there is a bit of code called "Flex shadows" in the code archives... look there
Alternatively if you are experienceing slow down with Swifts system, it is possibly to do with the number of polygons in the track which you are testing for and if the cars are high poly this will also cause slowdown if you have a few of them.
So one option is to break the track down into small sections and only test the road surfaces which could be affected by shadows. This means deleting the receiver on the fly and creating a new receiver for the next bit of track needed to receive shadows, but it is super fast and quite possible (I just did the same in my project). I managed it so that the last two parts of my world affected by shadows would be remembered so I could turn my character back and cross a shadow boundary without noticing too much.
Shawn implemented a really great feature which you can utilise and make life a lot easier, as the cars are not animated (or even if they are) can you make a reduced polygon version of them? If so you could be laughing, as Shawn allows you to hide a mesh which is parented to an object and cast a shadow from this lower polygon version, meaning the calculations are drastically reduced. I am not sure where this is documented, but during a recent project I asked for help and asked why the shadow system detects meshes parented to my main mesh, yet hidden, that was the reason. Low poly animated characters can be hidden and parented and used as the shadow casters for more complex animated characters. You could even create a very low polygon sphere and cast that as a simple shadow for you cars, meaning you dont have to do too much re-coding or new coding to see if it works - Sweet!
Hope this is useful.
IPete2.
Alternatively if you are experienceing slow down with Swifts system, it is possibly to do with the number of polygons in the track which you are testing for and if the cars are high poly this will also cause slowdown if you have a few of them.
So one option is to break the track down into small sections and only test the road surfaces which could be affected by shadows. This means deleting the receiver on the fly and creating a new receiver for the next bit of track needed to receive shadows, but it is super fast and quite possible (I just did the same in my project). I managed it so that the last two parts of my world affected by shadows would be remembered so I could turn my character back and cross a shadow boundary without noticing too much.
Shawn implemented a really great feature which you can utilise and make life a lot easier, as the cars are not animated (or even if they are) can you make a reduced polygon version of them? If so you could be laughing, as Shawn allows you to hide a mesh which is parented to an object and cast a shadow from this lower polygon version, meaning the calculations are drastically reduced. I am not sure where this is documented, but during a recent project I asked for help and asked why the shadow system detects meshes parented to my main mesh, yet hidden, that was the reason. Low poly animated characters can be hidden and parented and used as the shadow casters for more complex animated characters. You could even create a very low polygon sphere and cast that as a simple shadow for you cars, meaning you dont have to do too much re-coding or new coding to see if it works - Sweet!
Hope this is useful.
IPete2.