Always the busy bee programming...
I circled the wagons and improved shadows -- there is enough juice on the third generation iPod for it. The first generation iPad defiantly does not have enough juice. One of the issues was using a perspective projection to draw shadows. I changed this to an orthographic projection. So, shadows draw better with directional lighting. This is better suited to an outdoor scene. Sometimes you can fudge a perspective projection with a light that is very distant. Also, I'd like to do cascading shadow maps but I'm pretty sure there is not enough juice on these iDevices to handle it.
I've updated the Emerald Run game with orthographic shadow projections. I've submitted these changes to the app store yesterday. Before the shadows would drift a little when the player moved because the light was too close. There are other minor fixes in the free update too.
The shadows in the following shots have percentage closer filtering to smooth the edges. For Emerald Run, I disable this on slower hardware. In these shots, there are five samples being taken for each shaded fragment.
With regard to the new world I'm constructing, I've populated it with some more background props etc. Changed out the bump maps on some models.
I'm going to switch focus back to the character next. The world needs monsters too… :) Laser carbine anyone?
Here are some screen shots. I think its an improvement. A real good ground bump map can add so much. These are 3rd generation iPod shots..
