Godot 4.8 Dev 6, the sixth pre-release snapshot, introduces screen-space contact shadows for directional lights, enhancing visual quality while maintaining performance by limiting the feature to eight lights. The release, which occurred in less than a week, addressed two critical issues: a macOS Metal renderer crash and a Google Play upload failure, highlighting the team's urgency before the September feature freeze. The contact shadows are designed to improve the appearance of shadows without replacing existing shadow maps, focusing on efficiency and performance metrics. Additionally, there are various smaller enhancements and bug fixes, including improvements to GDScript syntax highlighting and the introduction of a multi-layer projection camera for XR, although it comes with a regression issue that is still being resolved

Godot 4.8 Dev 6: Contact Shadows Land Before Feature Freeze

Godot 4.8 Dev 6, the sixth pre-release snapshot of the current feature cycle, announced by Thaddeus Crews. Its headline feature is screen-space contact shadows for directional lights, built on Bend Studios' approach and deliberately capped to eight lights for performance. It landed in under a week because two blockers, a macOS Metal startup crash and a Google Play upload failure, needed quick fixes ahead of September's feature freeze. XR users should note a new OpenXR Spatial Container regression tied to the multi-layer projection camera

Godot 4.8 Dev 6: Contact Shadows Land Before Feature Freeze @ Linux Compatible