>>68
I don't really know what you are trying to imply with "they are almost certainly normal-mapped". It's not unusual to use different methods for the world and models, and everybody uses normal-mapped models now.
Yeah that's pretty much exactly what I meant. Not sure where the confusion is. I mentioned it because the PSP and DS don't support normal mapping; their characters cannot look that good.
Normal mapping does not require pixel shaders; Doom3 worked just fine (image quality-wise) on a GeForce2 (with bump&specular)
Doom3 worked on a GeForce 2 because it disabled normal mapping on it. I know because I played it on one.
It is possible to do normal mapping in certain scenarios if the video card supports a few extensions; for example the OpenGL DOT3 extension is one of them, but it requires normal maps in world space (not relative to each polygon), so you cannot use it with animated characters. In the general case, no, it requires pixel shaders.