[Engine Feedback] Whoever is responsible for the shadows in PoE2...

[Homer Morisson]

... deserves a bloody great raise, in my book -- these are among the very, very best dynamic, accurate shadows I have ever seen in any game or engine, and the very best way for me to express how impressed I was is this:

 

It took me a while to even consciously notice how great the shadows are in this game, because I subconsciously didn't pay any attention to them at all -- they were so realistic, so close to what shadows in the real life are like, that my brain didn't recognize them anymore as something artificial, something from the uncanny valley, but as something normal, natural, completely in line with expectations of how the world behaves and what it looks like doing so.

 

I hope this makes sense to the engineer behind this finely tuned masterpiece of a shadow/light-simulation, because to me this is actually the highest praise: to have imitated nature to the highest degree, if not possible then at the very least ever done so far, there's practically no topping that.

 

It was only during a lenghty dialogue during which I observed a maid at the Royal Palace in Neketaka go about her duties while the room was being lit mainly by my trusty St. Drogga's Skull, that I really noticed how marvelously the shadows interact with each other, how they distort and change their shape, size, length, all depending on the distance, intensity and relative height of the light source -- it's rare to find such a level of perfection in any one aspect of an engine's graphics features, but this is one of those times.

 

Well done!