Sticky says:
But I have a question. What is the quality that is send along with the track as you calculate high or ultra high quality shadows?

Hans Holo says:
So if I have calculated my tracks with HQ shadows will people who download it or play it on servers, get the map without shadows at all (and wouldn't it be unvalidated then) or do they get normal shadows instead?

Of course whoever downloads your tracks get normal/default shadows. That's what is saved all along in the GBX file. The exception to that is if you choose Fast shadows as the highest you do in your track.

You can check for yourself that what I'm saying is true. Go into your maniaplanet launcher settings and on the network tab, click the "clean cache" button. This will delete all the content you've downloaded from locators, but also the saved high quality and ultra lightmaps from tracks you've created.

So clean the cache, then go open one of your tracks in local play -> single map. Open a map that you know you did high quality shadows on, and click on the author name at top right to get the map information display. You'll no longer have a green check mark next to "High Quality Shadows Calculated".

I already wrote about this on the maniaplanet forums in jumperjack's big bug thread:
http://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic.php?p=96204#p96204

It was first brought up on the German language part of ManiaPlanet forums though. Kudos to them for figuring it out.

I'm still quite shocked by this discovery. I've thought things worked a completely different way for so long.

Sticky says:
And there probably isn't a function to calculate shadows for downloaded tracks without the need of the editor? Damn, so no full sensation of the track.

Well if you choose "high quality" under lightmap settings in the compatibility area of the launcher settings, then it might calculate shadows on high quality before you load some maps in single play. I'm not 100% sure it works in all scenarios though, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't work at all online, it'll just revert to whatever the highest quality lightmap that is included in the GBX file (which is probably "default" quality, but at least "fast" quality).

Hans Holo says:
This is sooo stupid. Nadeo should have made that clear.

I agree. It's wasted a lot of time for a lot of people I think

I'd like to hear an explanation of why they made it this way, although I suspect it has to do with filesizes and higher quality lightmaps taking too much space in the GBX file.

There are scenarios where High Quality and Ultra lightmaps are really needed, for instance in some huge RPG maps with indoor lighting. Ultra can really help in those cases. But of course, the author is probably the only one who will see them.

Thank you very much eyebo for the information.

I'm not having a big problem that the game is only played at normal shadows, but that's something you have to know.
I suggest to spread the info in some forums, so that most builders will know (I assume there are many that don't read the shadow-calculation thread or the TM bug-forum).

Hylis PM'd me about this and gave me some further details about how it works. It appears that there might still be some use for High and Ultra shadow calculation.

I can't explain it now, gotta go watch the Solar Eclipse! Woohoo!

But I'm going to run some tests and report my findings a little later tonight.

eyebo (741) says:
I can't explain it now, gotta go watch the Solar Eclipse! Woohoo!

"Solar eclipses mean new beginnings, (May 20, 2012) and lunar eclipses (June 4, 2012) represent finishing things. These are very powerful Eclipses each with there own gifts and own set of rules. " -from somewhere on the net...

Started a new video project on my Nesrallycross series yesterday (May 20.) ....So I better finish it June 4. i guess....

Interesting Nesrally.

Well, from talking to Hylis and reading a little more into this.. as well as some preliminary tests, it looks like there's still some advantage to calculating shadows on High or Ultra.

From what I understand, when you calculate shadows on High or Ultra you are enabling the game to do more calculations for the lightmap. So you get better quality for light bounces. Lighting is more smooth as a result. Well, I think most of us already knew that, it's why a lot of us used high quality.

After you calculate on High or Ultra, the game takes those higher quality calculations (that are saved in a file in your cache) and compresses them back down to around the size of a default lightmap so that it fits in the GBX file. So even though it's saved as default, it's taken from a higher quality source, and so you still get higher quality lighting your map.

That's my understanding of it.

The way it works in the game doesn't make that immediately obvious though.

Again, I want to post some comparisons, but I haven't got any good ones made yet. I'll hopefully do that in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, continue to render your shadows on high quality. I think it's still worth it.

And it's still worth it to do high quality shadows for others. The ticker in the map info apparently just tells if the high quality source file is available. It apparently doesn't tell you anything about the quality of the lightmap included in the GBX file, as it could still be high quality and yet the ticker won't show it.

Aaaaah, that feels goood knowing there's still someone out there to give us an explanation for the mysteries of the game.

Thanks Eyebo
Things make more sense now

I know we've discussed Lightmaps in length in this topic, so I wanted to give a heads up. There's a new topic on ManiaPlanet forums with comments from the developers themselves... with some explanations of how lightmaps work, if you're interested:
http://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic.php?p=139476#p139476