How does your shadows look in comparison to these?

[Spiritui]

I've seen posts here that say the shadows aren't nice, and I agree, but I must have done something because now my shadows are kind of flickering and does not look as good as they used to do (atleast that's what I think, it could be that I am just imagine they looked better before). So here are two screenshots (in jpg though, but shadows are as in game) with some shadows in them. Settings are maxed on everything. FPS is around 20-40 (is this good or bad?)

http://www.geocities.com/horizons_86...reenshot22.JPG

http://www.geocities.com/horizons_86...reenshot11.JPG

My specs are Intel C2D E6600 (2,6Ghz). 2GB Ram. Radeon X1900XT 256 DDR3. Nothing is overclocked and temps are fine. I have latest ATI drivers and ATI Tray Tools instead of CCC. Now I haven't enabled all the tweaking in ATT and I know the guides for it. I did try the guide found at TweakGuides.com and it didn't do much for me, hence I am now back to "default".

Basicly, what I am wondering is, does that shadows on my screenshots represent the best you can get in the game with my specs or is something wrong? And is 20-40 FPS good or bad? I have searched for these questions on the forum and many threads did come up. But, none which helped me, and if there were any, I missed them, and would be very grateful if someone could link them to me.

Very thankful for any help!

[Hells Bells]

have you considered that it could be the weather? in rl my shadow kinda sucks when all sorts of clouds are moving about the sky like in those pics there.

[Spiritui]

have you considered that it could be the weather? in rl my shadow kinda sucks when all sorts of clouds are moving about the sky like in those pics there.

Thanks for your reply!

Well, it's pretty much the same in all weather. It's not just the quality of the shadows I am unhappy about. They seem to flicker and stuff making it pretty annoying when playing.

[high3agle]

Your Shadows look the same as mine in those screenies, I also have the flickering problem when I set Shadow quality in options to anything bellow medium. I get the same prob on both my pc's and both are good gaming rigs, one has an nvidia 7900 and the other has an ati 1900, so its not just an ati prob. I like to play on low graphics settings just cause of the boost in fps and performance but when I do I get that flickering with the shadows.

[Garnier]

Lower shadow settings make them flicker more, because its changing the resolution of the shadow. If you have a guy that is moving, and 5 enlarged pixels for the shadow, its going to flicker a lot because its getting rid of 1/5 of it somewhere and adding 1/5 somewhere else... etc.

[Spiritui]

Thanks!

But the thing is, shadows are on high. I think I'm going to turn off shadows just go gain some fps since I think 15-30 fps is pretty bad for a computer like mine. But I am no pro so I might be wrong or just have my hardware settings wrong.