Shadow Density for Patch 7/EFLC?

[cp1dell]

Alright, so I know a bunch of graphics settings were either renamed or removed with a certain patch, where Rockstar started using a different shadow calculation method. One of those was the Shadow Density option.

 

Shadow Density turned into Night Shadows. With Night Shadows, you can decide on whether or not everything from streetlights to headlights casts shadows, and then higher settings make them sharper. Shadow Density, the older setting, didn't control the resolution of the shadows - that was up to the Shadow Quality setting. Shadow Density would control how many objects at a time could cast a shadow from a dynamic light source. Setting it to 0 would have the same effect as turning Night Shadows off, setting it to 1 would only have Niko have a shadow casted from dynamic light sources (headlights, subway tunnel lights, lampposts, helicopter searchlight etc), and setting it to 16 would be similar to having Night Shadows set to Medium or higher.

 

I'm disappointed that this option was removed come with the new calculation method. Being able to have only Niko cast a shadow from other light sources besides the sun is nice, but it sucks in Patch 7/EFLC where everything will have a shadow casted. It's extremely taxing on your FPS. And setting Night Shadows to Off kind of sucks since you lose things like having your shadow casted when a police maverick shines its searchlight on you - which is available in the console versions.

 

So I was wondering, is there any possible way with mods or something to control the shadow density in Patch 7/EFLC - or basically have Niko be the only object able to cast a dynamic shadow?

[Andreas]

I've tried using the -shadowdensity 1 commandline, but it does not seem to work. Apparently, they reworked the entire system with Patch 1.0.6.0/1.0.7.0. I'm not aware of a modification that would give you the ability to disable all shadows except pedestrian ones. The only thing I could think of would be installing patch 1.0.4.0, setting shadow density to 1, and using ENB series for higher quality shadows if needed. Though, that kind of defeats the purpose of installing the fourth patch in order to gain as much performance as possible, while having a good looking game. But then again, I'm not sure how big the performance hit of ENB is if you only want to improve the shadows.

Edited December 25, 2013 by Andreas

[cp1dell]

That could work, but the downside is that there's no 1.0.4.0 equivalent for EFLC.

[unc13bud]

you want the game to simulate reality. cannot be done, especially with lazy rockstar Toronto coding the game