HWA Raytracing?

When hardware acceleration gets here, will there be a way to get the kind of effect in Andos's shadow engine example (find it here: http://click.andersriggelsen.dk/examplefiles.php)

The reason why I'm asking is because it seems like his example only works with boxes and simple objects, where as I want it to put a shadow past everything, and also have it so stuff can have varying effects on how opaque the shadow is. Like if there's a wall, you want everything past it to be solid black, but if there's a bad guy, you want it to be a dark gray color, so you can see the bad guys behind them.

maybe some extensions for the HWA only will allow us to use lights. It will allow us to create lights effects or fog of war. :)

But what about shadow casting?

i think it will be down to a 3d engine to provide a real 3d shadow, in the mean time you could make do with an object under the main one to simulate a shadow.. As speed won't be an issue when Hardware support comes out.

I'm not talking about just character shadows that follow the character, I'm talking about having a flashlight for instance. So it would only be illuminated where you shined the flashlight. I might have to make my own raytracing 'engine'.

what I use for darkness is an active object on the top layer. Couldn´t you just link a darkened active object on the top layer to the flashlight with a hole in it where you want the light to be? Just an idea.

What lazycoder means is something literally like a flashlight. For example, the light "stops" when it hits objects, but it doesn't have to be a certain shape. Indeed not just a shadow.

ive done this with fast loops... it was actually easyer & faster then i thought... however that was a game made only to cast shadows i imagine in a real instance it would be far more adversive on performance.

if there is an somthing to do it for me... im all for it :cool: