Blocky shadows in games

[brikis98]

First, my system specs (I turned everything down to stock when I ran into this problem, but to no avail):

AMD x2 3800+
2x1GB Mushkin DDR500
MSI x1900xtx

Many of my games have very blocky/jagged/pixelated shadows that tend to shimmer from far away and just look stupid from close up. this seems to be a common problem that happens on a variety of nvidia and ATi cards with all sorts of different driver versions. this is a good example i found online of the problem - just look at the shadows of the trees, the players, etc.

The games on my pc that i've personally have seen this issue in are:

Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
Company of Heroes
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Splinter Cell: Double Agent

and possibly others that i've forgotten. it's extremely annoying and looks bad. i've tried dozens of combinations of turning on/off virtually every setting i could think of: AA, AF, temporal AA, catalyst AI, vsync, etc. and nothing seems to help. i've also seen the issue on the cat 6.9, 6.10 and 6.12's.

have any of you guys seen this issue? have you found any workarounds?

 

[TheRyuu]

It's to make the game run faster. The only way to fix it is to see if the game supports better shadows.

I think that it's blocky on-purpose.
The only game that I think it's not blocky on-purpose is in Farcry.

Must be you if you notice it that badly.

 

[CP5670]

I was also complaining about this last year, especially as the amount of blockiness in some games varies with the video card being used. It's definitely annoying, but it's an issue with the game engines and I don't think there is any way to get around it.

There are still some games that have proper looking shadows though. Off the top of my head, SC: Chaos Theory had a soft shadowing feature that removed the blocky look and Deus Ex: Invisible War (despite the general crappiness of its engine otherwise) had clearly defined shadows without any of that blockiness, although they had hard edges.

 

[TheRyuu]

Oblivion Shadows aren't bad either so I don't know why they're on your list.

 

[Zenoth]

It's done on purpose indeed, or else we'd have to pay an hefty price in terms of frames-rates for better filtered shadows. Those games' respective engines are mostly all capable of "better looking" shadows, but sometimes in-game settings just won't allow the engine to better filter them. Just take Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for example, and look at the in-game settings, you can set higher filtering for shadows. Set the shadows filtering to its highest variant, and then make sure you also set the shadows draw distance to the maximum value, and then look at the slide show ...

 

[flexy]

shadows bring down most hardware..that's the reason. It never bothered me as long as it's halfway decent. It bothers me tho if some games (Gothic III) under pixelshader 2.0 cards (X850XT) does NOT have ANY character shadows or whatsoever AT ALL. They make it sound like you need a PS3.0 card just for primitive shadows...which you cane w/ 10 year old games already and PS1.4 cards.
It always depends on the game engine.

 

[BassBomb]

i dont notice it on my 6600GT with latest drivers

maybe it is because of dx corruptions or something who knows? settings in control panels?

 

[brikis98]

although i would agree that it must be a game engine issue, a few things bother me:

* first, many game engines - even older ones - pull of smooth shadows without any problems. doom III and FEAR, for example, had very smooth/straight shadows with no blockiness. they were sometimes too straight-edged/solid/dark and looked a bit unrealistc, but the fact is that they were NOT jagged or pixelated at all, and you'd be hard pressed to tell me those lighting effects were any less GPU-intensive than the games i mentioned above. so, either designers forgot how to make game engines, or something else is wrong.

* not everyone experiences these blocky/jagged shadows. for example, my friend runs need for speed: most wanted on a 6600GT w/o any jagged shadows. some posters in other forums also post screenshots with clean, smooth edges in that game using a variety of hardware/drivers.

* oblivion definitely had it for me and it was especially noticeable on faces, since they are so close up during a conversation

* the company of heroes screenshots here (as well as numerous other places) show shadows that are far less blocky (if at all). are there certain settings that work better or is it more dependent on the hardware? and if so, is ATI worse than nvidia in this situation?

* finally, the biggest issue i have is not that the shadows are simple blocky, but rather that they shimmer, especially at a distance. in nfs:mw, for example, the shadows cast on distant buildings by trees flicker a lot as you drive by, which is very distracting. in splinter cell, the tutorial level and several game missions look ridiculous because of this flickering/shimmering of the shadows. i could live with shadows that are just a bit blocky... but when they distract you by dancing around and significantly reduce the image quality of the scene... that's when i have a problem. is there any way to fix this?

 

[aweigh]

Shimmering is the BANE of my existance, and it's present in all games. Even on my 8800 I can't get away from the shimmering, though it's less than in the 6x series of Geforce cards.

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

I've experienced this before which some games but usually just because either the settings where turned down or the shadows simply were of low quality. I don't think it's ATI specific as I'm using a X1900XT and the 6.12 cats, I have no problems at all with shadows in Company of Heroes

 

[TheRyuu]

Originally posted by: 1Dark1Sharigan1
I think it may be a driver issue. Which drivers are you using? Because for me with an X1900XT and the 6.12 cats, I have no problems at all with shadows in http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/...r666/RelicCOH2006-12-2700-27-31-30.png

(because I have nothing better to do)

LEARN TO LINK!
And I agree.
Driver/Game issue......
..
....

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

Originally posted by: wizboy11
LEARN TO LINK!
And I agree.
Driver/Game issue......
..
....

Yeah sorry about that. I've been posting on a different board for a while and I momentarily forgot about AT's different linking method.

 

[Munky]

It's a game issue, and usually blocky shadows are the result of shadow mapping w/o appropriate filtering within the game itself. Ironically, older games which used different methods like stencil shadows, do not suffer from the blocky shadows. It's the newer games which seem to be affected the most.

 

[CP5670]

so, either designers forgot how to make game engines, or something else is wrong.

Considering some of the bloated games we have seen during the last year, I would say the first possibility is the most likely one.

* not everyone experiences these blocky/jagged shadows. for example, my friend runs need for speed: most wanted on a 6600GT w/o any jagged shadows. some posters in other forums also post screenshots with clean, smooth edges in that game using a variety of hardware/drivers.

Yes, in some games they only occur on certain video cards, as I mentioned earlier. Far Cry is one example of this. Although I don't know whether the GPU companies or the game developers are at fault.

* finally, the biggest issue i have is not that the shadows are simple blocky, but rather that they shimmer, especially at a distance. in nfs:mw, for example, the shadows cast on distant buildings by trees flicker a lot as you drive by, which is very distracting. in splinter cell, the tutorial level and several game missions look ridiculous because of this flickering/shimmering of the shadows

The shimmering seems to be a somewhat separate issue that only affects a few of the blocky shadow games. I think I turned the shadows down to low in MW just so they would stop appearing in the reflections on your car, where, as you say, they look atrocious.

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: 1Dark1Sharigan1
I've experienced this before which some games but usually just because either the settings where turned down or the shadows simply were of low quality. I don't think it's ATI specific as I'm using a X1900XT and the 6.12 cats, I have no problems at all with shadows in Company of Heroes

well... that should shoot down all the "it's the way the game engine was designed" arguments and show that there's definitely some kind of glitch. i have all the game settings maxed out, 1680x1050 resolution... what settings are you using?

 

[schneiderguy]

I remember the blocky shadows in Company of Heroes with ATI x1xxx cards being a problem in the multiplayer beta, I thought either Relic had fixed the issue with their engine or ATI had released a driver that fixed it