Major leaps in PS3 visuals for at least four more years

288w ago - Insomniac Chief Creative Officer thinks the PS3 has the most advanced hardware.

Insomniac Games is in a pretty unique position. The company isn't owned by Sony, yet is responsible for two of the PlayStation 3's most important Sony published titles: Resistance and Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction.

Speaking to VideoGamer.com in an exclusive interview to be published tomorrow, Insomniac's Brain Hastings has given his opinion on the current state of PlayStation 3 development and what's still to come.

Talking specifically about the recently released Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, Brian pointed out what the team has been able to do with the game engine this time around:

"The amount of action we're able to put on the screen at 60 frames per second really dwarfs what we were able to do a year ago at 30 frames per second," said Hastings. "What's most exciting is the way things are headed right now I think we'll see just as big a leap from our second generation engine to our third as we did from the first to second."

Looking ahead, he was equally as optimistic: "We're already seeing a big leap in what people are able to do with the PS3 now compared to a year ago, and we're going to see just as big a leap between now and the end of 2008," said the Insomniac Games Chief Creative Officer. "I think we're going to continue seeing major leaps each year in what people are able to do with the machine for at least three or four more years."

And how are future games going to look better? It seems it's all down to the use of the much talked about PlayStation 3 SPUs, which until now haven't been fully used by developers.

"The tech and gameplay teams have moved tons of things over to the SPUs that used to run on the PPU," said Hastings on the improvements made to Insomniac's game engine. "Collision and physics are entirely running on SPUs now, which allows us to put much more on the screen at once than we were able to with Resistance. Moving more and more code to the SPUs is an ongoing process and I think we'll continue to see major benefits from this for several more years."

Check VideoGamer.com on Friday for the full interview with Brian, where he discusses the PS3 in more detail, gives his views on the other systems and development of new IPs.