Just thought I'd chime in here and say that shadow mapping with avatars IS possible, with a trick or two: http://www.x-tatic.net/images/AvatarShadowMapBox.jpg

Hahahaha. Do you do kids parties too?

You need to release all default pool resources before reset, that includes render targets. Unfortunately XNA does not do it for you.

A similar question has already been asked. See here: http://www.blade3d.com/Default.aspx?tabid=75&g=posts&t=964

The framework itself seems to be using a really old compiler too. I noticed this when trying to use 'break' to exit a branch, the keyword is not even recognised! Also it seems to be unrolling all the branches all the time, making the shaders incredibly slow. This is using CompileEffectFromSouce using optimization and prefer flow ...

[quote user="XTatic"]I have this problem too, it is when the presentation parameters have full screen flag set to true. Unfortunately the XNA Framework seems to be swallowing the error code thrown by native, so we can't find out what is wrong. [/quote] Managed to get it showing in DebugView, D3D reports invalid display mode, ...

I have this problem too, it is when the presentation parameters have full screen flag set to true. Unfortunately the XNA Framework seems to be swallowing the error code thrown by native, so we can't find out what is wrong.

Yes, I have tried DX Debug, and it gave no error messages, however there must be something being thrown by native that the XNA Framework is hiding. I would have hoped they would at least throw the error code in their InvalidOperationException so we can check against DX SDK error codes :(

Creating a new Vertex Declaration every draw isn't a good idea either, you only need to do it once.

HerrUppoHoppa is probably right, what is killing you here is the GetData off the render target, there is no need to do that on a render target, you can just get the texture off it. Other than that, avoid recreating a new RT and DS unless absolutley necessary.