I really hope there is some HDAO in the PC version. That would be the final touch on lighting to make my day.

Does it actually say in the article that there are dynamic shadows for every object in the game or does it just say that there are some dynamic shadows?

Here is a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUtvj_pqxvs to the Oblivion demo presentation that is being mentioned here. Look specifically around 1:40 for the mention of true soft shadows/dynamic shadows.

This demo made me SO excited about the graphics in Oblivion - but I was a bit disappointed with the final lighting engine, as it featured none of what was shown in the demo pressentation.

GACK. Can't stand DoF. If I want blurred stuff I'll take my glasses off and go stare at real trees

If they must include DoF, then for the love of all that's holy, make it optional.

i really want some deferred lightning for the pc, i know consoles cant handle it

Halo: Reach, LittleBigPlanet, Crysis 2, God of War, Borderlands, Resistance 2, Uncharted 2, Killzone 2, Metro 2033, Red Dead Redemption, GTA4, Bad Company 2... They are all using deferred approaches. I know the bolds are using deferred lighting.

Deferred rendering is actually an optimization. It is for having many light sources at the same time without being too costly. So console games are using it. I won't be surprised if Skyrim is using deferred lighting.

Real-time shadows on all objects. More specifically it states:

"Every object in the world casts a perfectly formed shadow."

I'm guessing the new engine allows better graphics with less impact on performance. I hope so.

Borderlands runs on UE3 which is by defualt so it too runs on defferred. Id be amazed if they didnt use it for Skyrim makes SO much more sense. Probably one way of getting the much higher shadow quality (number of shadows etc. ) in Skyrim Vs Oblivion on the same hardware.

Sounds good.

I tried a DOF mod for Oblivion, I quickly turned it off. It's just too distracting.

That doesn't mean that the shadows are Dynamic or Real-Time, nor does it mean that Self-Shadowing and true Soft-Shadows are included this time either - it just means that objects cast a well formed shadow.

I wish they had been more specific. :banghead:

It means dynamic shadows, sigh. Trust me.
They exist in almost every new game. Dynamic shadows means that a shadow every object cast a shadow, and shadows are cast depending on the sun's direction. It's in real time. It's very common nowadays, can't see how you've missed it.

I thought things like these were obvious. At least they are to me.

Sometimes though, characters and objects simply cast shadows and those shadows don't intertact with the environment or even other characters. They are simply shadows. I want this game's lighting engine to look like Crysis!

Defferrend rendering does have drawbacks, such as it's impossible to use AA with it (though you can still use fake shader-based AA, which doesn't work as well but is much cheaper performance wise).

Still though, I'd honestly prefer most of my games to use deferred rendering. It's so much better in every other way. Old dynamic lighting methods were expensive, like in Oblivion (which didn't use any beyond the shadow characters cast with the sun, and that was a huge performance drain in cities).

Deferred rendering basically allows an infinite number of dynamic lights to be visible in the scene (even from a distance), and sometimes infinite shadows as well. With little (relative) performance cost.

Sure a scene that is lit with old style static lighting and doesn't have any dynamic lights would still run a lot more efficently than one with defferred rendering and no lights. But start adding 6... 8... 12 dynamic lights to an enviornment and that really slows it down. While deferred rendering allows you to pretty much add infinite lights and it'll run just as good as if it had zero lights.

It isn't impossible. At least with Dx10.1 and 11.
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