One question though, sorry about the dumb ass question but what does this mean in comparison to regular anisotropic filtering on the PC?: "and a few specific per-instance illumination models like the anisotropic surface"???
It has no connection to aniso filtering, which is a texture-level operation. What I was referring to was the fact that certain things have lighting models which are dependent on direction of elements in the surface (i.e. anisotropic
illumination). In the case of Lara's hair, for instance, we do illumination based on the direction of the hair strands at that pixel and also things like getting the multiple speculars -- one off the surface shifted closer to the light relative to the root and another that bounced around inside and was filtered by the pigments and is shifted away from the light relative to the root. Something that's relatively simple in practice but because it also requires a fair bit of additional setup work, it's just yet another example of instruction count limiters that, when put up against god knows how many other ways to cut back, was considered lower priority (especially since it was so sparsely utilized).
Are you at liberty to discuss the motion blur technique? (or perhaps a less dangerous comparison to Lost Planet's velocity maps?)
Hmmm... wasn't really involved with that as it was something added to the base template for the material system, and that's something that kind of just suddenly appeared out of nowhere when looking at it from my perspective. The filter itself is pretty ordinary, but I haven't looked in depth as to how the parameters are determined. I have my doubts as to just how much liberty I would be at to speak of it. I'd much more likely defer to some of the Dutchies at Nixxes to be more certain of who did what there.
I'm seriously annoyed at the moment. In the level "Jan Mayen Island", in the room of the last hammer (I assume you know which one) - the one with the short cut scene. How can you climb up in the room to reach the last hammer?
To be honest, I am not really sure, as I've never actually played through any level in the game. I've only cheated my way to specific points so that I could test some specific features/bugs (and those cheats are removed for the final game because they allow you to do things which can crash any game). I've at least *seen* most of the levels, though, so I'm guessing from your description, that you're talking about the room with several pendulum-swinging hammers and a long stone bridge... And while I don't know the actual solution myself (never actually needed to try), I don't think the solution you mentioned is actually the right one -- I've never heard of needing to climb a chain in there -- there are plenty of cases of solutions that *look* viable, but actually aren't, and several cases where solutions don't look viable, but actually are valid play paths. It's a hard thing to get away with when you're talking about a game that is meant to be that way, but releasing that game in an era of gaming where the "primrose path" style of level design is considered the gold standard (unless of course, you're doing an open-world game like GTA)
I have a question though. Why is it that there seems to be significantly more going on in the PS3 version about the 360 version? Rain, water covered surfaces, reflectve highlights on walls, etc. Is this due to use of SPU's for specific rendering techniques, over and above what is rendered on the GPU?
Hmmm... I'm not sure on that -- I'm only aware of major advantages for the PS3 in the area of physics and animation. Rendering is definitely not one of those. SPUs are not used for actual *rendering* in any way... they're only used in a rendering context as a sort of rescue mechanism to save you from feeding the GPU unreasonably.
Most of these problems are somewhat associated with the camera that at times makes it even more difficult...
Best thing in general to do with the camera is minimize monkeying with it in general. One of the common tests we did late in playthrough testing was actually to play the game with a MacGyvered "thumbstick mute" of sorts taped to the controller that prevents you from moving the right thumbstick altogether.
