the shadows on my games looks very pixalated , its not only the shadows but also some of the texture edges look pixalated too and they flicker alot , i didn't notice this from my SD t.v might be because of it being a small t.v but i don't know anyone know how to fix this ?

These pics are from Battlefield : Bad Company 2 Beta.they are taken from my phone so the quality isn't good but you can see what im talking about.

and its not only in this game, here is a picture taken from Uncharted 2

That's normal-- there are some things you're not supposed to look that closely at.

Your camera phone is pretty good man

twesterm said: That's normal-- there are some things you're not supposed to look that closely at.

but the thing flickers alot when im playing, is it from my t.vs sharpness? or my cable perhaps?

the first pic looks good cause of the focus feature , but it made it a little blurry so i removed it.

PullusPardus said: twesterm said: That's normal-- there are some things you're not supposed to look that closely at. but the thing flickers alot when im playing, is it from my t.vs sharpness? or my cable perhaps?

Flickers, hmm when you brought up sharpness I thought that actually could be it, a TV too sharp will bring in artifacts around black edges, but I've never heard of flicker. Is it similar to the far right or the middle?

Grahamhsu said: PullusPardus said: twesterm said: That's normal-- there are some things you're not supposed to look that closely at. but the thing flickers alot when im playing, is it from my t.vs sharpness? or my cable perhaps? Flickers, hmm when you brought up sharpness I thought that actually could be it, a TV too sharp will bring in artifacts around black edges, but I've never heard of flicker. Is it similar to the far right or the middle?

yup! , the one on the upper right thats exactly how it looks sometimes.

so its this from the sharpness being too high?

PullusPardus said: twesterm said: That's normal-- there are some things you're not supposed to look that closely at. but the thing flickers alot when im playing, is it from my t.vs sharpness? or my cable perhaps?

Well... 'normal'... actually its because most games use shadow mapping to create shadows. Shadow maps are like 2D pictures of shadows that are applied to 3D world. As you know rasterized 2D pictures can't have infinite resolution and shadow maps usually can have only small resolutions on consoles as theres so little memory. So you can see clearly those pixels because shadows are like 2D pictures. There are other ways to make shadows like shadow volume. Shadows with shadow volume are created with extra polygons using stencil buffer. Not many game uses this kind of shadow because need of processing power is very high. Actually my own engine supports shadow volumes. There are no smoothing or anything yet, but those shadows are always as sharp as you can see in the picture no matter how close you zoom. With larger resolutions they will look even better.

Yes, i noticed these are not common in PC games when you have the shadows on full performance and enable edge smoothing, but why is it flickering like Grahamnsu said ?

If its only shadows, its maybe because of algorithm. If its whole picture, whats your resolution? Some things can cause flickering when they are shown in too low resolution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsqbjF9s3xk

(Check those shirts from 0:30+)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcSFHrL55uw

(About 0:30 those thinner shadows)