First Person Shadows?

Gidorick

I’m going to start this off by admitting this is a VERY small detail but it’s one that breaks my immersion so I figured it’s worth mentioning.

When in 1st person perspective my character has no shadow. With all the other shadows around, it gives me a sense of disconnection from the environment.

To have a shadow in 1st person would it require full-body-awareness? Where you look down and you see your characters body? Would that be a boon to the experience? Would it even be able to be done effectively?

GnatB

gideon_nine_ESO wrote: »

To have a shadow in 1st person would it require full-body-awareness?

That's an interesting point, I'm not all that familiar with the rendering side of things, but I imagine to make the shadow, you need the polys. But I'd imagine it should it be possible to make said polys transparent to the player. Though my understanding is the first person animations aren't the same as the 3rd person ones, so they're presumably have to fully flesh out the 1st person animations to avoid bizarness, assuming that is even possible. (quite possible in order to get arms feeling "right" in first person, they're actually coming out where the stomach would be, or somesuch)

That said, I've got to admit I never noticed the lack of shadows.

babylon

Wouldn't first person shadow look something like this -

ers101284b14_ESO

It's probably because its drawing on your side but when the camera goes into first person mode its not actually drawing your character on your side. So if there is no character drawn it's not gonna cast a shadow.

Moonscythe

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

It's probably because its drawing on your side but when the camera goes into first person mode its not actually drawing your character on your side. So if there is no character drawn it's not gonna cast a shadow.

Did you just say that I'm transparent/invisible/ghostly when I'm in first person? Cause things still try to eat me so they must see something and if they can see me I should cast a shadow. Not that being shadowless causes me any heartache but still...

wookiefriseur

Since they changed how your character actually turns when in 1st person, just activating the 3rd person shadow in 1st person view would draw a shadow inconsistent with your actual orientation. For instance you would see your shadow standing sideways while looking straight ahead.

But I hope that they will implement good 1st person shadows in the future.

ers101284b14_ESO

Moonscythe wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

It's probably because its drawing on your side but when the camera goes into first person mode its not actually drawing your character on your side. So if there is no character drawn it's not gonna cast a shadow.

Did you just say that I'm transparent/invisible/ghostly when I'm in first person? Cause things still try to eat me so they must see something and if they can see me I should cast a shadow. Not that being shadowless causes me any heartache but still...

Yes and no. It doesn't physically draw it but the engine still checks to see if your character is there. you still see the hands and weapons.

LtCrunch

I can't actually think of any game that casts player-character shadows while in first person. No, actually I take that back Dead Island's player characters casted shadows. My guess is it's due to the way most games implement their first person mode(nothing but arms being rendered). Dead Island is one of the only first person games I've played that actually rendered the entire player character body as well(likely not a coincidence). From my relatively limited experience with game engines I'd wager it would require an entire rework of the current first person mode along with having a negative impact on performance and requiring further performance optimization.

DaniAngione

And yes, having 1st-person shadows would require you to be able to look down and see your feet. They can make it so your 3rd person shadow renders in 1st person mode and it would work (it wouldn't be so hard, to be honest) problem is, without being able to see your own "body", it would be quite bizarre since, when looking down, you'd see your shadow (like the shadow of your legs and feet, for example) without seeing the "object" casting that shadow. This would be really, really bizarre.

AshySamurai

I agree with @DaniAngione‌. Also if ZOS "add out feet"(lol!), we can get FPS drop because of our dyed armor.