One of the most impressive elements of Sunset Overdrive is definitely its lighting, that gives the game a very unique look. Insomniac Games developed a new technology named "Light Linked List" or "LLL" for short, which allowed the developer to achieve definitely impressive results.

The technique was showcased during the "Advances in Real-Time Rendering" course at Siggraph 2014 by Senior Engine Programmer Abdul Bezrati, and works by storing "dynamic lights in a linked list accessible per-pixels for all the elements in a game scene."

Not only it speeds up the rendering of dynamic lights, but it also allows transparent effects and particles to receive lighting and shading.

Below you can see a picture of a scene rendered using traditional deferred lighting compared with and a few using LLL, and a video giving us a glimpse of the lighting effects that can be achieved with Insomniac's new tech.

Deferred Lighting

Light Linked List

//www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x24s407