As well as forum posters on a couple of other gaming sites, Butch mentioned in our forum that at times the frame rate of Halo did drop noticeably-- perhaps as low as 10 fps, in his estimation.
However, in addition to noting that Halo is still at least six months from release, Butch mentioned a few other things that indicate just how powerful this engine-- and the hardware it's running on-- really are.
During some of the solo action with 20 covies on the screen, 2 dropships, looking out over 500 yards if ruins, beachfront, and waves, the framerate dropped to maybe ~10. They were quick to point out this is an in-development game, not yet optimized, and that the XDKs they were running on were only at half of the final XBox power.In either of these levels there did not appear to be a clipping plane. If it was not under the horizon, you could see it. From the top of your base in the CTF level, you could see the whole thing, even though the enemy base was *very* far away.
Most veterans of 3d gaming will recognize the clipping plane concept-- the point beyond which items are invisible to a player, sometimes hidden with the ubiquitous 3d fog effect. If levels as large as Halo's have been described to be can be viewed in their entirety-- even during network play-- that's damn impressive.