In recent years, there were several important steps forward in the development of graphics hardware: shaders were introduced, GPUs became more general, and GPU performance increased drastically. In consequence, many new techniques appeared and novel rendering methods, such as deferred shading, became practical. e latter was one of the key factors in enabling a high light count, which added a never-before-seen realism to real-time graphics. e related tech demos were breathtaking, exhibiting enormous amounts of detail and complex surface properties. Skin started to look quite realistic, and even hair rendering reached a new level with image-based shading. Nonetheless, one e ect remained very di - cult to achieve: realistic shadows
