These are the results of my experiments with the spherical mapping. Actually, the advantages of using a single texture to generate environment maps are many, compared to the potential drawbacks (even if they are as little or ignoreable as this technique has) They can be stored on texture atlases and a single texture could be used to store many at the same time, without the need of texture arrays, for instance.
This demo also features IImage manipulation. An aspect that i think is overlooked on the main examples, as it is somehow left as a secondary tool, and a helper, as Irrlicht mainly focuses on the hardware drivers, leaving the software manipulation abandoned. For instance, a filtered 2D reading from the software images could be a nice feature to add. And many other things i sure forget to mention.
Also, there is code for both OpenGL and DirectX, so, in theory, the demo should be able to compile and run under any environment, i haven't provided any projects, only a windows executable, a compiled, unmodified, version of Irrlicht, the data directory, which just uses some of the media files from the Irrlicht distribution, and the source code in the source directory. Any part of it is freely useable.
http://omegasection.g0dsoft.com/backup/ ... rlicht.zip
Anyway! i hope you find them interesting!
Create a project on your preferred work environment (code::blocks, DevC++, Visual Studio Express...) add that source code, link the irrlicht library and you should be done with ease.
