Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is an all-time classic, but there's no doubt that its in-game mirrors have always been slightly wobbly in places. Now though, we finally know why, and it centres around a workaround put in place due to a lack of video memory – at least in the PS2 version.
Former Rockstar Games technical director Obbe Vermeij took to Twitter to share that the PS2 version of San Andreas never had enough video memory to render mirrors "the proper way." Vermeij explained that the standard method has developers "render the scene twice", taking the "point of view of the mirrored camera" and using it as a texture for the mirror. However, in the case of San Andreas on PS2, Rockstar "simply didn't have that spare video memory" in order to store this render.
