FM27 3D Stadium and Environment Megapack V4.01 - Refined Colours, Sun, Shadows & Bug Fixes

Hey everyone!

Quick one. 4.01 is a hotfix for the 4.0 pack, five files, nothing else changes. It fixes the things you guys reported first and one thing that had been quietly broken since the FM27 port.

Note! If you just installed this one as it was up, please download it again and install it again!

THE FLOODLIGHT SHADOWS ARE BACK

At night on custom grounds every player now throws the four shadows from the four masts, the star under the feet. The ball had them in 4.0, the players didn't, and that was the pack's fault: on FM27 the players are built differently under the hood and the bit of the plugin that marks them as shadow casters simply never found them. It does now, and officials too. Subs pick it up a few seconds after they come on.

THE GRASS

Several of you said the pitch was too vivid on 27. It was, and for a dumber reason than I'd like: the environment engine had been tuning the grass all along, the grass just wasn't listening since a shader name was changed! That's fixed, and the pitch has been re-tuned by eye for a clear afternoon, a floodlit night and a grey overcast day. It also means two other things reach the grass again: cloud shadows drifting across it by day and the surface going darker and glossier in the rain.

THE STAND SHADOWS

Daytime matches on custom grounds had the shadow of the stands sitting on the pitch like it was painted there. It didn't move with the sun, and every time the highlight cut it jumped to a new spot and sat still again. Turns out FM27 quietly runs two suns. The one the environment engine moves across the sky is the one the game draws shadows from, but the game had it set up so nothing could cast into it, while FM's own sun, pointing wherever the game felt like that highlight, was drawing the shadow instead.

4.01 shuts FM's sun off and lets ours cast properly. The stand's shadow now creeps across the grass as the match goes on, the way it did in 26, and it stays put when the camera cuts. Side effect you might notice: with only one sun lighting the place, the stands and roof look a touch less blown out by day too.

Here is an example showing what it now does:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxp9M6Z04JI

THE 5 SECOND STUTTER

A patron profiled a short freeze every five seconds or so during open play, worst at busy grounds like Fenerbahçe. He was right, it was the floodlight shadow code re-scanning the whole match scene far too expensively. That scan is now cheap, so the freeze should be gone. If you still feel a regular hitch, tell me which ground and if it appears under specific circumstances.

SMALLER FIXES

• The per-stadium bloom tuner (Numpad 1, for the people who tune grounds) did nothing on FM27. It works again.

• The lighting plugin had stopped talking to one of FM27's floodlight functions after the release build. Fixed.

INSTALLATION

This is a hotfix, not a full pack. You need 4.0 installed first.

DOWNLOAD

1. Close FM.

2. Open the zip and copy its BepInEx folder into your Football Manager 27 folder. Let it overwrite. Five files land in two plugin folders.

3. Start the game.

Install paths:

- Steam: Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Football Manager 27

- Xbox Game Pass: XboxGames\Football Manager 27\Content

- Epic Games: Program Files (x86)\Epic Games\FootballManager27

Your configs and saved cameras are untouched.