UPDATE: Played around with the settings a little more. I think I got the shadows looking even better and the performance is still very good. I find it's using a little more of my GPU now, particularily because I increased the shadow resolution, but the FPS is the same (meaning low FPS points are still CPU bottlenecked). I'll make notes in the spoilers of where you can or should edit something, so make sure to delete the notes if you do a copy/paste.

For reference, my specs:

i5 750 at 4ghz
8gb RAM
Crossfire 5850 1gb cards, overclocked 20% (870 core/1200 mem)
-the rest doesn't really matter, but it's in my sig

Also one more thing to note, I'm running all settings in Catalyst Control Center at "use application settings", with Catalyst AI set to High Quality, and the AA set to Super Sampling. It is for this reason the config is set to only 4x and not 8x. Noticeable improvement, including clearer water.

Note about ugridstoload: This is a big performance hog. Basically it allows you to see more objects in the distance, so if your performance is very bad outdoors, this would be the first thing to change. I have it at 7 which is reasonable. It's possible to do 9 or 11, but default at Ultra is 5. To change it, do this (from http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide?sf2686171=1:

Skyrim.ini

Skyrimprefs.ini

A few screenshots:
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/594704438448944365/D173048ED962101C29D99008A74F7535800972F9/
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/594704438448945109/A4F8BF3C7D80D62D9F86C9A8906448A3F3193495/
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/594704438448943413/3ADA31E9BB7F3DC64DF6784D557699C748CC3EFA/
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/594704438448942576/516B354CE3E66C87CA3636F3C5B1F0D5074C6EFD/
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/594704438449070680/AACF444BF20E50E0B1D0D7CD95F7E056B363FE1D/

I've also got several mods installed, most prominently would be:
"skyrim weapon retex"
"skyrim hd"
"no more blocky faces"
"highres road signs"
"hd furniture and barrels"
"clothes improvement"
"armor improvement"

bGamepadEnable=1
sD3DDevice="ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series"
iDifficulty=4
bDialogueSubtitles=0
bGeneralSubtitles=0


If you're going to use this INI be sure to change all of those settings to match what you would normally use.

Thank you for pointing that out! Indeed that would be rather important! Especially if you don't want to play on Master =P

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=32

Does that work?

I thought the highest that setting would go to is 5, I'd rather blur/blob shadows than have the jaggy flickery mess that is in the default.

It works great! Some moving shadows look a bit square still, like swaying trees, but it's overall way better. I set the shadow distance a touch below Ultra to help with that issue as well.

Hmm, I tried it, and it didn't seem to work, I set it back to 5 and they were smoother again. I think the max setting is 5 and if you go beyond that it defaults back to 2.

I guess I'm wrong, it can go higher, but for some reason it looked worse.. can't figure out why. Maybe because I set the resolutions back to default. There's a noticable difference between 1024 and 2048 resolution shadows.

Hmm interesting. I'll check it out. I didn't raise the shadow resolution beyond default Ultra but I'll check again if 4096 is an improvement over it.

The article I read actually suggested 8192 for iShadowMapResolution

I would be testing it right now but hey, 1.3 decided it needed to break Steam so I'm having to reinstall from scratch now.

Well a while back I was running 4096 and I don't see much difference. I had read that higher res like 8192 doesn't even work. I'll try different values and compare screenshots tonight I guess.

Ambient occlusion is so far a better improvement than all those ini tweaks save for maybe giving trees shadows. It's just so much more real now.

That's only for Nvidia though, yes?

Yeah I can't run 8192 res shadows.. it drops my framerate to next to nothing, huge performance hit.

I think for now yes, and the driver is beta so it's not optimized (the game isn't either though).

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/2024/2011120600011.jpg

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/962/2011120600010.jpg

-

http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/7479/2011120600001e.jpg

http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/6308/2011120600002p.jpg

There is one problem with AO so far, and that's this weird glowing outline on objects when in front of shadows: http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/489/2011120600016.jpg

Yea i noticed the 'shinny" foliage most as its horrible for me with AO enabled, some say its because of the shadows also and that Transparency AA will help git rid of it but i couldn't get results that i liked so its off at the moment but im wondering about 2 things.

1. Is the trees shadows setting causing the shinny edges and does turning it off fully remedy it.

2. Would AO make up for the fact that the tree shadows setting is off, as it does ass a great deal of shadowing.


or maybe i just haven't found the correct combination of FXAA/TRAA and AO etc. for me .

For better AO without the flickering, especially on the foliage try using the Nvidia Inspector and select the Call of Duty 4 profile instead of the Fallout 3 or Skyrim one. See what you think, it does reduces the flickering even on Performance setting dramatically.

Hmm i may try this, but im really not sure if i like NI, i tried AO with it also and it wasn't much better than with NCP, i would really like if the 290. drivers went full release with better AO optimization and other settings for Skyrim but im guessing that's a while away, thank you for the tip.

Could you please tell me the step by step instruccions?

That outline has always been there, that's the way the shadows work for some reason.

I compared some screenshots last night and they looked maybe a fraction softer going from 2048 to 4096. But there's a performance hit. I think the best option is how I have them set up, with a high diffuse.

Basically just go into your "my documents\my games\skyrim" folder and open the two .ini files. Replace the text with what I have here, except as mentioned you might want to modify the difficulty and possibly start with deleting the "ugridstoload" parameter as well as the "ugrids buffer" part. You also have to set the display device to that of your own graphics card. Otherwise it should work no problem. It's always good to backup your files, tho deleting these and using the default launcher to set to high/ultra will also recreate the original files.

I never noticed them with AO off, but maybe that's because without AO there's fewer shadows.

I'll have to try adjusting transparency AA and maybe even Call Of Duty 4 in NI. Does the COD4 profile reduce settings though? I don't want to reduce settings.

EDIT: Yep you're right, the outline is there even with AO off.

I noticed another strange thing: You don't cast a shadow when in 1st person, but you do in 3rd person.

Transparency doesn't affect it at all.

I'm not ATI (no AO) and I notice the glow effect as well, though not very often. I think it has something to do with FXAA, possibly. It's not as bad as that screenshot though.

I just need to fix my shadows, wich lines i have to replace?

The glow is caused by the game attempting to "filter" the ugly shadows by simply blurring its deferred shadow mask in screen-space.

Since the blur filter doesn't consider the depth differences between pixels, it just turns all sharp transitions in shadowing into more gradual ones... including those where a fully lit object is in front of something in shadow.

Lowering the blur deferred shadow mask setting would reduce it, but then you'd be back to seeing pixellated shadows everywhere.

Thanks tzt, makes sense to me. I can live with a little halo effect