Remember the scenes in Return of the Jedi, where the screen just EXPLODES with ships? You actually get to play that scene in Rogue Leader, just like in the movie. Each ship on the screen is really there, and you really interact with them.

I remember a documentary just after Return of the Jedi came out. The effects people behind that scene were talking about it, and explained that there were eighty-five independently moving objects in that scene, each matted against the other eighty-four by hand. They literally had an 85x85 grid on a big piece of paper, with crosses where one object occluded another, and ticks for partial occlusion (requiring painting the outline). They had one of those grids for each frame of the scene.

The lead animator said that the complexity of that scene would never, ever be equalled: it was like the Apollo moon shots, done only to prove it could be done.

And of course eventually (Independence Day, if not before) adding eighty-five independently-matted objects to a scene was just a question of clicking the "Add independently-matted object" button in the software eighty-five times.

And now Space Battle Scene 19 can be rendered on kids' toys. O tempora O mores!

Peter