Shadows (and grass) messed up

[MamiyaOtaru 1]

Normal detail shadows are looking a lot worse with the 1.05 patch.  A lot of it has to do with the grass layer.  Some of it is just weird.

As seen in this shot, shadows projected onto the footpath below the Paraiso cathedral are very blocky.  

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85....MG] (text in pic reads "no such problems here. Roads are fine too." Darn jpg compression)

The grass layer does something similar, as can be seen in this shot:

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85....MG]

Closer up, same problem, plus you can see the grass layer's low resolution compared to the ground: not pretty

http://img83.imageshack.us/img83....MG]

Weirder in the north.  Conifers have nice triangular shadows on the grass layer, but even before the grass layer they look wrong:

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85....MG]

With grass totally off, the shadow is normal:

http://img83.imageshack.us/img83....MG]

So, the weird shadows on the walkway below the cathedral may have been there before (don't remember), but the weird shadows on the grass layer are obviously new, and not so good looking.  Fixing them and making the grass layer have a nice texture like the ground may eat into FPS more than the grass layer already does unfortunately.  

The weird shadows of the conifer are strange.  Why does having a grass layer make the conifers' shadows look weird even where the grass layer isn't?

Last of all, missing shadows!  This might have been there in 1.04 too, not sure.

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214....MG]

edit: so, thumbnails seem to be broken.  Not sure why, but the links work :-/

[Possessed 0]

You should tune down your shadow settings because Armed Assault is just too demanding even to the fastest home PC systems of today. There is nothing wrong in the 1.05 patch, shame on you

[KeyCat 131]

@ Possessed: If you look in the upper right corner of MamiyaOtaru's screenshots you will see that he as a pretty OK fps so your comment doesn't apply.

I agree with MamiyaOtaru, the graphic quality took a major step back with the 1.05 patch IMO and a related thing that is new is the heavy flickering on distant objects (more on some objects than others) when looking thru scopes.

First I thought it was a driver issue on my end but after testing and seeing the same with nVidia 77.77 WHQL, 84.21 WHQL, 93.71 WHQL and 93.81 Beta it's obviously not.

But I'm happy that the 1.05 patch fixed other more urgent issues like CTD's in MP etc. Hopefully BIS can get back the pre-1.05 graphic quality later on (lower prio over other issues like CTD's etc).

/KC

[max power 21]

I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too.

[EricM 0]

I noticed the same. Shadows are sometime way more blocky (almost like perfect like triangles or squares) than before.

Regarding why the grass layer makes blocky shadow even where there is aparently no grass layer, I think it's because the grass layer is actually drawn EVERYWHERE but it is made transparent when true grass is rendered with some sort of alpha blending. The Shadow still intersect with the invisible layer though, hence the blocky shadow on rendered grass.

For the time being, I'd like to be able to get rid of the new grass layer which looks average at best and eat FPS while retaining the grass as in 1.04.

[MamiyaOtaru 1]

Regarding why the grass layer makes blocky shadow even where there is aparently no grass layer ...

That's the weird part.  In South Sahrani, it doesn't screw up the shadows where it isn't drawn, as one can see in the first shot, next to the pathway.  It only seems to mess up conifers.  You could be right about the cause though, that it is everywhere but is transparent close to you.

Anyway, I quite like the grass layer.  Some tweaks might help.  For now, make sure you don't catch a grass layer transition in one of your snaps for the photography thread!

A note: the grass layer has no problems with high detail (non-static) shadows. In the north, that's fine. I think they look better (softer and and darker and moving) in the forests, and I actually get higher performance in N Sahrani with high detail shadows. In the south, building and palm tree shadows projected in flat roadways looks better, and in the south for me normal shadows are faster, so I wish they worked a little better with the grass layer.

[xmongx 0]

I second the idea of removing the grass layer.

Im struggling to understand what it does or why its there :/

This seems to be the cause of the performance problems.