but jcl, what approach will you consider for the softshadows for 3dgs? (which i hope will soon get a new xx% state in the forecast)

in the shaderX3 book there are a lot of nice techniques dealing with it (which look like what frank has shown on the right side

or Shadow Accumulation ( pdf )

http://www.uni-koblenz.de/~cg/Studienarbeiten/SA_Kipermann.pdf

this looks interesting, too: http://www.sci.utah.edu/~bavoil/research/shadows/melissa/