Halo 3 is starting to look really good!

In Bungie's latest weekly update, Fank O Conner talks about the graphics and the technologies they are using to make Halo 3 look so good.

 

Last night in our internal Alpha test, we played a couple of the new game types – and we had a blast. As ever, I was focused on backgrounds. The one returning “homage” favorite looks almost unrecognizable to me now. Well that’s not true. Sure, whatever that map is, it has new features, places to fight and run and drive and fly, but graphically it’s unrecognizable. One section had sunlight filtering through glass and picking up motes of dust or haze and I was checking it out when Colm ran up behind me and smashed in my brains with a vicious and ungentlemanly melee attack.

And they just implemented the new “glass shader” which is especially visible on shiny Forerunner glass. The floors of the base in Valhalla use it to great effect – and it reflects in real time whatever’s facing it, while simultaneously refracting stuff very slightly (since it’s supposed to be “perfect”). It looks fantastic, and is another hypnotic feature that ensures I get killed while staring at it. It’s not much of an excuse either; “Hey ah was starin’ at some glass.”

 

You can read the rest of what he has to say here!