Creating Convincing Tube Interior Illusion With Parallax

As Emilio López put it, "Everything in rendering is smoke and mirrors, except smoke and mirrors, particularly smoke in mirrors." Thomas van den Berg from noio games shared a really fascinating application of a trick you've likely encountered many times, or perhaps even tried yourself, though it's traditionally used to fake window interiors.

Generally, this is a cheaper approach than using real geometry. However, in this case, the developer estimates it may actually be slightly more expensive than the "real" version, but the difference is negligible, and this method offers some nice advantages:

This technique is widely used in open-world games, and if you haven't come across it before, check out our article based on Joost van Dongen's detailed breakdown of the method.