I have been contacting Bethesda about the Shadow Issues from update 1.5 that seem to mostly effect but not limited to ATI Radeon HD Card users. Being that I play my character based on rogue stealth I really want to know where the shadows lay. So I have taken a lot of time to try and figure out what is happening with the help of the tech support team. what I think I may have figured out is that the shadows are being rendered backwards. this is why they are invisable on serfaces where they are supposed to be cast because only one side of a texture is rendered and the back is facing out now. this would also explain why the shadows cast on the character are now causing it to seem like you are looking through a shadow darkening anywhere that you are forced to look through it. because the rendered side of the shadow in now facing you and being stretched. this also causes the shadows to have a large square pattern in them like a grid. sadly I didnt figure this out (If this really is the issue and I am very sure it is) until today and its the weekend. My hopes is the email and this post will reach them as soon as they are back on monday and IF this is the issue they will be able to resolve it in a very timely manor. Thanx Bethesda for an awesome game and I hope this helps.

I am also having these same issues. ATI radeon HD 5770 - core i5 - 6g ram. I have been playing in ulta high without issues. Now I cant play. Been trying to figure out what happened. After reading forum posts I now know its not an issue on my part.

If anyone finds a solution, Please Post.

This game rocks and many others from Bethesda. Unfortunately right now it svcks. Hope it gets fixed soon.

same problem here , weird shadow patterns flickering and weird grid, ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT , I resolved the problem by regressing to patch 1.4. But I hope a solution will be found for 1.5 soon.

does changing fShadowBiasScale to fShadowBiasScale=1.0000 help ? you will find it in skyrimprefs under display section

Same issue here. ATI HD Mobility Radeon 3670.

I don't have such shadows problem, but patch 1.5 made my sun invisible (the sun itself it seems, not the sun glare texture)
http://oi39.tinypic.com/2416slx.jpg

1.4 messed up shadows, 1.5 messed them up even more.

Hm...I don't think I've ever had this issue. Radeon HD 6970 here, running on Catalyst 12.1; everything on ultra save shadows, which are on medium. What I have had issue with is shadow "banding" as seen http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/504641629020912986/727F01CED675B5D02E5BDDB6DEC0280ECC6C2016/ (look near the bridge's apex) and rather egregiously http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/630733235482833946/091AF926CAA3CCE0EB5617D27B7A71F58E6D5A70/ It was always bad in interiors (made worse with 1.4); the exterior banding only popped up with 1.5.

I was able to fix that, however...


...by doing that. Only in my case I changed the BiasScale to 4.0000 on another forum user's recommendation. That worked a treat, although it had the side effect of turning shadows a bit pixelated and Space Invader-ish. Tweaking the DeferredBlurMask setting up a bit helped smooth those out, though.

I tried playing around with the Update.bsa and put the original shaders in from Shaders.bsa. Sadly that didn't work. I have a feeling it has something to do with the TESV.exe update

By the way crashdown55. That is the exact card I upgraded from. for the fact its considered a low end its very powerful. sadly I didnt backup my files before the update so I cant revert back to 1.4.


Card name: ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Chip type: ATI display adapter (0x950F)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_950F&SUBSYS_25421002&REV_00
Display Memory: 2419 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1012 MB
Shared Memory: 1407 MB
Current Mode: 1360 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)

yeah im having this exact problem, the bridge near winhelm is the perfect example i that pic you sent, its nasty, very distracting, it feels like im chasing a block of shadows that move when i move, yes shadowbiasscale does indeed help, mines at 1.5000 but i might have to raise it, its weird cuz theyve been doing such a great job with patches, i really thought they would of fixed the nasty shadows. also whats with thelines that move under objects like plants as you pass by

If you raise BiasScale to 4.0000, that seems to do away with the problem entirely without any sort of performance hit. Just the Space Invader-style shadows I mentioned. http://i.imgur.com/H6wVo.jpg, after tweaking the ShadowBiasScale setting up.

Try that and see if it helps.

Bump!!!

Does anyone know of a mod that actually changes the shaders ambiant lights use to create shadows? Not .ini tweaks because I have spent 3 days tring ever combination. Not ENB because that doesn't change the problem though it does make the game look very nice. I even tried just placing my d3d9.dll in the game folder and that didn't work. Uninstalled and reinstalled the game to see if it would fix it. and after forever of waiting for steam to download the highres dlc that I don't want but cant make it stop downloading it, Its installed. didn't fix it. I hate turning off shadows because it either makes everything dark and removes all ambiant light if I set fInteriorShadowDistance=0 and the fShadowDistance=0 or I have major FPS drop in outside areas if I change iShadowMapResolution=0. Until a patch to patch the patch that fixed the patch comes out I really need something to atleast remove the problem even its its loseing the shadows.

Edit : It is fixed for window mode. Fullscreen seems to make the games lighting overly bright.

well it is now fixed for me. Not sure what one of these two fixed it. could be the combination of both. but I downloaded a d3d9.dll from falloutnewvegasnexus look up
Alternate D3D9 fix for ATI plus D3D9Gen
and I also downloaded SKSE
skse.silverlock.org
This corrected the shadow issue. From what I can tell by everything I have read about this issue, the fact these work, and the fact that my render info says this even though my video card is an ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 Leads me to beleave that the game was telling our cards to use the wrong shaders. either way the above links should fix the issue for anyone that is having the same issues am I was.
Renderer Device Information:
NVIDIA Geforce 8800 GS
aticfx32.dll
RenderPath : BSSM_SV_3_0
PSversion : 300
VSversion : 300
VStarget : vs_3_0
PStarget : ps_3_0
PS2xtarget : ps_3_0
maxPS20inst : 512
3.0 Support : yes
3.0 Lighting : yes
Nonpowerof2textures : yes
FP16ARGB blending : yes
FP16ARGB filtering : no
Bloom lighting : no
Refraction : yes
2.0 hairw : yes
SLI mode : no
NVapi enabled : no
Multisample Type : 1
Transparency MS : no
HW Thread Count : 4

I had those problems too when first installing patch 1.5.

My solution was to delete the SkyrimPrefs.ini, and let the Launcher create a new one.
I watched the old and new SkyrimPrefs files side-by-side, and the newly created one looks quite different to me.
Maybe that is whats messing up the shadows for many people.

The only thing I changed from standard is the "uGridsToLoad=" value, from "5" to "9".

No weird shadows for me so far. (Everything on Max, except shadows (high) and FXAA (off), plus 4xAA.

I use Catalyst v12.1, because 12.2 gives me those nasty pixels all over the place.


My system:

Athlon II X2 260, 4GB Ram, HD5770, Win7 x64

I now checked every single change I made to the SkyrimPrefs.ini step by step,
and it appears to me that the "bDrawLandShadows=1" setting is causing the strange striping shadows which are especially visible on snowy landscapes.
The standard setting "=0" fixes that for me.
Since this effect is very subtle, I have no problem disabling it for the time being.

The other issue, the striping shadows in interiors, i haven't been able to fix completely, regardless of patch version or settings.
There is a "Shadow Striping Fix"-Mod over at the Nexus, it doesn't fix all of those shadows, but at least it reduces them significantly.

I hope some of this helps...

Interesting how every time I find a post about this issue people hop on and explain how they had the exact same issue (Note that obviously dont have a clue what the issue really is and chose not to read the posts.) Please be aware that the issue is the shadows are gone. but when you are in the area where the shadow is supposed to be cast. example under a tree. the shadow that would hit your view point (spot on your character where your view is focused from) the shadow is then projected from your view to cover and darken anything in it. so if you were standing in the middle of the shadow cast that would have been cast by the tree. the shadow from the middle up or respective direction based on the angle of the light would project from your view. this does not matter the direction you are facing. so if the shadow casts east and you are looking north the shadow will project from your view to the north. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE anyone who has a pixilated shadow issue or anyother no really an issue issue. do not post how to fix that issue and say you had the exact same issue.

If anyone knows what the issue is please help us figure it out. the only thing I can say is it is NOT an ATI issue because I decided to go from my ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 back to my ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, Didn't work. So I went back to my Nvidia 7900 GS, and it still didn't fix the issue. so it has something to do with windows or my systems config. I don't beleave its windows because I reformated and still have the issue. I would say its a hardware issue most likely my amd athalon

I would assuem this is an issue based on the prossixr, motherboard, or soundcard.

I am useing

AMD Athalon 64 X2 3800+
Realtek High Definition Audio (not sure why the call it high definition)
A8M2N-LA (NodusM3) motherboard

EDIT I am editing this to also add that I am not useing a normal monitor. mine died so I am useing my 18" LED tv. I don't have the money to buy a new monitor so this is all I have. it had a VGA PC port so it is PC ready. the resolution is 1360 X 768. this is an acceptable resolution for Skyrim and is what I was useing before update 1.5 when the game displayed correctly.

So we're pretty much waiting for Beth to fix this in a patch then? No way to do a tweak fix?

sadly no. there are no tweaks for skyrim.ini or skyrimprefs.ini. also the d3d9.dll fix from new vegas will fix the shadow display issue but also causes a few others like you cant see under water, the shadows do not keep up with moving your view they seem to move slower than the objects casting them and makes kind of a virtigo effect. Bethesda knows its a vista issue but im not sure if it really is just vista or if it is the hardware since I reformated. not everyone useing vista has the issue but not everyone useing vista has the same system setup. thats why I think it has more to do with the hardware in your pc than the OS. my money is on the older prossixrs not being able to understand the new shaders.

What I don't understand is why Bethesda refuses to give us a link to the 1.4 update. they keep a copy of all of there updates and know this is a serious issue. they also know steam will not put 1.4 back up. Steam however did give us a new setting to keep games from auto updating so if we were to be able to get the 1.4 patch we could re install from cd and update to 1.4 until the issue is resolved. They know what they changed for update 1.5 so they know where the issue lies, where the problem could be coming from and how to fix it. but apparently we already paid for the game and copyright laws make it so we cant return the game for the fact they dont seem to care about the few of us with this kind of issue and only put out a patch so people dont have ugly shadows. they have there money so who cares right?

there are two things you can do in the skyrimprefs.ini to turn shadows off. though both options cause other issues.

First is Set the shadow distance to zero
fInteriorShadowDistance=0.0000
fShadowDistance=0.0000
(Note) this makes the game shadowed. turns off all ambiant lights.

Second is set the shadow texture resolution to zero
iShadowMapResolution=0
(Note) this will have good play inside interiors but will have a MAJOR FPS drop in outside areas

Posted this on another thread:


Anyone experiencing this? If so, any solution available?

That actually is exactly the issue we are having. thank you Raen Yrtham for finding a video that actually shows it. and as stated above there are no solutions found.

I don't have an ATI AMD card, but from what I've been reading this appears to be a problem only experienced on Radeon GPUs. I haven't seen any mention in this thread of 12.3 or whether or not it fixes the issue. I also haven't seen whether anyone's tested it by turning off anti-aliasing (either with or without FXAA enabled in-game). The release notes for the Catalyst 12.3 drivers mention an issue specific to Skyrim that seems to describe this issue (or one very similar to it) as being addressed in that driver update. Whether 12.3 fixes this or not I can not confirm, but this seems to clearly put the onus of this in AMD's court, not Bethesda's. Since not all Radeon owners experience the issue and seemingly no Nvidia GPU owners do, I would be inclined to expect that you will have to look to your GPU manufacturer to provide a solution to this issue.

From the AMD Catalyst v12.3 drivers changelog:


@Kastagir: Still, I recorded that video while already using AMD v12.3 drivers...

Before updating to v1.5.26 and v12.3 drivers, I was on v1.4.27 and using v11.12 drivers and the game run without any problems.

Neither AA or FXAA are enabled on my Skyrim game, and as you can see from the video there are several glitches related to shadows/lightning - shadows cast by/around trees are specially glitched.

These glitches are caused by changes that Bethesda made to lightning/shadows in v1.5 patches, they are not related to drivers, but since Bethesda certainly is not willing to go back in these changes, maybe AMD will get their drivers adapted to them.

Sorry to hear that. Rolling back your drivers to 11.12 doesn't resolve the issue? If that's the case, then it may very well be something that Bethesda needs to look at together with AMD.

Nope, it does not.

Nope, not AMD only.
my windowsXP + pentium4 + geforce 6800 has this shadow problem with 1.5, and my windows7(64bit)+ AMD FX4100+geforce 7900gs also.
So I postpone updating my game (gtx560 ti) system.

Maybe they used a directx 10 feature, so older (directx9) cards get these gamebreaking shadows.