| Jizz_Beard_thePirate said: I still think Rainbow Road looks the best out of all the tracks, Its just... Fappppppppp In b4 PC people that can't appreciate art direction and say ploygons are better than art therefore MK8 sucks
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You'll have to excuse the graphics programmer in me that notices these things.
I watched this scene in the trailer video. You can tell the reflection maps on metal Mario and on vehicles are static even while they drive around this track which should have many lights reflecting from the ground and the scenery. It looks like it's using static cube maps.
So how does that stack as Gen 8 technology?
In Gen 5 games used static environment maps. It makes things look shiny and like they reflect the sky, but they do not update to reflect other cars, trees, or other scenery dynamically.
In Gen 6 games could do more detailed enviroment maps. The original Xbox had native cube maps. A basic cubemap effect looks like this:
Poor man's reflection would still use a static cube map, but many games rendered enviroment maps in real time, so you could see buildings, trees, lights reflect as you pass them. This is much more intensive as it requires rendering up to 6 views of the world.
Since this is an expensive operation, a game might produce a single cube map shared between all cars on screen for example, so the reflections are not very accurate but make a good effect.
In Gen 7 the basic formula of using cube maps did not change, but resolutions increased, and shader complexity increased to produce more realistic metalic paint and other materials.
In Gen 8 games like Killzone Shadowfall utilize multiple cube maps simultaneously, and screen-space raytracing effects. This allows reflections to really look connected to their source all over the screen.
And then in MK8 we are... back to doing static cube maps, somewhere around poor mans Gen 6 reflections.
Hmmm. It's not like it couldn't be better since Gen 7 consoles can do better. Lack of time, or just they thought it's good enough? Could be better by launch?
