In P3D v2 the only way to get shadows cast by terrain (eg a Mt. Rainier casting its long shadow during the morning/evening) is to turn on 'cast' in Terrain Shadows. The problem is you have to set Shadows to Ultra in order for them to be visible at more than a few miles out. In FSX, while the shadows weren't 'realtime' (ie they didn't cast shadows on objects like your aircraft) but they did move and shift with time of day, and with no cost to FPS.

 

In other words, to achieve terrain shadows with P3D the way FSX has them (albeit with the additional ability to cast a shadow on terrain AND objects instead of just terrain as in FSX) you have to cut your framerate in half, because the casting terrain shadows are very costly in P3D. For example in the scenario below, I went from 100fps to 37fps by turning on the terrain shadow casting, and even then it looks really bad because there's a very limited shadow drawing distance even on ultra - you can see the dividing line between shadows and no shadows very clearly.

 

In addition you'll note in these screenshots that in P3D, the terrain shading (not the shadows, the bright side/dark side overall shading aka gouraud shading) is reversed - the darker side of terrain is facing the direct sunlight and vice versa. The screenshots were all taken at the same time of day but you can see the P3D terrain looks like the sun is shining from the other direction.

 

FSX:  Note the subtle shadows cast onto terrain by the canyon walls.

 

 

P3D v2: Terrain casting disabled. Note no terrain shadows at all, even the old style FSX shadows - also note (although you can't see the sun itself here) that the wrong side of the terrain is lit. The sun is shining from the rear right of the screenshot but terrain is lit like it's coming from the front left.

 

 

P3D v2: Terrain casting enabled. There are shadows now but they're far too dark, too limited in draw distance, and far too costly in FPS. Also they looks extra weird with the reversed terrain lighting.

 

 

Bottom line: LM needs to fix the reversed terrain lighting and give us back the FSX style terrain shadows, at least until the dynamic/realtime ones work properly.

 

 

Ya that does not look very good.

 

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk 4

Did you report to LM?

Did you report to LM?

 

I did post it on their forum, yes.

Here is the information from P3D that responds to this.

 

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=3963

The information about the shadows and how to edit them is in the help file: go to the Lighting page (search for Lighting) and then go to the Advanced Settings part at the bottom. It might be worth seeing what happens when you set the distance to max but leave cascades and log partition to low. Maybe the shadows won't look as good and detailed but it could solve the obvious end of the shadows!

 

And so the tweaking has begun............................