Projector based selfshadowing? (Or other solution?)

Hi!

Is it somehow possible to have a shadow projected onto a mesh(playercontrolled aeroplane in foreground)and have it selfshadowing? I think render to texture could help, but i'm not sure about this, as i'm just the artist in our team and i need to point the programmer into the right direction...

We would of course use a simple directional light but since this light is used to light(and shadow) the scene, it needs a very high shadow distance and therefor the shadows on the player are just so low res that they are not useable. I known that reducing the shadow distance and using a lightmap for far shadows would help a lot but this is not an option, because we need dynamically changing lighting conditions and daytimes.

Ideally we would use 2 directional lights, one for the near objects and one for the far ones(with different shadow distances) but since shadow distance(in the quality settings)affects all directional lights it would not help at all.

If there would be something like a light that does not cast light but only shadows it would help as well but i dont thik its possible. I would be happy if you someone could correct me on this ;)

I'm not so much concerned about the shadows that are cast on the ground but more about the selfshadowing... although it would be nice to have proper near shadows...

We need the high shadow distance because the game we are working on is a flightsim with huge viewing distance and some timelapse functions(shadows should creep over the terrain as the sun is moving). Everything works awesome(apart form some shadow acne, but its not really noticaeble) but as i said the forground shadows are veeeery low rez and this is not so great for a thing that is always closeup in the center of the screen...

Please!! Any ideas, i'm not nessecary after a specific solution... if you have a completey different idea/approach please share it!

Huge thanks in advance!!!!