   Hardware shadow mapping support on ATI cards
  Been digging around to find out about this.  Some old threads I found say that ATI card do not support this.  Is this still the case?  I googled, searched these threads, and ATI's site but seemed like all the info I got was old.  Whats a good way to find out answers to these and other specific questions?[edit: added]Like another question I have is does NVIDIA cards support n-patches?  I know ATI has Truform, but am having trouble finding out anything about NVIDIA cards.  It'd be cool if there's an NVIDIA vs ATI list somewhere.  Maybe its safe to assume that if the specs don't list a feature, the card doesn't have it?Thanks[Edited by - Unfadable on December 13, 2005 11:19:33 PM]
Quote:Original post by UnfadableBeen digging around to find out about this.  Some old threads I found say that ATI card do not support this.  Is this still the case?Yes. NVidia has patented shadow mapping implementation on hardware, so ATi can't implement it on their cards. You can do shadow mapping using pixel shaders, though.Quote:Maybe its safe to assume that if the specs don't list a feature, the card doesn't have it?I believe so. [smile]   ;  Both ATI and Nvidia have shadowmapping samples on their developer websites.  As centipede mentioned, ATI hardware does not support using the depth buffer directly as the shadow map.  Instead, you must render the depth to a texture using a pixel shader.n-patches are an ATI invention.  Nvidia hardware does not support them.  They never really caught on in the industry anyway.Many of these kinds of questions can be answered by looking at the caps bits for the different devices.  The caps will tell you what features are and are not supported.  Also, with every SDK starting in Oct '05, there is a spreadsheet distributed with the DX SDK that lists all the capabilities of D3D and which cards out there support the different features.  Its a very long list.  D3D10 will alleviate this somewhat by having a standard set of capabilities.neneboricua   