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Shadow Cutoff Distance


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Shadow cutoff.  

8 members have voted

  1. 1. Which is better

    • 1) bigger distance, lower quality, worse performance.
      4
    • 2) less distance, higher quality, better performance, weird line at a distance.
      4


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@vladislavbelov asked me to create this poll to discuss the new cascade shadow feature.

 

The goal of this poll is to determine whether it's better to have a good performance and good quality shadows BUT a visible line of shadows.
or whether it's better to have a lower shadow quality, a bigger distance, and worse performance

You can check this by setting the shadow cutoff distance to 500.

Miletus%20Peninsula.jpgShadow%20cutoff.jpg


https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/6221#comment:3

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Thanks for bringing this to the forum - I thought this would be an obvious improvement, but I‘m ready to discuss this.

Just one question - in which way does the shadow cutoff influence shadow quality? These are two different options that can be set independently...

Don‘t get me wrong, I think the shadow cutoff is a good idea in general, I only want to change the default value.

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6 minutes ago, Salesome said:

Just one question - in which way does the shadow cutoff influence shadow quality? These are two different options that can be set independently...

The shadow uses a 2D map of a fixed size for a given quality, so the more you render, the less detail you can have.

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I think we should default to "look good by default, even if it's somewhat slower", and so I would vote towards increasing the default distance to e.g. 500/600.

Players that have graphics lag will possibly think of turning down settings, but players that don't might not think of turning them up.

 

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Hard to say tbh. Am I correct to assume that shadows outside of the camera get not rendered anyway and don't influence the performance?

Generally I like to zoom out from time to time to have a better overview and then 500 or 600 is definitively better.

Or the best solution: LOD for the shadows. High res the closer you zoom in and lowest quality when you zoom out :D

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24 minutes ago, maroder said:

Hard to say tbh. Am I correct to assume that shadows outside of the camera get not rendered anyway and don't influence the performance?

Yes and no. You can play around with the lock cull camera option and see that some shadows are rendered outside.

image.png

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11 hours ago, maroder said:

Or the best solution: LOD for the shadows. High res the closer you zoom in and lowest quality when you zoom out :D

I like this^ as another option. Perhaps call it "adaptive shadow quality."

 

My experience playing with this feature is kind of odd. If I turn off "Cover whole map" and set the slider Cutoff distance to 1500 and shadows get really blurry. But if I turn on Cover the whole map (covering the whole map should stretch the texture really far?), the shadows sharpen up again. I play with Cover the whole map anyway, so it's no big deal, just relating the behavior.

Edited by wowgetoffyourcellphone
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