When i saw our last screenshots with apache there were a lot of noise caused by self shadowing which made me little bit angry
![Smiley :)](http://forum.outerra.com/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
. So I started to looking for a problem and I made some improvements to filtering algorithm. The new algorithm removes all undesirable noise which you can see on all previous screenshots. I also used Nvidia's hardware 2x2 PCF extension to raise number of random samples from 8 to 32 which makes transition between light and shadow more smooth. The final performance hit was little surprise for me because it was slightly faster than previous version with 8 samples which is probably caused by better cache utilization.
Detailed algorithm description will come later when we will have a little more time...
Finally here are a few screenshots with results.
new version of old screenshot
![Smiley :)](http://forum.outerra.com/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
![](http://www.outerra.com/shots/s_apache_sm_01.jpg)
![](http://www.outerra.com/shots/s_apache_sm_03.jpg)
![](http://www.outerra.com/shots/s_cessna_sm_01.jpg)
and one detailed shot
![](http://www.outerra.com/shots/s_cessna_sm_02.jpg)
it also helps to remove the noise from curved surfaces
![](http://www.outerra.com/shots/s_cessna_sm_03.jpg)
I almost forgot video
![Cheesy :D](http://forum.outerra.com/Smileys/default/cheesy.gif)
[youtube2]9_UyXHUd9gk[/youtube2]