How Superliminal’s Perspective Tech Works

Pillow Castle’s programmer Phil Fortier detailed how he and the team designed and implemented the mind bending technology found in Superliminal. The main highlight was forced perspective, which causes in-game objects to be the same exact size as they appear on camera. To keep this visually believable, light rays are constantly projected on the object, even simple shapes like boxes and balls. This keeps shadows consistent regardless if the item is tiny or massive. Additionally, sound effects also scale with the object’s size, making realistic soft taps or loud clanging thuds as they hit a surface.

 

The other major feature included trompe-l’oeil: drawing two dimensional art to appear third dimensional at certain angles. Fortier revealed that they mostly did this in reverse by first creating the model and then rendering it as a background image. However, it was important to make sure that lightning perfectly matched, as some trompe-l’oeil illusions could seamlessly transform into interactive environments. This could lead designers to create puzzles using both real geometry and optical illusions.    

Kurtis Seid, NoobFeed
Twitter