As you might have seen it, there seems to be a bug in either the particle system of GS or in my code - the particles are drawn brighter as they are into the AO'ed-scene. JCL confirmed it and is working on it after he has finished some more urgent work.

In the meantime I will have a look at (blurred-) stencil shadows, since this is maybe the most popular method of adding dynamic shadows atm. I already had some requests for the support of the new PSSM feature, but first I didn't tried it yet and second I want to wait until it has matured a little bit more so that JCL releases a public beta release in some time. Sounds reasonable, ain't it?

I started programming on Trixie HD and will be away from 12.-22.10. (London & the Netherlands), so don't expect any big news until the end of the month.

Best regards,
-Chris

Yes, I've followed your bug report. Nevertheless, I find that the particles look much more appealing to the eye because of this bug.
Have fun in London!

Short message: stencil shadows are now working correctly, so that you can use stencil_blur(1); from mtlView.c now:

(watch it fullsize by rightclick .. / show image)


Since I have access to normal- and depth values per pixel, I am thinking of adding my own support for screen-space blurring the stencil shadows - because I can then avoid shadow bleeding (because it is --screen-space-- blurred) and offer better blurring methods (I hate that poisson blur... it is too soft for my taste)).

I am also very disappointed that block-lightmaps, the stencil shadow map and my AO map are ultimately multiplied all together. Isn't taking just the darkest value more realistic? I never saw that e.g. a shadow of a person, who is walking into a shadow from a house, is darkening the shadow of the house

Grr... man, I hate monolithic shader solutions (like those one and half things which are talked about here and then) but I think I have to take this convenient opportunity in the future

Well,
the Shadow darkens shadow effect is truly present, even with a house shadow.
Sometimes its more/less noticeable.

Effect is caused by less 'Light bounces' hitting the environment, blocked by your body.

which is actually what ambient occlusion does, still your shadow and house's shadow do not add up.

hooooo that Niceeeeee

Good news for some guys: the current development version of the SSAO solution is now fully compatible to A7.86 and A8.

When do you plan to upload a new version?

When the next public A8 version will be released, because it includes a necessary bugfix for the newly added particle stage. I also want to take the opportunity to take that time to reduce the memory consumption a bit.

What about performance? Are there some improvements also?