The Technology Behind Insomniac’s Spider-Man

The amazing John Linneman from Digital Foundry did a thorough analysis of Spider-Man, showcasing a lot of the technology that powers this impressive game.  Here’s the video.

The researchers highlight the exceptionally high level of detail, superb texture work, reflections and clever use of subsurface scattering. They’ve also compared the videos, which were released before the game was released, and the footage from the final commercial build. They believe that the texture resolution is relatively the same, but the main change comes from the suit material. The E3 demo had a more shiny, reflective material, and the final suite looks more cloth-like, which kind of makes sense.

The animation is the king here. The game features an impressive number of animations. Everything is super fluid, fast and realistic. Cutscenes also look superb.

The environments feature a great number of details. There are no grey boxes you fly through. Building facades are lovingly designed, everything is covered in high-resolution textures. Some shops even have fully modeled interiors, with people inside them. Plus there are a lot of different areas scattered around the city. Not to mention the variety of great interior levels with a lot of small touches. There are even building interiors you can see from the windows!!

The water, light, HDR – there’s a lot more to learn about the Spider-Man tech!