If you think shadows are not important...

[Guest]

I was looking forward to P3D 2.0 for two reasons: no more autogen popping up and SHADOWS! Now I notice a lot of people turn them off because they aren't good for performance, but you can tweak that (see this topic: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/427529-simple-solution-for-shadows-and-loss-of-fps-or-the-tweaking-has-begun/ ). However, there are also people who say shadows aren't that important. Well, I think they make a world of difference when it comes to immersion. They make everything look more real. Well, imho.

 

Imagine it's a sunny summer day and you got out of bed early to do an early morning flight. I made two screenshots while flying above New York around 8.00 A.M., one with shadows on and one with shadows off. Now tell me, which of the two screenshots in the animated gif below makes you feel you are actually flying above New York at 8.00 A.M. on a sunny summer morning...?!

 

Take not that the shadows don't only make the buildings look more real (less like milk cartons) but they also connect the buildings to the ground and cover up the rather random ground textures. On the shot without shadows the buildings are almost floating above the scenery and all in the obvious wrong place too, right over other the buildings in the texture etc. But in the screenshot with the shadows, the buildings are standing there, connected to the ground and it's also a lot less obvious that the ground texture is a random one!

 

You really are missing out on a great feature of P3D 2.0 if you don't (try to) enable those shadows!!!

 

 

BTW The effect in the VC is of course very obvious and important. Without the VC shadows you get the feeling the back of your plane has been cut off and the sun is shining directly into what is left of your plane. In the picture with shadows you always can feel the warmth of the sun in your back... ^_^

 

There is no going back for me to any other sim, that's for sure. And I also refuse to use lower settings LOL

 

BTW Fps was around 24 with my GTX580 and i5 2500K @ 4.5 and very flyable and smooth (it seems that setting the limiter to Unlimited helps a little and also giving TrackIR higher priority helps with smoothness when looking around, something I always did with FSX and DX10). Imagine how good it will be with a GTX780!

[roarkr 104]

Hi,

Don't expect too much of a new GTX780.

 

I went from an i7-920 3,2GHz GTX570 to a i7-2600K 4,4GHz GTX780 OC system, but didn't see the improvement I thought I should get.

 

I didn't measured the improvement, but visuals and smoothness seems to be much the same.

[Q_flyer 766]

I didn't think I was going to be bothered about the shadows, but in fact I LOVE the VC shadows... they are amazing! ...... But I'm not bothered about ground or exterior shadows, and not prepared to pay the performance price for those.

[Aamir 2,907]

Only problem is, when at a complex airport, with a complex aircraft, it isn't entirely possible.

 

Flightbeams KIAD + AEX is making me turn down a lot of my settings, and I'm still not at a constant 30.

[davenicoll 104]

Excellent shot Jeroen...

 

The shadows is what has me completely hooked...and the performance of course lol...

 

Is that with FTX Global?

 

Dave

[FlyIce 354]

Hi,

Don't expect too much of a new GTX780.

 

I went from an i7-920 3,2GHz GTX570 to a i7-2600K 4,4GHz GTX780 OC system, but didn't see the improvement I thought I should get.

 

I didn't measured the improvement, but visuals and smoothness seems to be much the same.

 

I can't agree. I went from 580 to 780ti OC and the difference is quite big. With 580 I can get good visuals and smooth fps, but I have to sacrifice quite a bit on shadows, and turning terrain shadows on kills the fps every time. I also have to turn autogen a notch down etc. With 780ti I can turn on all the shadows and set nearly all other slides in graphics, scenery and lighting menus to max and I still get similar and smooth fps.

 

One thing still kills 780ti everytime is to turn shadow quality to Ultra, which makes 780ti micro-stutter all over the places. But Jeroen's shadow distance tweak works well to enable long distance shadow drawing at less than Ultra quality. I think the difference between 580 and 780 probably mostly boils down to shadows. If you want shadows full on you just have to go 780. Otherwise 580 can do pretty well too.

[Guest]

 

 

I went from an i7-920 3,2GHz GTX570 to a i7-2600K 4,4GHz GTX780 OC system, but didn't see the improvement I thought I should get.

 

Did you delete the shaders folder? If you switch GPU's with P3D installed, you need to do that otherwise the new card will be trying to work with stuff that has been generated during your install with the old card. From what I've read this can mean the difference to results being the exact same or less and the results being a giant leap forward.

 

 

 

But Jeroen's shadow distance tweak works well to enable long distance shadow drawing at less than Ultra quality.

 

Good to know it's working for you too!

[FlyIce 354]

Yes, it works great. I even pushed a step further: I increased shadow distance to 24000, and it works as I can clearly see shadows further than 12000 setting!

 

However and sadly, I believe it caused a strange problem: once I exit P3D2 and start again, it would give me a black screen and then crash. The only way I found to solve it is to use a copy of cfg before the modification. So apparently P3D2 can start and use 24000 shadow distance in cfg, but once it closes it probably makes some changes in cfg (I couldn't find any easily in the CFG though) that make the next start crash...

[DarkstarF16 72]

Finally the vide uploaded... http://forum.avsim.net/index.php?/topic/427688-How-terrain-shadows-interact-with-%27you%27

[Blaze 102]

Alright dog pile me if you want to but shadows are one of the reasons why I found it so hard to go back to an FSX VC after getting use to an XP10 VC.  Once you get use to them they are damn hard to do without. When you bank and a crisp shadow line pans accross your VC screen there really is no going back, 

[Aamir 2,907]

 

 

I didn't measured the improvement, but visuals and smoothness seems to be much the same.

 

Delete your shader cache.

[Guest]

Alright dog pile me if you want to but shadows are one of the reasons why I found it so hard to go back to an FSX VC after getting use to an XP10 VC.  Once you get use to them they are damn hard to do without. When you bank and a crisp shadow line pans accross your VC screen there really is no going back, 

 

Indeed! The effect is great! I also can't imagine flying without it! It so important for the immersion!

[rparson99 32]

I 2nd the emotion to the 4th power! Not only the shadows, but the lighting also with the shadows leaves less doubt in interpreting time of day, orientation, direction, weather, proximity...... Etc etc. The presence of Shadows gives back information to the scene which is always available in real life. To not have it, is against nature!! :-D

 

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

 

[bonchie 2,305]

 

There one of those things you don't appreciate until you have them. Once you have them you don't know how you did without them.

[DarkstarF16 72]

There one of those things you don't appreciate until you have them. Once you have them you don't know how you did without them.

Exactly... Theirs no way I'm giving them up voluntarily.