I can't see shadows in-game ( excepted for NPCs ). Got a nVidia GTX 260, and the game is running smoothly with all settings at maximum.
Is this normal ?

There are no shadows

That's an issue !

Ok, I've done my homeworks :
If I understand correctly, gamesas removed objects shadows some time before the release of Oblivion and they never activated this back. We don't know why.
The game engine is based on GameBryo which is capable of generating such shadows ( see Gothic 3 ).
They sold millions of Oblivion, Falout 3 and FO3:NV; so it seems like they don't care, so as most players. A few modders cares and they are still trying to hack the game.
And so we still have no dynamic shadows for buildings and static objects ( at least on the PC version ).

That said, I'd really love to know the technical reasons for this, if any.

Okay, help me out here. What do the Shadow Controls in the options box Advanced Tab do? :blink:

The shadows options are for NPC shadows. And the PC shadow too, but only when in 3rd person view. That's not like the body awareness concept ever existed.

Apparently this engine choked with environment shadows. But there is not way to enable them without the game's source code - through a mod or otherwise. The non-actor shadow options in the .ini (self shadowing, tree shadows) are for Oblivion, they don't work in this game even if turned on. Self shadowing was kind of dodgy in Oblivion anyway

If you're talking about Oblivion, it was 4 years and a half ago !
At least one other game based on the GameBryo engine ( Gothic 3 ) used dynamic shadows for terrain, buildings and other big objects.

Bah, I'm just ranting : the funny thing is that I actually bought this game ( like I did for Oblivion and FO3 before ); but seeing no improvement on things like shadows in the past 4 years is getting me nervous. I mean gamesas is not an indie 3 men team in a garage. But like I said before, they are selling millions of copies, so why should they care ?