Yep, that´s also a point why I don´t understand the urgent need of softshadow. I realy don´t understand it.

I don´t totally know how soft shadows could win.

Well, softshadows are visually nice, but as far as I can they run pretty slow.
I mean the shadows right now are slow and they have no smoothing. When they now get smoothed they will logically run even slower. I mean most users playing my games are complaining that the shadows are slow so I guess most people turn them off.
And now for some reason I totally can not understand why users voted for softshadows. Stencil shadows are a nice gimmick, but nothing I would build on... Can someone of the people who voted for softshadows why she/he has voted for softshadows, with the knowlegde in the background that the stencil shadows are slow and difficult to use because of the camera issue with the shadow volume.

EDIT: Same for the terrain thing. ISn´t there already a multi terrain shader thing? And there is a simple and well working application which renders static shadows on a terrain. Of course colored shadows would be nice. But it´s very useful as it is now. I think most people just don´t know that tool.