Agreed. The stencil shadows need to go.. that would also fix stuff like this: #7501.

Soft shadows look great in ArmA3, it is about time every object started to produce them.

Dont advertise your tickets on comments.

Dr. Death, which ticket are you talking about. If the one linked by simast, then don't be silly. The problem in that ticket is a consequence of what my ticket is trying to resolve, just in a bigger picture.

Please don't down vote a legitimate ticket (one that resolves MANY other tickets single-handedly) all because of some petty internet quarrel.

this is a tricky one. I am voting up, but cant say I am entirely happy with the soft shadows.

For one, stencil shadows and shadow mapped shadows mixed seem to give some depth in some shadows, for example player shadow is hard edged, and tree shadows are soft edged, this kinda adds to the look and feel that the tree is higher than the character. And also, the shadows maps edges kinda look crap, i mean on hard surface geometry, like walls etc, though it seems to look fine with ATOC. and lastly, there is a distracting border between high rez and low rez shadow maps, seems to appear about 40m infront of the player... unless you run ultra shadows.

But I will upvote for performance sake... it matters more than graphics.

Is it possible to use stencil shadows on the GPU though?

Should definitely be adjusted, at least for the higher graphics settings...

upvoted. to hell with those ugly stencil shadows. bring this game to 2013 :)

+1

I think the player shadow is just horrible.
especially the weapon he is holding, it always looks to me like cardboard.

A million votes for you sir.
Well, no, one. Also sorry if you aren't a sir, that must suck. I bet being a knight is awesome.
But... yeah, stencil shadows were cool back in the Doom 3 days when they were the new thing, but now they are inefficient and ugly.

Player shadow (fingers) == Freddy Krueger :D
please, make shadows soften and processed by HBAO or some similar

Freddy Krueger fingers! Once seen, can never be unseen.

Please BI no more stencil shadows, do it for the kids scared of Freddy Krueger!

Also shadows produced from objects farther from the ground should look softer than the ones from objects close to, but performance and gameplay first indeed.

Freddy Krueger would be proud :>

Seriously, if BIS thinks about optimising this game and making visualy-enhanced they can't just throw out this idea.

voted up

To be investigated

Arma 3 need any kind of Ambient Occlusion first. I can't look more at these flat shadows under vehicles.

To give a few examples of cases, the AH-9 first and third person shadows as well as the civilian offroad.

Other objects such as wooden lamp posts and road signs appear to still be using stencil shadows while street lamps are using the new rendering method.

And most vehicles/objects are still using stencil shadows.

-->Arma 3 need any kind of Ambient Occlusion first.
Already in. But very painful method for HW.

And we don't need fake HBAO in almost exterior scenes.

About shadows. What method is used? SSSS? Would be great to see something like PCSS by Randima Fernando.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmZenKr_sfU

This video outlines the issue where objects casting Stencil shadows do not cast on the first person player model and weapon. Very annoying.

I wish they would get rid of all stencil shadows, they look terrible in my opinion.

The problem that arises is that shadow maps would look like shit in first person. The shadow casted by the soldiers should be as hard as possible, but I'm not sure if the engine supports differen kinds of shadow hardness.

Sharp yes but stencil shadows are TOO sharp and in comparison to the new shadows they look ugly as they show every corner of the lower polycount shadow LOD.

They do have falloff and Arma 3's new shadows are up for the task http://shep45.edublogs.org/files/2011/02/People_Shadow-1g9bcxs.jpg

on high setting - all the shadows should be soft shadows , even on guns and in the cockpits too

Sharpness of real shadows depend from angle and range between light source, object and surface. And light source type, of course. The sun is huge source and produce very diffuse light with soft-edged shadows. Unlike the streetlamp.

And Arma doesn't take into account what the light source or its proximity aside from where it casts the shadows and how far, or at all. With that in mind, which would you rather see.

Remember also that stencil shadows use CPU vs GPU, so wether we want to or not we're always wasting cycles.

Please remember that this is an over 10 years old engine. yes, it has done more than even the Source could do, but its not limitless

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?154493-Stencil-shadows-vs-Shadow-Maps&p=2590429&viewfull=1#post2590429

Seems easily changed with the steps written here: adding prefershadowvolume 0 to the geometry lod. Tried it on the arma 2 zu23 static weapon without any other changes and it seems to work fine.

image wont work

If you mean tinemem's image then it's at http://i.imgur.com/sEsWaoA.jpg

if a simple change can make shadows realistic and bis haven't done it so its either:

1-because they have a good reason not to
2-they dont want to

When will BI implement shadow map over stencil shadows? This would increase the performance by at least some 10% because the shadows will be handled by the graphics card and not by the processor.

They said they acknowledged the problem, still no solution after 6 months.
Moreover, the game looks like a 2005 directx 9 game.
Still waiting.

any news here?
+1

Even tho they've added HDAO, shadows under vehicles stil look fake... also Directx11 supports shadows that are sharper the when closer to contact and blurrier when shadows i casted from up high.

Edit: Called contact hardened shadows

related to http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=17769

Actually, that is related to THIS, note the post dates...one was made in 2013 the other in 2014.

A ticket needs to be pointed out as relating to only if it is posted after one that already exists.

related to http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=21264

Its really annoying when I riding on back in a chopper with guys and notice their goggles just don't give a dam boat shadows.

related to #0025831

Is this fixed? When i saw version of game, when it was reported i fell i'm gonna puke...

https://dev.arma3.com/post/sitrep-00143 in some cases,they think stencil shadows looks better,but visually I HATE stencil shadow......they give me a option to force all shadow mapping
performance? well I don't care,just......to me,stencil shadow looks BAD,so I HOPE BI make option for "force shadow mapping" in graphic setting

Even DayZ uses shadow mapping for all, but why not arma 3?