...doesn't exist yet, AFAIK....but with your help it can!!!

OK, so the shadows in Skyrim are a frustrating mixed bag. On the one hand, it's great to finally have real dynamic shadowing in an Elder Scrolls game. On the other, it seems nigh impossible to strike the right balance between shadows that don't look horrible and a playable framerate.

Well, nigh impossible anyway.

Here's where you, yes YOU come in!
Instead of scrounging around for shadow settings people use, we can use this thread to share whatever particular set of shadow tweaks we're using. Since these settings are the result of our own trial and error, people can get a quick sense of what works for others, and more easily plug in a set of numbers to see what they look like.

By steadily accumulating a decent variety of settings, we might just be able to get close to some kind of *ideal* middle-ground.

WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR: (much guess work here, plenty of room for debate)

Shimmering and/or flickering shadows (aka the escalator effect)
- The jagged edges (or stair-step pattern) of shadows move, or have what I call a "snaking" effect when the viewpoint moves. If the jaggies are stairs, then they almost look like an escalator when the the viewpoint moves.
- Shadows on walls and other surfaces sometimes appear in a striping pattern that might also "snake" around when the viewpoint moves.
- In this context, it is NOT a reference to the apparent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-fighting in the fog of distant mountains (though the issue may be related).

fShadowDistance (exterior shadows)
fInteriorShadowDistance (interior shadows)
Decreasing fShadowDistance (exterior or interior) results in *more* jagged edges on shadows (that's a good thing); they're smaller and less noticeable. A larger fShadowDistance does the opposite; fewer jagged edges, but they're very large, blocky, and noticeable. It's essentially the same as decreasing or increasing resolution.
- In this case, the game engine appears to *spread out*(?) the resolution over a larger or smaller area, with lower distances resulting in higher resolutions (and thus more jaggies) but finer detail, and arguably, better quality shadows (and vice versa).
- Unfortunately, very low values may result in noticeable shadow drawing during movement; for example, walking in a long courtyard and seeing shadows change along distant walls as you move.
- Since interior environments are typically more taxing than exteriors (though that's a broad and certainly equivocal generalization), it seems that there's nothing gained by decreasing fShadowDistance to a value *less than* the interior distance. There are typically *more* shadows and lighting sources in interiors, which is where you'd presumably want the best shadow quality anyway.

iShadowMapResolution
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary
iShadowMapResolutionSecondary
Changing any of the shadow resolution values will, in and of themselves, produce consistent and logical changes to shadows in the game. Higher resolution means finer detail (ie; more but smaller/less noticeable jaggies), and less apparent flickering/shimmering when the player moves. Higher resolutions, in and of themselves, will also result in harder, more defined edges to shadows, which is not necessarily realistic.
- It is commonly mentioned that the "Secondary" value is for shadows that are further away from the player though AFAIK they (and me) are guessing/assuming.

Here's a screenshot showing some differences by altering the shadowmap values alone:
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m117/blacksun1942/shadowres-1.png
Note that the jaggies/stair-stepping are less pronounced with the higher resolution; The edges are slightly harder/darker and more well-defined. Obviously not a revelation, but it establishes a baseline. What's not visible in the screenshot is that the escalator effect/shimmering/flickering really turns on hardcoe at the lower res.

iBlurDeferredShadowMask
Blurs the edges of shadows, with higher values resulting in more blur, which can effectively hide jagged edges. Although the value can supposedly be raised to 32, there does not appear to be much difference above 7 or 8. Reducing this value to 0 will result in unrealistically hard edges to shadows, with stair-step patterns more noticeable; however, flickering/shimmering appears to be essentially eliminated.

*Combining resolutions and iBlurDeferredShadowMask settings*
- Low shadow resolutions and high iBlurDeferredShadowMask values appear to result in a higher degree of shadow shimmering/flickering during movement. Because low resolution shadows have large, blocky jagged edges, the "snaking" of these edges during movement seems more noticeable the more they are blurred.
This is most obvious on self-shadowing of the player character in third-person view.
- However, higher iBlurDeferredShadowMask values can also result in softer edges of high resolution shadows which arguably have unrealistically hard, well-defined lines. High resolution shadows combined with a higher iBlurDeferredShadowMask actually seem to result in *less* snaking/flickering/shimmering.

...thus it would seem that the best combination for minimal flickering, minimal jaggies, and realistically softer edges is a lower fShadowDistance, higher ShadowMap resolutions, and higher iBlurDeferredShadowMask values.

To be continued (with screenshots).

Interesting...on and off for the last 3 days I have been messing with my Shadows...Will update and post what i settled on in a rush now but will.


You have an Nvidia card, I found an amazing tweak for Us with Nvidia, It is not in the normal Nvidia settings , this is only found in Nvidia Inspector.

"Texture Filtering - LOD bias (DX9)"

Changing this setting to a - (negitive) number gives me crystal clear view. I have it set to - 1 (negative 1) and looks great. Most of the Shimmering is now gone!

The next setting down in Inspector is....

"Texture Filtering Negitive LOD bias" The two choices are ...."Allow" or "Clamp" If you set it to clamp it will also help with the Aliasing shimmer.

The first setting can go as low as -3 But really shows the Shimmering! so it is easy to see it fade, as you tweak!
Hope this helps...I do not know if ATI has these settings.

Shadow resolution as it is rendered is tied to fShadowDistance. The higher fShadowDistance is, the more jagged edges you will see as shadows are rendered. The inverse is also true - decreasing fShadowDistance will improve shadow rendering quality. Under the current version of the engine, these things can not be separated and rendered at distinctly-defined values. Changing shadow resolution separately will not address the blockiness of shadows.

Regarding shadow flickering, there is no single fix, but there are several potential fixes, many of which depend upon the video card, driver version and detail settings. In some cases, under normal circumstances, not all texture flickering can be removed. One example is the flickering seen on distant mountains. The only way to get rid of this paricular texture flicker is to reduce the LOD distance for this terrain element by changing fBlockMaximumDistance=125000, which is half the original value of 250000. I'm not sure if changes like this should be recommended when they have the potential to dramatically reduce the visual quality of the game.

I've been down this road and my advice: set shadows via the game launcher to whatever works for your system and be done with it. I spent so much time tweaking the freaking ini and having bad results or bad frames. It wasn't worth it to me. Hopefully it gets fixed in a patch (I'm not holding my breath.

I too have wasted many hour finding that perfect shadow tweak, I want a reduced jaggy yet nice distance but alas I gave up looking and decided the Holy Grail would be an easier discovery.

The flickering mountains is, as far as I understood, a completely different matter and got nothing to do with shadows. It's snow overlays that sometimes get problems when viewed at high distances because of zbuffer inaccuracies.

Something in the ultra shadows realy messes up my framerate. Sticking the game on low for shadows then manualy upping the shadows to 4096 or even 8192 had little impact on performance. For me anyway.

That is technically not correct. Decreasing fShadowDistance results in *more* jagged edges on shadows; they're smaller and less noticeable. A larger fShadowDistance does the opposite; fewer jagged edges, but they're very large, blocky, and noticeable. It's essentially the same as decreasing or increasing resolution. In this case, the game engine appears to *spread out*(?) the resolution over a larger or smaller area, with lower distances resulting in higher resolutions (and thus more jaggies) but finer detail, and arguably, better quality shadows.


This is also incorrect, as simple testing shows. Changing any of the shadow resolution values will, in and of themselves, produce consistent and logical changes to shadows in the game.


As was mentioned, you're mixing a separate issue into the equation. The flickering being discussed relates to visible shadows only, not z-fighting on other textures (as with, say, distant terrain).
- The edges of low-resolution shadows move, or have what I call a "snaking" effect when the player moves.
- Shadows on walls and other surfaces sometimes appear in a striping pattern that might also "snake" around when the player moves.
Don't know about others, but this is what *I'm* referring to by "flickering."

I've had excellent results with this http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=198

I had a post on the issue a while back, together with my settings which result in (imho) much nicer shadows than vanilla.

You can check it out http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1312478-the-different-shadow-settings-in-the-ini/, maybe you find some additional info.
There is abit of info on iShadowMaskQuarter in it.

Btw., Primary and secondary resolution settings don't seem to have much effect, at least in my case.

shadowdistance has the most severe hit to my fps and i just leave it at 2000 and just deal with shadow popping.
i can turn resolutionmap to 4000

Ditto. My settings are basically what his are set at. Shadows look crappy still, but better than without ini tweaking, and performance seems good.

I second this. I still use this and it helps a ton for my PC. Sure, it doesn't make shadows all uber soft and lush but it helps get rid of the jaggies, which is a plus (and the fact it has a very minimal performance hit )