Very ugly shadows

[DimSh]

Installing STEP 2.2.1 from scratch I reach 1.B. Skyrim Launcher Options.

The only thing I do different is applying Anisotropic Filtering through NVIDIA Control Panel.

I start the game as mentioned in 1.B.6 and I realize my shadows are terrible.

Why is this happening?

My GPU is GTX560Ti - 1GB VRAM

Thanks!

[Farlo]

Not only is v2.2.1 not ready for use, especially the control panel sections. On top of that, without screenshots it kind of hard to diagnose.

[TechAngel85]

@Farlo,

 

It may sound mean, but we should probably put up a note somewhere to not ask for troubleshooting when using 2.2.1 because it is not ready for beta testing. I lot of people have been going ahead and using it then posting problems which is taking up a lot of time. Guess I could just start ignoring the posts...but again, that's kinda mean too.

[Farlo]

@Farlo,

 

It may sound mean, but we should probably put up a note somewhere to not ask for troubleshooting when using 2.2.1 because it is not ready for beta testing. I lot of people have been going ahead and using it then posting problems which is taking up a lot of time. Guess I could just start ignoring the posts...but again, that's kinda mean too.

I agree, I'll update the page's note to be bigger and mention that we'll close/ignore any general support/troubleshooting requests for v2.2.1.  Whenever I get around to it, I'll also see about adding an entire subsection for the Development version of the guide so all questions and discussions about it will go there.

[stoppingby4now]

I thought that the big red warning box was enough to grab attention. Maybe it needs to be uglier and more in your face.

 

I think this also warrants a javascript popup informational box whenever you visit a development version to make it even more clear that it is not finished and that you proceed at your own risk, yadda yadda.

[Farlo]

I thought that the big red warning box was enough to grab attention. Maybe it needs to be uglier and more in your face.

 

I think this also warrants a javascript popup informational box whenever you visit a development version to make it even more clear that it is not finished and that you proceed at your own risk, yadda yadda.

I really wish we didn't have to, it's a tad excessive.  I can manually make it a couple thousand characters tall with huge font so that it literally can't be missed.  If you want to make a "popup", perhaps we could mess with Extension:DismissableSiteNotice, maybe we can set it to absolute positioning so that you have to click something to continue?

[Besidilo]

Why not just hide the page from the public for the time being? It's not like it's complete anyway, so anyone outside the STEP team shouldn't use it just yet.

[DimSh]

Trying to answer to all of you, up to point 1.B there is nothing special only STEP introduces to the game.

I could have been doing this according to NVIDIA's Tweak Guide.

So, I don't get why you say all these things about STEP being not ready.

My question has nothing to do with STEP.

I mentioned STEP point 1.B only to be clear about not doing anything else before that point.

I hope I'm clear on it.

[Besidilo]

There are a few things you could try to improve the look of the shadows, like lowering the Shadow Distance to 4000 or so, using a lower iBlurDefferedShadowMask value to sharpen them, increasing the internal resolution of shadows rendered to 4096 or even 8192, using transparency anti-aliasing, turning on shadows draw on trees and land, etc. Detailed Shadows in ENB help a lot too, SSAO will make the overall render much more pleasing to the eyes.

 

Heck, just follow this guide and see if it helps, worse comes to worse, you can always revert to the original INI files.

 

https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/7638

[TechAngel85]

https://www.geforce.com/optimize/guides/five-fast-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweaks-guaranteed-to-make-your-game-look-even-better

[Neovalen]

Side note... has anyone gotten uGrids 7 to work on a fully modded Sky rim? I'm 100% stable 60fps at 5 but ctd or hang with 7.

[TechAngel85]

Side note... has anyone gotten uGrids 7 to work on a fully modded Sky rim? I'm 100% stable 60fps at 5 but ctd or hang with 7.

From what I read in many many many different places, anything over 5 is considered unstable on really heavily modded systems. Did you do this as well:

We lost three frames per second by enabling uGridsToLoad=7, which is fine by us considering the dramatic improvement in overall fidelity. To implement this tweak open Skyrim.ini in My Documents\My Games\Skyrim. At the very top, in the [General] section, change uExterior Cell Buffer=36 to uExterior Cell Buffer=64. This value should always be (uGridsToLoad + 1)^2. In our case, 7+1x8=64. Broken down, that’s the seven nearest grids to load, plus the one your character inhabits, multiplied by the result.

 

Directly below uExterior Cell Buffer=64, add uGridsToLoad=7 to the file. This number can only be ‘odd,’ and as mentioned earlier values above 7 are incredibly unstable.