Trip to Madame Tussauds confirmed! Looks pretty cool actually :)

Would those customizations be locked because it's an old build or because u have to unlock em by playing online and ranking up!

You unlock them by completing campaign missions but as this is Epsilon and has only one campaign mission, I imagine most of them aren't available anyway.

No, his specific comments were very accurate.He obviously did watch the videos DC, so chill.Yeah, most of the static geometry seems to have prebaked shadows. They are cheap and really HQ. Unless your world lighting conditions change position then there are good arguements to use them, especially if you have a large world. Of course you then have to balance in dynamic objects to work right (and avoid issues like dynamic object shadows passing through and contrasting in intensity).

Ditto on the spot lights. I noticed this and commented on it about the Warthog headlights. I was pretty shocked to not see shadows cast in the bunker. The self shadows also have some issues with contrast with the cast shadow (different techniques is my guess) and dark/light side contrast and shadows. I am sure part of this all goes back to the HDR model and trying to emphasize it without overblooming everything.

Part of the reason devs avoid using certain techniques is because they are new and a lot of people are unfamiliar with them (they say you are nitpicky when a trained eye doesn't see them; then when become standard everyone expects them). A classic exaple is 3 years ago Carmack argued that most people wouldn't notice self shadows, hence it wasn't worth the cost. Which is the second point. Quality shadows and point lights are expensive. The more objects you have and higher poly count and these can break your game. This is one reason CoD4 uses a lot of normals and low poly models--it allowed them to invest more in lighting/shadows and particles while keeping a high framerate. Ever game makes compromises.

As for the questions about PS3 games... I do talk about them. But we have enough people bashing Sony and our newfound PS3 friends that we don't need me chimming in. And Sony just doesn't have the games I am interested in--and fewer games in general--and most of my indy friends are on the MS side of the court.

But I do say stuff, people just miss it. I didn't have so flattering things to say about KZ2 when the USAToday shot surfaced.A number of new games do those. Bloom can be independant but is pretty much necessary for HDR. Most new games use an HDR technique of some sort. Dynamic shadows are pretty common, too. Now some games cheat--they will have 3 or 4 shadow techniques doing different things. So sometimes they are lower quality (like muzzle flashes in KZ2 cast nasty low quality shadows). A game like Crysis uses a lot of different shadowing techniques, including VSM which was also featured in FM2 and will be used in Little Big Planet. VSM are a good way to get nice, soft edges with shadow maps at a reasonable cost.

Anyhow, Heavenly Sword has HDR, and dynamic objects both cast and receive dynamic shadows. The only glaring issue I have seen is that in large open areas the shadowmaps aren't quite big enough for the expansive screen space so in these open areas the aliasing (shadow crawl) is pretty bad. Not quite as bad as seen in the older Mass Effect stuff (my eyes, my eyes! they bleeeeed) but still distracting.

Personally, once we get quality lighting and shadowing techniques and start getting dynamic indirect lighting models, and hardware fast enough to do these techniques in good quality on large scale games, I won't be quite as interested in technology because the focus will be squarely on art.

Right now, 75% of what makes a game look good is art (direction/design coherance, quality, variety) and the last 25% is hardware and appropriately using the hardware. Some really technically excellent games look *horrible* and some of people's favorite games use many older techniques (not a bad thing as you can get good IQ levels... see GeOW).

But lighting is a mixed bag and does have a lot of "last gen" technical implimentations. Sure, they have HDR. But does that automatically mean it isn't a mixed bag when you don't cast any shadows from any point lights?

And I think it was a pretty fair response. Halo 3 is finished so I would hope that the AI is as well.But the lighting is the best looking part of the game--so calling it "last gen" sounds like we're assuming the rest of the game looks "last gen" as well.. which it obviously doesn't, in many ways.

Boo!