Abstract: Techniques for sectional terrain editing are described herein. In some examples, terrain associated with at least part of a virtual area of a video game may be sectioned into a plurality of terrain sections. Each of the terrain sections may have one or more associated data collections that store terrain data related to the sections with which they are associated. This may enable multiple different users to simultaneously edit different portions of terrain with the expectation and confidence that their edits will be successfully saved and will not conflict with edits made by other users. In some examples, each terrain section may have multiple different associated data collections, for example associated with different types of terrain editing operations. This may provide further efficiency by allowing multiple different users to check out and acquire locks on different terrain data for the same terrain section at the same time.

Abstract: Techniques for sectional terrain editing are described herein. In some examples, terrain associated with at least part of a virtual area of a video game may be sectioned into a plurality of terrain sections. Each of the terrain sections may have one or more associated data collections that store terrain data related to the sections with which they are associated. This may enable multiple different users to simultaneously edit different portions of terrain with the expectation and confidence that their edits will be successfully saved and will not conflict with edits made by other users. In some examples, each terrain section may have multiple different associated data collections, for example associated with different types of terrain editing operations. This may provide further efficiency by allowing multiple different users to check out and acquire locks on different terrain data for the same terrain section at the same time.

Abstract: Soft shadows can be rendered using a relatively expensive blur process by leveraging the structure provided for various user interfaces. The elements of a user interface may be arranged according to a hierarchical tree or scene graph. Certain related elements may be grouped into a shadow group that can cast and/or receive a shadow. When the root of the shadow group is designated, the other child elements of the group can be added automatically, up to the boundary of another shadow group. A single texture for a shadow group can be determined, blurred, and projected onto a corresponding receiving group. If the shadow needs to be regenerated due to motion, for example, only a single texture needs to be regenerated for the group instead of a shadow for each element. A throttling value may be set to further limit the number of shadows that can be regenerated per frame.