Shadow quality better on lower resolution??

[Back2friday]

It might be me, but i find shadows on 1080 better looking than using 4k resolution... (screen resolution)

With 1080 i mean using nvidia's integer which renders lower res and scales it to 4k. Kinda like a worse dlss. But its effective when it comes to saving gpu power. 

 

So when using integer scaling the shadows looks kinda soft, light, less blackness which kinda blends in well on character. 

But using native 4k, my god the shadows are blocky pixel like bla bla bla you all know what i mean. 

 

My question how can i get the lower res shadows on native 4k? I tried lowering the resolution in the ini but strangely i didnt saw major differences. I want to switch to 1440p resolution as my gpu has more power left. 4k Is not an option as that makes my gpu cry with all the CS stuff. 

 

Or are there other mods/methods to get better shadows on higher resolutions? 

[traison]

fShadowDistance and fInteriorShadowDistance if I remember correctly has the biggest effect on shadow quality. Set it to 1000 and you'll have nice shadows, but they will only render 1000 units from the player. As far as I know there's no other mod that "fixes" shadows than ENB.

[Back2friday]

19 hours ago, traison said:

fShadowDistance and fInteriorShadowDistance if I remember correctly has the biggest effect on shadow quality. Set it to 1000 and you'll have nice shadows, but they will only render 1000 units from the player. As far as I know there's no other mod that "fixes" shadows than ENB.

That unfortunately is not going to happen. 

Also i know about the ENB, but im not sure if i want to invest time in that right now. Because i know there will be ALOT of research needed to be done to fix and get certain stuff the way i want. Especially going from CS to ENB 

 

I found a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIcHz9TSrTY

Im going to test this out. It says it wont work on SE, but some ppl mention it does work. Ill be back to let know if it improves 

 

edit: meh the settings change shadow distance to 3000 lol with a resolution of 8192. I guess ENB is the only option 

Edited October 17, 2025 by Back2friday

[traison]

59 minutes ago, Back2friday said:

That unfortunately is not going to happen.

 

Don't take that so literally. If your current shadow distance is 12,000, then set it to 6,000. Set it to 1,000 if you want pixel-perfect shadows, assuming your shadow resolution is high enough.

 

59 minutes ago, Back2friday said:

I found a video...

 

It probably will work, but I suspect the reason it will is because the shadow map resolution is set to 8192. I have mine set to 2048 because going over that was not worth it considering the performance hit. Also 2048 is enough for me to get smooth shadows outdoors.

 

The only shadow related issue I have is that interior shadows are horribly blocky, and CS adds dithering between the blocks. I wish it would just blur the block edges massively, instead of dithering it. It's like GTA 4 all over again.

 

Edit: Scratch that. Just tested it again and apparently something I or someone else has done has fixed it. Interior shadows look smooth again. That's unfortunate actually, I wanted to know what caused it.

Edited October 16, 2025 by traison