Halo:Reach Technical Analysis by Digital Foundry

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-halo-reach-tech-analysis-article

Highlights:

Reach manages to up the resolution to nigh-on full 720p, while retaining HDR and employing an inordinate amount of dynamic lights - every needle from the needler is a bespoke light source, for example. It strongly suggests that another major innovation is the implementation of some form of deferred rendering - something we can confirm for certain if our planned tech interview with the Reach team comes to fruition.

In comparison with Halo 3 and ODST, there's the sense that for the vast majority of the duration, Reach is the smoother game. While frame-rates in optimal conditions are identical, the new game's implementation of motion blur - both camera and per-object based - is markedly superior to what we saw in the old engine. Put simply, the game just looks that much more fluid in motion.

Noble Team first touches down, you're treated to the richness of the terrain, and the sheer scale offered by the mammoth draw distance - which Bungie reckons to be four times higher than Halo 3.

The poly count has increased, while the quality of the materials and the texture work has also received a welcome boost. Combined with the superior dynamic lighting system and the sheer amount of active light sources the game processes, Reach has a more refined, realistic look to the Spartans, the vehicles and of course the hordes of Covenant.

It's fair to say that there are many strengths and weaknesses to the temporal AA technique and we get a decent representative sample of them both in Reach. First up, the major positive is that the effect on far away scenery in particular can be quite extraordinarily good, and one of Reach's major accomplishments is the creation of massive, sprawling levels with tons of view distance. Temporal AA also works pretty well in reducing specular aliasing - something we noticed most prominently on the floating wreckage in the orbital shooting section.

Modelling of the faces is an enormous leap over what we saw in ODST, but the real success here is in terms of the animation. For key scenes, Bungie employed the use of a technique it calls "Faceover". Here, the dialogue is recorded first, then actors are brought in to lip-sync and the animation of their features is recorded, which after artist touch-up then animates the in-game model.

Evolutionary in many respects, sure, but where it counts Halo: Reach is the revolution we've been waiting for: a genuinely superb game with a combined feature set that pushes Xbox 360 performance to the bleeding edge.

Nice.

It's not the best looking game ever though. lol

lol I doubt Reach has in-game graphics like this does it:
http://halo.heavengames.com/albums/halo_wars_cgi_screens/Forge_and_Arbiter.jpg

? XD

DemonWolf wrote:

lol I doubt Reach has in-game graphics like this does it:
http://halo.heavengames.com/albums/halo_wars_cgi_screens/Forge_and_Arbiter.jpg

? XD

Image is forbidden?

DemonWolf wrote:

Nice.

It's not the best looking game ever though. lol

No one claimed it was. But Halo Reach accomplishes so much interms of technical prowess. 30+ unique enemy AI at once, 20 vehicles, advanced physics, detailed and diverse textures, huge amount of environments, large scale draw distances, a huge amount of light sources, etc.

It's up there with the best of the best.

DemonWolf wrote:

TheJubJub5721 wrote:

DemonWolf wrote:

lol I doubt Reach has in-game graphics like this does it:
http://halo.heavengames.com/albums/halo_wars_cgi_screens/Forge_and_Arbiter.jpg

? XD

Image is forbidden?

https://i.servimg.com/u/f25/14/35/37/82/forge_10.jpg

lol dude Halo Wars cutscenes were CG with some of the world's top animators.

DemonWolf wrote:

TheJubJub5721 wrote:

DemonWolf wrote:

lol I doubt Reach has in-game graphics like this does it:
http://halo.heavengames.com/albums/halo_wars_cgi_screens/Forge_and_Arbiter.jpg

? XD

Image is forbidden?

https://i.servimg.com/u/f25/14/35/37/82/forge_10.jpg

Hell no, Reach graphics are no where near that good