Dynamic shadows LOD?

[AirRun]

Hopefully someone can help me with this.
not sure if it is m graphics card or not but here is the situation.

I place a few statics that vary in size. I place a movable light to have the shadows flicker and move (like a light from a fire)

i notice that smaller object do to display shadows unless you get close to the object

if i scale up smaller objects the shadow pop in once they hit a certain size based on the distance from the camera.

is there a override somewhere where you can have the shadows always on no matter size or distance from camera.

Thanks

[Nawrot]

There is something in ini file. But nothing for mappers that can be done only trough map. All we got was some crappy excuse for optimization, and that dynamic shadows depend on percentage of visible screen they are applied to. And it is set to quite high value making any dynamic shadow almost useless in most cases (all cases where you can walk far enough from light source making shadow suddenly pop in/out).

Anyway I stop whining and give you some pointers to check/do with flickering fire effect.
- flickering fire effect can be done much better (and it have less performance hit) by using lightfunction material.
- try using 2-3 toggle lights, i think they do not suffer from that shadow optimization
- to display shadows, get lit by dynamic/movable light all meshes need to have that lightchanel enabled.
- if its small room, you can add a bit more to believable factor, by adding subtle postprocess volume and dynamically change its midtones to be more/less orange over time. Also fog volume over fire with a tiny bit of fog.
-check light complexity in one of editor view modes, red = bad for performance, try to minimize red areas if its bigger/more visible surface. Static meshes are affected as whole by dynamic light, so if only one pixel of huge mesh has dynamic light, whole mesh has it also. Avoid placing big meshes around such lights (or do not let them be affected by dynamic lighting), it is better to place several smaller that are not visible across level.

[AirRun]

Ok that helps a lot.

Thanks

[DGUnreal]

UE3 is designed to use static lightmaps for its default shadowing system.
Attempting to use dynamic lights/shadows has specific requirements that are beyond most mappers.