I am having an issue with lighting in 1.5 that is breaking my game. Everytime I stand under a tree or house or anything that would block the rays of the sun, this happens:

Okay I apparently am not allowed to post links for whatever reason, so the screenshot that illustrates the problem is at...
i40.tinypic [dot] com [slash] 1zofh52 [dot] jpg

It's very ugly, I can't play the game like this. The lines you see on the screen only appear when I walk underneath something, but it'll also make the contrast suddenly go dark and then light up again jarringly when I cross over. This issue is new to Patch 1.5 and was not present before this patch.

I'm on low-end Intel Dual Core E7300 @ 2.66Ghz, with 3GB RAM and a Radeon 3800 (512MB). I have a few mods to add armour and weapons to the game installed, but nothing that would effect the lighting. Any advice on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated.

There is a thread on Nexus with people having the same problem (with screenshots), but apparently I don't have permission to post links so you'll have to do with just me.

It has to be said I think: Your PC is well below Skyrim's Recommended System Requirements and you are going to have issues. Both the CPU and the GPU don't come up to scratch.

Ran fine with a good FPS and no graphic problems of this nature at low settings before the patch. It still runs with silky smooth FPS after the patch, but just with this horrendous lighting problem.

The whole point of low-settings is so that more people can run it, no? If there's going to be a mandatory patch that makes people not able to run it then that patch is obviously problematic.

And besides, this isn't just my problem. Several people on Nexus forums complain about the same thing here:
forums [dot] nexusmods [dot] com [slash] index.php?/topic/625386-patch-15-shadow-bug/
and here:
forums [dot] nexusmods [dot] com [slash] index.php?/topic/625081-1524-post-your-bug-and-help/

I don't think Beth's intention with the patch was to stop lower-end machines from enjoying the game.

512MB of VRAM is a minimum requirement, 1GB recommended. Skyrim uses every bit of VRAM you can give it.

It is not reasonable to expect a perfect game graphically with such a limited amount of VRAM. 512MB is the main problem.

What driver are you using? If it is 12.2, uninstall it and revert to 12.1. 12.2 has serious issues in Skyrim.

I'm not expecting a perfect game graphically. What I'd like is the game that I had before this patch where I could walk under a tree without a bunch of weird lines flashing across the screen while the lighting goes from dark-as-night to bright-sunny day depending on the steps I take. I think that's kind of a basic desire, rather than a call for perfection.

Apparently someone flagged this during 1.5's beta and made a video demonstrating in this video:
www [dot] youtube [dot] com [slash] watch?v=5LTy4rwEmOA

I'm on 12.1.

That video looks like shadows is producing this effect. Have you tried disabling shadows?

In settings the most you can do to shadow quality is set it to 'lowest'. How can I turn them off altogether?

I've had no call to disable Shadows myself but there are several Shadow settings in SkyrimPrefs.ini and Skyrim.ini that you ought to consider adjusting.

In fact I would not be surprised to learn that the 1.5 patch has subtly changed some shadow behaviour. I wonder ...

Does it look anything like this?
http://imageshack.us/f/442/2012032100001.jpg/
I have this problem, the lighting and shadows at night just looks different. Espically with the way they reflect off the character.
I am on the beta 1.5 patch. (apperently its live now)

Try deleting your INIs and let Skyrim regenerate a fresh one.

I somehow have a feeling all of these complaints are coming from over-tweaked INIs/overmodded games...

How do you regenerate them after deleting 'em? Just run the game? I'll try that I guess.

Edit: Nope, same thing with no change. @ThingmeI'm not a modder so I don't really know how to fidget with .ini's at all. Any guidance?

Once again, let me emphasize that this seems to be mainly be a problem with sunlight. I walk under tree and suddenly the world grows dark and then bright again in a seizure-inducing way.

^ This but even with a vanilla ini the patch is causing .ini files that are write allowed to constantly revert to NEW shadow distance settings.....if this doesn't happen on your rig that just means that most simply the autodetect still believes that you can handle the original distance settings however on lower end systems this may quite well be what is causing issues.

This is my Skyrim.ini's shadow-related stuff


And from SkyrimPrefs.ini

Is anything wrong in there?

I'm not a mod person so I have no idea what any of this stuff means. If something should be adjusted, please say so.

That someone would be me . But to the point: I have this issue both in interiors and exteriors, be it a freshly recreated INI or a tweaked one. With 1.4, there was no such issue. However I was also using ENB antifreeze patch 096 and with that patch shadows in 1.5 are O.K., but - underwater is a solid color with nothing to be seen. Without ENB, underwater effects are on, but the shadows are ###.

I am in the process of replacing my (old) Radeon with an nVidia piece and will report if any change is to be found.

fShadowDistance=2000.0000 seems to be what 1.5 is changing the old value was(at least for me) 8000.0000 by default. You can try changing it and then setting the .ini properties to read only.

I had the same problem when patch 1.5 arrived. The shadows were dancing all over the place with weird thin lines appearing from the corner when my character was moving, it was really annoying and ruining the atmosphere. I uninstalled the mods, changed the properties, updated my graphic driver to last version and of course tried to find solutions in forums.

To no avails...

in the end I followed the advice from this thread and went back to 1.4, if the shadows and lightnings have allways been a bit weird at times , at least it doesn't feel like the dragonborn is tripping high on LCD anymore and I can play normally. I'm an archer but I'll survive without seeing the cinematic kills for a while longer. I hope that Bethesda fix the problem soon in the meantime I'll make do with 1.4 which works for me.

Are you running with ENB 0.102? If so I would recommend either removing it completely from your skyrim folder, or you can use Boris' simplified 0.108 d3d9.dll as an alternative, until a fixed version becomes available. The 0.108 version does work, but does not support features like DoF and some other effects.

Gotta get me some of those new fangled LCD tabs and go trip balls..... Sorry, couldn't resist.

ROFL

Well, I have replaced my old GPU (Radeon 3850 HD) with GTX 550 Ti and the issues are gone - at least the issue with shadows and lines, did not have enough time to further test it. So I don't care if that was because of an old GPU or bad drivers, as now it just works.

Congrats J.O.D.

i have the same issue. It worked perfectly with the 1.4 and now i have these horrible lines and shadow behave in strange way.
ATI randeon HD4290 with last drivers

Tried it, didn't work.

Anyone find a solution yet that isn't 'buy a new video card'?

to get rid of shadowy lines ( fShadowBiasScale=1.0000 ) anything lower will cause flickering and shadowy lines , damn nvida tweak guide needs changing for the latset driver

Updating to the latest nvidia driver did not solve this problem for me. Running a GTX590, so the problem is definitely not that my card is too old. Also its not mod related, I get exactly the same problem when I launch the game with zero mods. I've tried many different settings to no avail.


EDIT: fShadowBiasScale=1.0000 has helped me.