rdInst Tutorial 52 – Swapping MegaLights HW Shadows to VSM when close
Last Updated: 3rd October 2024
Tutorial created using rdInst version 1.50
One of the new features in Unreal 5.5 is MegaLights, giving the ability to have hundreds, even thousands of lights in your level while still retaining playable framerates.
One of the drawbacks of MegaLights though, is that they don’t update with WPO (maybe this is coming) and the quality isn’t as good as VSM rendered shadows.
To solve this, a new routine has been added to rdInst that allows you to swap from selected MegaLights using Hardware Shadow RayTracing over to VSM rendered shadows when they’re in proximity. This gives fully dynamic good quality shadows close to the player while keeping everything fast.
This tutorial goes through creating a small level with a road with streetlights and houses along it, swapping the MegaLights in proximity.