First i nearly finished dynamic objects handling. Placement of these objects is read from a lightwave scene and set with objects class. Lighting of objects is working too. They are lit by the near lights. But still no shadow casting.
Problem i have with more lights is that pixelshader(combined bump and spec lighting) slows down engine a lot. Are there optimization flags i missed [rolleyes] [help]? May be the shader is just too long...
Second thing i did last week is to finalize Bloom effect.
I do not like it if whole scene would be overbright so i did not apply it too strong.
On back of hostage you can see it best.
Sadly, nothing hugely special here; per-pixel effects can get expensive very easily [smile]
Without more details it's difficult to say, but you can add in optimized routes for higher shader models and do multiple lights per pass (commonly done using ps_3_0).
It's also quite common to hear about LOD shader effects. For objects close to the camera you use the full-resolution pixel shader, for middle-distance you disable bump mapping, for far distance you switch to per-vertex. The idea being that the further the geometry/pixels are from the screen the less likely the end-user is to notice...
hth
Jack