James McLaren on PS3 Gaia visualizer: Origins, Blue Marbles, updates

James McLaren on PS3 Gaia visualizer: Origins, Blue Marbles, updates - Image 1An interview with Q-Games‘ chief of technology James McLaren reveals some interesting details on Gaia – the PS3’s new music visualizer‘s name – such as its origins, its inspiration from NASA, and the studio’s future project plans. More at the full article.

James McLaren on PS3 Gaia visualizer: Origins, Blue Marbles, updates - Image 1Wondering who’s in charge of the gorgeous Earth music visualizer that came along with the PS3’s recent firmware 2.10 update?

A recent interview with Q-Games‘ chief of technology James McLaren reveals some interesting details on Gaia – the visualizer’s name – such as its origins, its inspiration from NASA, and the studio’s future project plans.

For starters, McLaren explained that Gaia had actually started out as one of two possible animations being developed by Q-Games for the PS3’s bootup screen. The project that eventually won out is the waving cloth background you see every time you turn your system on.

This didn’t stop the dev teams from polishing up Gaia, McLaren explained, which finally debuted as the console’s new music visualizer. It will be interesting to note that the Gaia that made it to the console is actually a trimmed version was due to Flash ROM restrictions. Getting on to the meat of the matter, McLaren also elaborated on Q-Games process of developing Gaia, which used no less than resource material from NASA:

They have some data that they’ve patched together from hundreds of satellite passes over the earth, which is really top-notch quality, as you can see. We really owe NASA a debt of gratitude for the data, as without it we wouldn’t be able to produce something that looks this good.

This representation of the earth is a 3D model with some shaders and SPU trickery going on. We tried to accurately model the earth’s atmosphere and have all the correct highlights on the oceans, etc. The texture data is sourced from the NASA Blue Marble project. They have some data that they’ve patched together from hundreds of satellite passes over the earth, which is really top-notch quality, as you can see. We really owe NASA a debt of gratitude for the data, as without it we wouldn’t be able to produce something that looks this good.

So what’s in store for the latest addition for the PS3? McLaren states that while they’re still unsure on the matter of updates, they’re interested in the notion of providing more user customizability. He ended the inquiry by hinting at the inclusion of the full Blue Marble dataset Gaia was based on.

Via Gamasutra

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