Shadows on high clobbers Aardvark framerate--medium shadows are fine. Is there a fix?

[Slant6 20]

Running an i3 1200f with GTX 1650 super (equal to 6GB 1060). Latest nvidia drivers. Decided to raise shadows from medium to high. Everything stock is fine, but any F-111 (A, D or E) has YUGE framerate drops. When shadows are dropped to medium, F-111 framerate runs like a scaled cat (or aardvark). Is there a fix for this?

[Wrench 9,987]

Nope.

The only fix would be a new model

[+streakeagle 874]

There are two ways to generate shadows: The original method incorporated a separate shadow 3d model. The new method generates shadows from the regular lod.

If this is an old mod, it may still be using the separate shadow lod. If so, there is a chance editing the F-111 ini file to use the new shadow method may solve the problem.

If not, perhaps completely disabling the shadow for the F-111 in the F-111 ini file will solve the problem at the cost of no shadow at all.

[+Menrva 4,257]

44 minutes ago, streakeagle said:

The original method incorporated a separate shadow 3d model.

To my knowledge this method does not work anymore in Strike Fighters 2. It only works on the first generation of games.

[+streakeagle 874]

7 hours ago, Menrva said:

To my knowledge this method does not work anymore in Strike Fighters 2. It only works on the first generation of games.

I thought SF2 (perhaps only in early patch levels?) was backwards compatible with old mods that had shadow models.
My memory extends mostly to old mods being used in SF2.
The Razbam F2H-2 sticks out in my memory.
The SF2 shadow technique mixed poorly with the old mod, so disabling the shadow fixed the problem.

The F-111 pack I have on file was an updated SF2 version with the following lines:

[Shadow]
CastShadow=TRUE
ShadowCastDist=10000
MaxVisibleDistance=400

As such, CastShadow can be set to false if the F-111's shadow is causing the performance hit.

Interestingly enough, the ini is only using a single LOD reported as 1,713 kB:

[LOD001]
Filename=F-111Ad.lod
Distance=8000
 

But has a 2nd smaller lod file included in the folder reported as 799 kB: F-111A.LOD

I wonder why there are two LODs, but only one is utilized in-game?

Edited January 7 by streakeagle