Jeremy Miller tweets (Senior Programmer at ISI)

I've got terribly jagged shadows as well, in cockpit mostly. So ugly. Tried all shadow and AA settings.

 

Do you recall it better before 880, or just the same? I am praying 880 is an anomaly!

 

+1

Inviato dal mio SM-T705 utilizzando Tapatalk

 

I've had various shadow problems on most builds, mostly drawing as you go and also sawtooth but I'm pretty sure I haven't seen them this bad in the cockpit before. The shadows are the biggest graphical problem from my point of view. All that flickering and sawtooth and watching them being drawn as you go looks so amateurish and it's been going on long enough now.

 

The sawtooth-edged shadows do ruin the immersion, especially when the other AA is OK.

 

Shadow edges have nothing to do with AA settings.

First thing you should do is to post a screenshot in the right forum section and provide description of your shadow settings.

Shadows will always have sawtooth edges - that's how shadows work in most games. Getting rid of it takes a lot of additional development time and GPU processing power. Unless you're experiencing something severe. I cannot tell from your descriptions, so I can only advise you post screenshots in the issue reporting forum.

 

Thanks for the info. All settings maxed. Why wouldn't shadows get AA like everything else? As soon as you add any movement (either the thing casting the shadow like a tree, or from a moving cockpit driving down a track), the sawtooth shadow edges turn in to a mass of pixelated shimmering that looks like a 1990's video game. I hope we can do better than that.

Also, the problem typically goes away when the objects/shadows are closer to the user POV. So how do the shadows that are close get AA, but not in the distance if shadows always have sawtooth edges?

How do certain shadows in the cockpit have sawtooth edges, but others do not and look terrific (iRacing has this issue a lot)? Sounds like a performance/quality trade-off like all else to me. There should be an OPTION for proper high quality shadows, optimized, so those who want to spend the resources can and those who do not can have their sawtooths. You can with higher resolution shadows:

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=1353

http://www.overclock.net/t/563420/mass-effect-bad-shadows-and-aa

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/615805-the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/60975074

And by the way, my question was related to 880 versus earlier builds. Is your assessment that shadow rendering has not changed in 880 or other more recent builds? It appears to me that higher res shadows are broken, but I will go test the settings again to see if they make any difference.

 

I agree with AA remarks above, but this particular problem is easy to explain: the less pixels you have to represent a complex shape, the more shimmering pixels you'll have. A tree shadow far from you is only few pixels high so choice have to be make from the computing (projection). The camera move sightly, the choice of displayed pixels change, that's impossible to avoid AFAIK. The more it grow, the more it have pixels to be represented, so the more the complex shape is displayed more accurately and gain "stability". This are not really something coming from AA (in this case), just due to resolution of our monitor, and "choice" made by formulas. Also, I guess they put some limits where AA is more computed when near than too far. This is why we see moving quality on shadow in front of you. I guess

 

I am still curious as to why Shadow Blur OFF, FAST, OPTIMAL and QUALITY all give identical performance to shadows cast by objects.

Only way to get rid of the shimmering ugliness is to bludgeon it with super-sampling. Links I put in above show that other titles have similar issues. In this case, no one is appealing to the console audience or hardware, so we should have an OPTION.

Hopefully it is just temporarily disconnected in 880.

 

Antialiasing helps with geometry edges. Shadows are not geometry, they're textures.

Textures are not antialiased, but they can have filtering. Unfortunately, this is not true for shadowmaps - they cannot be filtered and even if you would filter them, this would not make shadow edges look any different. This is because what you see on screen is not shadowmap texture, but result of shadow test made using that texture.
I will not go into details, but any filtering or antialiasing we have in your graphics cards just doesn't apply to shadows. Game developers need to use some advanced techniques if they want to soften their shadow edges. The better the result, the more complex the technique required or more performance impact it has.

I recently played Deus Ex HR. It got me thinking - why people keep comparing rF2 to 90's games if this 2011 blockbuster is in many aspects behind rf2? Shadows, for example, are of far lesser quality than what you can see in rF2.

I think it's because people get so used to technology, that they forget where we were 3-5 years ago. But truth be told - technology is not some magic - it's limited like everything else. If we don't get smooth shadow edges in every game, then we're not there yet and we need to wait a few more years. Right now some more advanced engines perform blurring of shadows, but let's not forget that these are made by companies making big bucks and investing that back into development time. They've been doing this for years and are ahead of smaller companies. You only need to look at this article to realize just how much research has gone into antialiasing techniques at some game studios. Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if they had one person working for a couple of years almost exclusively on subject of antialiasing

Personally, I think shadows in rF2 are programmed pretty good and the only problem is that some tracks (even ISI ones) don't have them setup very well.
You can try Croft circuit by feels3 - you will see shadows have much higher quality there.

No.
Shadows closer to observer use higher resolution shadowmaps. It's the same in pretty much every game that uses shadowmaps in open spaces.

This is why I commented, that you should post some information. Sometimes people try new track and have problems that they blame on recently installed build (because they didn't have these problems before). This is why first reaction is always to ask about circumstances
Also, what I mentioned about being used to technology - some people report normal behavior as bugs, simply because what they get is below their expectations, so they consider it an issue

It's important to "prove" somehow, that your claim is reasonable, so that it can make it to development team, and not just to the forum. This is why I also mentioned posting in forum section dedicated to bug reports. Show comparison with the same content and the same setting between current and previous build.

 

OK, so the simple answer is that the shadows have low resolution once they are a short distance from POV and it's not related to AA. I accept that, but it doesn't change the horrible appearance or distracting shimmering that they cause.

So why are we using such low resolution shadows (besides the obvious performance issues)? Why does the shadow blur option not affect them? Is this option not working in 880, or did it never work, or does it only not work with certain video cards?

I always use ISI Portugal and ISI cars for my comparisons so as not to introduce stray variables.

 

Another fantastically detailed and informative post K...

Ok, first thing I have to say is it`s a while since I`ve been on rf2/b880 as I`m away from home and the rig just now but from memory I have shadows maxed and set to optimal and don`t recall seeing bad jaggies using those settings most of the time.

Some builds did/do have problems with the shadows though so possibly b880 is one... as I say, not at my rig just now so can`t confirm.

 

By the way, K Szczech, you already explained the other huge graphics issue a long time ago:

http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/7921-Flickering-and-aliasing-fresnel-reflections

We're still waiting for that to be resolved by something other than SGSS or SS that kills performance.

 

It may be because of track settings. Check out Croft, like I said.
Perhaps some tracks from ISI had lower shadow settings, especially older ones.

See this post to see what difference shadow blur actually makes. It will not make shadow pixels go away, it will only blur them.

Good. I also like that track, but it's pretty old right now. May have lower shadow settings.

That's one of the issues with rF2 - engine depends on many settings in content, so as the content gets older, some features of engine (like shadows and reflections) grow old as well. This will remain an open issue for some time as I believe ISI simply does not have the manpower to keep updating the old content every time hey update something in the engine.

That is not easy to resolve - another subject that consumed some research in graphics world

One thing we need to keep in mind - these are not bugs or issues - it's just the way things work in relatime graphics. Of course game developers can spend time on overcoming these shortages and making exceptional game engine, but that takes incredible amount of time. This is why studios reselling their engines to hundreds of other companies can afford that, but independent game studios cannot.

And this is why I don't see such flaws as an issue - I simply accept them. I know how these things work and it doesn't bother me. But I do understand it bothers many other people. It's like I said - people get used to many things and start taking them for granted not being aware just how much effort has gone into achieving them. These things will be considered standard and demanded from everyone.

 

Wow, now I am even more depressed. The crap shadows are built-in to the track settings, not the core engine so they can be managed and selected on a system-wide basis.

I am also depressed that another 2012 thread from you has such a nice explanation, but that it is has been forgotten and/or ignored.

So bottom-line, what settings does one have to use to minimize the shimmering shadows problem? The most common place this is an issue is with shadows from trees on the track. If done well, they should look like shadows. When done poorly, they look from a distance like swirling, distracting pixels scrambling around on the track ruining the immersion. Once you get right on top of them, they may suddenly look normal, but it's too late. I thought the Shadow Blur setting helped with that, but now I am not so sure!?!

 

Can we keep this thread on track please?

 

It is on track--we're waiting for a reply regarding 880 shadows and whether they are broken or not. People are filling-in what they know. Since there is no new news from Jeremy, nor a new build imminent, what's is "on track?"

 

Tweets from JM? Why not start a dedicated thread for shadows?

 

my twitter must be broken...its saying that Jeremy has posted anything about the game since October 27

 

Mmmm yes it is broken. Correct date is 28 october but This means that he is working hard. The glass is always half full