I wonder if anyone has noticed this anomaly with P3D and aircraft shadows cast onto terrain?

 

With FSX the aircraft ground shadows are a fake kind of shadow which gets placed over the terrain as a fixed polygon rather than a true rendered shadow. This shadow was generated from the exterior model however which allowed developers to delete all those parts and polygons not visible in the virtual cockpit which would save quite a few fps. In fact, you can easily cut the total number of polygons in half for the VC by removing those parts not visible from the cockpit (eg, landing gear, bottom of wings and fuselage, engine etc) .

 

With P3D and the new shadow system this throws up a bit of an anomaly. The aircraft ground shadows are now rendered based on the interior model if you are in the VC view, if you are in an exterior view then the exterior model is used to render the shadows. Because aircraft shadows in the VC view are rendered using the interior model this can produce a few holes in some aircraft shadows. For example, the IRIS T-6 Texan has a few holes in the VC model which now become noticeable in the ground shadow. Now, usually when you see the aircraft ground shadow it is really small as you are in the air so you may not notice the holes but if you know what to look for you can see these holes.

 

When PMDG port their 737 over P3D they are going to need to include the full exterior model as the current VC model of the 737 includes just the cockpit and wings.

 

Or just a rudimentary low poly version that will cast the appropriate shadow. I don't think it will be a huge deal. Think of it like shadow puppets - it doesn't have to look good as an object to cast the appropriate shadow.

 

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