engrey Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Shadows, the most important thing in this game. Pro-tip: Turn them off as you will not be missing much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunsoar Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Don't show us shadows from beta. Show us shadows from release. The graphical quality back in beta was different and you know that. Yeah they were better then Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
viisual Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 My shadows look amazing. I don't know what you have for a system but in that screen you linked they look horrible. Yea, I wonder who helped you build such a good computer. -- @OP, as an educated Game Developer (not practicing one), I can tell you that shadows are very expensive to "compute". There are a vast multitude of styles of shadows, the cheapest/easiest being ones that don't move; are static and usually come from inanimate objects and stationary light sources. Once objects move, shadows change, things need to get re-computed / rendered. When it all comes down to it, in my personal opinion, shadows is one of the most impacting graphical features one can add to a game. This isn't necessarily true, I'm not going to back it up, but most computers will gain more performance by disabling shadows altogether, than any other tweak in the settings. (Unless you're running some like 16x pass aliasing) I personally have a few rules of thumb based on setting graphical settings in games I play: When my skill or performance is in consideration, shadows are off completely. VSync is always off, unless tearing _really_ is an issue. -- Now addressing specifically you're issue. I don't fully trust shadows are fully implemented yet, as anti-aliasing isn't in as well, but it likely will get better/smoother in time. Make sure your drivers are up too date, a lot of good info is in this thread to help as well, but as long as you can get past using shadows, you'll be fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apax Posted January 13, 2012 Author Share Posted January 13, 2012 (edited) Shadows, the most important thing in this game. Pro-tip: Turn them off as you will not be missing much. If we only discussed the most important thing in this game, we'd be a forum of one thread. Shadows are actually a big deal to me, both visually and because of the impact they can have on performance. I dislike playing with shadows off as I feel characters look like they're floating without them. It just looks unnatural not to have shadowing beneath an object (go figure). Edited January 13, 2012 by Apax Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apax Posted January 13, 2012 Author Share Posted January 13, 2012 (edited) Yea, I wonder who helped you build such a good computer. -- @OP, as an educated Game Developer (not practicing one), I can tell you that shadows are very expensive to "compute". There are a vast multitude of styles of shadows, the cheapest/easiest being ones that don't move; are static and usually come from inanimate objects and stationary light sources. Once objects move, shadows change, things need to get re-computed / rendered. When it all comes down to it, in my personal opinion, shadows is one of the most impacting graphical features one can add to a game. This isn't necessarily true, I'm not going to back it up, but most computers will gain more performance by disabling shadows altogether, than any other tweak in the settings. (Unless you're running some like 16x pass aliasing) I personally have a few rules of thumb based on setting graphical settings in games I play: When my skill or performance is in consideration, shadows are off completely. VSync is always off, unless tearing _really_ is an issue. -- Now addressing specifically you're issue. I don't fully trust shadows are fully implemented yet, as anti-aliasing isn't in as well, but it likely will get better/smoother in time. Make sure your drivers are up too date, a lot of good info is in this thread to help as well, but as long as you can get past using shadows, you'll be fine. Shadows are generally up there as far as performance hogs go, but nowhere near as large of an impact as they used to make. These days, turning shadows on can cost you a few frames per second, and that's perfectly normal. However, in SWToR they seem to have a much larger impact on performance than just a few frames, and on top of that they don't even look very good to boot. That's just a bad combination. I would be more understanding of the current performance impact if these were just stellar shadowing effects, but they're just years behind what other MMOs are doing in addition to performing so much worse. Edited January 13, 2012 by Apax Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myshella Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 The Shadows take my performance from 70-100 fps in indoor environments to 20-30 fps, indoor shadows dont look that bad but this performance decrease is extreme. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shammus Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/2991/screenshot2012011223022.jpg My shadows look good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorvan Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 (edited) Shadows in beta looked better. Also, shadows are rendered differently indoors and outdoors. You can check for yourself by stepping in and out of a building and noticing how your well-defined shadow indoors turns into a jagged and blurry shadow outdoors. Yep, noticed it too. I have a suspicion it's related to the filters they're using for lighting, particularly the yellow filters, such as is used for the sun and many indoor areas. The shadows are smooth under lights with a white or bluish filter,such as spaceports and certain areas. Edited January 14, 2012 by Zorvan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorvan Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 (edited) http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/2991/screenshot2012011223022.jpg My shadows look good. Take a screen of you standing in that same area, but under the yellow lighting. Or better yet, standing in the sun. Edited January 14, 2012 by Zorvan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myshella Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 (edited) http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/2991/screenshot2012011223022.jpg My shadows look good. lol there are no shadows in that screenshot they use some prerenderet shadows in some areas but they are not the same then the horrible realtime shadows Edited January 14, 2012 by Myshella Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorvan Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 Uhm, so is the Unreal engine... Isn't it basically FREE? Man, by your logic, it must suck worse than the Hero engine! Only free to use until you want to make and release a commercial game with Unreal, then you're going to pay a hefty ( I believe it was around $500k last time I looked, been a bit ) license fee. Heroengine doesn't even let you use the whole engine with their "free" version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shammus Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 I still don't have the issue the person is referring to http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/811/screenshot2012011403042.jpg/ http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/215/screenshot2012011403193.jpg/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myshella Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 (edited) I still don't have the issue the person is referring to http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/811/screenshot2012011403042.jpg/ http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/215/screenshot2012011403193.jpg/ the second picture shows the problem its very pixelated, btw this is is how my shadows look on tatoine in closeup: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/192/swtor2012011410175339.jpg/ Edited January 14, 2012 by Myshella Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shammus Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 oh well give it time, high res textures aren't even in yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dekadez Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 My shadows look silky smooth. I don't know how you can have those with everything maxed. And I'm not forcing AA or anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorvan Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 My shadows look silky smooth. I don't know how you can have those with everything maxed. And I'm not forcing AA or anything. Sure they are. Just post the screenshot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myshella Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 i can count the pixels in that screenshots thats not silky smooth! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imtrick Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 (edited) My shadows look silky smooth. I don't know how you can have those with everything maxed. And I'm not forcing AA or anything. I have a hard time believing this, and I get called a fanboy constantly. There are two kinds of shadows in the game: The lighter ones that are pretty much OK, and the darker ones that just suck. For an example of sucky shadows... well, just stand under a tree. Trust me, you'll see it. No amount of forcing AA or tweaking graphic setting will fix them. They're blocky and ugly and the best you can do to make them better is shut them off. I find a lot of complaints on these forums to be overblown, exaggeration or pointless, but this one's definitely legitimate. The darker shadows are just awful. Edited January 14, 2012 by imtrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazari Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 People that thing the shadows look great in this game obviously have recently upgraded from an N64 and have never seen what variable intensity shadows are supposed to look like. In SWTOR... regardless if you have AA turned on or not... are rendered in 1 shade of 1 color. You even cast the same exact shadow intensity on Dromund Kaas (a cloudy planet) as you do on Tattoine. I've said it before... this game is 7 years behind the power curve technologically. It was old before it ever went into closed Beta and it's even older now. The reason why it looks so bad is because its old and this engine lacks the capabilities. Remember: If anyone says this game looks amazing or that there's nothing wrong... they just have no concept of how good computer gaming has come in the past decade (they've likely been playing WoW like the OP). Here's an MMO to compare SWTOR to. Notice the difference? RIFT's Shadows Rift not only looks better but has better performance. 1920x1200, AAx16 AFx16 all to the maximum, 40-45 fps average. Swtor 1920x1200 AAx4 forced, AF - no idea, all decently high, shadows OFF, ~40 fps average with lower setting worse grapics etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazari Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/2991/screenshot2012011223022.jpg My shadows look good. What shadows lol, characters themself don;t cast shadows in your screenie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazari Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 I don't know what to tell you. My Sager with a 6990 runs everything on high fine. I don't get up to 200 fps, but I don't drop to 20 , either. I remember reading on the Faeblight forums that you quit TOR, so none of this should really matter. 6990 should eat it, digest and **** out, 6990 should be a total overkill for SWTOR, this game is supposed to run on older PCs. Just wait and see how performance wise GW2 will run. I bet i will run it on my work laptop better than i can SWTOR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daemonjax Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 We're all playing the same game here. We all know the shadows look bad, especially for the performance hit we take in displaying them. That goes for the devs, too. Don't you think other bugs/features are more important than shadows right now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mineria Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 (edited) High Quality shadows look like crap in the majority of mmorpg's, and also have performance impacts. Even Rift HQ shadows are crap when you move around, they tend to make some annoying flickering on edges in the landscape. I still don't have the issue the person is referring to http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/215/screenshot2012011403193.jpg/ Character shadows are not softening out, to hard edges, and no AA. Edited January 14, 2012 by Mineria Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urglab Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 I feel it has the same shadow trouble as Skyrim. From far away the shadows look decent but the closer you get the crappier they become. There were some ini tweaks in Skyrim where you basically sacrificed the distance at which shadows appeared for close up quality. Haven't kept up with it though, so no idea if the shadows there have gotten better in patches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myshella Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 Well thats true the game needs a lot of work in other areas, as for the shadows i just turn them off and forget the game even has shadows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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