Disney's new racing video game at core of big bet on The Associated Press is a Q&A with Graham Hopper, head of Disney's game division, about their future plans. Hopper declines to comment about a possibly canceled Turok sequel, though Joystiq offers the latest indications that a dino-hunter sequel has indeed been canned. The project he does discuss is Split/Second, the racing game revealed recently in a Gametrailers segement, which we mistakenly took for a console only title, missing the PC-DVD logo at the end of the trailer (sorry about that). Here's a bit on the game's advanced lighting effects:

One pillar of Disney's strategy involves new twists in the way the games look. "Split/Second," for example, feels more like a movie — with cars surging through dissipating smoke while light refracts through exploding buildings — thanks to developments in graphics-rendering technologies such as "deferred lighting."

Video games have traditionally have been able to appear as if the action has one or two sources of lighting. "Split/Second" uses a "deferred renderer" that can generate hundreds of virtual light sources, including ones on exploding particles of buildings.

That kind of realism is backed up by "fluid dynamics" — a movement technology that allows "Split/Second" to flow more smoothly.
For instance, smoke and dust generated by explosions in the game are realistically generated so that "cars can punch through the smoke," said Nick Baynes, game director at Black Rock.

And "if you are at the back of the pack," he said, "you'll get a clearer view of the world in front of you than the car who's had to drive through it first."