SUGGESTIONS FOR 2019
Here are my shadow-related suggestions for 2019, specifically for the base PS4 and PS4 Slim (which still makes up the majority of Playstations).
* Prioritize Our Cockpits - Most games on PS4 have "crappy shadows", but you don't see them unless you are really looking for them, because these games prioritize the shadows of objects that the player is focused on, and saves the "crappy shadows" for things in the periphery. In ED, cockpit shadows should be of medium to high quality, even on PS4 Slim. When I'm out exploring, I know I'm often hitting 60fps, and my own cockpit / bridge is the only thing casting shadows, so my machine can easily handle the step up in quality. My cockpit is the equivalent to the main character (Nathan Drake, Lara Croft, etc) in a 3rd person game - it should have good quality shadows unless a really complex scene requires a downgrade to keep fps from tanking.
* Prioritize Focus Points - related to above, the objects a CMDR is focused on should be of higher quality. The mailslot comes to mind, but anything "in our face" receive priority over periphery and distant objects. Similarly, if I'm looking at
my Dolphin from an external camera, it better look good. The random Dolphin flying in and out of the station, however, can have lower-quality shadows.
* No Shadows Are Better Than Crappy Shadows - These flashing, disco shadows need to go. Period. There's low quality and then there is NO quality.. One way to achieve this is to trim down on the number of shadows being cast. Again, this requires keeping the above-mentioned needs of knowing a player's focus, but for example, many stations have criss-crossing thin (from a distance) struts which really don't need
any shadows from that distance. Right now they have fat, flashing shadows, which looks terrible. In fact, the thinner / smaller the object casting the shadow, often the worse it looks at the current quality. Save the GPU for the bigger items like pythons, towers, etc. As a person gets really close, you could "fade in" the more detailed shadows. Again, the exception would be things of focus, like the mail slot.
* Precalculate Shadows On Planets - Planet surfaces took a real hit in this last update, so now they too suffer from dancing disco shadows. You don't need dynamic shadows on the vast majority of planets. Copy what almost every other game does, and precalculate these shadows and update them periodically. This will allow you to give us very good quality shadows, even on the humble PS4. The only negative is that there will be a "stepping" effect as shadows move on planets with an exceptionally fast rotation. I've seen this in plenty of other games, and it is way less jarring than the low-quality dynamic shadows we currently have on planets.
* Observe How Other Games Handle Shadows - Play something like
Horizon Zero Dawn or even the lower-quality
Monster Hunter World. In the latter, there is a very graceful, hardly observable "softening" of shadows as the player moves away from the object casting the shadows. Also consider what is casting the shadows, and what the shadows are being casted on. A tree blowing in the wind, casting a shadow on a grassy plain, can get away with "dancing, flickering shadows". Solid, defined objects like a space station, on the other hand, can not.
Right now Elite Dangerous is like a vampire. At "night" (out of direct sunlight), this game looks absolutely amazing. Stations, outposts, these new assets, all are breathtaking. It's when the sun rises that ED currently falls apart visually on the PS4. This does not need to be! Fixing the shadows can completely change the visual quality of this game. It literally will make a "night and day" difference
