Dynamic shadows artifacts

[ConverseFox]

Why do people always come out and be like "oh don't be so entitled".

No one who complained about a lack of support from Epic ever said that they aren't getting premium support for free, and I doubt you can give me a single example of someone asking for that. And I also doubt that there is a lot of people who actually write an email to epic to get individual project support, people write on the forum (or answerhub) for that.

It's about the lack of responses to support emails regarding account problems, the decreasing responses on the forum by epic staff even about gamebreaking problems (this discussion is the best example), the often ignored support requests regarding the marketplace (by both customers and creators), how long it took them to implement a proper account security, the many problems regarding the marketplace and launcher UI that have been adressed so many times already by people on the forums, ...

Also, the Engine isn't really free and you know that.

You're taking this out of context. I'm not talking about marketplace/launcher support/UI nor account problems/security. I completely agree those things need more attention from EPIC.

I'm strictly talking about anybody who downloaded the engine completely free expecting a responses/acknowledgment from EPIC regarding the engine/project support. Be it from these forums, answerhub, or through email. There are a lot of people using the engine without having spent a single cent on it. Expecting responses/acknowledgment is what I mean by premium support, and EPIC just can't guarantee that to all those people. There is a reason UDN exists. You can't just assume there's not enough people emailing them to warrant the equivalent of premium support.

EDIT: This is a good example of how EPIC views UDN and Answerhub (the forum should probably be grouped in with the Answerhub since it's also available to everyone). Link with a timestamp at 40 minutes 51 seconds: https://youtu.be/2edoacF53F0?t=2451

[spacegojira]

Well, it's not exactly feasible to offer individual support for every single indie dev using the engine for free. That's just too many people and too many questions to answer. Yeah, the answer hub isn't the best, but is there really a better option?

I just think it's silly to assume EPIC doesn't care for you just because you can't get premium support for something you're getting free access to.

Why do people always come out and be like "oh don't be so entitled".

No one who complained about a lack of support from Epic ever said that they aren't getting premium support for free, and I doubt you can give me a single example of someone asking for that. And I also doubt that there is a lot of people who actually write an email to epic to get individual project support, people write on the forum (or answerhub) for that.

It's about the lack of responses to support emails regarding account problems, the decreasing responses on the forum by epic staff even about gamebreaking problems (this discussion is the best example), the often ignored support requests regarding the marketplace (by both customers and creators), how long it took them to implement a proper account security, the many problems regarding the marketplace and launcher UI that have been adressed so many times already by people on the forums, ...

Also, the Engine isn't really free and you know that.

[ConverseFox]

Well not really, but it's true though that Epic doesn't care about the small indie devs. They use them to market their engines, but that's about the level of "support" you will ever get.

Well, it's not exactly feasible to offer individual support for every single indie dev using the engine for free. That's just too many people and too many questions to answer. Yeah, the answer hub isn't the best, but is there really a better option?

I just think it's silly to assume EPIC doesn't care for you just because you can't get premium support for something you're getting free access to.

[spacegojira]

all this is so incredible that i think this is a Epic strategy to make sure that only a "certain èlite" of pro developers can make a game with UE, and "little indies gamedev" not.

Well not really, but it's true though that Epic doesn't care about the small indie devs. They use them to market their engines, but that's about the level of "support" you will ever get.

[Fiasco Games]

all this is so incredible that i think this is a Epic strategy to make sure that only a "certain èlite" of pro developers can make a game with UE, and "little indies gamedev" not.

[II_ADN_II]

Personally, I think this is a problem that has nothing to do with RTX or PCSS. I know that unreal had "hided" this kind of probolems before, implementing more expensive techniques to replace the old ones , or simply set the feature to "experimental" and abandoned it after launch.

This could not be a trivial problem to solve in the actual render pipeline, but its not a minor problem either. Dynamic shadows in the engine lack of several basic features. They were a "on the go" implementation since the begining(features as proxy shadows or normal based bias should have been there since day 1).

This kind of things happen on programming all the time, simple things hardcoded in stone (as the gravity only Z axis) are real bad design decisions, and not everyone has the resources to "fix" all this anoying little things, that in the end causes the everyday work with unreal a real pain.

IMO epic should be focusing more on usability, and assure that the existing features are robust enough for a multipurpose engine such as UE4 has become.

[IronicParadox]

It doesn't matter how long it would take to fix it, but they are not even acknowledging the problem exists.

I'm pretty sure they have acknowledged it as an issue, but haven't given an ETA on a fix. I know they have PCSS on the roadmap, but it seems like it apparently didn't make it into 4.22.

[Fiasco Games]

i have to go to unity for this problem, sorry EPIC

[spacegojira]

It's not and every engine is different. Unreal has an insane amount of things tied to the shadow system. To truly fix the problem, it would likely take a serious amount of low level recoding. Using unity, as a comparison, is an apple vs an orange. Both are fruits, but both are very different from each other.

If this were a simple fix, they would have done it years ago...

No one here said it's going to be an easy fix, that isn't even the point. It's about Epic ignoring this discussion for over 2 years now and not even talking about if they intent to fix it or if we just have to "deal with it".

With all the money Epic made through Fortnite, they could easily hire a few experts to work on this and the countless other engine problems. Or for example hire a few UI / UX experts to make the launcher and the marketplace better. But do you see them doing that?

It doesn't matter how long it would take to fix it, but they are not even acknowledging the problem exists.

[IronicParadox]

That sounds like a bad excuse to me, considering that other engines don't have this problem and still don't suffer from framerate losses when it comes to smooth dynamic shadows without artifacts.

It's not and every engine is different. Unreal has an insane amount of things tied to the shadow system. To truly fix the problem, it would likely take a serious amount of low level recoding. Using unity, as a comparison, is an apple vs an orange. Both are fruits, but both are very different from each other.

If this were a simple fix, they would have done it years ago...

[Fiasco Games]

BUMP this discussion is too important to be ignored by epic for 2 years and after thirty thousand and more visits

[Fiasco Games]

look at the second phtoo of the unity docs, unity have normal bias and other option to solve this issue, why ue don't?

[spacegojira]

It's not an easy fix. Typically, in dynamic scenes, a lot of render time is eaten up by shadows. Anything they do to alleviate the artifacting is going to increase that portion of the frame time.

That sounds like a bad excuse to me, considering that other engines don't have this problem and still don't suffer from framerate losses when it comes to smooth dynamic shadows without artifacts.

[IronicParadox]

c'mon epic this is a **** problem, 2 years and 26 pages of threads ignored? what the hell are you doing

It's not an easy fix. Typically, in dynamic scenes, a lot of render time is eaten up by shadows. Anything they do to alleviate the artifacting is going to increase that portion of the frame time.

[Fiasco Games]

c'mon epic this is a **** problem, 2 years and 26 pages of threads ignored? what the hell are you doing