To everyone, and this is quite important so I'll make this a sticky:
I did more research on Skyrim shadows level of detail (LOD) switching issue, what is causing it and what type of shadows it affects.
It turns out that this issue is a possibility of having bad shadows in Skyrim, because it affects all of the shadows in game, making them way lower quality thet they should be (halves the overall quality of all shadows). The thing respoinsible for shadows switching their level of detail is actually a increased field of view (FOV) setting combined with increased shadow draw distance.
I have made a video that should showcase and expalin this issue far better than typing hundreds of lines of text (though, typing a wall of text would probably be less time consuming in my English speaking capabilities ), here's a link:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc2FLhRnTLY
If you don't have time to watch it, or don't have the patience for people violently butchering English, to sum this up: The higher your field of view setting is, the lower your draw distance must be, in order to have bug free shadows. It goes like this: For fShadowDistance=2800.0000 (my tweaked settings) a good FOV is up to 80. For fShadowDistance=3200.0000 (gool quality to filed of view balance) a good FOV is up to 72. For fShadowDistance=4000.0000 (game vanilla high setting) a good FOV is up to 62. Game vanilla FOV value seems to be 75. And for that FOV, shadow draw distance should be set at fShadowDistance=3000.0000 to avoid level of detail switching bug. If you have a FOV set higher then those suggested values, you will most likley be encountering a shadow level of detail switching that halves the quality of all shadows in the game.
This discovery really changes a lot when it comes to tweaking Skyrim shadows, where overall shadow quality is actually set by field of view alongside with shadow draw distance. It will require changing the tweak description, and that I'll do right away.
I will also update my tweak description with information about glitchy ground shadows, that you might notice after latest patches (as far as I remember, issue was fixed in 1.7 and in 1.8 it returns). To avoid this glitch, set this:
bDrawLandShadows=0
EDIT: If you are going to change the FOV to get a better shadow quality, then please remember, changing the FOV over the vanilla setting might give you some clipping issues when having a bow equipped in first person perspective. Those instructions are most likley for people that already changed their FOV setting over vanilla and/or are fine with said clipping issues (I personally played quite a lot with FOV at 80 and the clipping was almost not notieable for me, though, this may vary for different systems and game instalations).
EDIT2: I will be doing all sorts of testing, and I'm planning on posting a small text file, that you can download from the download section as a miscellaneous file. This file will contain max field of view that is issue free for a range of shadow draw distances. I think that a file like that should be helpful. It will vary from: fShadowDistance=1000.0000 possibly up to 5000.0000. I'm planning on testing field of view settings and increasing shadow draw distance by 200. For example: fShadowDistance=1000.0000 max FOV of xx fShadowDistance=1200.0000 max FOV of xx fShadowDistance=1400.0000 max FOV of xx And so on... You can expect this file to be ready in a day or two, because it will require quite a lot of testing (a lot of entering and exiting the game, I hope my Skyrim will not go mad on me while doing all this testing ). My planned update on "Shadow tweaking basics" file will have to wait a bit more.
i would rather have data file that dose fixes the shadows & what i just copy in skyrim data, cause game resets the changes i make, when i launch the game
You can try to make your .ini files to read only to avoid your tweaks reseting, or just make a backup of your tweaks.
As for a data file for adding tweaks, I was actually looking into that quite a long time ago, but wasn't sure if it's possible. Nowadays, I know it is posible to do so, that why I minght look into it once again, just to make tweaking shadows easier.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!
Getting back into Skyrim again and messing with my settings. Caused some really weird shadows when direct light was shining brightly on certain textured objects. The Medium/Medium fix WORKED LIKE A CHARM. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!
thanks for this twek, really, thanks!!! i´m playing in a laptop i3 6gm ram intel HD family at 1280x720. all low. and now i have beatifull shadows, 1024, 5 on blurry, no pop-up ... 35 45 fps in exteriors! many thanks!!
I had endorsed this years ago and I (if I could) would re-endorse it again. I wanted to replay Skyrim on a clean start, and realized my shadows were ugly AF. I went thru my endorsed mods and found this one. 2 minutes and my shadows are as beautiful as ever, at 0 performance loss. Amazing.
IMPORTANT FOR THOSE WHO USE MOD ORGANIZER, READ ON:
This "mod" has you tweak some settings in the file "Skyrimprefs.ini" that is located in your ../documents/my games/skyrim/ folder.
HOWEVER, if you use ModOrganizer, editing that file does absolutely fucking NOTHING, because when launching the game thru MO the .ini that Skyrim refers to for its settings has been changed and is now located in the ../Mod Organizer/profiles/Default/ folder, located wherever you decided to install your MO (If you followed G.E.M.S. quick guide, it should be inside the Skyrim game folder).
This is true for everything that changes the Skyrimprefs.ini file, I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned anywhere!
Can't believe it took me so long to get around to this! Thanks for sharing this, it's a great tweak. I'm using the medium/medium version and you've really cut down on the flickering when shadows moved, the shadows look amazing now. Gladly endorsed.
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I did more research on Skyrim shadows level of detail (LOD) switching issue, what is causing it and what type of shadows it affects.
It turns out that this issue is a possibility of having bad shadows in Skyrim, because it affects all of the shadows in game, making them way lower quality thet they should be (halves the overall quality of all shadows). The thing respoinsible for shadows switching their level of detail is actually a increased field of view (FOV) setting combined with increased shadow draw distance.
I have made a video that should showcase and expalin this issue far better than typing hundreds of lines of text (though, typing a wall of text would probably be less time consuming in my English speaking capabilities
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc2FLhRnTLY
If you don't have time to watch it, or don't have the patience for people violently butchering English, to sum this up:
The higher your field of view setting is, the lower your draw distance must be, in order to have bug free shadows. It goes like this:
For fShadowDistance=2800.0000 (my tweaked settings) a good FOV is up to 80.
For fShadowDistance=3200.0000 (gool quality to filed of view balance) a good FOV is up to 72.
For fShadowDistance=4000.0000 (game vanilla high setting) a good FOV is up to 62.
Game vanilla FOV value seems to be 75. And for that FOV, shadow draw distance should be set at fShadowDistance=3000.0000 to avoid level of detail switching bug.
If you have a FOV set higher then those suggested values, you will most likley be encountering a shadow level of detail switching that halves the quality of all shadows in the game.
This discovery really changes a lot when it comes to tweaking Skyrim shadows, where overall shadow quality is actually set by field of view alongside with shadow draw distance. It will require changing the tweak description, and that I'll do right away.
I will also update my tweak description with information about glitchy ground shadows, that you might notice after latest patches (as far as I remember, issue was fixed in 1.7 and in 1.8 it returns). To avoid this glitch, set this:
bDrawLandShadows=0
EDIT: If you are going to change the FOV to get a better shadow quality, then please remember, changing the FOV over the vanilla setting might give you some clipping issues when having a bow equipped in first person perspective. Those instructions are most likley for people that already changed their FOV setting over vanilla and/or are fine with said clipping issues (I personally played quite a lot with FOV at 80 and the clipping was almost not notieable for me, though, this may vary for different systems and game instalations).
EDIT2: I will be doing all sorts of testing, and I'm planning on posting a small text file, that you can download from the download section as a miscellaneous file. This file will contain max field of view that is issue free for a range of shadow draw distances. I think that a file like that should be helpful. It will vary from:
fShadowDistance=1000.0000 possibly up to 5000.0000.
I'm planning on testing field of view settings and increasing shadow draw distance by 200. For example:
fShadowDistance=1000.0000 max FOV of xx
fShadowDistance=1200.0000 max FOV of xx
fShadowDistance=1400.0000 max FOV of xx
And so on...
You can expect this file to be ready in a day or two, because it will require quite a lot of testing (a lot of entering and exiting the game, I hope my Skyrim will not go mad on me while doing all this testing
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/16464
As for a data file for adding tweaks, I was actually looking into that quite a long time ago, but wasn't sure if it's possible. Nowadays, I know it is posible to do so, that why I minght look into it once again, just to make tweaking shadows easier.
Getting back into Skyrim again and messing with my settings. Caused some really weird shadows when direct light was shining brightly on certain textured objects. The Medium/Medium fix WORKED LIKE A CHARM. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!
IMPORTANT FOR THOSE WHO USE MOD ORGANIZER, READ ON:
This "mod" has you tweak some settings in the file "Skyrimprefs.ini" that is located in your ../documents/my games/skyrim/ folder.
HOWEVER, if you use ModOrganizer, editing that file does absolutely fucking NOTHING, because when launching the game thru MO the .ini that Skyrim refers to for its settings has been changed and is now located in the ../Mod Organizer/profiles/Default/ folder, located wherever you decided to install your MO (If you followed G.E.M.S. quick guide, it should be inside the Skyrim game folder).
This is true for everything that changes the Skyrimprefs.ini file, I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned anywhere!