Unreal Engine 3 shadows.. lol?

[antwan]

I was playing:

Mass Effect 1,2,3
Batman City, Batman Asylum
Gears of War 1,2,3

The games which have PC versions, on the highest of ultra settings, and Gears of War 2 and 3 on 360.

How is it possible that each and everyone of those games has the ability to have such lame shadows? I mean: you can have 2 characters on screen, with one's shadow facing north, and the other's shadow facing east. Even intersecting!!!!
How is this possible on Ultra settings.
Why does UE3 use those fake shadows?
You can even see the shadows changing direction as you walk.
It's too lame for words.

Can anyone explain this?

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

It's just a really old implementation that hasn't really been updated much over the years. Thus you get a weird mix of stencil shadow volumes computed based on an average light location (ouch!) and/or per-dynamic-object hacky multiplicative-blended shadow maps. Given the dated tech, it's sort of surprising that they sometimes look as decent as they do.

 

[homerdog]

Shadows in Mass Effect series are so bad I thought there was something wrong with my graphics card. Just turn them off.

 

[french toast]

I was playing:

Mass Effect 1,2,3
Batman City, Batman Asylum
Gears of War 1,2,3

The games which have PC versions, on the highest of ultra settings, and Gears of War 2 and 3 on 360.

How is it possible that each and everyone of those games has the ability to have such lame shadows? I mean: you can have 2 characters on screen, with one's shadow facing north, and the other's shadow facing east. Even intersecting!!!!
How is this possible on Ultra settings.
Why does UE3 use those fake shadows?
You can even see the shadows changing direction as you walk.
It's too lame for words.

Can anyone explain this?

Its the moon landing all over again...

 

[antwan]

I am really relieved to see I am not the only one who noticed it.

Still, I don't understand how Epic never addressed it. Of course noobs don't see it, but for the people who do, it's really irritating. I know PS2 games with better shadows in that regard..

 

[nightshade]

It's funny to see how per object shadow in UE3 looks. For example in Gears 3 your character's self shadow will change even if you simply rotate the camera using the right stick regardless of the fact that the character is still in the same place and facing the same direction as before.