10 Ways Video Games Blew Your Mind (Without You Even Realising)

Driveclub was a divisive game on launch, with ire directed at its unfair opponent AI and a struggling online component, but one thing critics could firmly agree on was its stellar visual presentation. A year after its release, a dynamic weather patch pushed this even further.

A cut above even the most visually impressive racing games before it, a huge amount of effort was poured into Driveclub's extreme weather conditions, the like of which had never been seen before. Raindrops, rather than simply being thin semi-transparent lines, are millions of individual droplet particles each directly affected by the game's physics and lighting engine, and post-processing such as motion blur.

The resulting droplets which then rest on your car's windshield and bonnet are similarly dynamic. Instead of pre-baked animated textures, the droplets react to the vehicle's velocity and direction in real time, streaming down the windshield whilst static but causing realistic streaks when in motion. The windscreen wipers even then leave realistic streaks and pools when activated.

The snow effects take this further, and when driving in a blizzard at night, the combination of near-total darkness and a blinding onslaught of snow particles reduced visibility to just about zero.

Whether that's a good thing or not is down to the player.