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Halo Alpha
HR Allspark

The Cube inside a Covenant cruiser.

These shapes that are usually found outside of a map is a game developing method used to texture a map. You cannot go through them and it would not end well if you deleted it through hacking.

Cube

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Cube.

In computer graphics, cube mapping is a method of environment mapping that uses a six-sided cube as the map shape. The environment is projected onto the six faces of a cube and stored as six square textures, or unfolded into six regions of a single texture. The cube map is generated by first rendering the scene six times from a viewpoint, with the views defined by an orthogonal 90 degree view frustum representing each cube face.[1]

In the majority of cases, cube mapping is preferred over the older method of sphere mapping because it eliminates many of the problems that are inherent in sphere mapping such as image distortion, viewpoint dependency, and computational efficiency. Also, cube mapping provides a much larger capacity to support real-time rendering of reflections relative to sphere mapping because the combination of inefficiency and viewpoint dependency severely limit the ability of sphere mapping to be applied when there is a consistently changing viewpoint.

Sphere

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Sphere

In computer graphics, sphere mapping (or spherical environment mapping) is a type of reflection mapping that approximates reflective surfaces by considering the environment to be an infinitely far-away spherical wall. This environment is stored as a texture depicting what a mirrored sphere would look like if it were placed into the environment, using an orthographic projection (as opposed to one with perspective). This texture contains reflective data for the entire environment, except for the spot directly behind the sphere. (For one example of such an object, see Escher's drawing Hand with Reflecting Sphere.)To use this data, the surface normal of the object, view direction from the object to the camera, and/or reflected direction from the object to the environment is used to calculate a texture coordinate to look up in the aforementioned texture map. The result appears like the environment is reflected in the surface of the object that is being rendered.

Locations

There are many locations to view these "maps"

  • The first method is to use the Pelican/Phantom easter egg in New Alexandria. Without boundaries, the player/players can travel out of the map and through the Covenant Cruiser Models.
  • The second is to use Theater mode. On the Pillar of Autumn, the player can lift the camera up and through the Covenant Cruiser.
  • The sphere can be found by going out of the map on Long Night of Solace in Theater mode. It is beyond the Launch Facility

Trivia

  • The cube is most likely another version of the DaVinci Sphere/Cube seen in Halo 3 that are used for light effects like a gravity lift or a sentinel beam. This version is most likely used for the glassing beam effect and enviromental effects.

Sources


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