What technology's used for the dynamic shadows Overlord for Wii?

[homerdog]

I meant that self-shadowing is an improvement over shadowing.
(A number of games don't have self shadowing because of filtering artifacts or just precision issues.)

And some games shouldn't have self shadowing for those reasons. Especially games with lots of closeups and dialog.
Bioware

 

[Neb]

And some games shouldn't have self shadowing for those reasons. Especially games with lots of closeups and dialog.
Bioware

While one could point fingers at Mass Effect I do enjoy that I can up the shadow res to make it look good on closeups!

 

[homerdog]

Meh, no matter how high I cranked it I could never make it look good, so I ended up raising the depth bias to get rid of self shadows on faces while keeping them on bodies. Come to think of it I've never seen a game that pulled off good looking self shadows on faces - not even Crysis, no matter how high the shadowmap res is cranked. Guess there's just not enough precision or something.

 

[Fafalada]

Come to think of it I've never seen a game that pulled off good looking self shadows on faces - not even Crysis, no matter how high the shadowmap res is cranked.

It's a resolution distribution problem, not precision. It's an inherent limitation of linear-projection with shadowmaps, balooning the resolution is just a bandaid, not solution.

That said, Uncharted does a pretty good job at close-up shadow details, facial or otherwise (and the sequel looks to be even better). Wonder if they'll ever share whether it's special treatment of closeup shadows or they actually use some fancier method of distributing the shadow texels.

 

[homerdog]

I see, thanks. That reminded me of something.

http://software.intel.com/file/1497 - page 11

This is touted as a Larrabee only technique but I wonder, would other hardware be able to achieve something similar?

 

[sfried]

Sees to me the same kind of shadow casting effect they used in Star Wars: Rebel Strike for GameCube. Different developers (Factor 5 made the Rogue Squadron games), I know, but it looks practically to be the same technique.

 

[Nano]

Also, I think the Quantum 3 engine (the engine for The Conduit) has self-shadowing support.

Yes. It supports projected shadow casting, soft shadows and self-shadowing.