I looked up how shadows work in GTA V and found a really interesting article by NVIDIA on their Percentage-Close Soft Shadows (PCSS) technique (https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/05/01/grand-theft-auto-v-shadows/). PCSS mimics the natural property of shadows that makes them more detailed the closer they are to the casting object, and more diffuse the further they are away. PCSS also heavily reduces shadow aliasing (which can definitely be seen in this picture, as the shadows look very smooth at the edges!). Finally, the PCSS uses a shadow buffer to handle overlapping shadows in order to avoid so-called "double-darkened" portions. If you read the article you'll see what a fantastic job PCSS does of making GTA V's shadows look realistic!
I looked up how shadows work in GTA V and found a really interesting article by NVIDIA on their Percentage-Close Soft Shadows (PCSS) technique (https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/05/01/grand-theft-auto-v-shadows/). PCSS mimics the natural property of shadows that makes them more detailed the closer they are to the casting object, and more diffuse the further they are away. PCSS also heavily reduces shadow aliasing (which can definitely be seen in this picture, as the shadows look very smooth at the edges!). Finally, the PCSS uses a shadow buffer to handle overlapping shadows in order to avoid so-called "double-darkened" portions. If you read the article you'll see what a fantastic job PCSS does of making GTA V's shadows look realistic!