How to fix flickering / jerky daytime shadow movement

rumsey · 11-19-2011, 05:59 AM

So, there are a couple of problems that people are having with shadows:

1) When the sun moves it can create a strobe effect, which is very ugly and distracting.

2) Some people don't like the sudden movement of the shadows when the sun updates, and would prefer it update continuously.

If you are having problems with #1 (the strobe effect), I suggest adding:

fSunShadowUpdateTime=0
fSunUpdateThreshold=2.0

to the [Display] category of "\Documents\My Games\Skyrim\Skyrim.ini"

What this will do is cause the sun position to refresh instantly every minute or so. Since it is an instant, you will not notice any strobe effect. You will, however, occasionally see the shadows update position.

Alternatively, if you aren't seeing strobe effects, but are bothered by the sudden movement of the shadows as described in #2, you can use the following parameters instead:

fSunShadowUpdateTime=0
fSunUpdateThreshold=0

This will cause the sun's position to update continuously, refreshing the shadows every frame. I don't know what effect this has on performance, so if you have performance issues, you can try experimenting with other parameters as well.

If you aren't having either of these problems but are noticing weird shadowing artifacts on objects (even indoors) then there may be other parameters you can adjust. I have heard that setting fShadowBiasScale to 1.0 might fix this (by default it's lower) but I don't have that problem so I don't know.

(note: this didn't work when I modified SkyrimPrefs.ini, only Skyrim.ini)

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11-19-2011, 05:59 AM	#1
rumsey Join Date: Feb 2009 Reputation: 15 Posts: 469	How to fix flickering / jerky daytime shadow movement So, there are a couple of problems that people are having with shadows: 1) When the sun moves it can create a strobe effect, which is very ugly and distracting. 2) Some people don't like the sudden movement of the shadows when the sun updates, and would prefer it update continuously. If you are having problems with #1 (the strobe effect), I suggest adding: fSunShadowUpdateTime=0 fSunUpdateThreshold=2.0 to the [Display] category of "\Documents\My Games\Skyrim\Skyrim.ini" What this will do is cause the sun position to refresh instantly every minute or so. Since it is an instant, you will not notice any strobe effect. You will, however, occasionally see the shadows update position. Alternatively, if you aren't seeing strobe effects, but are bothered by the sudden movement of the shadows as described in #2, you can use the following parameters instead: fSunShadowUpdateTime=0 fSunUpdateThreshold=0 This will cause the sun's position to update continuously, refreshing the shadows every frame. I don't know what effect this has on performance, so if you have performance issues, you can try experimenting with other parameters as well. If you aren't having either of these problems but are noticing weird shadowing artifacts on objects (even indoors) then there may be other parameters you can adjust. I have heard that setting fShadowBiasScale to 1.0 might fix this (by default it's lower) but I don't have that problem so I don't know. (note: this didn't work when I modified SkyrimPrefs.ini, only Skyrim.ini)