Something I noticed while trying to squeeze a few more frames was that shadows on low and shadows off are a world of difference. 25% gain with them off... Why are player shadows raytrayced on low? This is expensive as a golden toilet.
He means the shadow is calculated to be accurate dependent upon the light source rather than a shadow that is just pre-baked. The issue as I would see it is that the shadows would look wrong based upon the day/night cycle but I guess it might be better to have pre-baked shadows than nothing.
Low settings for shadows are advertized as "Blob shadows" in description box. So ..isn't that the case? ^^
no, they are just a really low res and really near you. there are already "blob" shadows, it's the SSAO making them. so if ambient occlusion is activated and shadows too, there are self shadows and ssao shadows togheter.
Basically you have rays that represent light, and each time one of these "rays" collide with an object they make shadows as the light cannot get past it, unless you have light bouncing. There is at least one game that utilizes ray tracing and that is Doom 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_volume
SSAO only shadows object that collide with each other, shadows cast the objects shadow where the light source points it. in other words shadows are casted, SSAO isn't
There is no way SOE could afford to have non-pre-baked shadows as it is extremely brutal on the hardware, so they use pre-baked system, this also explains the shadow artifacting on newer builds
Well you requested the shadow, but only on lower map size. BTW the game uses shadow maps and/or stencil shadows
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_tracing_(graphics) Forgelight definitely isnt using raytracing either. Cant wait for unreal engine 4s voxel cone illumination. Closest thing to raytracing in games yet.
I play with no AO, occlusion is also no the same as shadows. You can fake blob shadows with player casted terrain AO but it has to be really intense and makes things look.... odd. Stencil shadows are still raytraced no? The Terrain shadows are baked Im pretty sure, they snap with the Time of Day. this is OK. However it is the PLAYER shadows I think are raytraced. Example: Blobs Traced. Low graphics settings should be the lowest before disabling. Low shadows should draw Blob shadows for all players to reduce CPU load. I came to this conclusion when I realized shadows cause the same performance hit across all systems (Lowest/Highest system requirements, I have AMD X4/GTX460 and shadows kill the FPS just as much on an i7/GTX760.
But i said that they(ssao) aren't really shadows and i do think that the palyer shadows are shadow mapped as they become blurrier as you step down the graphics, otherwise they'd be sharp all the time or at least have contact hardening algorithm
