Quote - Depth-mapped shadows can do small-scale if you work with the shadow cams. There's no reason to use AO just because you have DM shadows. I wrote about this years ago - the No Nostril Glow thread.

i know.  i followed it.  and had lots of problems in different situations.  i encountered enough that i eventually switched to raytraced, despite the grain.  and i'm pretty decent as Poser users go, and not but so complex with my scenes. just from complaints in the forums, i'm betting most people aren't willing to take the time it takes to make them work well in most scenes, nor able to master them well enough to avoid serious problems. 

basically, i think you're right, it's technically possible for some scenes if you're willing and able (given your hardware) to get your shadow cam settings right.   but after alll that tweaking, some of which makes your light inaccurate or uses huge resources (avoiding clipped shadows and getting the right res shadow can be difficult at larger sizes), you still have to wait for it to render for much longer than most people are willing to wait.

edited to clarify:  basically, i think you're right and i'm not disagreeing with you, just trying to make it clear that this information is to be used in conjunction with other info.  it only negates all those threads about using AO to get rid of nostril glow if you are using your shadows accurately in the first place, which i think most people aren't.

Quote -
By the way, AO is just as grainy as blurred RT shadows if you set the samples to the same level as is used for RT shadows - it uses the same mechanism. But RT shadows don't let us adjust number of samples, whereas with AO you can, and that's how you get rid of AO grain - more samples.

i know.  i do that with AO, and the "quality" settins on reflections and refractions.  i thought maybe the pixel samples settings would affect the shadows as it does the depth blur (if you use it), but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Quote - And I don't think blurred RT shadows are that bad. Have you experimented with shading rate? The shading rate of the surface receiving the shadow will influence the number of samples used to generate the directional shadow.

yep.  experimented with pretty much all the settings in the rendering options.  for instance, i found that if you render large enough, and keep your shading rate too low, your depth mapped shadows become too accurate and make what looks like a contour map on surfaces.    i haven't done a methodical test in ages, though.    unless i get some wildly upgraded hardware, doing so would probably take a long time. 

it's probably not worth it right now since i'm still on P6 (though i think a significant amount of other users are, too) and will upgrade in the future.