bikerdude on 6/11/2008 at 16:55
I have just recently discovered after a shed load of digging that all games 'based' on the 'Unreal Tournement 3' engine (Mass Effect, Tombraider: underground, Bioshock) can suffer from crap looking dynamic shadows.
In 'Mass effect' when in closeup dialoge mode, the shadows on charachtrers faces is jagged. And whenin 'TRU' at the begining of the demo where Lara is stood on the deck of her boat, the shadows are so low res its shocking.... I initially thought it was my shiney new GTX280 and or the gfx drivers or vista - it never occured to me that it would be the damn game engine...!!!
Most games that use that engine have had a fix of sorts put up on thier respective community forums and what I have found is its to do with the resolution of the shadow mask being applied in-game. The only UT3 based game that never exhibited the problem was Bioshock.
biker
EvaUnit02 on 6/11/2008 at 23:48
What are you talking about? Tomb Raider Underworld uses a proprietary in-house engine that Edios developed from scratch, it doesn't use UE3.0.
TheOutrider on 7/11/2008 at 00:33
It's not just UE3 that does it. Viva Pinata has it as well. The shadows aren't really jagged either - they're fairly low-res and use dithering to both implement soft edges and disguise the comparatively low resolution. It might just be the way DX10 handles dynamic soft shadows (which Bioshock didn't have as far as I remember), I think.
In all fairness, it only shows when you're looking at things from fairly close up or the shadows have a MASSIVE falloff (like they do in Mass Effect). I was quite bothered by it in Viva Pinata at first, but got used to it quite quickly.
Also note that the static (or animated) environment shadows don't do it - the problem is not with the levels' shadow maps. It's literally only the self-shadowing and dynamic shadows that objects cast.
bikerdude on 7/11/2008 at 00:36
the info i came accross suggested it was based on the UT3 engine -
what ever engine its based on, its suffers from the EXACT same problem that other UT3 based games do, "low res crappy dynamic shadows" which quite frankly are completely unacceptable
When I have paid some of my hard earned cash, I do not, expect kindergarten problems like crappy low res shadows.
biker
EvaUnit02 on 7/11/2008 at 00:40
Look, when you're playing ports of console games, you can't be expecting them to look like Crysis. Low res textures and the like are to be expected when using software that's designed for hardware circa 2005.
Have you tried playing these games in their respective DX10 modes? Shadows rendering is usually one of the noticeable differences between DX9 and DX10 renderers.
bikerdude on 7/11/2008 at 15:02
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
Have you tried playing these games in their respective DX10 modes? Shadows rendering is usually one of the noticeable differences between DX9 and DX10 renderers.
Hi Eva
I choose the highest settings in both Mass Effect and the TRU demo, so as Im running vista I assume I would have been in DX10 mode on both..?
And the shadows are actually ok in thos pictures, the shadows I have been seeings are much much much worse - I will post screen shots.
biker
EvaUnit02 on 8/11/2008 at 13:28
Have you tried changing the "texture filtering - quality" setting in your Nvidia CP. I have the Global settings set to "high quality".
bikerdude on 8/11/2008 at 18:05
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
Have you tried changing the "texture filtering - quality" setting in your Nvidia CP. I have the Global settings set to "high quality".
I allways run my NvCP global setting as "high qaulity"
b.
