I put together a glow demo thing. You can download it here. I used pixel shader 2 for the blurring but I'll add a multi-pass shader to support version 1.1 later. As it stands right now I'm doing too many set-render-target calls but I'll fix that after I whip up a texture copy function. Currently I'm bouncing the glow image quad off of two textures instead of rendering to one and copying to the other. It looks ok though I'm not that happy about the blur. I messed around with a box-type blur but settled on the blur horizontal then blur vertical method.

Here are some screens - click for a larger view. If you have already downloaded the material editor then you can easily change the look of the shuttle car by opening the static mesh included with the glow download. It only uses basic materials so yes even Coder can play with it. [smile]



[edit]: I created a texture copy function using Device->StretchRect() and used it in the blur phase. While this decreased the number of set-render-target calls it effectively cut my frame rate in half. Oh well at least now I've got a copy texture function. [smile] I was surprised as it is recommended to use this function in the gamasutra "Real-Time Glow" paper. I think they prefer the StretchRect() because it allows texture filter changes during the copy. I wonder if it could just be my card's implementation slowing things down.

[edit2]: As mentioned by johnhattan, in the remarks, the head lights were a bit dim. Now they are bright and a different color. Funny thing is by making these changes, I stumbled across a way to significantly decrease drawing calls, remove a shader pass, and control the glow by modifying the materials on the shader_glow static model. Here is a screen of the new version.