CSM - Dynamic shadows for turrets and gun barrels

[Senshi]

So as long as a tank stands still, its turret shadow won't move with the actual turret? That would suck indeed...

[Apache Thunder]

It's not all bad. If you move the turret while stationary, the shadow won't update, but as soon as you move, the shadow would immedietly snap to the correct position. The rotational bundle it self moves all the time, it's only the shadow that doesn't update while stationary.

It also doesn't take a lot to get the shadow to update. Even a little foward movement by an inch may be enough for the shadow to update.

[Jeronimo]

I have seen in your video that the shadows of the helicopter fade away to invisibility when flying around 10 to 15 meters high, and this is also what I'm used to from BF42. Maybe this is a little bit offtopic here, but do you know if it's somehow possible to increase that distance or at least change the darkness / the color of the shadows? If this isn't hardcoded then modifying it could probably be another good way of improving the look of dynamic shadows.

[Senshi]

Hardcoded .

[Jeronimo]

damn...

[fo0k]

but!

I tried the DC Movie Mod a while back and noticed they seem to have a setup where the shadows were very poor quality but stayed on screen much farther.. This shadow fade distance has always annoyed me too.

I didnt look into it but that mod certainly has something strange going on with shadows.

[fo0k]

took another look at the mod.. taking the humvee for example.. they appear to be setup the same in both dcme (desert combat movie edition) and stock desert combat.. but shadows are very poor in dcme.. This could be the overall size of the object (the position of the movie cams on the humvee are very offset from the vehicle so including all of its visible and invisible (cam positions) the whle thing becomes very big.. this may explain low quality but longer on screen.

vid here. : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PbDhJbs8y8

you dont get the full idea of distance but you do see how crap they are. same on my machine with settings maxed.. so its not a settings thing.

[Apache Thunder]

That link doesn't seem to work for some reason. It loads. But youtube never plays the video. No error reported. Just nothing happens.

Anyways, I would guess that the PCO "size" would determine how far the shadow would be drawn and it's quality. Really tiny stuff like projectiles and perticulery my RC Tank have higher detail shadow meshes.

Also note that if you place addTemplate a object to a PCO with a larger offset it will cause the 3rd Person camera to zoom out very far from what would be normal. I guess whatever causes that also occurs with dynamic shadows.

[fo0k]

yeah the camera position and flyby cam positions caused me a lot of headache with the rcc mod..

this pic shows the difference

The Movie edition shadow stays on screen approx 3 times the distance

you can see the bradley shadow has just gone in the standard pic and you will have to take my word for it that the humvee shadow is on the cusp in the movie edition pic.

[Jeronimo]

In the 2nd picture you can already see a difference between the first and the second humvee shadow. The shadows in DCF (and also EoD / any other mod I have ever played which doesn't include DCME) seem to fade from full to nothing within only 5 units at a distance of ca. 60 units...
Another defective appearance of dynamic shadows in BF42 is that they're not drawn on anything else but the ground. Standing on a pad with a helo would give you no shadows on the pad, only on the "pure ground" where the shadow leaves it.