Something I have to mention is the geometry detail in the assets, because it's just very very good.
Just look at the X-wing. Most people would probably call it a crude blocky design, especially compared to something like the Naboo starfighters; but the truth is that there's a lot of complexity and curves even in the basic design (note the engines and guns - 3 elements made of different sized cylinders with insets and bevels and such) and then there's a ton of greeble detail on top of it. One of the first CG models I've built in 3ds max was obviously an X-wing, and I've had a very hard time to get it to a reasonable quality level, because of the limitations of both the hardware and the software tools of the time.
Now look at this:
It's basically a perfect recreation of the original practical model, you can't see any jagged edges or obviously faked normal map impostors. If it wasn't for the somewhat messy AA and MB, it could even be sold as a New Hope movie asset, and it looks pretty damn better than the stuff we've seen in Rebel Assault.
And on top of that, the terrain has an insane level of detail as well.
Now we can obviously point out that there aren't that many things in this scene, a couple of starfighter models and the terrain, so an average 2-5 million triangle count would still allow hundreds of thousands of polygons for each asset. That's actually in the same ballpark that I've been working with back then. Funnily enough, I still have the images :O and oh man, this was made in 1999!
It's really interesting to see how in less than 20 years, a real-time video game has become a LOT better looking then what I've spent so much time working on
The lighting in particular is so much better; and yet the AA still suffers.
