[REL] Shadow Improvement Mod

[SteelViking]

Low resource usage version now available!

This mod does what its name implies, fixes/improves many aspects of the games shadows.

This mod resulted from the work of, and or information from the following people:

-SteelViking-Myself

-tonschk

-Pintea

So credit is due to the three of us for this mod.

Version 1.0 Change Log:

- Increased draw distance of shadows(in stock, the shadows were only rendered half way across most rooms, and on only 2/3 of the sub, allowing you to easily see the where the shadows ended).

- Greatly improved the distribution of shadows over crew member's skin and clothing.

- Made the precision of all shadows closer to the real thing.

- Decreased the odd looking double vision effect of stock.

- Fixed some more minor irregularities in the way that shadows were being rendered.


Be advised: This mod may cause drops in frame rate, as the resolution of the shadows as well as the draw distance has been increased. My graphics card is an ATI Radeon 4600 series, and it does not make any significant impact, so if you have better, than it should be no problem. Testing was conducted by a few people, and none reported any fps drops but that does not mean it is not possible.

This mod is JSGME compatible.

Known JSGME conflicts: None

Known issues: None, testing was conducted by others.

This mod is really a work in progress right now, because I am conviced that an even better setup is possible for the shadows. I invite all to take a look and see if they can improve upon what we have here. It would be nice if the resolution could be kept as low as possible however, as folks with older systems may start having problems if it is not.


Thanks for giving this mod a look, and good hunting,

SteelViking

Link to High quality high resource usage version: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom//dow...o=file&id=1943

Link to slightly lower quality but greatly reduced resource usage version: http://www.filefront.com/17018577/Sh...ent%20ModLR.7z

[SteelViking]

Screen Shot:

[SteelViking]

Oh, and by the way tonschk, I know I said I was going to put this out as a [WIP], but I did a lot more testing/tweaking since then. So, I decided to go full [REL] version 1.0 and I leave the possibility of future versions if any further improvements can be made.

[tonschk]

Hello ,well done , Have you changed the shadows settings for external camera ?



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[SteelViking]

Originally Posted by tonschk

Hello ,well done , Have you changed the shadows settings for exterior camera?

Yes, I basically took the settings you told me worked well and mixed them with some experimental setting I had found out were decent. The exterior free camera could still use some improvements though that's for sure.

I go for realism, so I must admit I did not work as hard on the exterior shadows as I did on the interior or bridge shadows.

[tonschk]

You know what I see ?, the shadows are casting properly on the water surface but are not casting upon the bow wake ,therefore the bow wake colour is not affected by the shadows and are always the same colour , do you think this flaw can be fixed ?

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[SteelViking]

Originally Posted by tonschk

You know what I see ?, the shadows are casting properly on the water surface but are not casting upon the bow wake , the bow wake colour is not affected by the shadows and are always the same colour , do you think this flaw can be fixed ?

.

Good eye man! You hit the nail on the head, that is the one thing that I have not been able to figure out how to improve upon. You see, the bow wave texture images are low opacity images(rightly so since it is water) and, so are the texture files for the shadows. The result is rather odd rendering when the two are combined. Maybe something could be done with shadow mapping to take the bow wave into account, or maybe the bow wave .dds files can be modified in some way to fix it. I will look into it and try some stuff but I cannot promise anything.

[TheDarkWraith]

Looking good I have GTX 490 (Fermi) with GTX280 doing the physics calcs and it doesn't even phase it (but nothing really does anyways )

[SteelViking]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

Looking good I have GTX 490 (Fermi) with GTX280 doing the physics calcs and it doesn't even phase it (but nothing really does anyways )

Thanks, and good to hear.

[tonschk]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

Looking good I have GTX 490 (Fermi)

Hello , heve been released already a GTX490 ? , I was thinking there are just GTX480 and GTX470

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[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by tonschk

Hello , heve been released already a GTX490 ? , I was thinking there are just GTX480 and GTX470

.

oops, my bad. Yep, it's a 480

[reaper7]

Looks great inside and out SteelViking, Haven't noticed any FPS hits here - GTX250 also tried it on a GTX8800 (Similiar Spec) no problem there either.
Laptop I'm getting around 20FPS but thats prob down to it being a loptop more than anything - doesn't run SH5 the smothest at the Best of times .

Excellent work though, definite must have.

[SteelViking]

Originally Posted by reaper7

Looks great inside and out SteelViking, Haven't noticed any FPS hits here - GTX250 also tried it on a GTX8800 (Similiar Spec) no problem there either.
Laptop I'm getting around 20FPS but thats prob down to it being a loptop more than anything - doesn't run SH5 the smothest at the Best of times .

Excellent work though, definite must have.

Thanks for the compliment and info John. If enough people report that there are no fps drops, I will go ahead and remove the advisory statement(no sense making people think they can't get this mod just because they have an older system when it doesn't really have any negative effects)

[clayman]

GREAT! Looks way better than stock, more life like. Thanks much!

[tonschk]

Hello there , I tweaked a bit the settings of the [Bridge] shadows , do you think this settings give too much sharp shadows ? , I dont understood yet how the DepthSlopeBias affect the shadows