Digital Foundry| Little Big Planet 2 Tech Interview

In Digital Foundry's last Saturday feature before the onslaught of E3, we talk to one of Media Molecule's tech masterminds, Alex Evans, about the origins of the company's association with Sony and how they got to grips with unique PlayStation 3 architecture.

We also go in-depth on the make-up of the proprietary engines that power both LittleBigPlanet and its forthcoming, hugely anticipated sequel.

[Icyhot]

Nice interview. Digital Foundry interviews are always informative.

On topic, I heard LBP2 was using the GOW3 lighting engine. Great to read it's gonna use MLAA technique. Gosh I hope KZ3 uses the same as well in fact all Sony first party should use it, it gives a much nicer and consistent picture. Also great to hear that all the previous LBP1 levels will also get the graphical updates with MLAA...

[Faztkiller]

I Digital Foundry interviews are great glad to see they are using MLAA Hope Multiplatform studios start using it on PS3 as well

[seij555]

LBP2 uses its own lighting engine but uses the same MLAA technique from GOW3.

[hesido]

It only has MLAA in common, which is not a lighting technique. It now has a forward renderer, like GOW3, tho, but it employs a world-space volumetric based lighting solution (unlike screen space solution which cannot account for offscreen objects)

[Nathan123]

This game has GOTY written all over it.

[Campy da Camper]

I bought the first one because me kid really wanted it. After "teaching" her some basic controls, she had to wrestle the controller from me. It got to the point she made me leave the room when she played because when I saw her die I would "offer" my assistance. That got old for her real quick.

[yewles1]

"I knew that we'd have these six SPU processors, and I'd heard rumours (incorrect in detail, helpful in spirit) that the vertex pipe was weak on the GPU. That doesn't really count as research, but it was enough of a nudge to just force us to build an engine where all the vertices are pushed through SPU."

Oh SHAAAAAMAAAAAN!!! I hope you're REEEEAAADING THIIIIIS!!!

*echo*

[asgharagha]

wowwwwwwwww what is going on with ps3 games????i watched kz3 trailer today and i couldnt believe its visualls ...i cant even imagine how beutiful gow3 or uncharted 2 will be !!!!!!

[asgharagha]

lbp with better anti aliasing will be perfect but i dont think they use gow 3 lighting because they must use deffered lighting like lbp1..i think kz2 anti aliasing was so good and if they dont use god 3 anti aliasing there will be no big problem but uncharted 2s aa was crap

[shadow2797]

Read the interview. No deferred anything. The entire engine is "forward" now. And I thought Uncharted 2's AA was fantastic. Not as good as MLAA, but better than most games.

[deadheadfred]

great read. DF always is informative.

[thewhoopimen]

Wow the last part where Alex mentions how he gets to sit down with Tech Directors from all the most talented first party studios blew me away. The ability to just share information like that is something that just doesn't exist anywhere else. No wonder Sony's First part is pushing so many envelopes with console dev.

[shadow2797]

"It's not something we've specifically tackled for LBP2 (yet), but one of the QA guys here has actually rebuilt a working Pop-It using the direct control devices in LBP2. In other words, he managed to make a create-in-gameplay mode, from scratch, using direct control and emitters. The possibilities of meta-game creation like that are quite mind-boggling..."

... blew my mind. Can you imagine the possibilities?