Wow Splinter Cell...

I remember playing the old version on Windows XP a few years ago and it was basically impossible to get the light / shadow effects working correctly.

The game originated on the Xbox and when it came out it used features of AMD and Nvidia cards of that time. As new cards and drivers came out these features don't work anymore.

In the later levels you can't see spotlights and things like that.

Has GOG.com addressed this at all?

The main "PC" Splinter Cell is Chaos Theory. An absolute GEM. All other releases have issues on the PC and are best played on the Xbox.

Well, I'm 100% sure you can't make the game look exactly like the xbox version, but it has another shadowing method, that (while having some glitches) works well even on modern PCs.

I tested it on my AtiAMD HD5770 card, and it worked as it was expected (few glitches here and there, but shadows worked and the game was playable - spotlights worked as well).
(Example of minor glitches here)

To be clear, GOG didn't do anything with the game, apart from patching it and setting this alternate shadow method as default.

"All other releases have issues on the PC and are best played on the Xbox."
...or a PC with a GeForce 3/4 card. Those display everything perfectly.

Thanks for your input!

I did finish the first game but at some stages you simply didn't see the search-spotlight.

I'm quite into Retro gaming and getting old Geforce cards is no issue :) Might look into this.

On the other hand it might just be cheaper and easier to get a Xbox.

Chaos Theory however is PC gaming at its finest. This game is seriously fantastic.