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Most of what Sphere 2 can do can probably be done with A6 pro alone too,

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Theoretically perhaps, but in practice not really. Sphere uses lots of specialized rendering methods and features that really need direct access to the renderer.. for instance, the dynamic imposters for the trees cant be done in Pro; neither could the clouds, grass, etc.

The clouds and grass use batched sprites and instancing to render large numbers of objects; you cant do this in pro, so it would be much slower.

I dont know that shadow mapping can really be done efficiently in Pro alone--at least i have yet to see any example that works. Specifically when you need to use cubemaps as render targets for point lights, and so on. Pro doesnt offer all the flexibility needed.

Well, i'm just going to wait for A7, rumor has it A7 render is 5 or 6 times faster...

The rendering speed of the engine won't help you when the effects have to be done in an inferiour way..

I have written a native, realtime shadowmapping shader (search showcase I), and have to agree with matt that it is very cumbersome to do without a dll..

@ MATT
Where is the Sphere site?
How much is it

i think sphere is 20$ if i remember but my memory sucks ass lol. Sphere can be found on the links sections