>> That is rendered in realtime on the PS3, see any triangles in the car 
>> models? 
> 
> That's part of what the whole Phong shading stuff is about, yes, if I 
> have the right term?  Where you don't shade the entire polygon the same, 
> but rather weigh each pixel's color based on the colors at the corners 
> of the triangles and the distance of the pixel from the corners?

Yes, you interpolate the surface normal between the corners to fake a 
curved surface. A bit like normal maps allow you to fake ripples, 
cracks, bumps and so forth.

Trouble is, normal tricks like this are just that - tricks. They don't 
work as well as the real thing does.

- You can smooth out the lighting, but the profile of the object will 
still have sharp edges, as will its shadow (if it has one).

- Where two objects intersect (e.g., something half submerged in water) 
you can plainly see the mesh.

- If you smooth out all the surface normals, you now can't have sharp 
edges where they're supposed to be sharp.

etc.

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