DanM, on 08 May 2012 - 10:54 PM, said:
if you want spotlights that dont use shadows use a point light but cut off the sectors it can see, you can find the angles by drawing a line from the centre of the pointlight and dragging it out to the point on the corner you want the shadow to start from, that is basically the angle you want to use, stops light leaking and improves performance to
on a sidenote regarding polymer performance i recently doubled my framerate by going from an q9400 clocked to 3.2ghz to a i7 3770k at stock 3.5mhz / 3.9mhz, so even though they seem similar clock for clock the i line seems miles ahead in terms of performance from polymer.
I know this shit is not cheap but if you were looking to get a kick out of polymer that is what you should be looking for.
What I like from spotlights is their "cone" appearance, which by itself makes them look more realistic in many situations. Sometimes I want them to project shadows from models, while sometimes I just want that light cone to "decorate" a wall or to light up an area with no models; shadows aren't needed there. Also, point lights can't project textures.
Sector cutting is a technique I've already been experimenting with, basically trying to find a way to stop light leaking. It's a great way to improve performance, not only because you are limiting the number of objects hit by a particular light, but also because most of the time it causes the sectors beneath the cut not to be drawn at all.
I'm using an i7 860 overclocked to 4GHz already. It doesn't use the same architecture as the latest i7's, but still... I'm not worried about performance on my machine, but rather on other people's machines.