Faster shadow technique option

[YouGroove]

I run my game at 60 Fps with Quality = 1, but shadows are really only near the character and no more visible in some small distance away

Changing quality to 2 and the frame rate drops to 26 Fps

Shadows are the main factor, as they will appear in bigger distance.

It would be usefull to have a optionnal shadowing technique able to perform faster, perhaps more approximative, but faster when we display distant shadows.

(something similar to Anti Aliasing like MSAA that costs power and the alternative FXAA lot more light and producing good results)

 

Thanks.

[martyj]

Without having your map, I don't think we can make suggestions on how to improve shadow performance.

 

Shadows in games can be implemented in two ways.

 

The first way is to render the scene to a shadow buffer.

 

The second way is to bake in that shadow buffer to each of the models. Which let's be honest, in this case of an off the shelf engine, is very unrealistic.

 

There could be some AA done on the shadow buffer which could be lowered for improved perfomance. I'd assume there is judging by the soft outlines provided by the shadows.

 

What hardware are you running on? You'd be surprised how cheap you can get a second hand graphics card today. Especially since the bitcoin bubble popped.

 

Also I've noticed for the most part I have poor performance on debug builds. If I run my code for release I get a lot better frame rate.

[martyj]

Do you get a better framerate when you run the app without debugging it?

[Josh]

I'll be happy to look at the program if you post an example I can run. Otherwise, I can't tell anything. Your framerate seems abnormally low.