Soft Shadows Benchmark 1.5.4

This OpenGL benchmark is focused on the pixel processing unit (pixel pipelines). A 3D scene with 5 objects and 3 dynamic lights is rendered. Each object casts soft shadows and the filtering of soft shadows is performed by a 7x7 filter. The benchmark exploits the latest 3D features like the vertex buffer objects (VBO), the framebuffer objects (FBO) and a GL 2.0 codepath. This benchmark is based on an experimental branch of the oZone3D engine (v3.x).

The filtering of the shadow edges is the biggest difficulty of soft shadows and it is a very GPU power consuming task. So this benchmark can be used to quickly know the performances in OpenGL 2.0 of the new graphics cards generation. Besides, the benchmark has two modes of running: with and without dynamic branching in the pixel shader. The mode with dynamic branching is new and allows to see the impact of this fundamental functionality of the shader model 3.0.

The benchmark offers two Options:

Use Dynamic Branching: enables the dynamic branching in the pixels shaders.
Fullscreen: starts the benchmark in fullscreen mode. In Benchmark Mode, the Fullscreen option is automatically selected.
Due to the large number of texture lookup in the pixel shaders, the Soft Shadows Benchmark requires at least a GeFORCE 6*** and higher or a Radeon X1*** and higher.