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    <p>Well considering that DirectX and OpenGL have both moved towards a shader-only (i.e. no fixed-function) system, the answer to your "which effects are only possible with shaders" question could be "everything". </p> <p>Some techniques that I believe were not possible/feasible without programmable shaders (or by using very specific black-box APIs) though, are:</p> <ol> <li>Per-pixel lighting</li> <li>Shadow mapping.</li> <li>GPU skinning (i.e. matrix palette skinning) for animated meshes.</li> <li>Any of the various post-process effects that are common today: bloom, SSAO, depth of field, etc.</li> <li>Deferred shading.</li> <li>Implementing arbitrary/"other" lighting models like Oren–Nayar, Cook–Torrance, Rim-Lighting, etc.</li> </ol> <p>and the list can go on, and I'm sure some people will disagree with my assessment that these couldn't be achieved with fixed-function functionality (through hacks or various fixed-functions extensions). </p> <p>What it boils down to is, before programmable shaders, a given effect had to be implemented in the hardware/driver by the vendor and it and it had to be something that could be reasonably expressed through the API. Now you can execute effectively any user-defined code you want (within the constraints of the different shader stages and other limitations of the hardware) so you have the flexibility to greatly customize your rendering pipeline and invent new techniques as you see fit.</p> <p>Take a look at the first couple GPU Gems books (which can be read for free on Nvidia's website) to get a feel for the types of techniques that were showing up once programmable hardware was available.</p>
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    1. COAlthough I agree with the answer, here's a little remark: shadow mapping is actually possible with fixed/function GL (don't know about D3D) and there's also an extension for matrix palette skinning (and I'm sure D3D has it, too). But these are surely not that flexible as a shader (and the skinning extension is not supported widely).
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