Would it be possible to fix the broken shadow draw distance in Toussaint? One of the main reasons I still haven’t migrated to Next Gen. Also full DX12 support for those of us that dislike RT shadows? Unsure if possible.
You can try to increase the distance of the cascade shadows, the impact on performance should be minimal. This can be done manually in the user.settings file or with the Tweaks mod. The biggest visual impact is: CascadeShadowDistanceScale0 the maximum sensible value is 8, anything above spoils the shadows quite noticeably. As for Scale1 and Scale2, I recommend not exceeding a value of 4. However, I do not recommend changing: Scale3, because it causes problems with shading of vegetation (such as forests) on dx12, at least in my game.
This doesn't fix the fundamentally broken shadow rendering in Toussaint. It is a bug exclusive to NG. Go to any windmill in Toussaint and watch the shadows of the blades fade in basically right at your feet.
This works technically, but causes extreme shadow LOD pop-in, especially noticeable when approaching the buildings outside the Novigrad walls or haystacks. Editing the other cascade distance values mitigates this, but such a brute force fix like that should not be necessary and it stands that the developers of the NG update caused many issues that were never present in 1.32.
"but causes extreme shadow LOD pop-in, especially noticeable when approaching the buildings outside the Novigrad walls or haystacks."
You have to look for it though, as it stands RN the shadow issues are way less noticeable than before, for me at least. The issues are there still, I admit, however, nowhere nearly as noticeable.
IDK why but when I change the other three shadow options' values, the overall quality of in-game shadows drops significantly so that's the reason I've only changed the first one, namely "CascadeShadowDistanceScale0=8", and left the other three at vanilla u+ default.
These values I gave are the ones that give nice effects in my game. I don't know if they do the job in every location in the game, but in Novigrad and around they do.
Cascade shadow distance is related to the CascadeShadowmapSize and the CascadeShadowQuality settings. In this Nvidia tweaking guide: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Graphics, Performance & Tweaking Guide, there are tests of various settings (including shadow settings) that can improve the game visuals. Admittedly, it's a guide for OldGen, but the settings listed there still worked.
"but causes extreme shadow LOD pop-in, especially noticeable when approaching the buildings outside the Novigrad walls or haystacks."
In my opinion (because I am not an expert), it is not a problem of changing the setting: CascadeShadowDistanceScale(0-3), but a game bug or engine issue. Toussaint regardless of whether you change this setting or not, it still has messed up shadows. I don't know why the developers didn't fix it.
As for haystacks. If you are using the HDRP NGE mod, that could be the casue. Someone wrote about this problem on the page of this mod. We have to wait until HalkHogan releases an update.
P.S For someone who want to fix flickering on dx12 download Tweaks mod and set cascade shadow distance scale 0 to "Ultimate" and cascade shadow distance scale 1 to "3" also it helps with shadows pop in very close. I need more tests ingame but for now everything seems ok.
So, I accidentally launched the game after only installing the mod folder(I didn't install any files in the bin folder) and It somehow fixed the issue in one place in Toussaint I was testing it. Needs further play testing tho.
Once installed the mod introduced screen flickering in every area of the game. The uninstall instructions are poorly written and unclear. 0/10 don't recommend at all.
So my game had no shadow flickering, still, I gave this mod a shot to see what happens or maybe it would improve something. This actually introduced unbearable flickering both during gameplay and cutscenes. Uninstalled.
So, I was doing some searching online. Someone mentioned this in a reddit forum for steamdeck. It makes sense because cascade shadows control distance. I changed my cascadeshadowscaledistance0-3 to 10 from default. I'm not getting flickering. I don't believe there is a huge fps drop if any at all. Give this a shot. Is till have the shadow flickering fix installed, and it works fine for me. So, I would try that and see if it works for you.
128 comments
Wow, that did work wonders 💯❤️🤩
I just did exactly that. There were no shadow fade-ins whatsoever to report.
Please do note that I've only changed one of the four cascade shadow options. This one:
CascadeShadowDistanceScale0=8
All the other three cascade shadow options remain at vanilla ultra+ default.
Thanks for the confirmation ;)
"but causes extreme shadow LOD pop-in, especially noticeable when approaching the buildings outside the Novigrad walls or haystacks."
You have to look for it though, as it stands RN the shadow issues are way less noticeable than before, for me at least. The issues are there still, I admit, however, nowhere nearly as noticeable.
IDK why but when I change the other three shadow options' values, the overall quality of in-game shadows drops significantly so that's the reason I've only changed the first one, namely "CascadeShadowDistanceScale0=8", and left the other three at vanilla u+ default.
These values I gave are the ones that give nice effects in my game. I don't know if they do the job in every location in the game, but in Novigrad and around they do.
Cascade shadow distance is related to the CascadeShadowmapSize and the CascadeShadowQuality settings. In this Nvidia tweaking guide: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Graphics, Performance & Tweaking Guide, there are tests of various settings (including shadow settings) that can improve the game visuals. Admittedly, it's a guide for OldGen, but the settings listed there still worked.
"but causes extreme shadow LOD pop-in, especially noticeable when approaching the buildings outside the Novigrad walls or haystacks."
In my opinion (because I am not an expert), it is not a problem of changing the setting: CascadeShadowDistanceScale(0-3), but a game bug or engine issue. Toussaint regardless of whether you change this setting or not, it still has messed up shadows. I don't know why the developers didn't fix it.
As for haystacks. If you are using the HDRP NGE mod, that could be the casue. Someone wrote about this problem on the page of this mod. We have to wait until HalkHogan releases an update.
For someone who want to fix flickering on dx12 download Tweaks mod and set cascade shadow distance scale 0 to "Ultimate" and cascade shadow distance scale 1 to "3" also it helps with shadows pop in very close. I need more tests ingame but for now everything seems ok.
if you get this you are lucky because it can be fixed by
deleting this modchanging shadowcascade in usersettings and or installing mod manuallyplease enlighten me if it has something to do with user settings...
take my endorsement as an apologytry the method that i posted above