Wow,

I can't believe I just found this after all this time.  One thing that has always bothered me is the shimmering in shadows under certain lighting conditions.  In researching a "fix" I found the 4K shadow config change in a couple of online videos.  Bothering me to the point I shut down my flight two hours in, made the change and restarted.  Holy cow, what a difference.  

It's not the raytraced shadows in 2024 but it is SO much better in 2024.  

Simply change the Shadows value in usercfg.opt from your current value, mine was 2048 to 4096 and reload.  Done.  It even shows 4096 under options but beware if you change it in the sim you have to exit and do the cfg change to get it back to 4k.

So much more depth and texture to the shadows.  Still "some" flickering under certain circumstances but huge improvement with no noticeable FPS hit.

Sorry if everyone else already knew this but it was new to me and thought I would share in case anyone else still on 2020 was also unaware. 

 

Edited April 12, 20251 yr by psolk

How is VRAM? i will try it

Michael Moe 

1 minute ago, Michael Moe said:

How is VRAM? i will try it

Michael Moe 

On my 4090 it was negligible.  a few hundred meg but I guess that could go up based on the number of shadows displayed...   Some much clearer and more detail though.

I'm sure 4k shadows look great, but my performance is on the edge with shadows well tuened down - are great shadows worth the performance hit?  Maybe on a very high end system otherwise you may have to Sacrifice something else.

15 minutes ago, cianpars said:

I'm sure 4k shadows look great, but my performance is on the edge with shadows well tuened down - are great shadows worth the performance hit?  Maybe on a very high end system otherwise you may have to Sacrifice something else.

Well if you are already on the performance edge then no, I obviously wouldn't recommend this. On a 4090 I saw negligible VRAM increase, no FPS hit and with lossless scaling it becomes irrelevant anyway.

Really pleased with the result and in a 12 hr flight from RJAA-OMDB VRAM never exceeded 15GB on my 24GB 4090... Like I said, they aren't Raytraced like 2024 but I've never had shadows like this in 2020...

 

 

 

 

Some of us have been using this for the last four years.  It works in MSFS2024 as well, and negates the need to use performance costly ray-traced shadows in the cockpit / flightdeck.  It can look just as good as RT shadows without any cost.
I don't understand why this has not been mentioned by Asobo as an improvement.  Maybe just another example of them not knowing their own sim.

Like I say, this 'tweak' has been around since the first year of MSFS2020.
It shows up in the forums a couple of times per year, but it is easy to miss the threads as they move so quickly in the MSFS forum.

3 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

Some of us have been using this for the last four years.  It works in MSFS2024 as well, and negates the need to use performance costly ray-traced shadows in the cockpit / flightdeck.  It can look just as good as RT shadows without any cost.
I don't understand why this has not been mentioned by Asobo as an improvement.  Maybe just another example of them not knowing their own sim.

Like I say, this 'tweak' has been around since the first year of MSFS2020.
It shows up in the forums a couple of times per year, but it is easy to miss the threads as they move so quickly in the MSFS forum.

Haha, that's why I said sorry if everyone else already knew about this but it was brand new to me and mostly because I was looking for a fix for horrible flickering shadows.  I don't see any performance hit from this either. 

I also tested that you can still make other UI changes and the setting will stick so it's only if someone changes "this" setting in the UI that they would have to re-edit the usercfg as it shows 4096 in settings now but if you change it to 2048 you can't get it back to 4096.

Late to the party or not I'm a happy camper.

8 minutes ago, psolk said:

Late to the party or not I'm a happy camper.

Sure Paul.  It is one of the few free and easy tweaks in the sim that add a genuine benefit without effecting performance significantly. 

I lost a frame or two at an 8096 setting with my old faithful GTX1080, so I knocked it back to 6144 in MSFS2020. 
So I use 6144 now, which is even a little bit sharper than 4098 at 4k, and still with no discernible performance loss. 
I have left it at 6144 now in MSFS2024 even with my RTX4080, as the shadows easily seem sharp enough - no need to go any higher.  

Edited April 13, 20251 yr by bobcat999

1 hour ago, bobcat999 said:

Sure Paul.  It is one of the few free and easy tweaks in the sim that add a genuine benefit without effecting performance significantly. 

I lost a frame or two at an 8096 setting with my old faithful GTX1080, so I knocked it back to 6144 in MSFS2020. 
So I use 6144 now, which is even a little bit sharper than 4098 at 4k, and still with no discernible performance loss. 
I have left it at 6144 now in MSFS2024 even with my RTX4080, as the shadows easily seem sharp enough - no need to go any higher.  

Good to know Rob, thank you!  Yeah, why Asobo doesn't expose this in the UI is beyond me.  The jump from 2k to 4k resolution quality gets rid of all those "wiggles" in the shadows.

Been using it since 2020...  Prefer rtx in 2024 though 

I've been at 6144 since about 2022. 

Wow, I am really late to this party LOL.  Unsurprising, I'm a little slow on the uptake LOL

Not the first or last time I'll stroll in fashionably late 😉  

Too bad Asobo hasn't exposed this in the UI.

I learnt this usercfg tweak a while ago, from @bobcat999 👍

Where can I set shadows to 4K in MSFS 2020? Shadow Maps and Terrain Shadows both have maximum value at 2K.

Edit: I forgot about the config.opt ... Do I set both to 4K?

Edited April 15, 20251 yr by Nemo