Gran Turismo 5 “Car Index” PlayView Tech Demo

First, the good news: more than 756 of GT5’s cars were revealed in a recent tech demo of Sony’s PlayView image rendering software. The bad news: we only know that one of them is a Nissan 240ZG.

The only two pictures we have of this PlayView demo (apparently featured at the Tokyo Game Show 2010) were unearthed by our own CoolColJ, which you can see above. To get a better understanding of what you’re looking at, check out the following video to see PlayView in action. Basically, it allows you to quickly zoom in on extremely large (34,800 x 92,300) interactive images. Here’s an article which goes in to more detail, and curiously mentions that Sony will bring the technology to their games in “fall of 2010”:

The PlayView can deal with not only still pictures but also movies, music, hypertext links, etc. And SCE plans to use the PlayView for electronic documents such as the instruction manuals and guides for game software and start a service called “PlayView for Games” in the fall of 2010.

It sure would provide a fun, fast way to browse GT5’s massive car list, don’t you think?

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Comments (60)

  1. Hatrix

    Hey I think the reason GT5 is Move compatible is because of this!! Think of using your Move stick to point and zoom!

    What do you guys think?

  2. John Marine

    TOO much detail! It’s a cool feature, but it’s as much of a WOW! as any picture with double-digit megapixel numbers.

  3. Tompie913

    The technology itself seems quite interesting. There’s no way a PS3 could actually cache a 34,800 x 92,300 image (that’s over 3000 MP!).

    I’m thinking it must be vector-based.

  4. jagenigma

    Question, Why is everyone saying that the standard cars are just ported from GT4 in better graphics? Last I read, PD developed GT5 completely from scratch.

    1. Jdmlover

      The game is practically built from scratch, however, about 80% of the cars are GT4 cars that have been upgraded to the GT5s engine. People are complaining about that 240z, but it looks good, and on top of that, we are not seeing it in HD.

      I think this means that all of the GT4 cars have been touched up and even the textures improved to look like GT5 cars, just not as detailed as the the new premium cars, but still much better than GT4. Of course 800 cars won’t get an interior as well.

  5. Liam

    Am I dreaming? This is ******* amazing, HONESTLY amazing, even without thinking of the posibiltys of it…and you guys are just turning a blind eye to it! THIS IS THE FUTURE!!! Wow I can’t even believe this is runing on the PS3 either…its like viewing the WHOLE internet on one page…0_o

  6. Toronado

    I would be very happy if the 756 number was of the Standard cars rather than the 830 number thrown around earlier. It would mean that PD took the GT4 car list and made additions rather than imported the awful GTPSP car list.

    1. fade

      Amazing that you can tell this from an car image that is 190×70 pixels. I guess you saw the blacked out windows and just ran with “crap”.

  7. Rasmus

    Pretty cool, definitely a first for video games. Not sure how much I’ll be using it though, looks a bit confusing. :) I hope that we’ll have the same (and more!) sorting options as in Forza 3 when going through the cars. Makes it so much easier to find exactly what you’re looking for.

    So, my updated wishlist now looks like this :D hopefully some of these things will come true! Hehe.

    1) Spa-Francorchamps! My last BIG wish for this game

    2) Porsche =) but, not gonna happen

    3) A livery editor (which I highly doubt we’ll see). If that’s not gonna be in there, at least a way to respray your car in another color

    4) Qualification – online at least

    5) Bonnet/hood camera – I think it’s included, not sure tho. NOT talking about roof cam

    6) Less rigid and stiff chase view cam, or ability to adjust

    7) A decent way of punishing crashers online

    8) Ability to adjust max. steering degrees for steering wheels

    9) Ability to play around with more than just one car in photomode, 3 would be nice!

    10) Advanced sorting options when viewing the cars

    11) Ability to manually choose all your AI opponents’ cars, like you can in Forza 3

    12) Now that we’ve seen rain, ability to choose wet tyres would also be cool

    Ah well, no matter what, GT5 will be the greatest driving game of all time. Not being a fanboy, just being realistic. Gran Turismo will triumph once again!

    1. seals1

      “1) Spa-Francorchamps! My last BIG wish for this game

      2) Porsche =) but, not gonna happen

      3) A livery editor (which I highly doubt we’ll see). If that’s not gonna be in there, at least a way to respray your car in another color

      4) Qualification – online at least

      5) Bonnet/hood camera – I think it’s included, not sure tho. NOT talking about roof cam

      6) Less rigid and stiff chase view cam, or ability to adjust

      7) A decent way of punishing crashers online

      8) Ability to adjust max. steering degrees for steering wheels

      9) Ability to play around with more than just one car in photomode, 3 would be nice!

      10) Advanced sorting options when viewing the cars

      11) Ability to manually choose all your AI opponents’ cars, like you can in Forza 3

      12) Now that we’ve seen rain, ability to choose wet tyres would also be cool”

      Changing base colour of paint has been confirmed look at some of the GT Auto pics of the SLS that has flower things on it.

    2. Traviizter

      Look at some of the other GT Auto pictures, the one with the Audi R8, and you will see on the SS that there is Wheel and Body Re-Spray.

    3. Jdmlover

      The stiff chase camera has always sucked in my opinion. It’s drivable with it, but I don’t like it. Forza 3s chase cam ain’t so great either.

      I have been babbling for the longest that more games need a chase cam like Project Gotham Racing 4. Check out some videos or screens of that game and tell me it’s not one of the best chase cams you’ve ever seen.

    4. Takumi_Fujiwara

      If you could pick your opponents cars, you would take away any sense of difficulty the game has… Theres always that 1 car that is faster then yours and figuring how to tune your car to beat it, is a big part of the game

    5. Rasmus

      @ Traviizter: Oh yeah, right, I’ll cross that one off the list then. ;)

      @ Jdmlover: Agreed. :)

      @ Takumi_Fujiwara: True, but I’m not talking about in GT mode, what I mean is that when you want to set up a race (in Arcade mode or whatever it’s called), it’d be very cool to be able to specify your opponents manually. For instance, you could set up a race with only cars from the ’60’s, only muscle cars etc. :)

    1. Rasmus

      I can almost guarantee you that’s gonna happen. Cus why on earth would longer development time and more advanced modeling mean higher price in game?! I’m sure PD will do everything they can to make us have the best experience with the game as possible – and we only get the BEST when driving the premiums.

    1. Super_Colossal

      When I zoom in on this very picture, it’s not in a high enough resolution for any of the cars to be recognizable. How the hell did you come up with a Bentley? They’re all just pixels!

    2. Rotard12a

      @iLex Nice indeed! Even better, if you look at 22nd row, 5th column you can see that they also included the GTC version, presented in the always-pleasing Windsor Blue Metallic color. Can’t wait for some drop-head GT5 cruising!

  8. SHIRAKAWA Akira

    Coincidentally, 750 is the number of cars available in GT4.
    Somehow I don’t think that the list there is the full list of standard cars that will be in GT5. Several of them (especially popular japanese models) would surely have been converted to Premium and it wouldn’t make sense to have exactly the same car, only with different graphic detail duplicated in the game. I could understand for slightly different models or special editions actually existing in real life, though.

    1. LordVonPS3

      The number 756 comes from 27 x 28. That you can see that the cars at the edges of the screen are half displayed and half not displayed shows there could be plenty more where those come from – but they’re off screen…

    2. SHIRAKAWA Akira

      It could also be that the input on that Sony display is overscanned, resulting in cars at the edges being cut in half… just saying, I’m just speculating :)

      But the possibility that there are only GT4 cars rendered with the new graphics engine in that screen is high in my opinion.

    3. LordVonPS3

      I’d say it’s more due to how far zoomed out the cars are and that it’s coincidental how many were shown on screen at the time the photo was taken.

      A quick flick on the analogue controller would (as the video exhibits) allow you to scroll / zoom, quite possibly through all the cars in the game.

      Unless you’re party to some information that we’re not (e.g. that Japanese text says so), I don’t see how you can possibly claim that there are *only* updated GT4 cars (i.e. GT5 standard cars) included on that page.

  9. Rattlehead

    Fingers crossed, my guess is PlayView can enhance car browsing very much, and make it much easier.
    I still wonder if it’s only a demonstration, or there will be actual implementation in GT5…

  10. Rick

    For a standard car, it doesn’t look too bad. In fact, quite good actually. I wouldn’t mind giving that a car a spin.

    1. Rotard12a

      @me Pretty tasteless (or perhaps ignorant?) to call Nissan’s purest sports car and, arguably, greatest styling achievement “garbage”. You sound like you would make a great Forza fan.

    1. Anes

      I think it will either be Spike Lee or David Duchovny. I originally thought it would be that squid bloke from the smash hit movie series Pirates of the Caribbean but I’ve recently discovered he’s working on the Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland so quite obviously, it won’t be him.

    2. 280z06

      Awww they don’t have the normal S30 body, they only have the G-nose and the 280zx(s130 body) I wish they had the normal S30 body :(

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