A fun Sun Shadow trick I just remembered after 2 years

[spacefiddle]

After reinstalling the game and playing again on a new machine....

TL;DR for smooth, more-realistic sun shadow movement that doesn't hammer your system, add the following values to your Fallout4Custom.ini:

[Display]
fSunShadowUpdateTime=7.0
fSunUpdateThreshold=0.4

If that isn't quite right on your system, 8.0 or 9.0 and 0.5 can also work.

"UpdateTime" is - how long do I take to transition the shadows to their new position?
"Threshold" is - how often do I check where they should be? (1.0 is 20 seconds, 0.5 is ten seconds).

Since Skyrim I've seen people trying to avoid those sudden, "invisible to some, irritating to others" jerky shadow updates. If you've never seen them or cared..... you are blessed :D . If you're in my category... welcome, brother or sister, grab a coffee.

Thing is I always see advice like, make the threshold smaller and smaller to chase this impossible dream of realtime constant updates like

fSunShadowUpdateTime=1
fSunUpdateThreshold=0.05

You'll never get there. You could go nuts and

fSunUpdateThreshold=0.00000005

and all you'll end up doing is hammering your system with requests for HAY WHERE'S THE SUN HAY WHERE'S THE SUN HAY WHERE'S HAAAAAAAAY

So, go the other way: don't poll to check position very often at all... and make the shadows move reeeeeallly slowly. By the time they get to where they should be, they start moving again. You can get super smooth, almost realistic sunshadows this way. It *seems* to be less resource-intensive than just hammering away for constant updates, but all evidence is anecdotal, so I encourage experimentation.

Since you're probably not always pegged at a perfect 60 FPS even on great hardware, make the update time just a wee bit shorter than the update interval, and you'll never see another sudden jump.

 

[Whisper]

Interesting. Yes, sometimes that sudden “creep” of shadows is a little jarring. I will add this to Umbrecht’s tweaks and see how it goes.

Btw I’m managing to get 40fps now - running on a 4k screen and with Umbrecht’s and RayBo’s tweaks.

 

[spacefiddle]

Orly? What are these tweaks of which you speak? I recently replaced an 8 year old machine that was made from 10 year old parts, so would be curious to see how else i can scr^H^H^H adjust it, as the new machine is capable of rendering more than two frames per day.

 

[Whisper]

This is the performance tweaks thread - an interesting read.

And this is @RayBo 's thread on Baking a Game Save, which is an awesome read. The videos especially in the second-to-last post has several game-settings which have helped me also.

I'm waiting with baited breath for the couple of video's on Fallrim that he promised. (*hinthinthint*)

I've only just gotten my sticky fingers into the DLC too, so it'll be a while before I have a really stable setup/pattern for a game.

 

[VersusXV]

This is the performance tweaks thread - an interesting read.

And this is @RayBo 's thread on Baking a Game Save, which is an awesome read. The videos especially in the second-to-last post has several game-settings which have helped me also.

I'm waiting with baited breath for the couple of video's on Fallrim that he promised. (*hinthinthint*)

I've only just gotten my sticky fingers into the DLC too, so it'll be a while before I have a really stable setup/pattern for a game.

Both threads are amazing! IMO should be pinned posts or Vault guides.