In particular I found the modified instancing of objects interesting. The jointed root instances and different texture blending on modified instanced looked nice too. And the normal map comparison is just good solid advice...
Because of game engines like UDK, Crysis, Steam, Unreal a lot of people think that most company's use an engine like this to build there games. Fact is most dont, there are a lot who use UDK and such but most use a "proprietary engine" for there game, which is very different from things such a UDK. In engines that are like…