A Novel 2.5D Shadow Calculation Algorithm for Urban Environment

This paper proposes a novel efficient algorithm to calculate a 2.5D shadow map based on a coherent mathematic formula concerning the sun's position in a specific location, date and time. This work attempts to improve the understanding of the underlying equations and data structures from an analytical, a geometric and a dynamical systems perspective. By using scalable tensor data structure and inherent parallelism offered by data-flow based implementation the proof of concept is developed to test the technical feasibility of the proposed algorithm. Results show noticeable and significant improvements in overall performance keeping accuracy at negligible differences.