Distance Field / Far shadows on Quest 3 standalone

Hi

I’m developing a simple VR flight simulator for Meta Quest 3 in UE 5.5.

There is an issue I’ve been struggling with for the last couple of weeks and I need some help before I lose my marbles.

I’m trying to get a half decent shadows (near and far) to show in Quest 3 standalone apk. For some reason though, no matter what I do, only the Cascaded Shadow Map shadows work.

The issue with CSM is that it loses all the close-up detail if the range is set to a larger distance.

My scene uses a single Stationary Directional Light (the Sun) and only one dynamic actor (the player pawn).

Rest of the scene is static with baked lighting.

The goal is to have a cascaded shadow, set to a low distance (1000) so it draws a crisp shadow inside the cockpit and on the landscape when sitting on the ground. So far so good, this works well.

When airborne, however, (past the 1000), I need to switch to either “Far shadows” or “Distance Field shadows”.

Although it all works correctly in the editor, I can’t package and deploy the apk on the Quest with the same looks.

I must have tried every possible setting, tick box and cvar, but something, along the chain disables the Distance Field / Far shadows and it drives me nuts.

Did anybody manage to use Distance Fields or Far Shadows on the platform please?

I’ll buy a beer to anyone who can help:)

Thanks

Jay