Has V2.4 fixed your terrain shadows?

 

I've just spent an hour flying around Biarritz and Bilbao enjoying the new V2.4.

 

All is well apart from my terrain shadows.

 

When I turn them on the shadowing pops on and off and redraws itself ahead of me (in sharp jumps not smoothly). This is with all settings on the slider.

 

Looks awful so have switched it off again! I thought this was supposed to be one of the main fixes in V2.4?

 

Or could this be my PC and GPU showing their (4yr old) age?

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

 

Has V2.4 fixed your terrain shadows?

For me it looks like in P3D v2.3. The tree's shadows are still very much unsettled and flickering. I switched it off because for me it looks nicer without  than this kind of shadow.

Spirit

In some brief testing, the terrain shadows are repaired in my v2.4 installation. Instead of harsh black blob shadows on mountains and hills, they now appear far more realistically soft and subtle, as it would in real life.

 

I did notice a little draw in harshness, but only when I had a different application up in front of P3D for a while and the sim needed to play catch up. While flying, P3D v2.4 kept up perfectly well with the shadows and did not demonstrate any drawing delays.

 

I do not run with vegetation or building shadows set to cast (*they only receive), so I cannot comment on any of those visuals.

The terrain shadows are in the right places now... they just flicker constantly, at all quality settings.  

Everything looks OK after flying a little bit around the ridges of OrbX NorCal. Also tested with the time of the day preview. No flickering.

Strange. Seems like some are affected and others not. I will try with tessellation ticked OFF later but that normally leads to P3D crashing.

With terrain shadows on I see slight random black flickering on the ground. Just park at an airport then go into spot view and move around. 

I think it's normal that they flicker. I mean the closer you get, the more details you get. In short the LOD is increasing: more polygons = more shadows. 

With terrain shadows on I see slight random black flickering on the ground. Just park at an airport then go into spot view and move around.

 

Like this?-->

 

...watch the whole thing or skip to when we get to My valley, about halfway through, to see more pronounced what I call black flashes.

 

I think the reason that you're seeing more around stinking Creek is because there are more differentiations in elevation.

 

Chaz

I think it's normal that they flicker. I mean the closer you get, the more details you get. In short the LOD is increasing: more polygons = more shadows.

 

That may be a technical reason for why it sucks so much and totally diminishes the "immersivity" of low and slow flight.

 

Chaz

 

 

I think it's normal that they flicker

 

If you fly by candlelight yes. In reality no

I haven't installed 2.4 yet (wondering whether I should), but I've seen others complaining about cloud shadows flickering. Maybe all the shadows were broken in some way?

I still see some glitching with terrain shadows, but they are greatly improved over 2.3. With a fairly high sun I do see some popping on/off in the terrain, but with a low sun they seem far better, if a little hard edged.

 

Its great to have hills and mountains cast across the landscape, and as long as you have all the 'receive' shadow options ticked, get no more brightly glowing autogen buildings and trees, when they should be in the shade.

I see anomalies while I am on the ground with terrain shadows enabled.

The LM developers have made great strides in getting rid of the glitches/anomalies with ground shadows, but I still observed some artefacts as reported earlier in this thread. Looks promising though.

Apparently, they only partially fixed terrain shadows. They now appear correctly only if you disable cloud shadows:

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=8598

 

Oh well, back to P3D 1.4 while waiting for P3D 2.5. At this rate they will hit 3.0 before the year is over and still not have all the v2 features working...