# Shadows disappear with increased camera distance

**URL:** <https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/shadows-disappear-with-increased-camera-distance/4690>\
**Category:** Rendering\
**Tags:** unreal-engine\
**Created:** [May 20, 2014, 5:07am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/shadows-disappear-with-increased-camera-distance/4690 "2014-05-20T05:07:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![noswahj](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/noswahj/32/467449_2.png) [@noswahj](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/noswahj)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2014, 5:07am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/shadows-disappear-with-increased-camera-distance/4690/1 "2014-05-20T05:07:45Z")

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I was playing with a pseudo-isometric camera style (low camera Field of View) with a larger camera distance to give it a 2.5D feeling but still maintain some perspective.

Anyhow, I’m not sure if this is a bug or if I need to change the way my lighting is being handled in the scene. When the camera distance (being driven by the SpringArm in the Blueprint) exceeds about 6500+ units all of the cast shadows seem to completely disappear or are not being rendered or registered. However, by just lowering the camera distance back down below 6000 units, they pop right back in. This can be seen in real-time while playing the game demo.

![6a595181cf22a7ff4bd3db63f5b06587dc9c145f.jpeg](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/images/transparent.png)

![4ebb9c2a10a854238fc2e8795ab699f6c9681757.jpeg](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/images/transparent.png)

Would love to hear any suggestions on how to make this work without having to have a closer camera distance.

Thanks!

**EDIT - RESOLVED**

Some gathered notes that help me solved this problem (thanks everyone!):

When using Stationary or Movable Lights on a movable mesh (not static) the shadow visibility of that movable mesh is dependent upon the size of the mesh and its distance from the camera.

Command Line Values to Tweak:

**r.Shadow.FadeResolution** - controls how big the light has to be on the screen before it _starts_ to fade out.  
- Default Value: 64  
- Can lower this value to keep shadows from fading out at further distances

**r.Shadow.MinResolution** - controls how big the light has to be on the screen before it _finishes_ fading out, at which point it no longer has cost.  
- Default Value: 32  
- Lower values seem to increase shadow visibility.

**r.Shadow.TexelsPerPixel** - Causes a higher resolution to be assigned and then it should fade out less aggressively  
- Default Value: 1.27324  
- Can increase this value to improve shadow rendering visibility & quality

**r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold**  
- Default Value: 0.03  
- A lower value of 0.02 or 0.01 greatly increases shadow visibility at far camera distances (seems to have the most impact of all the console commands).

**Useful Link:** [https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/Scalability/ScalabilityReference/index.html](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/Scalability/ScalabilityReference/index.html)

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