Outerra forum
Anteworld - Outerra Game => Tech demo, support, updates => Topic started by: josem75 on December 02, 2016, 09:40:24 am
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This is a question mostly for Cameny and Angry.
When i hear about udates, i always think that the best update i would like, would be a shadows system improvement.
Only with that graphics would look almost perfect already.
Coverall because the actual flickering in terrain and trees shadows is huge, and this quit much of all the nice things of the graphics in the engine.
Analysing a bit. I discovered that the maximun range for show perfect shadows is 1.3 Km, in terrain and trees. Over 1.3 Km, shadows are in low quality and flickering is on fire. But curiosly, trees shadows range can be maximized from default 20% to 100%. And when i do, nothing changes. Only from 0 to 10-15% the distance change. But in this % you already obtain the maximun 1.3 Km distance for show perfect shadows trees. And terrain even dont have a value for increase range.
So. A Shadows improvement can be in two ways. A better low shadows without flickering problem. Or real options for go really far in perfect shadows (even while take some fps impact). For people who have a good graphic card would be a solution. But a fix in the low quality shadows also needed for those who have less power graphic card.
For example. In the first 5 Km range is where you mostly see the flickering problem, making something very ugly in a wonderful engine. So if perfect shadows can have a option for terrain and trees, to cover at least 5 Km range, the most important part of flickering would gone. And if extended to 10 Km, almost 100% would gone.
I dont know the impact in fps of 5-10 Km range shadows in trees and terrain. But the change in the engine would be incredible.
So is this posible or planned in a update soon?
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I would guess, by no means the current shadow implementation is meant to be final.
I also feel the current LODing, near cut off range and incomplete terrain shadowing and in VR moving shadows with the eye point and the flickering tree shading is quite distractive. But - there is always hope for an update, maybe even this year, who knows? ;)
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Honestly, at this point I usually turn tree shadows off and sometimes ground shadows as well.
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Even without reworking the shadow system we could add an option to set the number of shadow bands. I think currently it's set to 6 or 7, and the coverage in distance deteriorates quickly. More shadow bands mean more shadow rendering passes, and especially with low sun this could be quite a performance hit. But as you say, better GPUs can handle more ...
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Even without reworking the shadow system we could add an option to set the number of shadow bands. I think currently it's set to 6 or 7, and the coverage in distance deteriorates quickly. More shadow bands mean more shadow rendering passes, and especially with low sun this could be quite a performance hit. But as you say, better GPUs can handle more ...
Well, if you ever decide to do it, I would certainly give it a try. =D
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Is there a possible "quick" fix for the inconsistent and flickering tree shading too?
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That's a bigger problem. The flickering and inconsistency comes from the fact that currently the whole tree is shaded if one point on the ground is in shadow, so you can send the whole tree to the dark side just by moving, since the shadows from vehicles or from terrain are slightly moving.
Hm, in theory we could switch close trees to full shading, but that would require some blending. Or just give an option to switch tree shading to full one, for better GPUs .. at least until the shadow system is updated.
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So that's how you join the dark side...