Weird shadows... My card or the game?

So I've been experiencing this for a while now. Small shadows in some games have a very odd flicker/blockiness about them.

In Dirt 2 for example, most of the bigger shadows like shadows from the car chassis and trees and cars bodies look fine.

It's just some of the small things in the cockpit like the small bit of shadow from the instrument dials. I get this random really blocky looking and not solid shadow that looks very pixelated.

In Just Cause 2 I've experienced an occasion where there were stripes of grey shadow on a wall that shouldn't really get any shadows. It was like looking at a gradient.

In Necrovision Lost Company, the shadows appear blocky close up. Like when you zoom in on a spot in paint it gets blocky.

Are those just glitches in the game engine? Or does it have to do with my card?

I have the 5870M and it happens with 10.5 and 10.8 drivers, both with Catalyst AI on and off.

 

Probably the engine acting up.

 

I thought so too but then I looked at some Youtube videos and they have no weird shadows on the same car, same track, same location.

 

Here's a screenshot.
In other Youtube videos I actually see a similar thing but then theirs don't seem to flicker much.

You can see some of the shadows are screwed up.

 

I must be missing something, I only see a shadow on the dashboard area

 

Do you see that stupid looking shadow by the speedometer?
And the shadow cast by the knobs/button give a similar appearance.

 

Anyone have an idea?

 

Seems like a driver/engine issue. It could be the very first signs of something wrong with the card, but that seems unlikely.

 

Does anyone else have the game and would like to test it?
It's on the Spillway level with the Mitsubishi Pajero Dakar 1993 (bonus raid car). Screenshot is from replay on the very first left turn.

 

Honestly, I think you're overreacting. Looks exactly the same on my comp.

 

I probably am... Ever since getting this machine I get ticked off at every imperfection...

 

It's ok if you are worried that it was your card rendering incorrectly, but it isn't.

What we have here is a classic case of "mario on my NES is clearly just a bunch of dots on the screen, and he can only move in 2D... is this normal?"

The answer, of course, is yes. Modern graphics engines take massive shortcuts when rendering at the cost of image quality, so that the rendering can take place in real time. Rendering normally takes FOREVER (seriously, a very long time, maybe a few minutes to an hour or even a lot more per FRAME, and this is doing 30-60+ frames per second).

You can find similar oddities in every video game if you pay enough attention to detail. Still, you should be able to find enjoyment out of the fact that despite the fact that it isn't 100% true to life, there IS a lot of attention to detail in these games, and they do have their moments of extreme realism.

 

Thanks for the response, pretty helpful.

Yeah I agree about games taking shortcuts, because another thing that bothers me a lot is draw distance and pop-ins.

I guess this is just another one of those instances.