Unity8 window shadows are too small and look unrealistic/unprofessional compared to other desktops

[Daniel van Vugt]

Unity8 window shadows are too small. They don't look as nice as the larger shadows in Unity7 (or OS X).

Also the corners of the shadows extend unrealistically far - the shadows should be more pulled in around the corners to appear more realistic.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please provide an explanation. Do design not own the visual design?

[Alex Milazzo (digitalalex)]

App shadows are designed to work on all form factors. Unity 7 shadows are way too strong for mobile use.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

What does too strong mean?

I'm surprised you've just decided that Unity8 desktop also won't look as good as Unity7 or our competitors.

Can we make it user configurable?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

You know you can have a large shadow penumbra radius and just coloured lightly, or more translucent. To argue a larger shadow is always too strong is plain wrong.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

The argument that the mobile form factor limits the visual design of what we see on desktop doesn't add up.

Of course you should have a different design for windowed vs phablet modes. And of course "strength" of a shadow is not bound by its size, but moreso by its colour, opacity and penumbra curve.

Please design a nicer shadow for desktop mode at least. Even if mobile doesn't change.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I suspect the entire problem could be solved by using a different gradient curve. The current penumbra curve used doesn't look very realistic (looks more linear than exponential).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.