I have been experimenting with Parallax Occlusion Mapping over the last couple of days. It is a very interesting algorithm for reducing geometry processing by encoding the surface information into a texture and the details are figured out in the pixel shader.

This of course reduces vertex cost and increases pixel cost, which most of the time is the opposite of what you want to do [smile] but it is still a pretty cool trick to have at your disposal.

I decided to get the parallax portion of the shader up and running first. My first go at it was alright, the second and third were much better. Finally, I compared my implementation with that of Natalya Tatarchuk from ATI (a reference implementation is in the DirectX SDK). There were a surprising number of similarities, but I guess if you are trying to do the same thing then there is a likely similarity in the possible solutions.

Here is a screenshot of the current iterative implementation: