I don't play with shadows because I have a video card from ancient times and cause huge fps drops..... but .. wow... i would never see anything like that since I need to play with them off.
The problem is that the engine seems to be not capable of rendering shadows from the 3rd person models when they are not rendered for their owners.
But then again is the advantage in that picture not that big since those detailed shadows only start rendering when you are just a few meters away from the actual source. I wish there was a way to crank that distance up in the options, in case your PC can handle it.
Props on the camera work. That's got good composition and good use of spot lighting and colour. Maybe could use the shadow being a touch further to the right (rule of 3rds!), but overall I'd say 8/10, well done.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
I love shadows personally. At least when I'm not being all serious with a competitive game.
It adds a lot to the game's atmosphere Imo
I mean how many multiplayer games do you know that have dynamic lighting? I think I know of two others.
It's a fun dynamic and i wish it played more of a role.
But it is a shame that shadows are still so technically demanding on GPUs, even today.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
Once upon a time it was said "let there be light" and as such shadows were created as a byproduct. Game designers would have none of this and simply gave us the option to shade or not to shade.
-WildCat-Cape Town, South AfricaJoin Date: 2008-07-19Member: 64664Members, Reinforced - Shadow
I can't imagine playing NS2 without shadows. To me, they're a defining feature of the game's visual style and I'm sure there are also some rare cases where you might see an enemy's shadow before they come into view, giving you a tiny advantage.
Ah, I thought those guys are wallhackers, turns out they just have shadows on.
In other games (source and unreal engine) shadows go through walls. It's awful!
Do you have any examples?
If anything, I have rather problems with light coming through a wall rather than shadows.
Other possible symptoms:
-if you have light seems on BSP corners from a light source on the other side, then the lightmap resolution might be chosen too low.
-light may pass through Terrain from the outside if it's in such an angle that it only hits the back faces of it.
-if shadows of equipment and character model overlap in an ugly manner, the equipment didn't set the proper shadow parent.
But the previous Unreal Engines were not really meant to be used with dynamic lighting anyway.
- UE1 pretty much only consists of BSP and thus ligthmaps. Characters had simple blob shadow decals.
- UE2 introduced more use of StaticMeshes, which have to rely on vertex lighting and thus can't get any detailed shadows without cranking up the polygon count. Projectors were used to create accurate dynamic shadow maps for selected Actors.
- UE3 then got lightmaps for StaticMeshes.
- UE3.5 introduced Unreal Lightmass as a global illumination solution that could create accurate rayrtraced lightmaps and thus allowed you to get rid of a lot of additional helper lights and opened the ability to use emissive materials as actual light sources. Light color information generated by the global illumination was also stored in voxel-like points throughout the entire map which could then be accessed by Actors with a LightEnvironment attached to them, so they got detailed character lighting based on the global illumination.
There was an option for full dynamic lighting that would use the traditional way without global illumination, would not create any lightmaps and skip the render pass that involves lightmap data to save performance, but I never really liked the result because the draw distance for dynamic shadows would be too low for large outdoor maps to look good (imho) and there was no real reason to use it for indoor lighting when Lightmass looked so much better.
Though I have to admit that I use full dynamic lighting during the development (rebuilding lights frequently takes ages if you don't have a render farm and actually makes my PC run out of memory in the process), but the performance hit is something that I would not deem acceptable for an actual game release, so lightmaps will still be baked in the end.
- UE4 will only have fully dynamic raytraced global illumination, but it requires a monster PC as minimum in return.
Ah, I thought those guys are wallhackers, turns out they just have shadows on.
In other games (source and unreal engine) shadows go through walls. It's awful!
Do you have any specific examples?
UT3 DM_Heatray is the best example for the Unreal Engine: while you are running through the buildings, the Darkwalker can and will cast a shadow throughout the entire building. Pretty jarring. Also, all floors cast a circle shadow of players right through the other end, in every case it seems. Really easy to see on the HOLP/COMP levels.
HL2 and TF2 has problems with shadows too, but I mostly only see them in modded maps. However, in KOTH_Viaduct, middle door from both spawns has a passageway with a light casting a shadow through the sheet metal wall. Other odd places have those problems in Source games unless the mapper fixes it somehow.
Because while many of us get high fps, if you DO get less than 60fps (which has happened once to me recently, the game crapped out, rebooted and it was fine), it seems like 25-30 fps it's so choppy for some reason.
I usually always have 60 fps when I play this game, but in one match I played a little while ago my framerate dropped to about 8 whenever I got anywhere near marine start. I lost my fade twice because of it... Not really sure what caused that problem
Join Date: 2012-11-28 Member: 173581Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold
Comments
Hurry up! I hear combat boots!
I don't play with shadows because I have a video card from ancient times and cause huge fps drops..... but .. wow... i would never see anything like that since I need to play with them off.
But then again is the advantage in that picture not that big since those detailed shadows only start rendering when you are just a few meters away from the actual source. I wish there was a way to crank that distance up in the options, in case your PC can handle it.
What should I choose shadows or better frame rate?
I choose the later...
It adds a lot to the game's atmosphere Imo
I mean how many multiplayer games do you know that have dynamic lighting? I think I know of two others.
It's a fun dynamic and i wish it played more of a role.
But it is a shame that shadows are still so technically demanding on GPUs, even today.
In other games (source and unreal engine) shadows go through walls. It's awful!
I'd love it if the engine rendered the player's own shadow so I've posted a topic in Idea's and Suggestions.
Do you have any examples?
If anything, I have rather problems with light coming through a wall rather than shadows.
Other possible symptoms:
-if you have light seems on BSP corners from a light source on the other side, then the lightmap resolution might be chosen too low.
-light may pass through Terrain from the outside if it's in such an angle that it only hits the back faces of it.
-if shadows of equipment and character model overlap in an ugly manner, the equipment didn't set the proper shadow parent.
But the previous Unreal Engines were not really meant to be used with dynamic lighting anyway.
- UE1 pretty much only consists of BSP and thus ligthmaps. Characters had simple blob shadow decals.
- UE2 introduced more use of StaticMeshes, which have to rely on vertex lighting and thus can't get any detailed shadows without cranking up the polygon count. Projectors were used to create accurate dynamic shadow maps for selected Actors.
- UE3 then got lightmaps for StaticMeshes.
- UE3.5 introduced Unreal Lightmass as a global illumination solution that could create accurate rayrtraced lightmaps and thus allowed you to get rid of a lot of additional helper lights and opened the ability to use emissive materials as actual light sources. Light color information generated by the global illumination was also stored in voxel-like points throughout the entire map which could then be accessed by Actors with a LightEnvironment attached to them, so they got detailed character lighting based on the global illumination.
There was an option for full dynamic lighting that would use the traditional way without global illumination, would not create any lightmaps and skip the render pass that involves lightmap data to save performance, but I never really liked the result because the draw distance for dynamic shadows would be too low for large outdoor maps to look good (imho) and there was no real reason to use it for indoor lighting when Lightmass looked so much better.
Though I have to admit that I use full dynamic lighting during the development (rebuilding lights frequently takes ages if you don't have a render farm and actually makes my PC run out of memory in the process), but the performance hit is something that I would not deem acceptable for an actual game release, so lightmaps will still be baked in the end.
- UE4 will only have fully dynamic raytraced global illumination, but it requires a monster PC as minimum in return.
UT3 DM_Heatray is the best example for the Unreal Engine: while you are running through the buildings, the Darkwalker can and will cast a shadow throughout the entire building. Pretty jarring. Also, all floors cast a circle shadow of players right through the other end, in every case it seems. Really easy to see on the HOLP/COMP levels.
HL2 and TF2 has problems with shadows too, but I mostly only see them in modded maps. However, in KOTH_Viaduct, middle door from both spawns has a passageway with a light casting a shadow through the sheet metal wall. Other odd places have those problems in Source games unless the mapper fixes it somehow.