Tämä tulee aika myöhään, mutta tässä olisi joitain faktoja siitä, miksi Halo 2 näyttää siltä, miltä se näyttää, olette varmaan kaikki jo tämän lukeneet, mutta tässä se nyt on copy pastena Team Xboxin sivuilta:
One of the biggest advances in HALO 2 will be the new graphics engine. A radical change in the rendering philosophy makes possible -- as the teaser trailer probed, real-time graphics that are almost undistinguishable from pre-calculated rendering. To better understand why HALO 2 looks as good as DOOM III, the other benchmark in real-time graphics, you have to first understand the change in the rendering method.
"Traditional real-time graphics utilizes light maps or what is known as vertex lighting. Although this method is faster and more flexible, it lacks resolution and it doesnt work for dynamic objects. Projected textures dont give much detail for the surface and thats why you need to increase the polygons count in the models geometry in order to improve the detail.
The trick in Per Pixel Lighting is to use textures as data. These textures, called normal maps, contain information about the direction each pixel is facing relative to a light source. And since the lighting information comes from pixels (picture elements) which are the smallest units that can be displayed on the screen, per pixel lighting creates lighting and other custom shading effects at a pixel level. Thus, the quality of per pixel lighting is far superior to previous techniques"
Näin se homma etenee.