Widescreen Gaming Forum

Shadows and post-processing effects (like heat bending) produce this weird pixellated noise that to me is just distracting as hell. I don't think a still shot would demonstrate what I'm talking about - it's mainly the motion that looks odd.

A lot of games seem to have this problem with soft-shadowing, and I have no idea why (Riddick didn't have this problem and that was back in 2004). But GTA4's dithering seems far worse than normal.

I'm not sure if we are thinking of the same thing, but try hitting P while in-game. IIRC that is the toggle for some pretty horrendous post-processing.

I'm not sure if we are thinking of the same thing, but try hitting P while in-game. IIRC that is the toggle for some pretty horrendous post-processing.

That's a menu option now, forget what it is called... definition or something. Anyway with it on it is just a blur filter really, covered up the jaggies and low res on consoles a bit.

As for the shadows, I don't remember a moving effect like you talk about cranky. I know the shadows are sort of "grainy" and it annoys some people, not me. If that is what you mean then there is a shadow mod that makes them solid and I think you even gain fps from using it. There are mods that effect the lighting and such too, if that's also part of your problem. GTA4 is definately an effects-heavy game but people have modded all that out for the small group it annoys.

Here's a 10-second clip:
http://www.2shared.com/file/10608746/6fd3fad/gta4sm.html

The bright spots have this dithering effect, with speckled "grain" moving around semi-randomly.

Just found that it gets worse - far worse - if I turn the shadow quality down any. It's been on "high" and won't let me increase. I applied a tweak that unlocks higher settings, and upped shadow quality to very high, but noticed no difference.

Known Issue.

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=403764

Also you could try a higher resolution downscaled to see if there is any improvement.


EDIT - Not saying it is a fix just that it is a common complaint.

Ehh, I think you're talking about the deffered shading? Which is probably not possible to remove or "fix," only reduce the effect of. That'd be Tanuki's solution then.