[MetalDestroyer]

Shadwos are great but on my spec, the mesh vanished sometimes.

[mjn.mixael]

I guess polycount will now matter really hard. 8 FPS instead of 90 in the beginnign of BP2 intro. Even if this is an early stage of development, I'm afraid i'd have to turn off nearly everything except shadows if I wanted do have them at reasonable quality. Will look nice on vids though

its a problem that was going to crop up at some point. shadows are a fantastic advancmeant for the fso engine. but with the detail that the comunity puts into the ships and assets they create we will see allot of these frame drops

it really is a pity multi core would require pritty much rebuilding the engine

This is shadows version 0.3 people. Based on Valathil's comments in IRC, he's still just trying to get everything working reliably. I'm sure optimization of the effect will come after that.

Also, BP2 Intro is a really bad example to give. Unoptimized models plus this sort of effect is going to produce dead frame rates without a doubt.

[torc]

do you think that with other shaders enabled the FPS drops more than now?

[Herra Tohtori]

Do the subspace missions have a primary light source in them, or do they just rely on ambient light? Not having a sun might be doing something nasty to the shadow system...


And, actually, I get about the same frame rates from the BP2 intro, shadows or no shadows... when the camera zooms to the big furball towards Jupiter, frame rates drop to about 10 anyways. That's likely because my system is heavily CPU/memory bus bottleneck limited; the GPU can deal with the shadows, the slowdowns in my end are caused by other stuff.

[MatthTheGeek]

Do the subspace missions have a primary light source in them, or do they just rely on ambient light? Not having a sun might be doing something nasty to the shadow system...

IIRC, you always need to have at least one sun in a mish. There should be a sun at the end of the subspace tunnel.

Also, randomly, I can't seriously believe it. Self-shadowing = outstanding. Ships shadowing each other = wait wat how

What is this sorcery.

[Sushi]

I guess polycount will now matter really hard. 8 FPS instead of 90 in the beginnign of BP2 intro. Even if this is an early stage of development, I'm afraid i'd have to turn off nearly everything except shadows if I wanted do have them at reasonable quality. Will look nice on vids though

What if we added support for using a lower LOD for shadow map generation? I have no idea how possible that is (Valathil would have to answer), but it would allow some tradeoff between shadow fidelity and performance. Basically, get less detailed shadows (but that render faster).

[Luis Dias]

I guess polycount will now matter really hard. 8 FPS instead of 90 in the beginnign of BP2 intro. Even if this is an early stage of development, I'm afraid i'd have to turn off nearly everything except shadows if I wanted do have them at reasonable quality. Will look nice on vids though

What if we added support for using a lower LOD for shadow map generation? I have no idea how possible that is (Valathil would have to answer), but it would allow some tradeoff between shadow fidelity and performance. Basically, get less detailed shadows (but that render faster).

This would only work on shadows between ships. Self-shadowing would create massive errors.

Anyways, it's a massive point in FSO history. Graphic cards will only get better, and now FSO is ready for what the future might bring to it. When this feature gets integrated into a more stable version, I must show it to some of my friends. And I'm betting that it will spawn a new age of interested people as well.

[mjn.mixael]

This would only work on shadows between ships. Self-shadowing would create massive errors.

Unless you have experience getting shadows to work.. I suggest leaving these distinctions to Valathil...

[Luis Dias]

mjn, it's basic geometrical deduction, for which I'm more than qualified thank you very much. If you make a shadow map of a LOD1 and imprint it on a LOD0, you'll get every single detail of LOD0 that isn't on LOD1 wrong in its shadowing, creating a mess of an image. I'm sure that Valathil will agree with me.

[Jellyfish]

Shadows in FSO. We truly live in great times.
Next they'll announce motion blur or a build that makes beer pour from the screen and I wouldn't be surprised.

Where do I send the poet?

[Iss Mneur]

it really is a pity multi core would require pritty much rebuilding the engine

This has pretty much nothing to do the with CPU.  Shadows are almost completely exclusively limited by the GPU.

IIRC, you always need to have at least one sun in a mish. There should be a sun at the end of the subspace tunnel.

There is usually two suns in a subspace mission, one at each end of the tunnel, so that you get the sunglare/whiteout when you look down the tunnel.

[Kolgena]

I didn't have much time to test the build, but I get the same dark ships when I go into the tech room.

Performance is pretty abysmal all around (WiH intro is 2-3 fps down from 20-30), but I have a ****ty 3650 so I wasn't expecting much. The good news is, the shadows are working, unlike thruster distortions.

Quick Q: Is there any optimization implemented at all yet? Like, LOD's, culling, and any other magic that would keep my game playable with shadows on? (Please say no, because then there is still hope for me)

[esarai]

Valathil.

This man.  This man deserves a medal.  I need a general, or an admiral, someone of rank, quick.

[Mongoose]

**** protocol either way, I'm making this a news post at some point.

[Cobra]

Valathil.

This man.  This man deserves a medal.  I need a general, or an admiral, someone of rank, quick.

Ooh ooh I'm a commodore in FS1!

[Ace]

http://youtu.be/8E3a_RL2XkE?hd=1

Geomod next?

Very impressive.

Other than the tech room wonkiness, it works in game pretty well with minimal framerate impact on my system.

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[mjn.mixael]

Geeze.. it's amazing what shadows do to add realism to the look of the game...

[The E]

One thing that should be noted is that, at the moment, shadows are rendered into a 4096 by 4096 rendertarget. Which gives great quality, but is also much, much larger than is sensible.

[Skarab]

Might there be a way to eventually set up a "shadow quality" type of slider in the launcher, or using another method?  I ask because on my own system, there is minimal impact on performance.  Others with lower end hardware would certainly benefit with something less than the 4096*4096 you mention, but those of us with more powerful hardware might be just fine the way it is now, optimizations notwithstanding.

[The E]

This is definitely going to happen; but as has been said quite a few times, this is the first working implementation. The one that will get into trunk eventually will be faster and more configurable.