Hi there
Quote:> Charles Wrote:
> On the win32 platform, you can't actually check for a hardware
> implementation, you can only check whether a given pixelformat is
supported
> via an icd. Commonly this means the pixelformat is accelerated. However,
low
> end hardware may provide a slow path for things such as the stencil
buffer,
> one of my dev cards being a voodoo 1 is one such beast
Aye, this is what we have found; even if the stencil buffer is supported in
hardware, there can be a huge disparity from one card to the next. Hence my
wish to look at all methods possible. I think your right about the metrics
as well, it seems the only way to go there.
Quote:> Paul Wrote:
> Without knowing what requirements your shadow must meet, this will be
> difficult to answer. For example, if it will lie only on a simple plane,
> then a projected shadow is your fastest approach.
Well at least one of our methods will need to handle fairly complex meshes
being cast on other complex meshes and possibly self-shadowing as well. I
believe we will probably need special case shadowing methods, for spheres
for instance, we would like to be able to cast at least one shadow and
possibly as may as four on as many as 25 spheres. Largely the surface will
be a plane, but that cannot always be guarenteed.
I think we might take a number of algorithms, optimise and tune them and
create special case methods as well. There may be an option to choose the
shadow method, number of shadows cast and possibly some metrics to determine
what settings - if any - should be used.
Thanks to you both for the help, anything else you can add would be greatly
appreciated.
Kind Regards,
Ian
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