Shadow Buffers on GeForce 3 TI Cards
Author
Does Directx 8.1 support GeForce 3''s new Shadow Buffers? I found nothing in the DX SDK Docs and after searching the web, the only thing I found was an article discussing ATI and Nvidia''s technology:
Quote from article:
"ATI counters that nVidia''s shadow mapping feature isn''t supported in DirectX"
But no were in the article does it mention whether they were talking about DX 8.1.
AFAIK shadow buffers have been available for awhile on the GF3 (pre Ti) in OpenGL, but not in DirectX, including 8.1. You can do shadow mapping yourself in DX8.x, and as far as I can tell (based on very little research), the shadows buffers aren''t significantly faster than do-it-yourself shadow mapping, although I *think* they do feature softer edges. If you have a GF3 class card, try the shadow mapping effects in the nVidia effects browser and see for yourself.
Author
From what I can tell, the shadow mapping effects in Nvidia's demo's are all using depth buffers and not Shadow Buffers. So there not taking advantage of the hardware acceleration provided by the Geforce 3 TI cards. And what I read from there website, there technique is faster and more hardware efficient. Plus I think there doing something different so you can create soft shadows, but I'm not sure about this.
I would like to see a demo of this in action, but so far I haven't found one.
Edited by - JohnG on November 21, 2001 6:21:06 PM
I would like to see a demo of this in action, but so far I haven't found one.
Edited by - JohnG on November 21, 2001 6:21:06 PM
gamasutra.com has a directx tutorial that shows you how to do soft shadows using render-to-surfaces
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