Technical Question regarding the DC and shadows

Raqia · April 2nd, 2007

How are the shadows for games like Soul Calibur and Virtua Fighter usually done on the DC? Is it stencil or shadow maps? iirc the PowerVR chip uses tile based rendering so does this mean it doesn't have a traditional Z-buffer and are complications related to this why no DC emulator so far is able to render shadows in Soul Calibur?

**drkIIRaziel** · April 2nd, 2007

PowerVR does rendering using span sorting so yes , it doesnt need a Z Buffer.PowerVR has hardware support for Volumes ,which is used to accelerate shadows (using shadow volumes).Its quite hard to emulate that feature properly.

Raqia · April 2nd, 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by drkIIRaziel

PowerVR does rendering using span sorting so yes , it doesnt need a Z Buffer.PowerVR has hardware support for Volumes ,which is used to accelerate shadows (using shadow volumes).Its quite hard to emulate that feature properly.

Thanks a lot for your explanation. Fantastic work on the emu btw!

April 2nd, 2007	#1 (permalink)
Raqia Ah! Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Evanston Il Posts: 545	Technical Question regarding the DC and shadows How are the shadows for games like Soul Calibur and Virtua Fighter usually done on the DC? Is it stencil or shadow maps? iirc the PowerVR chip uses tile based rendering so does this mean it doesn't have a traditional Z-buffer and are complications related to this why no DC emulator so far is able to render shadows in Soul Calibur? __________________ Laptop: 1.6@2.13 Dothan 2MB (Pinmod), 2 GB 533mhz DDR2, GeForce 6800 360/730 256MB, 100 GB 5400 RPM, 17" UXGA+

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April 2nd, 2007	#2 (permalink)
drkIIRaziel Emu author Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Athens,Greece Posts: 466	PowerVR does rendering using span sorting so yes , it doesnt need a Z Buffer.PowerVR has hardware support for Volumes ,which is used to accelerate shadows (using shadow volumes).Its quite hard to emulate that feature properly.