I don't think so. You cannot compare stencil buffer with pixel shaders.
stencil require shadow/projection volumes, where a pseudo pixel shader don't. It' a huge diffrence. The point is, if this is once working properly, all you have to do is push the button to have full shadows on everything, including self shadowing even of complex and recursive things.
Pixel shader don't care too much about the polycount of the scene.
Now I would agree if you said "why don't you use hardware pixel shaders". That's true and with a graphicscard that supports DX 9 and the right programming tools this would be my choice. But I have an old card an I also don't think you can use pixel shaders in Blitz3D.
But basicly the reason why I do this is the challenge to do the impossible. It's hacking fever that may be compared to hunting fever, something a lot of people don't know, of course. Maybe this way of trying the impossible can be compared with the first wolfenstein that was running on weak hardware that was thought to be way to slow to do any liquid 3D presentation.
I think a lot of people were asking too "why are they doing this" until it was finished and released.
stencil require shadow/projection volumes, where a pseudo pixel shader don't. It' a huge diffrence. The point is, if this is once working properly, all you have to do is push the button to have full shadows on everything, including self shadowing even of complex and recursive things.
Pixel shader don't care too much about the polycount of the scene.
Now I would agree if you said "why don't you use hardware pixel shaders". That's true and with a graphicscard that supports DX 9 and the right programming tools this would be my choice. But I have an old card an I also don't think you can use pixel shaders in Blitz3D.
But basicly the reason why I do this is the challenge to do the impossible. It's hacking fever that may be compared to hunting fever, something a lot of people don't know, of course. Maybe this way of trying the impossible can be compared with the first wolfenstein that was running on weak hardware that was thought to be way to slow to do any liquid 3D presentation.
I think a lot of people were asking too "why are they doing this" until it was finished and released.