Shadows keep rendering only a few feet away from me, same goes for gra

[3rr0r]

Nvidia pcss blurs the shadow depending how far is the shadow from the object itself. This is how a shadow "works" in real life too. When do you see a tree's leaf shadow full sharp on the ground in real life? A tree shadow in real life is just a blurry "spot" on the ground. So I don't get what is your problem with pcss.

 

Indeed, PCSS is the most realistic setting, but sometimes it is bugged, like for instance the mesh of the wire fence shadow is not visible or the shadow of the telegraph line is almost not visible and so on and so forth.

[_MK_]

PCSS is bugged,just like every other Soft Shadows option.

Edited April 23, 2015 by _MK_

[gamerzworld]

Turning the "Extended Shadow Distance" all the way off seems to have fixed a similar issue for me.

[Spider-Vice]

AMD CHS actually does the same thing as PCSS, on the GeForce website, their comparison is weird as hell, because AMD CHS for them is just like sharp shadows. I use AMD CHS and they're extremely soft. Probably because they weren't using an AMD card.

Edited April 23, 2015 by Spider-Vice

[ImoonPeople]

I have this issue as well. I don't seem to remember seeing it on launch but it has been driving me crazy since what seems like the last patch. I played this game on a 360 before and remember looking down and seeing the shadow detail distance even lower, but the same thing was there. Then when driving through grass I felt like I was "chasing the LOD". I was using PCSS but realized it seemed like I was missing shadows and last night changed it to softest. I have had that LOD rectangle show up before and it doesn't seem right. I have to try some more things tonight like not forcing 16x AF in nvidia control panel, or using native res instead of DSR 1440p, because those are the last things I haven't tried.

 

Win 7 64 Ultimate

i7 4790K

2xGTX 780 6gb with latest WHQL Nvidia driver.

 

1440p No AA/FXAA on

All ultra/very high except for Grass which I bumped down to very high after reading the nvidia article. I now don't get dips from 60 when out in the wilderness, and with less shadows casting from the grass the "chasing the LOD" is a little less noticeable.

After turning down grass to ultra high I was able to enable some advanced settings like shadow distance to max, extended draw distance to middle of slider. These settings made no difference on the short LOD.

[nyolc8]

If you take a look at these screenshots(at shadow quality section): nvidia graphics guide for gta5

 

Then you can see that shadows are all good there. So they changed/broke the game for some reason.

[jjjayb2]

PCSS is bugged,just like every other Soft Shadows option.

 

 

Turn on high resolution shadows to fix this.

[BustaNutsak]

Can we just get confirmation that this is a permanent bug/setting that can't be changed so we can move on?

 

I don't think this can/will get fixed but I would like someone in the know to provide real info?

[ImoonPeople]

In the post that just came up about console vs pc graphics from Digital Foundry, they mention this LOD issue.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-grand-theft-auto-5-pc-face-off

 

"Speaking of shadows, we're back in high preset territory on console here. Unlike the PC's very high setting, PS4 and Xbox One use a much narrowed frustum - essentially an invisible cube around the player that determines the point at which shadows are filtered. This smaller field is noticeable on console, and creates more evident filtering to the screen's edges when walking past long shadows. The PC version disappoints too, with a filtering technique that barely improves this even on its best preset. Of the very few gripes we had with the current-gen release, we hadn't expected this one to re-emerge on PC."

[3rr0r]

In the post that just came up about console vs pc graphics from Digital Foundry, they mention this LOD issue.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-grand-theft-auto-5-pc-face-off

 

"Speaking of shadows, we're back in high preset territory on console here. Unlike the PC's very high setting, PS4 and Xbox One use a much narrowed frustum - essentially an invisible cube around the player that determines the point at which shadows are filtered. This smaller field is noticeable on console, and creates more evident filtering to the screen's edges when walking past long shadows. The PC version disappoints too, with a filtering technique that barely improves this even on its best preset. Of the very few gripes we had with the current-gen release, we hadn't expected this one to re-emerge on PC."

That is one freaking massive disappointment, but Iam still hopeful rockstar will fix this in the upcoming patches or updates, they have to !

[BustaNutsak]

Theres likely nothing to fix. Its probably a built in game engine limitation.

 

Weak sauce, but it is the sauce we've been served on this tasty entrée.

[El Dorado]

The "filtering radius" is somewhat controlled by the timecyc

 

Notice the same time on the screenshots

 

 

Theoretically, this value can be edited. But there's no way to edit the .rpf files... yet

 

 

Some shadow related values from the timecyc.xml files

<dir_shadow_num_cascades> 4.0000 4.0000 4.0000 4.0000 4.0000 4.0000 4.0000 4.0000 4.0000 4.0000 4.0000 4.0000 4.0000</dir_shadow_num_cascades><dir_shadow_distance_multiplier> 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000</dir_shadow_distance_multiplier><dir_shadow_softness> 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.5000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 0.0000</dir_shadow_softness><dir_shadow_cascade0_scale> 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000</dir_shadow_cascade0_scale>

Edited April 25, 2015 by El Dorado

[utack]

AMD CHS actually does the same thing as PCSS, on the GeForce website, their comparison is weird as hell, because AMD CHS for them is just like sharp shadows. I use AMD CHS and they're extremely soft. Probably because they weren't using an AMD card.

 

I tried it on AMD and they were quite sharp and had heavy performance impact, weird.

Not that I care about soft shadows, I just use "Soft" and they look good to me.

 

[Marsmillo]

Thing is, I didn't have this glitch until the patch. I would've noticed it right away at launch and the fact that other people are noticing it too means that R* has broken something.

 

I hope this is hotfixed tbh, I don't get how it can be an engine problem. If it was, then everyone would experience this glitch at launch.

 

Yeah, I have the same feeling over here.

Didn't notice this weird things when playing GTA V PC at launch until patch Patch 335.1 (4/21/15).

 

I don't say it was not there, but I didn't notice it as much a I do now.

Found out on my system putting soft shadows back to PCSS did fix (or mask) the shadow thing but not the grass popping in.

[_MK_]

Even when it comes to spawning vehicles and peds,(not always) you'll have to take a spin around the area for the car to spawn in it's spot,some times when you pass by a park...it's empty.... take a fast turn and it'll be filled with parked cars,just like the consoles,and the house on the ocean where the sub is parked,at first it had no peds,toke a jump in the water for like 10 seconds,came out and the place had peds all over.

Ah what could it be ? that they are using the same stream method as they did for the old version with laziness to modify it for the new version ? or that's just how outdated the RAGE engine is ?

Edited April 25, 2015 by _MK_

[Marsmillo]

Did mess around a bit with the graphic settings.
I'm still testing out things, but regarding the shadow-rendering-bubble:

 

Shadow settings in this one are/ sharp soft shadows, shadow quality max, high resolution shadow on and no extended shadows. If I change one off these shadow settings, the bubble reappears back.

I also removed my settings.xml file, so the game did make a new one before I start testing.
And I also think AA was turned off in the test

Edit: I have a nvidia gtx 970, used the latest 'gta' drivers
Edit2: Strange things are happening, at first if I added extended shadows the bubble reappeared, but now it issent the case anymore. I'm testing in director mode to have same time and wheather conditions. I don't understand it. Looks to me its something to do with the rendering engine. Alt-tabbing out and in, changing resolution and turning on and off vsync all reset the engine I believe and sometimes it fix or cause the problem.

Will tweak my settings for my computer at this moment, and after a patch will re-evaluate things.

Edited April 25, 2015 by Marsmillo

[Tuur]

Finally found a topic, i have the same problem and i'm sure it wasn't this way when it first released!

 

 

I hate this, hope rs will come up with better patches.

[Joyslan]

Same here...

I am on Steam Version.

Win8.1 x64 fully updated. Gtx 980 latest driver.

Tried several configs on shadows options (high, very high, extended minimum or maxed, high resolution on or off)... none fixed.

I`m pretty shure it wasn't that way before last GTAV update...

[petemac]

same happening here since latest patch

i74970k 16gb ram 4gb gtx 770

[nyolc8]

I just tested the game with update1, update2, update3 (I have all version exe and update.rpf files) and there is no difference between them. The only thing which changes the "box" size is the camera distance from the character. If you select a camera view which is more far from the character, then the box size expands(dynamically) to bigger.

[_CP_]

OK, I guess I found temporary fix for shadow cascades.

 

1) Run the game and set Shadows setting on Sharp.

2) Open settings.xml file in Documents and edit these values

 

<Shadow_SplitZStart value="0.930000" /><Shadow_SplitZEnd value="0.890000" />

to these

 

<Shadow_SplitZStart value="1.000000" />    <Shadow_SplitZEnd value="0.000000" />

Works with Soft shadows too.

Edited April 27, 2015 by _CP_

[nyolc8]

You say we need to set shadow to sharp, then you say it works with soft shadow too. So... it works with soft shadow or not?

[raburs]

You say we need to set shadow to sharp, then you say it works with soft shadow too. So... it works with soft shadow or not?

 

It seems like it works but doesn't..

[nyolc8]

Tried it, it definitely changes something related to this, tried to set many-many values, and setting 1.000000, and 0.000000 (what _CP_ suggested) helps a bit. Not removes it but makes it better. Any other values makes it worse.

 

edit: tried to understand what this "shadow_splitZ" setting means:

 

split - (the line where the higher res shadow and lower res shadow meet)

Z - (the height of the camera)

start/end - (the camera height boundaries where it makes this shadow "splitting")

Edited April 27, 2015 by nyolc8

[iNIKEL]

Performance cost for xml editing this way?

[nyolc8]

I just set them to 100.000000 and 0.000000 and now there is no any shadow at all outside of the invisible box I can't find the logic in this setting...

[Spider-Vice]

PS4

 

 

(Skip to 1:22:56 if it doesn't work)

Look on the right, in the wall. It's the exact same issue but on a sideways shadow. As I said, this is also on consoles, so it's definitely an overlook in the engine.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Spider-Vice

[FilipCRO]

PS4

 

 

(Skip to 1:22:56 if it doesn't work)

Look on the right, in the wall. It's the exact same issue but on a sideways shadow. As I said, this is also on consoles, so it's definitely an overlook in the engine.

Nice find. well. thats f*cked up. No fix for that (rockstar wont fix it for sure)

[Lexus.V]

I just set them to 100.000000 and 0.000000 and now there is no any shadow at all outside of the invisible box I can't find the logic in this setting...

range is 0.000000 to 1.00000

if you set 100 or 500 they won't work

[FilipCRO]

OK, I guess I found temporary fix for shadow cascades.

 

1) Run the game and set Shadows setting on Sharp.

2) Open settings.xml file in Documents and edit these values

<Shadow_SplitZStart value="0.930000" /><Shadow_SplitZEnd value="0.890000" />

to these

 

<Shadow_SplitZStart value="1.000000" />    <Shadow_SplitZEnd value="0.000000" />

Works with Soft shadows too.

 

Does it work with "Softest" shadows ?