Please enable "Ultra" shadows in game settings. It looks beautiful, works wonderful especially in VR. I see no performance impact.

[Rapierarch]

8 hours ago, Hammer3246 said:

I'm not having this issue.

Good to hear it. I still haven't got chance to fly. But if some people have problems than it might be conflicting with some other setting. I would suspect "blur flat shadows" setting. 

Ultra shadows use set of 5 8K shadow maps instead of 4K that high setting uses. When smoothing is on it might use even more VRAM

[draconus]

23 minutes ago, Rapierarch said:

...it might be conflicting with some other setting. I would suspect "blur flat shadows" setting.

Had that one off when trying.

[obious]

Can confirm that ED have done something to break this setting (shadows=5). All my settings are reverted to default if I open up the settings menu without touching anything.  

[Hammer3246]

11 minutes ago, obious said:

Can confirm that ED have done something to break this setting (shadows=5). All my settings are reverted to default if I open up the settings menu without touching anything.  

All of your settings?  If you're just talking shadows=5, that's always been the case for me ever since I read that you could set it to this.

[Rapierarch]

15 hours ago, obious said:

Can confirm that ED have done something to break this setting (shadows=5). All my settings are reverted to default if I open up the settings menu without touching anything.  

Read my post. That's always been the case. That's why I requested to add this to the in game settings otherwise I wouldn't bother asking it and set it in the file as 5. But it reverts to 0 the moment you click ingame settings button.

[draconus]

10 hours ago, Rapierarch said:

But it reverts to 0 the moment you click ingame settings button.

Does it still work for you? I cannot even start the game with "5" setting.

Edited August 13, 2023 by draconus

[Hammer3246]

Bueller

[f14billy]

If you want to enable ultra shadows without having to change the config file every time try this:

In the file \DCSWorld\MissionEditor\modules\Options\optionsDb.lua

add the ultra option as shown below.

graphics('shadows')    :setValue(2)        :combo({Name(_('OFF'))        :Value(0),
                            Name(_('FLAT ONLY')):Value(1),
                            Name(_('LOW'))        :Value(2),
                            Name(_('MEDIUM'))    :Value(3),
                            Name(_('HIGH'))        :Value(4),
                            Name(_('ULTRA'))    :Value(5)
                            }):low(1):medium(1):high(4):VR(3)

This adds the ultra option in the shadows menu in the options tab. Not sure if this will break the Integrity Check in multiplayer. It works perfectly in my PC in single player open beta 2.9.

@BIGNEWY could this simple change be added to the code?

Thank you

Edited October 27, 2023 by f14billy

[Rapierarch]

2 hours ago, f14billy said:

If you want to enable ultra shadows without having to change the config file every time try this:

In the file \DCSWorld\MissionEditor\modules\Options\optionsDb.lua

add the ultra option as shown below.

graphics('shadows')    :setValue(2)        :combo({Name(_('OFF'))        :Value(0),
                            Name(_('FLAT ONLY')):Value(1),
                            Name(_('LOW'))        :Value(2),
                            Name(_('MEDIUM'))    :Value(3),
                            Name(_('HIGH'))        :Value(4),
                            Name(_('ULTRA'))    :Value(5)
                            }):low(1):medium(1):high(4):VR(3)

This adds the ultra option in the shadows menu in the options tab. Not sure if this will break the Integrity Check in multiplayer. It works perfectly in my PC in single player open beta 2.9.

@BIGNEWY could this simple change be added to the code?

Thank you

 

Thanks! This is exactly what I wanted. 

[MAXsenna]

What's sixes and sevens then? 

[MAXsenna]

@f14billy

Do you know of other enhancements that can go here?

[f14billy]

1 hour ago, MAXsenna said:

@f14billy

Do you know of other enhancements that can go here?

I wouldn't try to change anything else in that file. That just tells the options what values you can set on the screen. Entering a value that the sim can't handle could either just disable the option or even cause a crash in the sim.

Value 5 of the shadows was proven to work. This just enables it to be selected from the options screen instead of having to change a config file.

Edited November 14, 2023 by f14billy

[SkateZilla]

Note: Adding the option to the optionsdb.lua will only work as long as the settings for that value are in the shadows.lua and shader files.

I mean if you wanted to you can just change the parameters of the High Block to match the ultra block.

Change:

		{	--high
			4096,
			{0.02, 25.0, 100.0, 400.0, 1500.0, 7000},	
			{0.02, 2.5,  25.0,  250.0, 1500.0, 7000}
		},

To:

		{	--ultra
			8192,
			{0.02, 25.0, 100.0, 500.0, 2000.0, 7000},	
			{0.02, 2.5,  25.0,  300.0, 2000.0, 7000}
		},

And further info, you can simply create your own settings:
 

		{	--referencename
			2048,								-- size of shadowmap
			{0, 0, 0.02, 20.0, 70.0, 7000},		-- split distances outside
			{0, 0, 0.02, 2.0,  20.0, 7000}		-- split distances in cockpit
		},

 

[Tippis]

6 minutes ago, SkateZilla said:

Note: Adding the option to the optionsdb.lua will only work as long as the settings for that value are in the shadows.lua and shader files.

I mean if you wanted to you can just change the parameters of the High Block to match the ultra block.

Do you have a good reference for or description of what the different parameters represent? Is it some kind of progression of map size scale factors up to the max distance, or something else?

[MAXsenna]

I wouldn't try to change anything else in that file. That just tells the options what values you can set on the screen. Entering a value that the sim can't handle could either just disable the option or even cause a crash in the sim.
Value 5 of the shadows was proven to work. This just enables it to be selected from the options screen instead of having to change a config file.

Of course! Just wondering if more tweaks were known. I made a mod package obviously.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[PLUTON]

f14billy said:
This adds the ultra option to the shadows menu in the options tab.
question? Where is this location please?

[Hiob]

 Nice tweak. Cockpit shadows are less blurry now. Comes with a small performance penalty but negligible. I like it.

[Bucic]

What's the performance hit for 2D?

[draconus]

5 minutes ago, Bucic said:

What's the performance hit for 2D?

Depends on your hardware and settings. Easiest and fastest is to check for yourself.

[Hiob]

7 minutes ago, Bucic said:

What's the performance hit for 2D?

~3% fps penalty (rough estimate, I haven't done systematic testing on it yet)

Edit: That is in 4K with very high gfx settings (almost everything maxed out) 

Edit: I also assume that this depends a little on the used airframe. Higher detailed cockpits probably suffer more than simpler ones.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Hiob

[Picchio]

31 minutes ago, Bucic said:

What's the performance hit for 2D?

@Rapierarch it's not like everyone has a 4090, I don't see the use in declaring "I see no performance impact". A bit of a clickbaity thread for a tweak that has been around the forums for years.

Moving on, aside from being obviously related to the GPU, I can say that the performance penalty can be especially severe when the viewpoint is close to forests. As @Hiob correctly pointed out, it really depends on the number of shadows being drawn.

There is a reason why Ultra quality is not implemented by default.

[average_pilot]

In case someone finds it useful, what I do is to comment out the High setting so that DCS reads the Ultra settings as if they were the high. With notepad++ select text with mouse and press Ctrl+K to comment selected text. For me it's the fastest way after each update and I don't have to worry about DCS reverting the setting in options.lua.

Yes, AFAIK it breaks IC.

Edited November 15, 2023 by average_pilot

[Picchio]

All it takes is a forum search:

[Hiob]

44 minutes ago, Picchio said:

@Rapierarch it's not like everyone has a 4090, I don't see the use in declaring "I see no performance impact". A bit of a clickbaity thread for a tweak that has been around the forums for years.

Moving on, aside from being obviously related to the GPU, I can say that the performance penalty can be especially severe when the viewpoint is close to forests. As @Hiob correctly pointed out, it really depends on the number of shadows being drawn.

There is a reason why Ultra quality is not implemented by default.

There is a misconception here though. 

The Setting we're talking about only affects your cockpit. That has nothing to do with ground shadows. Hence the performance impact is not too severe.

Edit: A second misconception is that the performance impact depends on the GPU. Unless you run into a hard bottleneck like VRAM the performance hit of various gfx settings is usually a factor. So when your 3080 gives you 100 fps as a reference, the hit maybe 3 fps, while your 4090 gives you 200 upfront the hit will likely be 6 fps.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Hiob

[Picchio]

28 minutes ago, Hiob said:

There is a misconception here though. 

The Setting we're talking about only affects your cockpit. That has nothing to do with ground shadows. Hence the performance impact is not too severe.

Edit: A second misconception is that the performance impact depends on the GPU. Unless you run into a hard bottleneck like VRAM the performance hit of various gfx settings is usually a factor. So when your 3080 gives you 100 fps as a reference, the hit maybe 3 fps, while your 4090 gives you 200 upfront the hit will likely be 6 fps.

 

Uhm, if the changes suggested don't simply affect all shadows there is something I'm missing - I've re-read the posts above and I see the same modifications that were already discussed in the thread I posted. 

As for the second misconception, I agree with your observations, I was simplifying.