Insomniac Responds To Three Speech Questions

As promised, Three Speech was able to get your questions over to the Insomniac team. Here's what they had to say:

1. I would like to know if Insomniac takes inspiration for some of its weapons (especially in Resistance) from real world weapons?

Nathan Fouts, Weapons Programmer: Absolutely. We like taking modern-day weapons as inspiration and building on those. We also like taking physics phenomenon and natural occurrences and trying to blend them with weapons. For instance, the air-fuel grenade was based on real weapons but also on slower fluid dynamics, while the Hedgehog grenade was based on "Bouncing Betty" mines and Cholla cactus. The look of a homing tag locked on the environment using the Bullseye was inspired by the classic Bohr model of the atom (with bullets homing on the tag mimicking swirling electrons).

[techie]

great interview!

[VirtualGamer]

8. How much does the progressive mesh differ from the original PS2 R&C-engine in terms of scale?

Al Hastings, Chief Technical Officer: Our level-of-detail techniques are actually much simpler on PS3 than they were on PS2. We made the decision to steer away from doing heavy amounts of geometry processing on the SPUs, so instead we’ve focused on techniques that can be implemented directly on the graphics chip. There are a lot of trade-offs with this approach, but ultimately we like the fact that it gives us more flexibility in our engine and it frees up the SPUs for gameplay related processing.

Considering how good the graphics look in R&C and that they are using the RSX more instead of the SPU's would that mean the RSX is more capable then people have given it credit for? I also wonder if Factor 5 is using this method as well for Lair?

[Whoooop]

Nice read. keep them coming virtual and deep.

[techie]

Of course it is. Everyone says Nvidia cards can't do AA and HDR...but RSX can in the PS3. Motorstorm HDR and 2xMSAA. Heavenly Sword HDR and 4xAA. RSX is more capable than people suppose, and devs can find their way in. Plus the HDR on RSX is some of the best, more accurate than most. Plus all of Motorstorms GFX were done using the RSX, without reliance on the Cell...thus if RSX can pull off Motorstorm graphics without aid, then what happens when it does have help from the SPU's?

Not sure VG. I'll ask tomorrow. :)

[VirtualGamer]

Ahh yes that right they did say that about Motorstorm I had forgotten about that. Do you know if they used streaming in Motorstorm? I know they did not implement it for RFoM but have plans to do so for the next in the series. Be interesting to see what kind of improvement they can get.

[Bhai]

C/C++ all the way baby. A great read, didn't know Insomniac has also
been dealing with progressive-mesh technology(alongside Lair). Another
thing is that its really cool to know so intimately how some of the
most wanted level devs like Insomniac and Naughty-Dog themselves see
into things, from time to time dependibilty on CELL or RSX for
rendering to planning out the real fun-stuff development according to
genre. Real nice stuff.

Need "Bubble-Love" please !

[Whoooop]

gave you some my friend..

[neogeo]

I'm starting to wonder what my PS3 can really do

[timmyp53]

.

[Vojkan]

We will find out more about RSX as time goes. Since it is Nvidia card, maybe in future there will be updates that will push RSX to do even more?! But than again Microsoft could do the same.

[DJ]

It's great that the hardware is flexible enough to fit each developer's needs, whether they want to keep the CPU and GPU within their respective functional boundaries, or cross over GPU work onto the SPUs.