SimonT those are the decal planes. That is why they are overlaying geometry in place of the stripes. They are decals... Bungie is famous for using floaters like this for the nice crisp text and stripes.
From what i saw in game it was for higher resolution decals so things didn't look naff up close. Which actually worked pretty damn well. :) Very cool work. Must've been a blast to work on such a popular title. :) edit: bah, should have refreshed.
So how did you solved the flickering problem of geometry which is very near to each other? And how did you hide, that the "decal"-plane is a bit in the front of the ship geometry? I mean, if you would look straight from the side, wouldn't you see that it's floating in front of the ship?
Hey thanks again everyone. @ SimonT - That was all taken care of engine side as artists we didn't resolve that. We just flagged the geo as a decal and the Z sorting was taken care of. @CW - I don't really have time-frames man. A lot it was iterative and involved other disciplines as well.
@Davison3d - Thanks! @Skamberin Thanks dude. It was in the intro trailer and gets blown up just outside swordbase. The used to drop that one but switched to the classic on instead there. @XenoKratios Not going to be working on the next game. I was contract at Bungie and have since gotten a job working on an unannounced…