I didn’t bother with shadow volume too much and this suggestion could be wrong.
As I read from various docs and papers and if I understand correctly, programmer should, for some 3d model, build copy of vertices and just modify some attribute in vertex copy. Also he should generate more faces - strips (Im, IXm - In, IXn; Im,In are indices of normal vertices; IXm, IXn are indices of vertices prepared for extrusion) for each edge aka. wedges. This small modification in vertex copy give information for vertex shader to know should extrude vertex or not.
My idea is to hw vendors make extension which can duplicate each glVertex call (or duplicate vertices in any vertex glDrawXXXX call) but only to set some even/odd flag in state. This even/odd value in gl state should be accesible from vertex shader.
How to use it?
App should detect silhouette and sent only this (silhouette) vertices. Extension should internally duplicate each vertex call, and update even/odd state. Vertex shader will be executed twice with different flag state. So even/odd state on beginning is 0. In first call, flag is 0 - vertex shader will transform vertex as usual. Now, state is changed to 1. In second call flag is 1 - vertex shader will transform and extrude passed vertex. Set flag back to 0.
I know that new HW have several vertex pipes so it could be difficult to manage state for each pipe. Maybe some wired read-obly even/odd vertex attribute can help.
Is it big problem to implement such extension?
yooyo