I believe this is a shader. For those who have seen Legacy of Kain- Defience, or anybody who has seen heat rise off a source (so that the air around the heat is distorted), is there a way to create a Beam or shader that creates that effect? As in LoK Defeience, the trail that follows the Reaver blade is distored. Is there a way to duplicate this in 3dGs?

I asked the same question a while ago... I was thinking a refraction map that scrolls upwards on say... a model that constantly faces the player. I usually run through these idea's creativly, but I cant say ive tried this since i havent got my hands on a refraction shader. Sorry if i make no sense, i do that alot.

Would this be the same effect as the one used for weapons in Minority Report for PS2?

This can be done.. however you need the Pro render-to-texture feature.

If you have pro, then simply render the view to a texture, and then map onto an entity Then you will have simply a rendered view of you camera view on a sprite

Now you must apply an actual distortion pixel shader.. i currently dont have one, but such things aren't to hard to find.. i think Nvidia has one on their website ( do a search for nvidia postprocessing or some such).

Perhaps the easiest way to do it is to use a bump environment map technique.. there are several available on this forum, and instead of a reflection map use your render view texture, then just mnodify it with the normal map.. and then make the whole thing slightly transparent.

please ppl, use the search button , there are many distortion shaders in this forum.
its a simple thing:

distortionOffset=tex2D(distortionMap,(texCoord+float2(xSpeed,ySpeed)*vecTime.w/generalSpeed)+float2(xScale,yScale));
distorted=tex2D(renderedView,texcCoord+distortionOffset*levelOfDistortion);

you need to place this into the pixelShader and there aou are. apply the shader to a screenaligned quad. check my download-section to fine a good startup-set.

as matt says, pro-version or his render_dll

Thanks for the help, but...ello; will you first method work with Commercial Edition? I don't have pro...