Shadows in PS3 games looking really bad

[gwaves]

Hi, i've been having some problems with PS3 games that I own, Heavenly Sword and the GT5 Prologue demo seem to have these problems the most. They both seem to look awesome on every department, except with shadow. They really look bad, and playing Heavenly Sword and GT5 in cockpit mode are pretty much unbearable in my opinion. Here are 2 pics showing what I mean.

 

[gwaves]

Sorry I submitted the thread to fast.

My question: Is this normal in games? Heavenly Sword used shadows a lot and it seems better if they didn't use it. I'm thinking something is wrong with my PS3 but i'm not sure.

 

[Mize]

I'm probably more than 1/2 way through HS (got distracted with R:FOM) and I'm just wondering how you had time to stare at the shadows. I'll have to load it up and check, but they never bothered me. Is that the reason you registered?

 

[gwaves]

Actually yes, this seems to be the only place that knows about this stuff. But I'll stick around.

Anyway, i'm surprised you didn't notice it, with the huge amount of shadows in the game. You don't notice anything with the trees, or the shadows of Nariko's hair in her face? Do you notice this with the GT5 demo in cockpit mode? (the shadow of the actual car and the trees look fine)

I'm guessing this has something todo with my PS3 since I never really saw anyone complaining about this, but I wanted to make sure.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Shadows are expensive.

 

[D3B]

Warhawk has great shadows. Having a warhawk set under trees you can see the shadows animate on the warhawk.

 

[Graham]

It's simply a performance trade-off.
The higher the shadowmap resolution, the more memory you use and the longer it takes to render.

You can offset the visual problems somewhat by applying filters and intelligent blurs to the lighting shaders, but this can be very expensive as well, and I haven't see that many PS3 games do this.

 

[Hazuki Ryu]

You don't notice anything with the trees, or the shadows of Nariko's hair in her face? Do you notice this with the GT5 demo in cockpit mode?

Actually i think its kind of lucky tat her hair casts shadows, expect to see many like those all this console gen.

 

[gwaves]

That I understand, but shouldn't all shadows in the game be the same then? Because like I said with GT5, some look like this while others look normal.

And I wouldn't really call it lucky about her hair. You have this beautiful and detailed face, only to have a distorted line going through it, which really sucks.

So this has nothing to do with my PS3 at all? Just with the games?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

No, not all shadows would look the same. It depends on resolution of the shadow map used for whatever shadows, and different shadows can use different maps. It's not a problem with your PS3, or a problem exclusive to PS3. It's just a limit of current technology that perfect shadows in all situations hasn't got a viable solution at the moment, in the same way we haven't got perfect skin rendering, perfect natural lighting, perfect animation, perfect water splashes, perfect fire effects, etc.!

 

[gwaves]

Okay thanks for the answer. I really hope Call of Duty doesn't have this problem, as i'm probably going to play that 24/7.

 

[Mrakor]

GT5 in cockpit mode are pretty much unbearable in my opinion. Here are 2 pics showing what I mean.

Errr...
Any other racing game with so good self-shadowing?
And self-shadowing even in cockpit-view?

 

[djskribbles]

i have to agree with the OP, GT5P (more noticeable during replays) and HS (more noticeable in cutscenes) in particular have a lot of flickery shadows. other games i've played aren't bad though.

 

[dskneo]

motorstorm is a real contender to this kind of problem. I confess I also get distracted sometimes to this problem

 

[_phil_]

why on earth hasn't there been a thread on that very topic when gears of war launched ?.GeoW has the worse self shadowing on earth yet nobody noticed ?

 

[pipo]

Because the OP only has a PS3 (and it's supposed to be superiour to anything man has ever known)?

I mean, everybody knows the 360 is the weaker machine, so why start a thread on something like that...

 

[deepbrown]

I think the shadows in Heavenly Sword, and it's lighting far outweigh any "jaggy shadow" problem. There are moments where it is truly spectacular with all the shadows cast in real-time on the ground. Beautiful even.

I'm sure Ninja Theory knew there might have been a better way to do things, but in my eyes they came up trumps with the final game.

 

[Fafalada]

why start a thread on something like that...

Because it's a common problem on virtually all "nexgen" games released in last 2 years, regardless of the platform?
Then again - there's already a thread about this on front page - but it doesn't seem people were interested much since it's completely devoid of system wars commentary.

So instead - paralel threads like this one get started with system in the title...

 

[Dr. Nick]

i have to agree with the OP, GT5P (more noticeable during replays) and HS (more noticeable in cutscenes) in particular have a lot of flickery shadows. other games i've played aren't bad though.

The Jaggies I can stand but the flickering is annoying. Something that people should have seen coming from last generation with games like Halo 2 having the same problem.

Off-topic: Doesn't the G80 and R600 have special anti-aliasing for shadows or am I mistaken. If they do it makes me wonder why Microsoft didn't implement it on the Xenos. They should have known it would be a problem.

 

[Butta]

Anyone seen the shadows in R&C... they are fantastic to the point that I was convinced the cinematics were pre-rendered. It is a solveable problem and 2nd gen titles will be better.