Buildings receive shadows option

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

I watched numerous P3D tuning guides (I know, waste of time, but I did) on Youtube and I always click on "this is my settings" links on forums. To my surprise pretty much nobody has "Buildings receive shadows" option ticked in the Lighting section in Options. To me, this option makes quite a difference. Without it, the buildings are really bright and pop out like overly bleached teeth or something. With this option ticked the scenery looks much more natural, the buildings blend with the environment much better in my opinion. So, do you use this option and if not, why? Just something I was wondering about for quite some time...

Edited April 29, 2019 by 0Artur0

[RTK1972 288]

i am using i too, caus as you say the buldings are to bright when unticked and i have clouds drawing shadows

[TravelRunner404 596]

I have no idea either. I would imagine it’s performance related for most people. If you have a cloudy day it’s hard on the GPU. That being said I see people with 1080ti’s who don’t use it.

i for one would rather have “normal” or “sparse” autogen density then the white teeth you describe. 

[AnkH 2,232]

I could not turn this option off, exactly due to the reason you mentioned: on a cloudy day, the autogen buildings then show like popping out and illuminated totally wrong (same is true for the vegetation receive option in my opinion). That is why I have it on. As most other shadowing options, shadows do a lot for immersion in my opinion.

However, as mentioned, shadows can totally ruin your performance in dusk/dawn and night time flying when using higher antialiasing modes along. Thats why I created presets in the P3D graphics options allowing me to easily switch:

- Day time flying with most shadow options on and 4xSSAA

- night time flying with many of the shadow options turned off and only 4xMSAA.

Like this, I can keep my 30FPS cutoff (I use the internal limiter) in almost all situations. If I fly from day to night time, I switch the preset as soon as FPS drop is to big. As long as only shadowing options, AA and other GPU related stuff is changed, changing a preset does not even result in a reload of the sim, it works on the fly (sometimes it takes two, three seconds to reload the image).

[Sethos 4,266]

I absolutely couldn't run without it, along with the other 'receive' options under shadows. It looks awful if one of those receive options isn't ticked and you suddenly come across something in the sim world that sticks out like a sore thumb.

Edited April 29, 2019 by Sethos1988

[kevinfirth 1,392]

I always have this option checked for the same reason, but I have a meaty enough GPU to manage it.  With my old 980Ti I couldnt always manage that in 4k

[Clutch Cargo 384]

I always try to use it s it adds nice depth when looking at, say, a city skyline in the late afternoon.  Of course it depends on the area as it does eat up FPS.  I also use shadows for trees but keep unchecked tree shadows falling upon other objects as that is too much for my system and up in the air I couldn't see the effect if I tried.

[Patco Lch 1,459]

This is an interesting and informative thread. I'm wondering if you guys who use these shadow settings are mainly GA or jet liners flyers. I fly mainly study level tubes myself and have to walk the eye candy / performance line.

[kaha 205]

I mainly fly GA, but ever without "buildings receive shadows". Same of course goes with "vegetation receives shadows". 

 

Karl

[Michael Moe 493]

I always find myself disabling it. Not sure why LM hasnt moved this intirely to the GPU. I use an GTX1080ti and mostly i have plenty of room even in 4K but some places it eats my fps. Havent found out the sweet spot. Just disabled it in Vegas 

Thanks Michael Moe 

[kaha 205]

2 hours ago, kaha said:

I mainly fly GA, but ever without "buildings receive shadows". Same of course goes with "vegetation receives shadows". 

 

Karl

Sorry, this should read never, not ever. So, I have switched it on. 

 

Karl

[AnkH 2,232]

14 hours ago, PATCO LCH said:

I'm wondering if you guys who use these shadow settings are mainly GA or jet liners flyers.

Both. And I use presets in the graphics menue to get along with the different requirements. I have an preset called "Standard IFR" for tubeliners with high settings but not max., a "Standard Night" preset for tubeliner flying in dusk/dawn/night flying with reduced shadow and reflection settings and then I have a "VFR Max Settings" preset that is self explanatory, for VFR slow and low GA flying, almost everything on max. including shadows and reflections. For all presets I have a frame limit of 30 set inside P3D.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

Very interesting to see that many others are using this option too. I guess all those guides and tutorials disable "eye-candy" to gain some extra performance. But that's the thing... before I started using it I thought this would kill my FPS since shadows are usually pretty demanding and there can be A LOT of buildings. To my surprise, I barely notice any difference in FPS with it on or off. I don't run 4K though. I also didn't test it in various situations so it can very well eat up quite some FPS in urban areas. Of course, if your computer can't handle demanding settings than I also understand to leave it off.

[AnkH 2,232]

Receive Shadows alone does not need a lot of performance, especially not if it is just cloud shadows. It is the shadow casting that eats up FPS under certain conditions. My "compromise" regarding shadows is that I turned off vegetation shadow casting, as it anyway looks silly for most situations due to the x-sprite tree construction. Maybe, if 3D trees (speedtrees) are finally looking better, I might turn tree shadows again on.

[Flic1 969]

I keep all 'receive' boxes checked as stated by AnkH above it does not eat much performance.  Casting causes the hit and terrain casting causes a pretty large hit so have never used that. I only use cloud, internal/external vehicle cast....