That's strange. Maybe there's some other settings too that affect. Complete ini would help.

cheers, this makes a huge improvement.

The flickering is incredibly annoying.

For those of you who used these settings, how is your indoor lighting now? I used these settings and everything is much darker inside.

Can someone post screenshot comparisons of the improved shadows? I made these changes but I still have very jagged, crappy shadows and at this point I'm not sure it this is just what Skyrim looks like or not.

Okay, I think I got mine fixed pretty well.
Here's what I did:

1. Keep the "vanilla" shadow settings at first. (I personally took the vanilla shadow settings from High)
2. Then change:
iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=-4096
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=40-96
iShadowMapResolution=4096

The result is less blocky shadows and that only flicker very little for each "7-15 second transition". We will never be able to remove this little flicker transition completely, because Skyim's shadows are not dynamic; they don't move in real time, they move only every 7-15 seconds or so. Keeping the shadow resolution high reduces the blockiness and the makes the shadow flicker during the transition more "confined" to the higher resolution, thus making the flicker less noticible.

I didn't notice any big drop in frames after doing this.
I sure hope this helps someone; I hated the blockiness and flicker before...

yeah, that fixed it for me. well done.

Well, thank you. This pretty much took care of the shadow "problem" for me too.

Uhmm...you don't need to do that inside the .ini, if you crank up the shadow detail from low to high you get the exact same result.

My INI file just keeps resetting no matter what I do. Pesky nonsense. I wish Bethesda would just admit they are going to work on the PC version. I mean the graphics are okay, but they can't pull this funny business with PC users, we've seen better. Only console people tolerate this nonsense.

Copy/Pasta's from a post I made in a similar thread. What I've found so far:

The line with the main difference for shadow quality is fShadowDistance

Ultra default is =8000 but gives incredibly blocky shadows. Reducing this value to =500 gives you amazingly detailed shadows, the best I've ever seen in a game, but also significantly reduces the draw distance of shadows to about 15 feet away from the player, so also looks awful really.

I've tried playing around with the shadow map size, assuming that the game generates a shadow map, and then layers it over the size of the gameworld designated by fShadowDistance, meaning smaller sizes allow the shadow map to be concentrated and detailed, and larger sizes mean it gets stretched out over a larger area, leading to blocky edges. That was my theory, but it didn't work. Doubling the shadow map size to 8192 did nothing...

I still think it must work like this in some way, as I can't think of any other explanation as to why the shadows get so detailed when they're layered over a much smaller area. I just can't work out how to increase the shadow map size along with the draw distance.

Here is my prefini:

[General]
fBrightLightColorB=1.0000
fBrightLightColorG=1.0000
fBrightLightColorR=1.0000
iStoryManagerLoggingEvent=-1
bEnableStoryManagerLogging=0
[Imagespace]
bDoDepthOfField=1
iRadialBlurLevel=1
[Display]
iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3
fInteriorShadowDistance=3000.0000
fShadowDistance=4000
iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=1024
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=2048
iShadowSplitCount=2
iMaxAnisotropy=8
fLeafAnimDampenDistEnd=4600.0000
fLeafAnimDampenDistStart=3600.0000
fTreesMidLODSwitchDist=5000
fGamma=1.0000
fDecalLOD2=1500.0000
fDecalLOD1=1000.0000
fSpecularLODStartFade=1000
fShadowLODStartFade=200.0000
fLightLODStartFade=2500
iTexMipMapMinimum=0
iTexMipMapSkip=0
iWaterMultiSamples=0
iMultiSample=8
iShadowMode=3
bTreesReceiveShadows=0
bDrawLandShadows=0
bFull Screen=1
iSize H=1050
iSize W=1680
fMeshLODFadePercentDefault=1.2000
fMeshLODFadeBoundDefault=256.0000
fMeshLODLevel2FadeTreeDistance=2048.0000
fMeshLODLevel1FadeTreeDistance=2844.0000
fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=1e+007
fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=1e+007
iScreenShotIndex=2
bShadowMaskZPrepass=0
bMainZPrepass=0
iMaxSkinDecalsPerFrame=10
iMaxDecalsPerFrame=30
bFloatPointRenderTarget=0
sD3DDevice="NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460"
bFXAAEnabled=0
iShadowMapResolution=2048
fShadowBiasScale=0.25
iShadowMaskQuarter=4
iAdapter=0
iPresentInterval=1
iShadowFilter=3
bTransparencyMultisampling=0
bDrawShadows=1
[Grass]
b30GrassVS=0
fGrassStartFadeDistance=5000
fGrassMaxStartFadeDistance=7000.0000
fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=0.0000
[MAIN]
bGamepadEnable=1
bCrosshairEnabled=1
fHUDOpacity=1.0000
bSaveOnPause=1
bSaveOnTravel=1
bSaveOnWait=1
bSaveOnRest=1
fSkyCellRefFadeDistance=150000.0000
[GamePlay]
bShowFloatingQuestMarkers=1
bShowQuestMarkers=1
iDifficulty=1
[Interface]
bDialogueSubtitles=0
bGeneralSubtitles=0
bShowCompass=1
[Controls]
fGamepadHeadingSensitivity=1.0000
fMouseHeadingSensitivity=0.0125
bAlwaysRunByDefault=1
bInvertYValues=0
bGamePadRumble=1
bMouseAcceleration=1
[Particles]
iMaxDesired=750
[SaveGame]
fAutosaveEveryXMins=15.0000
[AudioMenu]
fAudioMasterVolume=1.0000
fVal7=1.0000
uID7=0
fVal6=1.0000
uID6=0
fVal5=1.0000
uID5=0
fVal4=1.0000
uID4=0
fVal3=1.0000
uID3=94881
fVal2=0.4000
uID2=466532
fVal1=1.0000
uID1=554685
fVal0=0.8000
uID0=1007612
[Clouds]
fCloudLevel2Distance=262144.0000
fCloudLevel1Distance=32768.0000
fCloudLevel0Distance=16384.0000
fCloudNearFadeDistance=9000.0000
[TerrainManager]
fTreeLoadDistance=40000
fBlockMaximumDistance=150000
fBlockLevel1Distance=40000
fBlockLevel0Distance=25000
fSplitDistanceMult=1.1
bShowLODInEditor=0
[NavMesh]
fObstacleAlpha=0.5000
fCoverSideHighAlpha=0.8000
fCoverSideLowAlpha=0.6500
fEdgeFullAlpha=1.0000
fEdgeHighAlpha=0.7500
fEdgeLowAlpha=0.5000
fTriangleFullAlpha=0.7000
fTriangleHighAlpha=0.3500
fTriangleLowAlpha=0.2000
fLedgeBoxHalfHeight=25.0000
fEdgeDistFromVert=10.0000
fEdgeThickness=10.0000
fPointSize=2.5000
[Trees]
bRenderSkinnedTrees=1
uiMaxSkinnedTreesToRender=20
[Decals]
uMaxDecals=250
bDecals=1
bSkinnedDecals=1
uMaxSkinDecals=50
uMaxSkinDecalsPerActor=40
[LOD]
fLODFadeOutMultObjects=7.5
fLODFadeOutMultItems=4.5
fLODFadeOutMultActors=6
fLODFadeOutMultSkyCell=1.0000
[Launcher]
bEnableFileSelection=1
bShowAllResolutions=1
uLastAspectRatio=4
[BlurShaderHDR]
bDoHighDynamicRange=1
[BlurShader]
bUseBlurShader=0
[Water]
iWaterReflectHeight=512
iWaterReflectWidth=512
bUseWaterDisplacements=1
bUseWaterRefractions=1
bUseWaterReflections=1
bUseWaterDepth=1


I have never been one to mess with ini files before-so I am a little nervous about tinkering here. Just changing the lines that match what you posted should help me correct? a lot more stuff here than what you posted. thamnks and sorry if I am a bit of a noob here

This is very helpful tweaking now to see what combo works best. Will report back.

This works great! such a huge difference! thank you so much

The "jagged shadows even on ultra" problem can be solved by just going to advanced settings on the skyrim launcher, options, advanced, and specifically setting shadow settings to ultra. It worked for me, however the lag was totally horrible so i settled for [censored] shadows instead -.-

I wanted to thank the OP for providing this information. This has corrected the annoying shadow flickering I was experiencing.

Gonna try this when I get home.

I hate the jagged shadows, but the fixes have downfalls. Then you have the shadows updating with the sun, which just looks stupid. Then you have flickering. So hopefully the fixes you posted will solve all of these. Will report after work

Colddog, is it possible you could show you other Shadow settings too? Like fShadow distance and the others. I think using your settings will vary depending on the other shadow settings which you don't list. Or are they kept default?


Edit:

How does your settings work in conjuction with the other tweaks to prevent the moving every 15 seconds? Have you tried it? Referring to this, found in another thread:

iShadowMapResolution=256
fShadowBiasScale=0
iShadowMaskQuarter=1
fShadowDistance=0
iShadowFilter=1
fShadowLODStartFade=0.0000
iShadowMode=1
bTreesReceiveShadows=0
bDrawLandShadows=0
bDrawShadows=0

Haven't tried, saw it somewhere else.


Also what is the performance hit for the settings in the OP. I am at work..as of last night I was geting 60 FPS average with the settings I liked. Today at work I remote accessed my computer and put the shadow stuff in, now I am getting 30 FPS.

Okay so I signed in just for this topic

- The Shadow Quality increase is like:

Over 9000!

And no: I do NOT want to exaggerate this. IT IS!

It is from "standard doom 3 shadows" (hard shadows) to actually REAL-LIFE shadows (no hard edges - NONE)


@ Threadstarter: Can I marry you? Srsly.

Bless you.

Be careful about iShadowMaskQuarter, if set to 0 it can screw up interior lighting, I think.

You can also have a look at a similar topic I made some time ago:
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1312478-the-different-shadow-settings-in-the-ini/page__fromsearch__1

Also, if anyone reads this, I'm still interested about the 2 settings mentioned in my topic I linked to.