Distant Sunlight Shadows and Cloud Shadows

Note from the author:

This isn’t related to this mod (at all), but there's something happening in the world that's become increasingly important to me in the past two years. I want to use my mods as a platform to share that topic. Unfortunately I can't voice it on NexusMods, because it might go against flimsy and easily weaponizable policy guidelines relating to sociopolitical issues. So I have to vaguely gesture to it instead. Here's a song recommendation.

Anyways, back to videogame mods.

7/15/20 Notice:

I would highly, highly recommend checking out EVERGREEN's/frofoo's Beyond Ultra Settings mod. It's a performance-oriented graphics improvement mod that increases the Draw Distance and Level of Detail to reduce pop-in, and pre-includes Distant Sunlight Shadows, all with minimal performance loss. It doesn't include the Cloud Shadows effect, but that can be downloaded here and installed separately alongside the Beyond Ultra Settings mod. There are also options to turn of FXAA. For these reasons, it is my go-to graphics mod.

Alternatively, check out Stefferp's FXAA Disabler, which also pre-includes Distant Sunlight Shadows if you're concerned about the minor performance impact from the Beyond Ultra Settings mod.

Mod Overview:

This mod significantly increases the distance at which shadows are cast by sunlight. In Vanilla MGSV, any shadows cast by the sunlight fade at a very short distance from the camera. This mod increases that distance for High and Extra High Shadow settings. Refer to the gifs to see what I mean.

In addition to the Distant Sunlight Shadows, I have included an optional, standalone mod which enables the effect of cloud shadows moving across the terrain. Some of you may remember this feature in Ground Zeroes, however it was disabled in TPP. While this is a standalone mod, I'd highly recommend coupling it with the Distant Sunlight Shadows, for its full potential. Please be aware that there are some known issues.

Here's a video of the effect in action:

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Known Issues:

-The Optional Enable Cloud Shadows has a couple of caveats, which is why it was not included in the base game.

[]There aren't actually clouds casting the shadows. these shadows are of unreal clouds. If you're actively looking for it, this may be jarring.

[]The shadows of the clouds may cut off at a certain distance from the player, leaving a noticeable line where the shadow distance ends. I did my best to minimize this effect, but it's still noticeable if you are actively looking for it. For this reason, I'd strongly recommend installing