3DShadows is the diploma-thesis I did at the University Of Applied Sciences in Dortmund / Germany. Supervisor was Prof. Dr. Burkhard Lenze. The main goal of 3DShadows is to visualize real-time shadows in a dynamic environment with OpenGL.

Many computer games nowadays make extensive use of different shadow-algorithms. These shadow-algorithms give the viewer an additional information of depth and beside this it just looks cool...

3DShadows implements three different shadow-algorithms:

• Planar shadows
• Hardware shadow-mapping
• Shadow-volumes

Each of these algorithms has specific advantages and disadvantages. Considering these facts you can choose the best algorithm for a specific application.

So 3DShadows gives you the opportunity to test all three shadow-algorithms in a dynamic environment to see how each of the three algorithms behaves under any circumstances and from any point of view.