I don't want to vote this down but the first image looks great.

As objects are close to the ground, like a human body, the shadows should be sharper. As objects are further away, like the chopper or leaves or something, they should soften. It's physics....It looks to me like BIS is doing this, just needs a bit of tweaking if anything.

Perhaps the cars and trucks should have a softer shadow, but NOT the character. The difference is softness is looking quite realistic to me.

Yeah looks like the soft shadow models aren't complete yet, but this is probably known to the BI devs.

EDIT: It can't be by design, I agree there with Kol9yN, but it's probably too early to jump to conclusions, because they announced in the Sitrep (I think), that they would "experiment with soft shadows".

In my opinion, the softness of the shadow should depend on the light intensity/diffusion; strong sunlight makes for a crispier shadow, while soft, diffuse light, might equally give a softer, diffuse shadow.

Thanks Fireball :)
Im just notice devs about this ;)
so they do not forget to finish it ;) :)

the hard shadows are shit, plan and simple. either replace it with a better hard shadow that resembles the new soft shadow effect, but more crisp, or get rid of it entirely. my shadow does not look blocky no matter how close i get to the ground, so fuck you for suggestion that they keep it that way.

Sorry, I'm confused....I thought this post was concerning the placement of soft shadows, not shadow-map resolution with is what creates blockyness in hard shadows...

johncage what are you talking about

Kol9ybN...I agree, the shadows are sometimes hard where they should be soft, and vice-versa. Bear in mind, in the end, some shadows should be hard and some should be soft, and on a clear day, that is only a function of distance to the ground.

(unless we're talking about ambient occlusion, which is a type of shadow I'd love to see implemented, but that's another discussion)

Closing in favor of #8233.

Same request, more votes.