I wanted to build a special plugin for this case, a plugin using as a base the VSM, but I was relieved to find out I don’t have to anymore because with some quick tests it seemed raytraced shadows could achieve a result similar to this. Soft shadows are not just for overcast, as you can see here we have a sunny day - so directional light, but also very soft and also sharp shadows in the same scene. As far as I know you can not achieve this with the shadow maps included in unreal.
RT shadows could, but since they are trees, they would need to be animated.
