For the love of God someone please make a mod that allows the GPU to render the shadows. Having the CPU to do it is absolutely [censored].

Shadows in this game need fixing in general, the way they handled it was just plain wierd. In lower settings the shadows glitch out when the sun logs a new position, it looks aweful and ruins gameplay experience so you have 2 options: increase shadow detail in the INI or turn them all off. This and the wierd low indoor perfomance are the only things that prevent this game getting a 10 in my books.

Where are people getting the insane idea that shadows are rendered on the CPU? They're rendered on the GPU just like the rest of the scene.

It was mentioned in one thread, with not a whole lot of proof behind it I think. No idea if it's true or not. But now everyone has started repeating what they heard from some guy who heard it from some other guy who originally read that thread.

Either way, we can't rewrite the engine. People need to realize that not everything can be modded.

Shadows in Skyrim are done on the GPU.

/sigh

Yeah, I responded in that thread asking the same question. Didn't get an answer. Pretty sure that guy is trolling, especially looking at his other posts.

Yeah it's pretty obvious that Bethesda's using bog-standard cascaded shadow maps; (unsure as to whether or not they're modulative or 'true' shadow masks) there also seems to be a screen-space blur going on with some possible multiresolution rendering and a depth-aware upsample, as dikeing with the ShadowQuarter INI whatsit demonstrates. Feel free to point folks here for a more authoritative explanation of what's happening, although this is obviously still speculation until someone can get a definitive shader decompile.

That said, two suggestions I would sent Bethesda's way would be to use some slope-scaled depth biasing if they aren't already and to look into generating the depth maps using back-face culling instead of front-face. The acne overall is surprisingly good, but maybe the blur is just masking it.

They're definitely rendered via the GPU. Otherwise, I'd be able to increase my shadows pass Medium/low, as my video card is my only bottleneck. I can render all the decals just fine.

Yes you did. Here's ianpatt's response, yet again: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1262283-request-shadows-mod/page__p__19193244#entry19193244

I'm far more inclined to believe ianpatt's answer considering he (or she) seems considerably more technically literate than most of the people posting that the GPU does *not* control shadows (that and their arguments are based mostly on conjecture and misinformation).

First: I love that I'm still in your sig :3

Second: is any of this stuff that a theoretical SKGE could play around with?