Why EA Is Lazy: a technical view

[That Guy]

i dont think any game normal maps anything BESIDES characters... it involves taking higher detail models and making lower detail ones from them, and last i read, games like farcry and riddick used them on characters... terrain is still too costly, and even UT2004 had preset (pre-built/rendered) lighting for most areas of the maps... doom 3 is the first game with real time unified lighting and shadowing from what i can tell...

unreal 3 will have true 3-d bump mapped terrain (brick walls etc), but there's no point to normal map flat surfaces...

but the idea that the gaming industry is moving away from pre-scripted sequences to the use of engines is right (ie all those .bik movies being replaced by in game sequences), and in that respect EA is behind...

btw, ragdoll physics would mean they'd need to move from vertex animations to rigging and bone animations systems, so they'd have to remake their tool chains (in all likelyhood) in addition to models/rigging/animations/uvw maps/skins (textures have to be remapped and laid too), so why bother doing all that when they move more and more units every year??? heh...