Why would it be useless? I don´t know how it is with this project and there probably aren´t too many thinking the same but I myself do most stuff for they way and not for the result. I want to learn something when playing around with different open source libraries or some special things like head tracking, anaglyphs or just basic shaders. Even is the result is bad I would never call those things useless. Maybe for you but it is not for me.

About this project, it looks very nice so far and you seem to make some very fast progress. It is btw quite easy to get some basic static shadows working... The integrated shader editor looks like awsome stuff :P
Just go on and have fun with what you are doing