njkilleen Posted March 24, 2012 Share Posted March 24, 2012 Regardless of all of all the issues with shadows present in Skyrim, there is only one that particularly bothers me. It's a weird shadow "line" that is always traveling a fixed distance away from the player. As it passes over the shadows, they suddenly become crisper/more detailed. If I had to take a guess as to what's happening, I would say that the game was, at that line, switching from the blurry and lower quality secondary shadows to the higher quality primary shadows (evident in SkyrimPrefs.ini as iShadowMapResolutionPrimary and iShadowMapResolutionSecondary). However, after some lengthy experimentation, the only setting in the SkyrimPrefs.ini that has any impact on the moving line is fShadowDistance. It seems as though the line is completely proportional to the total distance that shadows are rendered (probably about halfway between the player and the edge of fShadowDistance). At ultra settings, with fshadowdistance=8000, I can ignore it (as its relatively far away), but anything setting lower than that... and its just kills immersion. fShadowLODStartfade and fShadowLODMaxStartFade also seem to do nothing. If it is truly switching between secondary and primary shadows, then I would imagine that the game engine would blur the line in some way... instead of making it an instantaneous transition. I have a video demonstration this weird... phenomenon:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvKd7xH8L7U&context=C4dbd9a0ADvjVQa1PpcFNJlkxLmKmI9qLxPhog5pO6Jk9_1zMZkq0= Make sure to put the video on 1080p, or youtube will stretch the pixels and it will be difficult to see the line. Focus mostly on the tree's shadow at the center of the video. This is running at fshadowdistance=8000. If anyone has any knowledge about this weird shadowy detail line, please let me know! Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zyg0tic Posted December 11, 2012 Share Posted December 11, 2012 (edited) I've noticed this issue too and it is quite annoying. It is quite disheartening to see no reply to this thread, and that the video has been removed. If anyone else out there knows what he is referring to and has found the solution please help us out! UPDATE: Increasing fShadowDistance to 6000 did make it less apparent, especially on close objects like rocks. Its still a little bit visible when looking ahead at other shadows, so the shadow blur line might be a separate graphical feature.So I guess I need to find a setting that makes shadows crisper whilst fShadowDistance is higher.... Edited December 11, 2012 by zyg0tic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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