Still no reflection in his visor, doubt Raytracing is in. I also reckon his armor should be more reflective to get more pop, especially when running down a hallway with lights and ember flickering, dancing over it for that nextgen feel. If we can get RT on Clank then it should be done on Chief also.
Could be selective RT or hacky forms of it. It’s sort of silly there is a reflection on it from a military standpoint, everyone could see you a mile away. It’s why soldiers wear their watches inwards to not reflect light into their enemies and give away position but I digress.
the welding of 117 was very accurate diffuse reflection with the particles also reflecting and losing their luminance in the reflection as it moves away from the welding point but keeping bright in the light; RT is capable of this (very expensive to do diffuse reflections); traditional T&L maybe? I believe for nonRT to compute this would have to be a very specifically designed hack would be required for this and that part only. Because chiefs armour is not a reflective surface. And you’re only going to achieve that type of proper reflective lighting as specific angles and a dark room setup like that. A diffuse reflection is not easy to pull off.
so I’m not convinced it’s a hack, a lot of work for a teaser.
and the other thing here is that the smoke is lit by the welding, or in this case a dynamic light and it's tinted blue by the welder. That's something I haven't seen before. Which when the main light goes on, you still see a tint of blue as the welder goes off and then it gains the colour of black smoke as the standard lights turn on.
And I dare say, it almost looks like the smoke from welding is also reflected, but this is harder to tell.
All in all, this is not something I've personally seen in the generation of in-engine type effects, even if this fidelity is only for cutscenes, I've not seen it.
I need to put out the bat symbol from some extra experience from senior rendering members here to weigh in. And our resident game engine inspector
@Dictator