If I had a PS3…
…I would keep this gorgeous music “visualizer,” apparently a feature of the 2.10 firmware update, up and running all the time.
Over at Gamasutra, developer Q-Games’ technology chief James McLaren says this about the console’s latest little gewgaw, appropriately titled Gaia:
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.
Very, very cool, even if it doesn’t actually react to music. I’d love to have something like this spinning on my desktop.