I disagree, as this anomaly is repeated elsewhere in the game, the jaggies are the fault of gamebryo's rendering engine.There are 20 yr old games that utilize dynamic shadows much MUCH better, https://www.google.com/search?q=severance+bod&num=100&hl=en&safe=off&client=opera&hs=NHR&rls=en&channel=suggest&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Qo_jTtmmIc2btwfShJjnBA&ved=0CEgQsAQ&biw=1082&bih=573 easily comes to mind.

(A more detailed bit of info, from someone's post in this very thread) V

I get this as well, BOTH inside and outside. I've had it since launch, it's very annoying. It's known as "Shadow Acne (Fig.8)", which is all explained below. It's a very common problem during development, but is usually fixed BEFORE release. This also explains why the shadows (Fig.5) in the Skyrim look so bad too.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee416324(v=vs.85).aspx

Severance used stencil shadows a la Doom 3 (though pre-dating it by about 4 years!!). I don't think that would be appropriate for a game like Skyrim. You can't have masked surfaces like trees casting shadows properly using that method, and you can't create soft shadows (well, you can filter them, but it's not as performance-efficient as the shadow mapping Skyrim uses).

The shadows in Skyrim could be filtered a lot better and not so tethered to the CPU, but at least the game even has them. I don't think Bethesda's actually released a game to this point that properly handles dynamic shadows at all.

If you ever wanted proof Bethesda needed a new engine, this would be it. Unreal Engine 3 used real time dynamic soft shadows a long time ago and one reason why it's so popular. Their engine is so out of date, it's only their design of the game that keeps Skyrim not looking like total crud.

You said it! <--A pop phrase that shows my age and region)

Funny though, that Divine Divinity II - DKS uses Gamebryo as well, yet with none of the artifacts that plague an otherwise stunning title that is SkyrimI But yeah, it is stencil shadows now that I think about it, whereas Gamebryo uses shadow mapping (A guess, as I'm not well versed in game dev) still, many other games in the past year have better shadow techniques than Skyrim/Oblivion/Morr* Hell, the whole series!

However, considering the sheer real-time size of this behemoth of a game, they DO need to up the fps somehow!

Once upon a time I adjust the sh1t out of the skyrimprefs and I got this:

http://s9.postimage.org/a8zyqnt9b/Screenshot104851.png

Don't ask me what the settings are, because the next time I fired up Skyrim, it detected my settings and the frickin thing reverted back to stock all my editing.

I don't have these ringed shadows. If it can help, here are my settings:

bShadowMaskZPrepass=0
...
iShadowMapResolution=2048
fShadowBiasScale=0.2500
iShadowMaskQuarter=4

Yeah me 2, fugly shadows all over, but breezehome ris particularly bad, because you tend to go there often, rest, view your stuff, char etc.

At first it really annoyed me, but now I've moved to an other home, it's not distracting me all the time anymore.
I think in breezehome it's the fireplace causing it, so my first mod when the cs is released will be to place an on/off switch for the fire.

[img]http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/632984400731296584/FB6EFC1E59C0A6F9CDBD3DBDC176C51C1405363B/[/img]

This issue has been covered many times on here now.
The best easy solution is increasing the iBlurDeferredShadowMask= value to like 5 or 7.
Or follow the http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/23/tweaking_skyrim_image_quality/2 if you want perfect shadows at the cost of shadow distance and performance.

Yeah I have this too. There's no definite way of getting rid of it. Upping the quality in the .ini will cause FPS loss. More or less depending on your system. You could try upping the amount of iBlurDeferredShadowMask= in SkyrimPrefs.ini but I wouldn't mess with anything else.

Size of the game has nothing to do with it, since such effects are local and rendered according to the spec you pick. Their engine is poor for today's standards and why companies like DICE tacked this with their Frostbite 2 engine and Crytek with CE3.

I don't get that effect. I have fiddled with my shadow settings in order to improve performance, and at the same time make them not look so blocky by blurring them (iBlurDeferredShadowMask).

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=30
fInteriorShadowDistance=2200.0000
fShadowDistance=1500.0000
iShadowMode=3
bTreesReceiveShadows=0
bDrawLandShadows=0
iShadowMapResolution=1024
fShadowBiasScale=0.4400
iShadowMaskQuarter=2
iShadowFilter=3

It's been like that since release, for me. First time I really noticed it was in Breezehome, but just any open fire seems to cause this.

Shadows in general have always appeared jagged. The optimization for this, like so many other issues with the game, svck. Very poor QC overall. How it won 'best game of the year' is beyond me, unless money changed hands prior to the award.

This thing plays more like a half assed beta than a triple A release.

These settings solved the issue for me... thank you.

I only get it in Breezehome.

For whatever reason, the streaky shadows fix (fShadowBiasScale=0.6000) doesn't work for interior shadows, only exteriors.

This one is up to Bethesda to figure out.

It's definitely a localized issue with certain interiors. It will get fixed when we have the CK and the fixes will be absorbed into the unofficial patch. Until then, play on.