8800GTS and F.E.A.R. = no Soft Shadows ?

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
24,560
Location
Amsterdam,The Netherlands
Recently I have been playing F.E.A.R. again since upgrading to a 8800GTS and it runs so smooth at max details I thought why not try Soft Shadows but whenever I enable it it doesn't seem to do anything, shadows are still 'hard' and the performancce is the same.

Is Soft Shadows an option that is currently not available?
 
I know it is (was) a performance killer, I just wanted to see if it really is very nice to look at or if it isn't worth the performance drop.
 
geeza said:
if you like looking at the shadows instead of playing the game, then yes :)
Good point, though I do think that the shadows in F.E.A.R. add to the atmosphere of the game, seeing some guys standing round the corner with their shadow visible is a good warning to stop and lob a grenade towards them :p

I am more interested in it because of the technological aspect of it though so no big deal if it does not work.
 
I had enabled FSAA in the control panel as I tried 8xCSAA in the beginning and that stopped soft shadows from working, I set it to application controlled and it works.

I think it looks better than 'normal' shadows but the average at 1280*1024 4xAA/16xAF dropped from 94fps to 63fps in the test and 63fps in the test is nowhere near enough as ingame that would drop to low fps.
 
geeza said:
how do i check?
Go towards a light, look at the shadow you are projecting, go to options and enable/disable soft shadows and look for the difference like this:

FEAR_10.jpg
 
geeza said:
All it does is seem to blur them anyway, they dont even look better
I would say it looks more realistic than the 'normal' shadows and I quite like it.

But as said it is not worth the performance hit and also when AA is on together with soft shadows the shadows sometimes are messed up.
 
Back
Top Bottom