Hi,

I noticed a post by Excessus in the Feedback forum listing various possible soft shadow methods that could be considered for A7. I would like to add another suggestion to that list namely a paper entitled "Rendering Fake Soft Shadows with Smoothies" which can be found at MIT
http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/papers/smoothie/ Apparently this is similar to the patented method Farcry uses.

I'd be very interested to hear what JCL and others have to say on these various methods and what is likely to be used for A7?

Cool shadow effects..

I've looked at this paper. While the results are indeed pleasing, I find the algorithm cumbersome and non-intuitive. There are other means to derive soft shadows and penumbrae. Im not sold that this method is highly scalable, though i'd need to look at the paper more closely.

I believe standard shadow mapping is somewhat better suited for the next Conitec Engine, with the freedom for the developers to use their own shaders to filter the shadows in whichever way they want.