PGR3's visuals may be hugely detailed, but there is a feeling of artificiality to them - as if they've been constructed more than they've been designed. With Playtime mode, we can prevent people using it in our games. Meanwhile, the buildings you swoop past are accurately modelled based on hundreds of thousands of photographs snapped from every angle, all the windows reflect what lies outside of them and all the little details stand out. As you bash into a barrier, they actually leap back from it in surprise. The crowd is a mass of polygonal bodies, flash-bulbs going off all around, and if you stop and have a look you'll even be able to read some of the slogans on the spectators' t-shirts, and note the fact that each of the city settings has a crowd comprised of the correct ethnic groupings. Outside the cars the environments are hugely detailed. The only performance car-damage affects is technical Gotham's always been about going fast even if you hit things. And you can damage them too, break the wing mirrors, and generally mess up the exterior to the same extent that you could in Gotham 2 - albeit to a much greater magnitude of detail. On the Ferrari F50, Ward says, you can actually see the individual wingnuts on the rear spoiler. It may be a game in a hurry, but it's trying not to forget anything. Car audio, too, has been improved - the sound changing dramatically as you step inside the door. The bloom effects from the sun, the heat haze on the exhaust, the real-time reflections in the wing mirrors as you marvel at some of the 40,000 interior polygons from the cockpit view, the authentic speed-o-meters they all add up. Taking a close look at one of the cars, the real-time mapped reflections running over those 40,000 exterior polygons are the first thing to catch your eye, but they're just the start. You don't notice that much difference because the motion blur takes a lot of it away." We'll have to wait until we're playing it to decide if he's got a point, but watching the two of them pound through a Tokyo circuit it's obvious to see why they're having to work hard to optimise the game. "In the next generation frame rate will become much less important," says Wilson, "because when you apply HDR and these lighting effects and run with motion blur, you can't tell the difference at 60. But does it really matter? We were there earlier. Indeed, the frame rate is just about the only thing off the pace. The 80-plus cars all had to have a 170mph top-speed at the absolute minimum, the levels of detail have shot so high that the Microsoft rep in the back of the room has to remind Wilson to mention it's 80,000 polygons per car (in case we're tempted to report it's only a few shades above PGR2), they joke about new bugs they spot during the presentation, and Ward admits he only tried out the Route Creator feature for the first time that morning. Standing in Microsoft's Japanese headquarters the morning before the Tokyo Game Show, Gareth and his cohort Ben Ward look knackered, and they've just pelted through a one-hour presentation in half the time so that we ourselves can race off to hear Microsoft announce that the Xbox 360 will launch on December 2nd in Europe - with or without their game in tow.ĭevelopment on Project Gotham Racing 3 is permanently stuck in fifth gear - and so's much of the game. It's whether we've got the time." With precious time to reflect even on that, the conversation lurches in another direction.įittingly, Bizarre Creations is in a hurry in every respect. If we had four months we could get it running at 60. We're aiming for 60." Does he think they'll hit it? "We'll see how we go. "This version's running at 30 frames per second. Design manager Gareth Wilson takes the question. Some cynical git (yours truly) decides to ask about the frame rate.
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