Transparency Depth Buffer

Hi guys

So I’ve been thinking about transparency and depth sorting, etc. lately…

I’m actually wondering why no one has updated the Z-buffer to include transparency?

It would be great for developers - no longer would we have to depth sort anything, and it would solve many problems (for instance, how to correctly deal with transparency in chunk based engines, such as Minecraft).

I’ve thought of a pretty simple algorithm that would work nicely, so it’s not like it’s a difficult task… of course, it would need to be implemented in hardware, and on an API level.

I’m surprised that this hasn’t been implemented many years ago, shortly after the shift to 64-bit Z-buffers. You’d think that would be the next obvious step.

Incredibly useful feature.

Cheers

There is alpha testing… but even then doesn’t actually solve anything. I don’t think your algorithm is fully thought up.