I think Halo: Reach for Xbox 360 actually doesn't do this, in theater mode you can pause and fly around to see individual droplets rendered based on distance but frozen in place.
They're actually little dots too, they only turn into blurry lines when in motion.
Probably but when you paused the theater mode the droplets were fixed in space and you could move them around very slowly by playing the clip at 0.1x-0.9% and everything in between.
They were dynamic enough and tied to the physical space enough that I can't tell if they were some kind of camera trick.
Project Gotham Racing 4 also had very impressive rain and weather effects for the time, it was a headline feature. I’m still hoping Microsoft revives the IP, but they seem to view Forza Horizon as their arcade racer for now.
I think Halo: Reach for Xbox 360 actually doesn't do this, in theater mode you can pause and fly around to see individual droplets rendered based on distance but frozen in place.
They're actually little dots too, they only turn into blurry lines when in motion.
Halo: Reach was a really impressive use of the hardware. Surely the drops are cenntered around the camera in the example you describe?
Probably but when you paused the theater mode the droplets were fixed in space and you could move them around very slowly by playing the clip at 0.1x-0.9% and everything in between.
They were dynamic enough and tied to the physical space enough that I can't tell if they were some kind of camera trick.
So cool.
ngl Reach's Forge mode was kind of the peak of AAA for me. it's all been downhill since that.
Project Gotham Racing 4 also had very impressive rain and weather effects for the time, it was a headline feature. I’m still hoping Microsoft revives the IP, but they seem to view Forza Horizon as their arcade racer for now.