Opinions on Shadow Quality in Skyrim SE

[PineCone1]

First off, I apologize, I'm sure there have been a magnitude of posts pertaining to this, but I just wanted to get a little feedback on peoples opinions of shadow quality in Skyrim SE.

 

I am not a person who has a "good eye" for colors and picture quality in general (I am partially colorblind, but nothing serious, I still see all the spectrum's of color). However, this makes certain things tough for me to judge, and the effect of shadows in games is one of them. Now some might say, "well why do you care then if you cant really notice a discernible difference".. It's not so much that I dont see or notice a difference, it's just not as clear what the difference is to my eye as what it may be to others.

 

So to the root of the question, is it worth playing with 4k shadow textures? To my eye 2k vs. 4k shadows are very similar, I would say the 4k shadows give my game a slightly "more realistic" look and softer shadows overall, while the 2k tend to be darker and less soft (particularly at the edge of the shadow, i.e where the shadow ends and light begins)

 

The reason I ask is because when running 4k I tend to notice more FPS drops, especially when turning fast. (Its not that big of a deal or performance hit, but overall 2k seems smoother, and the spikes are less/nonexistant in most areas) I run a GTX 970 which are notorious for their limited 3.5 gigs of VRAM which I am assuming is part of the issue.

 

As a person who likes to take screenshots/videos of playthoughs I would obviously prefer the best looking experience. But to someone with a trained eye, are the 4k shadows really worth it?

 

 

TL;DR: What are your opinions on 4k vs 2k shadows in SSE and are the 4k worth the slight performance hit at times

Edited February 5, 2018 by PineCone1

[Moksha8088]

Use 2k whenever possible. The exception being for something like skin textures. How good something looks does not necessarily correspond to the resolution. You can look at many of the clothing, armor, and weapons mods and see that the detailing the artist puts in makes the preponderance of difference to how it will look in your game.

[sopmac45]

2k vs 4k depends on the kind of rig you have, how powerful your video card is. Do you have a 144 Hz monitor ? Is it a 4k monitor ?

 

I do have the Nvidia 1070, 16 gb RAM, i7-6700, Z170 mobo and Viewsonic 144 Hz Monitor, so my rig is kind of decent and I play all my games with these settings : AA = off, 2560x1440, Godrays = off, Lens Flare = off, Decal Quality = High, Shadow Quality = high, Shadow Distance = High or Medium and Texture Quality = Ultra.

 

In my Skyrim game I am not using any lighting enhancer mod at all but I use Dust Effect and Better torches and candles. I also use ONLY one environmental mod : Vivid Weathers which it is IMO, the best out there. I only use one ENB which in combination with my Vivid Weathers, makes my game looks amazing. I could give you my reasons on why I use the above settings but that will be too long probably.

 

In my Fallout 4 game, I use the same game menu settings. Do not use any ENB, no lighting effect mod at all, only one Graphic textures which it is : Grafix ... and my game looks amazing as well. Especially for Fallout 4, I should not add mods like those because it will make me drop a lot of FPS and I do not like that at all. Skyrim engine is much better than the crappy engine of Fallout 4 to be honest.

 

My point is that for me, I have to have a balance between performance and quality and by following my own rules, I have come up with that balance. In Skyrim my FPS are between 53 - 60 and in Fallout 4, between 55 - 144. In my Fallout 4 I have some heavy mods like WOTC ( War of the Commonwealth ) and other overhaul mods that in combination with the crappy engine, makes my FPS vary that much. Skyrim is more stable than Fallout 4.

 

So, If I was you, I would just set up Shadow Quality to either Medium or High.

[JimmyRJump]

First off, a GTX970 has 4GB of V-RAM. It's just that 512MB of it is a bit slower than the rest. When scared your 4GB of V-RAM will be insufficient to pull-off some high res textures, have a look at ENBoost. ENBoost is a tool that allows for system RAM to be used as V-RAM. Don't worry that the ENBoost file is sitting with the Fallout 4 mods: the tool works for a few different games, among those both SSE and FO4.

 

I have an MSI RX470 GPU with 8GB of V-RAM and am running loads of 2 and 4K textures (in 1080p) with 2K shadows because there's almost no visible difference with 4K (again, in 1080p)

[PineCone1]

Hey guys thanks for the responses, its good to know that even to people without broken eyes there is no huge difference between the shadow quality resolutions. I'll probably stick with the 2k, overall it just seems smoother on my rig (GTX 970, i5-3570k, 8GB DDR3, 144hz 1080p, Samsung EVO SSD- I know.. time to upgrade some stuff)

 

I experience these weird macro stutter hits with the 4k sometimes when loading distant textures it seems (i.e. if i'm outside of Whiterun and do a 180 to face it and its loads the city in the distance.. not sure if this has something to do with draw distances or what but its annoying as hell from an immersion standpoint) but without the 4k they are nonexistent it seems. (Even without mods I still take a 5-7 fps hit for some reason) I use BethINI and it seems to get most of the settings where they need to be on the ultra/high presets (besides actor fade, gotta max that out if im going to be playing an archer lol, I do understand that I will take hits if a bunch of actors are in the same area).

 

@Sop I used Vivid weathers but switched to CoT only because Vivid tends to wash my colors (to my eye) but I think my monitor could be part of that (asus VG248QE), ENB hits my rig pretty hard on SE (I can run Rudy ENB fine on Oldrim), but I have been considering using a reshade instead.. decisions decisions

 

@Jimmy I was under the impression that ENBoost was obsolete in SE because the 64 bit is able to handle memory better/correctly (or something lol).. obviously I am not well versed in this. It would certainly be nice to have as I think on my system it could help

Edited February 8, 2018 by PineCone1