Why are shadows such a problem?

[47ply 1,100]

shadows make and brake this game I love them!!!! but hate looking at frozen in place trains and cars only when played in hardware and only a problem med shadow or high shadow

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Shadows and reflections are some of the hardest things to do in graphics especially when there is animation.  Shadows have to be projected on a projection so there are at least two (or more) levels of indirection needed and a lot of calculations.  The CPU for this has to come from somewhere, and it just robs both the simulation and the output animation.

[47ply 1,100]

so the freeze ups are just the way it is and not something I'm doing wrong or my machine?

[Cyclone Boom 16,912]

Yeah, shadows are very resource intensive. A faster processor and RAM may help a bit, though only to a certain extent. It will always be a case of balancing graphics with performance. The lag tends to be more noticeable when a city becomes more complex, which at times can become quite frustrating. But hey, these are the limitations of a 10 year old game not optimised for today's hardware.

 

Personally, I tend to set most detail settings to low when building. Then when observing a city (i.e. not zooming or scrolling as much), I'll consider raising the graphics and shadows for aesthetic purposes.

[47ply 1,100]

thanks guys kind of what I thought.

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

CPU seems to be the biggest factor.  Unfortunately SC4 can only use one processor core at a time, so you'd have to buy a top-end processor to get the clock speed needed to keep up with shadows turned on.

[zimmie 521]

 

Personally, I tend to set most detail settings to low when building. Then when observing a city (i.e. not zooming or scrolling as much), I'll consider raising the graphics and shadows for aesthetic purposes.

 

I work like that too, Switching between high and low settings. I also keep a seperate plugins folder with bare minimums such as NAM that I switch to by renaming folders such as tempPlugins and realPlugins so when I want to just get into the game quick and work with a passing idea or maybe play with a certain plugin, well, I don't lose interest waiting 10 minutes for the game and region to load.

[47ply 1,100]

Right now I use my HP g6 laptop it works ok till it starts to get hot. I just started playing a year ago and am in the process of using a 2mg plash drive to upload plugins onto my old xp media desktop that I had all redone for my son but he said he didn't want that old thing so I thought to myself pc sc4 only, good monitor should be fun.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If you can keep that XP system plugging along, it is probably the best machine for this game.

[47ply 1,100]

I intend to Nonny  taking my time setting this one up for the best game play I can get thanks for the advise everyone