Adjustable Lighting?

I was just thinking about Shadows and such with FX and other shadowing apps.

I was wondering if it would be possible to have a program that would add a lighting effect from any corner or side and communicate that to a windowFX type shadowing program.

in other words you would have an effect like there was a light source coming from a corner or side of your desktop and the shadows would be cast oppisite the light source.

No Clue how this would go about being written as I am a much better idea man than I am a programmer but let me know what you think and if this is even practical.

Thanks

#31601

honestly doesn't seem practical.... are you high? i would regroup that idea.

#31610

Is there some way to set the brightness of the screen programmatically?

#31682

I remember I had an old game some years ago that kinda did that.

I think it was called Populous 3.

The text in the game had some noticable drop shadows.

And the mouse cursor acted as a light source (I think the cursor looked like a candle or something).

So when you moved the cursor around the text, the shadows would start to move according to the position of the cursor.

For example the text right underneath the cursor would have no shadow because the light was shining right above. The text on the farther end of the screen would have long shadows etc.

I thought that looked really cool back then.

#31689

The XP GUI guidelines state that the dropshadows should be 135 degrees, which means light sources 'should' always come from the top left corner. But it seems nobody really follows these guidlines, and thats prolly why windows is such a GUI disaster.

Chris

#31706