Re: [Flightgear-devel] Cloud shadows

[Renk T. <tho...@jy...>]

> I wonder how much fps it would cost if even smaller cloudlets would cast
> shadows as well??

The way this is set up right now, you get a constant number of shadows. If you make more cloud types cast individual shadows, the range out to which they're drawn goes down (on the other hand, a whole sheet of clouds can be registered with a single shadow, making it very efficient).

Unfortunately since we can't pass an array of uniforms  through the effect framework into the shader, scaling on the weather side is changing a simple number, but on the effect side it amounts to adding more declarations for uniforms one by one. 

I wanted to gain some experience with the framerate hit under various situations now, and then perhaps try to extend the system a bit (and make it automatically off when there are no shadows to be drawn...). Perhaps some priority system balancing larger distance for larger shadows vs. detail for smaller shadows can be introduced... I'm not sure - the technique has pros and cons over a shadow map.

* Thorsten