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From my memory the only games which ended up using shadow volumes were Doom 3 and games based on the Doom 3 engine. Shadow maps always seemed like the way forward to me. That is purely based on my own "what looks better" scale. Given that most techniques in 3D programming are hacks to make things look better, I was surprised to see Carmack go down the shadow volumes path. It felt like he'd chosen it based on having nicer code versus an overall nicer looking game. This is all my opinion of course.



I find shadow volumes tend to look better, at least cleaner anyway. Shadow mapping if not properly done can look glitchy and aliased. One surprisingly bad offender was Skyrim.


I recall seeing both shadow mapping and volumes in Far Cry. Mapping was generally used outdoors in daylight (parallel casted light), and volumes for point lights. F.E.A.R. used volumes extensively also.




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