An investigation into the use of shadow techniques in computer Games

Rendering real-time shadows has been an important and a sophisticated topic in computer games. They improve the reality of the scene and produce a natural look to the viewers. This research study chooses the two most common shadow techniques, projection shadows and shadow mapping technique.

Where, projection shadows will be implemented by projecting the vertices of an object onto a plane, which defines the shadow of an object. And it is calculated through an intersection point of the light ray with the plane. Whereas, shadow maps will be implemented by rendering the scene from the light’s perspective, and store the depth values per each pixel. Then, by rendering the scene from the viewer’s perspective, and depth values in the scene are compared. So if the depth values per pixel are not matching, which means that pixel is in shadow.

This paper emphasizes how effectively, we can produce the projection shadows & shadow maps in real-time interactive computer games. And how do they analyse in terms of performance and visual appearance, if they are projected on plane surfaces and curved surfaces.

Moreover through this paper, we can conclude that the projection shadows are not suitable for curved surfaces, and it is not possible to generate the projection shadows on any type of curved surface, like we can do this through the shadow maps. Hence it is recommended to not to use the projection shadows in the scenes having curved surfaces.  For more information, Please follow the link

     Pulahari feerojkumar



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Research Analysis of the shadow techniques in computer games

After the overall review of my research study, i have observed and analysed the projection shadows and shadow maps in this research in terms of performance and visual appearance, when they are projected on both, plane and curved surfaces. Similarly in future, we can also do the same by considering the shadow volumes performance and visual appearance on both plane and curved surface. Moreover, in this research study, we just considered only one occluder and one receiver in the scenes, so we can repeat the same research by considering the multiple (occluders/receivers) models in the scene and then we can observe and analyse the performance and visual appearance of the shadow techniques like, projection shadows, shadow maps and shadow volumes on both the plane surfaces and the curved surfaces.