'A classic fake reflection where it's just the same room under a glass floor': I no longer trust my senses after reading this gamedev thread breaking down cost-effective graphical sorcery

If you've ever trundled around on the back of a Warthog in the original Halo, you'll remember the way its tires seemed to melt into noisy blur as they got going. Turns out, there's no actual blur effect being applied—the game just swaps out a normal tire texture with one that looks hazy whenever the tires are spinning fast. It's economical, but effective.

That's the running theme with a thread game developer and designer on Weird West Joe Wintergreen started on Bluesky last Friday, which...