I think I remember I read some new paper with some new development to improve this and make the edges soft, but I don;t remember if it was for UE4 or cryengine and was it for DOF or motion blur.
But real-time has still a long way to go. Even the new nvidia RTX area shadows development when scrutinized it seems lacking. I'm talking about the demo with tomb raider - the part in the market at night and how the people shadows are blurred with raytracing. But the shadows are not sharp enough and lack contact and seem to blur too much when extending further.
The architectural renders posted here with UE4 are fine, but that's because the lighting is baked, but when it comes to real-time we still need to get proper :
- GI or at least good AO - not screenspace and not blurred, sharp enough for contact as well
- reflections/refractions which might be good enough with the new RTX
- great area shadows with good contact (which is kind of the same technology as world-space AO)
- HDR raytraced 3d motion blur and DOF, with proper blurry margins
We already have the rest, as in: polygon count, great textures resolution, good displacement and bump mapping, lens flare and glare and so on.