Stencil shadows vs Shadow Maps

[old_painless 182]

Still...it is just plain silly to have different types of shadows on higher settings, I'd say that if this isn't fixed by beta then there should definately be some vocality, currently there are other things to be concerned with.

If I understand what DaRkL3AD3R is going at here, it is not so much the inconsequential choice of shadow methodology (a silly issue), as it is an issue which could be costing us CPU cycles

[nodunit 397]

I wasn't aware I could bump the ticket? If I knew that I wouldn't have posted a simple bump on this thread, which apparently lead to an infraction...

Anyways, thanks for agreeing and showing support. I actually get the feeling they might be planning to do a total shadow maps solution anyway as you can see with the A/MH-9 aircraft they do cast shadow maps in at least 3rd person. That's a good thing, so hopefully they continue to make these changes for the entirety of the games content.

Fair enough then, yes any change you make to a ticket will bump it be it on purpose or mistake..even simply editing one of your posts will cause it to refresh.

If I understand what DaRkL3AD3R is going at here, it is not so much the inconsequential choice of shadow methodology (a silly issue), as it is an issue which could be costing us CPU cycles

It is but that has been discussed a few pages back and is included here http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=8233

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

If I understand what DaRkL3AD3R is going at here, it is not so much the inconsequential choice of shadow methodology (a silly issue), as it is an issue which could be costing us CPU cycles

Correct. I believe that even with the GPU calculated shadows there's still a very small amount of overhead on the CPU, but compared to the Stencil shadows method which many objects and models use still even on Ultra shadows it's nothing in comparison. Just try putting shadows on Low and watch your FPS drop because you're being more heavily CPU bottlenecked. What needs to be figured out is if the amount of objects still casting stencil shadows are costing more performance than just transitioning to full shadow maps. Sorry it's a bit confusing but I hope you guys know what I mean.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

I made a video showing how stencil shadows do not cast on the first person player model and weapon, but shadow maps do.

Ticket shows acknowledged by the developers, so that's good news. Maybe we'll see all stencil shadows upgraded to shadow maps for world objects sometime in beta. That'd be excellent. By the way I do believe the shadows cast from our weapon and arms in first person should indeed stay as stencil. At this close proximity shadow maps wouldn't be high enough resolution to really show good details.

[nodunit 397]

Welp...here we are well into beta and still no progression since it's final initiation. Some vehicles cast soft shadows in first person while others ignore then entirerly..

On the flip side it is being looked into according to this http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=8233

[KingScuba 1]

nice ground work, excellent idea and a great way to start using our gpus which aren't being used at all.

[suprememodder 11]

would shadow maps negate the need for shadow lods? also, i'm not too keen on the arguments for keeping stencil shadows. even on a sunny day, i don't cast super sharp angular shadows on myself. they're still a bit diffuse. the work offload to gpu would definitely be welcome as well. my gpu is barely being challenged by the game at the moment. very cpu heavy.

[PuFu 4600]

would shadow maps negate the need for shadow lods?

No 5 char

[BMCha 10]

I'd like to add that, given that Arma 3 is a DX10/11 title, the CPU-intensive part of stencil shadows can be done on the GPU in geometry shaders. I have no idea whether BI is doing that right now but it certainly would be something for them to look into.

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

would shadow maps negate the need for shadow lods? also, i'm not too keen on the arguments for keeping stencil shadows. even on a sunny day, i don't cast super sharp angular shadows on myself. they're still a bit diffuse. the work offload to gpu would definitely be welcome as well. my gpu is barely being challenged by the game at the moment. very cpu heavy.

They do negate the need for shadow LODs. If you haven't noticed with the stencil shadows, the player models cast shadows that are nowhere near appropriate for the actual 3D model, obviously this is due to extremely low LOD assets in place to cast stencil shadows. This is because Stencil shadows are EXPENSIVE and they need to optimize it as much as possible. Where-as Shadowmaps generated on the deprived GPU, can cast full quality LOD shadows quite nicely and easily. Sad that they haven't touched on this subject at all since it's been opened up months ago :(

I'd like to add that, given that Arma 3 is a DX10/11 title, the CPU-intensive part of stencil shadows can be done on the GPU in geometry shaders. I have no idea whether BI is doing that right now but it certainly would be something for them to look into.

Actually it's easy for you to find out that nope they aren't. Here's what you do:

- Go to a forest area

- Turn Shadows on Ultra

- GPU usage should spike quite nicely

- Now turn Shadows on Low

- GPU usage plummets and in fact your minimum fps should drop a lot due to CPU bottlenecking

gg

[suprememodder 11]

if it does away with shadow lods, that alone is worth it for me. shadow lods look like ass and they always product artifacts at the joints.

[suprememodder 11]

you gotta be kidding me. this hasn't been implemented yet? this easy thing that would save performance twofold and improve visual quality all around hasn't been implemented but useless crap like this get priority?:

Fixed some discrepancies between vest models and their capacities.

Introduced some diversity amongst vest types in their weight and capacity.

btw the new hdr effect is fucking terrible.

[Alabatross 1]

you gotta be kidding me. this hasn't been implemented yet? this easy thing that would save performance twofold and improve visual quality all around hasn't been implemented but useless crap like this get priority?:

btw the new hdr effect is fucking terrible.

The game is out, you already payed. It's not their problem anymore.

I don't see Arma 4 getting off as easy

[Deadfast 43]

you gotta be kidding me. this hasn't been implemented yet? this easy thing that would save performance twofold and improve visual quality all around hasn't been implemented but useless crap like this get priority?:

Fixed some discrepancies between vest models and their capacities.

Introduced some diversity amongst vest types in their weight and capacity.

You do realize different employees do different things?

btw the new hdr effect is fucking terrible.

There are better ways you can provide feedback than shouting in random threads.

[dmarkwick 261]

you gotta be kidding me. this hasn't been implemented yet? this easy thing that would save performance twofold and improve visual quality all around hasn't been implemented but useless crap like this get priority?:

For a guy who has a name like "suprememodder", you seem to have an incomplete idea about how work is distributed among workers.

btw the new hdr effect is fucking terrible.

Raise a ticket. I recommend calling it "The new HDR effect is fucking terrible", and just copy-paste that into the description field too. It seems to succinctly and completely describe all the problems perfectly in a way that makes it really easy to identify a fix.

[rundll.exe 12]

Just wondering (didn't investigate it myself), but what makes a model use stencil shadows? Is it defined in the p3d? Is it in the model config? Is it hard-coded in the engine? If one vehicle does stencil, and another does soft shadowing, there must be a difference in config right?

If that's the case, maybe it's possible to make a replacement config to test the performance of all-soft-shadows

[das attorney 858]

I think it's the shadowVolume LODs in the model.

[MavericK96 0]

I hope BIS considers this. Personally I think the extremely sharp stencil shadows are unrealistic in the first place. Plus we end up with a lot of weird issues where parts of weapons/characters will have shadows but some won't.

[rundll.exe 12]

In that case there's not much we can do without the models, and BIS has to go trough all (hundreds?) the models to "fix" them?

[clydefrog 3]

We need full shadow maps... stencil shadows are ancient, almost 10 years old technology when looking at realtime implementation in commercial gaming. Shadow maps are where it's at, and I hope BI fixes this issue.

Most of the engine is 10 year old technology so what do you expect lol?

[NeuroFunker 11]

Most of the engine is 10 year old technology so what do you expect lol?

unreal engine is since '98, so what?

[tinemem 11]

In that case there's not much we can do without the models, and BIS has to go trough all (hundreds?) the models to "fix" them?

well, if it's possible to config, they could at least help the community by letting us know how it's done. not having to make a shadow lod can save a lot of time.

I think it's the shadowVolume LODs in the model.

i tried deleting the shadow lod but that just made the model all bright and not cast shadows. i have a named property called lodnoshadow set to 1 in my viewable lods. i wonder what it does.

i am convinced there must be a setting somewhere in oxygen. if we can just enable that. i've already searched and seen ported arma 2 models that use shadow maps. sadly the guy who posted the pic no longer posts here. so we need to discover the method again.

[roshnak 41]

Wait- this thread is old. Has this not been changed yet?

Edit: Just checked. Still a thing. I don't understand the logic behind CPU shadows. No one has a CPU so good and a GPU so bad it's worth offloading shadows onto the CPU in this game.

Edited January 2, 2014 by roshnak

[tinemem 11]

here's what i found after researching old threads from 2008, you can apply a shadow hybird system. you have to add a named property called "shadow" with its value as "hybrid"

then you will have a hybrid system, like for some of the vehicles.

here's a picture, notice how the shadow map of the arm blends perfectly with the shading. no more out of place, jagged angular shadows. now i need to figure out how to get rid of stencil shadow altogether.

i.imgurdotcom/sEsWaoA.jpg

---------- Post added at 05:17 ---------- Previous post was at 04:55 ----------

found a simpler way to enable shadow maps. go to the geometry lod of your mlod, go to windows>named selection(ctrl+L), and add property name "prefershadowvolume" with its value being zero. now the model will disregard the shadow lods and use gpu shadow buffer.

unfortunately, every other piece of equipment still uses prefershadowvolume=1, and we can't open those up in oxygen to fix them. the onus is on bis to make an option for this. i wonder if the mlod editing method is the only way, if so, tough luck ever seeing this happening since they'll have to open them all up, and you can't do a simple option menu toggle, and after that, there's the problem of steam lacking binary patching support, so unless they want to fragment the bin files even more badly, they'll have to replace the 400+mb bin files meaning huge downloads again.

to me, this is a clear case of lack of foresight. bis screwed up.

[nodunit 397]

So it remains as a half assed project...wonderful, simply wonderful. So now we have a mixture of pretty and sharp, old and by comparison ugly shadows that also ignore other aspects of lighting amongst the bran new method and we don't even have the option to push the stencils to be full gpu based like the older shadow solutions even if they do appear less spectacular.

Why is anyone supposed to be calm about this, they experimented with this stuff in ALPHA and bettered it through patches. Oh sure it has its flaws but in comparison to the older method of GPU rendering it is gorgeous, they have had plenty of time to fix this and the idea that they never will just makes me grind my teeth in frustration. By comparison of so many things it would be a simple fix, yes there are a lot of objects, yes it would be a big patch but I'm pretty sure that most people would happily deal with a large patch update if it meant that the shadows would be fixed especially given the facts that we've been told that stencil shadows run on CPU whereas higher run on GPU and has always been like that.

Edited January 2, 2014 by NodUnit