"Replacing z buffer shadows by decal shadows "

1) are decal shadow better and faster?

2) Plus why don't you add many options for shadows:

a) z buffer
b) decal shadows
c) "Parallel-Split Shadow Maps"

d) or these here?
fast shadow

I guess the decal variant is a way to achieve softshadows: you could render the entity volume against a flat surface as bitmap, soften it and then use it to align it along an arbitrary surface. This way, you could also use the shadow bitmap to achieve fading or multiple shadow instances depending on multiple light sources - but this would be only my first guess.. I am not much into realtime softshadow techniques..

does not sound like it - hehe

That does make a lot of sense, I think if we have many options to pick from the better

Decal shadows are much faster than other shadow methods, and have soft edges; their disadvantage is that they are not animated and are no real shadows.

Z Buffer shadows are a relict from A5 and make the engine unnecessarily complicated. Currently A7 contains 3 kernels, A5, A6, and A7, and I want to get rid of the A5 kernel that is only used for z buffer shadows.

A PSSM shader is planned.

Stencil shadows are slow because they don't use shaders. If the PSSM shader turns out to be not quite the hit, we'll implement shader based stencil shadows as an alternative.

That's what's planned for shadows in the next time.

Sounds great what you have planned can't wait (PSSM)

"are not animated"

so for models which shadow system will be used?

OR they will have shadows but the shadow will not be animated?

sounds great but I would really like to see a flag to enable shadows always..this is to prevent that when a model goes out of view frustum,the shadow is still rendered...large shadows,like on buildings, keep dissapearing once the building is out of view frustum

This would heavily reduce the frame rate, but maybe a second, extended view frustum for shadows could be a solution.

Ok..is the extended view frustum possible with liteC or it has to be done via the sdk or shaders ?.Thanks.

Good idea, but entitiy shadows that are still rendered in this new view frustrum should be only rendered, when a special flag on the entity is set.

exactly..I think its really needed,because many games may not use too many shadowed buildings and so this wouldnt reduce the fps so much..besides,it can be
given as an option for high end users.
otherwise,I dunno how to realise accurate large dyanmic shadowed buildings