As I pointed out in the comparison shot is only showing Contact Shadows and has disabled Cast Shadows for the meshes so you don’t get shadow casting from any light sources here. In a development state you would not do because contact shadows aren’t meant to replace shadowing techniques but instead to enhance them by providing these nice shadows for small surface objects at distances and close up. It works really well with foliage and detailed characters and should use low values for the contact ray length. 0.07 is probably a bit much for and could definitely be lowered with similar results, but again, was only meant to show the quality differences between 4.14.0 and 4.14.1 from a bug.
Also keep in mind that Contact Shadows is a screen space feature and use it to enhance your shadows, not replace them. They blend really well with light source shadowing and is not particularly noticeable with the noise when using a proper contact length.