Thoughts on the new Shadows and settings

[RuecanOnRails 10]

I was just playing around with my settings again, and I noticed there is now an ULTRA setting for shadows so of course I'm going to put that on.

Shadows now have a dither effect to smooth out edges and make them look more natural, and it looks great.

I have however found one minor annoyance with them, and that's the new method of smoothing appears to be a STATIC overlay on your screen that shows up when looking at shadows.

It really reminded me of the condensation you get on your gas mask in Metro 2033 when you look closely. very similar effect.

If you want to test and see what I mean and check it out for yourself there's a couple settings you need to change.

Set your shadow distance at the max 200

and in the quality tab set your shadows to ULTRA

Now go around in a town or look under a tree and hold right click to zoom in (don't look through a scope)

You will see the "noise filter" applied to the edges of the shadows rather clearly. If you look around slightly you will notice that the noise filter is static on your screen, it's not on the ground with the shadows.

I'll post a picture or two when I get a moment.

Here are a couple of pictures to show the effect up close, looking at it up close it does look bad, but from a distance it looks great.

http://imgur.com/a/Gv48D

I really enjoy the new look of shadows, it add's so much by simply drawing attention away from jagged lines cast from buildings. while some jagged lines are still present they are much less noticeable.

Edited March 12, 2013 by RuecanOnRails
Added link to a couple pictures

[Ringo 0]

Cool. Will have to try that out tonight. Have you noticed any significant change in performance with the Ultra setting over High?

[RuecanOnRails 10]

Overall not really, but your mileage may vary. With my set up it doesnt really matter what shadow quality I use, the fps ranges between them all is about 2-4 fps last I checked so I just keep it on the highest settings.

The shadows on every setting have been changed, not just adding very high and ultra. Even on standard it's improved. I think low is still the same as before.

Added link to pictures in original post.

Edited March 12, 2013 by RuecanOnRails

[gliptal 25]

This is new, didn't notice, I'll try ASAP...

Yay!

[Gorbachev 1]

This looks a lot like GTA4 shadows when it first came to PC. Ick.

[catar 1]

I don't see ULTRA option for shadows.I got 14 mb patch but no ultra shadows

[zimms 22]

I think there may be some hard coded restrictions for the settings, depending on your hardware. E.g. if you graphics card has X MB, your max. texture quality is Y.

I'm not sure though, can't check right now.

[gliptal 25]

I think there may be some hard coded restrictions for the settings, depending on your hardware. E.g. if you graphics card has X MB, your max. texture quality is Y.

I'm not sure though, can't check right now.

Good point...

What are your spec catar?

Yay!

[NeuroFunker 11]

yes i did notice it too, but it doesn't really disturb me, compared to the blocky shadows before. Thank you BIS for listening to community. ;)

[danil-ch 165]

Something weird just happened. After last update i set shadows to Ultra and played about a hour and then exit the game. Now when i start game Ultra and Very High setting for shadows are gone. What the hell?

[gliptal 25]

There has been a new update, 12:35 at my time zone...

Yay!

[ScratcH1 10]

They reverted the patch because it was causing major issues in MP... they're working on it to re-roll the patch

[danil-ch 165]

Thanks for clarification.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

I just want to chime in to say the new shadows are lovely and I am grateful that they added them!

To anyone who doesn't like them, you need to step outside more often. The further an object is from it's shadow the softer it's edges appear. Things like trees and buildings should NEVER have ultra sharp lines for shadow edges. The player model can cast hard edged shadows because generally a human's shadow is never really casting more than a few feet away, so it's fine.

But wow I noticed it alright and I LOVE IT. Good job BI!!! :bounce3:

[mordeaniischaos 3]

That effect is normal. It's how you do soft shadows these days. Don't stare at it, and you won't notice too much.

It does look awesome, loving the change! I wish the unit shadows were a but better though, they look even more out of place now.

[spamurai 3]

Before the patch, I prefered the Low shadow settings. They performed and looked better.

However, the new Ultra shadows are much improved... and appear to perform as well as Low Shadows, and in some cases Ultra ran even better then Low as the following screenshots demonstrate. A significant boost to FPS in certain areas in addition to improved image quality resulted. Shown here is near the shack up the hill from Camp Tempest. This performance boost is not universal across the board however, but still, at the very least the Ultra setting appears to be running as good as Low shadows. Shadow distance was set at 200

Low Shadows

http://imageshack.us/a/img152/7025/arma32013031223020174.png (4445 kB)

Ultra Shadows

http://imageshack.us/a/img812/5397/arma32013031223013211.png (4471 kB)

[johncage 30]

units need soft shadow as well. the hard lines simply don't look real.

[pathetic_berserker 4]

However, the new Ultra shadows are much improved... and appear to perform as well as Low Shadows, and in some cases Ultra ran even better then Low as the following screenshots demonstrate. A significant boost to FPS in certain areas in addition to improved image quality resulted.

If it its like A2 then shadows at low settings are being rendered by the GPU but at high settings by the CPU so the performance increase would still be dependant on hardware.

And yep the new shadows do look great.

[RuecanOnRails 10]

That effect is normal. It's how you do soft shadows these days. Don't stare at it, and you won't notice too much.

It does look awesome, loving the change! I wish the unit shadows were a but better though, they look even more out of place now.

I know the effect is normal, what I was trying to point out that I find a slight annoyance is that it's a STATIC IMAGE on the camera.

What I mean by that is, if you look at some shadows really closely so you can clearly see the noise filter layer. Put your finger up to your screen on a single detail of the noise distortion and watch it as you aim around slightly. It never changes. It's pretty much a transparent layer on your screen at all times but shows up when looking at shadows. Normally that filter will be overlayed on the terrain, not the camera view. It's like mt monitor is dirty and I need to clean it.

Trust me, I love the new look of the shadows and how it smooths the edges, and removes any jagged lines cast from buildings when compared to the previous method. I just find that static overlay image is a little too static.

Obviously this is the first iteration of the new shadows and it's a massive improvement. I could easily live with them the way they are. But I would of course like to see it improved a little further, even if that means adding multiple layers of that filter that change every few frames so you can't track a single part of it no matter where you look.

[nodunit 397]

Before the patch, I prefered the Low shadow settings. They performed and looked better.

However, the new Ultra shadows are much improved... and appear to perform as well as Low Shadows, and in some cases Ultra ran even better then Low as the following screenshots demonstrate. A significant boost to FPS in certain areas in addition to improved image quality resulted. Shown here is near the shack up the hill from Camp Tempest. This performance boost is not universal across the board however, but still, at the very least the Ultra setting appears to be running as good as Low shadows. Shadow distance was set at 200

Yar, when I were playing anywhere but in a forest I'd use low settings because I were not a fan of the scurvy serrated edges of the shadows on higher settings, twas a mockery of urban setting it was!

But now with these new soft shadows not only look much better, keeping that crispy shape with soft fuzzy goodness but also lended itself to the new graphical changes, making Arma 3 appear even more visually pleasing. I do hope these beauties will be making rounds to fill in the rest of the assets from props to infantry and vehicles.

That said, I'm not sure I be seeing what you be seeing with the frosted glass filter going on thar, what card be ye using?

Edited March 13, 2013 by NodUnit

[spamurai 3]

Yar, when I were playing anywhere but in a forest I'd use low settings because I were not a fan of the scurvy serrated edges of the shadows on higher settings, twas a mockery of urban setting it was!

But now with these new soft shadows not only look much better, keeping that crispy shape with soft fuzzy goodness but also lended itself to the new graphical changes, making Arma 3 appear even more visually pleasing. I do hope these beauties will be making rounds to fill in the rest of the assets from props to infantry and vehicles.

That said, I'm not sure I be seeing what you be seeing with the frosted glass filter going on thar, what card be ye using?

MSi GTX 670 Power Edition

[metalcraze 290]

What I mean by that is, if you look at some shadows really closely so you can clearly see the noise filter layer. Put your finger up to your screen on a single detail of the noise distortion and watch it as you aim around slightly.

Some squad is getting pounded in the background by enemies, a chopper flies by firing rockets at an APC, artillery explosions everywhere. Frontal scene - Ruecan crouches near a tree shadow with a magnifying glass "look at those shadow edges - they are not perfect! Preposterous!"

[RuecanOnRails 10]

Some squad is getting pounded in the background by enemies, a chopper flies by firing rockets at an APC, artillery explosions everywhere. Frontal scene - Ruecan crouches near a tree shadow with a magnifying glass "look at those shadow edges - they are not perfect! Preposterous!"

Don't forget about watching the small flies, bee's and occasional butterflies :) If there was a flower picking meta game, you bet I'd doing that as well haha.

[tremanarch 6]

great!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2KF-ms0Pas&t=0m49s

[Placebo 29]

There is an existing thread about the new shadows, please search before posting.

Merging.