Problems with shadows...help!

Hi. Im developing a dark horror game, when some scenarios are very dark. I have noticed, testing on other more modest pcs, that shadows are a HUGE problem. If you set textures, post processing, etc on high, there is no problem, if you don’t have the shadows activated everything goes really well. But when I activate the shadows, either in profile 1, 2 or 3, the game starts to go really bad, the fps drop a lot. What tricks do you use to optimize the shadows? I’ve thought about things like:

  • Disable all shadows, and put shadows only on large objects.
  • Use static lights whenever possible.
  • The objects that have shadows, limit the distance to the culling.

Even so, I haven’t improved much the shadows performance, and I’m surprised. Any recommendation?

By the way, what is the best way to see what is overloading the GPU?

Thanks.!!

Turning off shadows ALWAYS has a huge effect. I don’t think it’s your problem.

The main thing you can do it ramp down the engine scalability setting on the lower end machines.

Thank you. I solved the problem doing:

  • Baking static lights.
  • Deleting the shadows of most little objects.
  • Setting the ExponentialHeightFog 1500 draw distance.
  • Deleting some particles…

And now is workig much better!

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