Real Life vs. Gran Turismo: Corvette ZR1

corvette-zr1-granturismo-vs-reallife-4

It’s always fun to compare real-life photographs with screenshots from Gran Turismo, and it looks like that’s exactly what Polyphony Digital had in mind when they released this batch of Corvette ZR1 images from Gran Turismo PSP last week.  Coincidentally (or not!), the camera angles match up quite nicely to Chevrolet’s official ZR1 photos, making it simple for us to place them side-by-side.  Can you tell what’s real and what’s not?  I’ve intentionally left these shots unlabeled, to make it a bit more fun.  If you’re confused, just ask around in the comments below.

Thanks to forum user Heath_1 for the inspiration!

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Comments (59)

  1. LolCows

    lol at the people thinking those are real in game gt psp shot LOL just lol,talk about blind fanboyism and dumb gt planet supporting fanboys.

  2. John

    @Zolarie while it’s good you actually do 3d modeling, I think you are akin to a rocket scientist commenting on modified game console or something… a high end pc modeling app is not really comparable to what happenson a psp… especially considering they would have to put this high end rendering engine in the PSP game solely for not in game effects?

    And I still don’t buy that a PSP could render these in any kind of decent time even at just psp screen res (again making these screens useless as they are models and results too high in detail to be what’s even used on the psp so essentially they are an entirely different product).

    These pictures are a little less complex than some of the previous ones, but show all the markings of being the same rendering engine and the previous ones with more complex reflections and details were hands down beyond what a PSP could feasibly pull off.

    Back to modleing in maya vs things on the PSP… it shows in the way you pick out a few things that you see as flaws like the super dark crisp shadows on the wheels… I don’t think thats indicative of much outside of maybe cranking up the contrast or some sort of HDR attempt.

    I am no GT5 image quality expert but that’s exactly the kind of detail I don’t think anyone can say is or isn’t possible from GT5 especially before it’s released… I mean we can say these can’t be PSP because the hardware just doesn’t support it, however GT5 could have pretty certainly have these graphics.

    Sorry, just don’t buy it, these obviously weren’t rendered on a psp and even reducing the resolution (which again makes it a whole differnet product) I don’t think could be rendered on the PSP with the detail and effects (some effects more obvious on other shots).

  3. ICANT55

    LOOKS DAMN CLOSE TO ME !!! I just reserved my copy of GT5 @ GAMESTOP … They Have it to release on FEB 2 2010!!! Cant MoFO wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEUS!

  4. Zolarie

    @ John

    I currently do 3D modeling in Maya. There aren’t any complicated textures, I don’t even see any bump mapping. It looks like a single light source, and nothing but the car. The PSP wouldn’t render the image in that kind of resolution (I’m repeating myself here) because most of the detail would be lost anyway when you shrink it down to the PSP screen size. But, it’s not that hard to take a graphics engine and tell it to render a few shots in a higher resolution to show off some detail. If they had rendered the pictures in the size that the PSP displays, people would be complaining that it looks like crap when you blow it up to full screen size.

  5. John

    @Zolarie I question how you could know (or even think) the PSP could render these… the only method would be to very slowly render the scene over quite a period of time and even then I would venture the PSP would run out of memory (that model is so complex it’s probably huge just for the wire frame before you include textures). I suppose anything with decent memory could raytrace a picture like that (I used to do 3d scenes on my old Atari computer, raytracing a few metal spheres took hours) but that’s not a realistic process to be showing pictures of and I don’t think anyone believes there is anything in GTPSP that will let you see a picture after rendering for 2 or 3 hours…

    @snicker probably very likely.

  6. snicker3s

    Behold: my foolish attempt to raise the level of this discussion by splitting up kinds of screenshots.

    Splitting them up by rendering technique
    -RAST: rasterized(@realtime, in game, done by gpu)
    -RT: Ray traced (slower, fancyer, done on beforehand or in ‘photo mode’, done by any (also psp) cpu)

    Splitting by HardWare used for render
    -PS3
    -PSP
    -PC

    Splitting up by 3D model
    -GTPSP model
    -GT5P model
    -GT5 model
    -Fancy High Poly model (not usable in game)

    My Guess: RAST – PS3 – GT5.

  7. Gsus

    @Ngrignon: I totally agree with you

    these pics are not the PSP version…who brought that bullshit in the world?
    we can only hope these pics are from GT5

  8. Ngrignon

    Come on…. Is there still very naive people who take these shot for granted as PSP shots??? Where is your BRAIN???? have you ever see a PSP of your life? or watch what can be done on this handeld??? a PSP don’t EVEN HAVE THE POWER OF A PS2!!! and you still believe that you will play GT5 prologue graphics on your PSP???

    Geeez, stupidity is really ruling this world today.

  9. Zolarie

    First, those are NOT PS3 shots. Look at the flat lighting reflections on the car and the too crisp shadows inside the wheel. The GT5 screenshots we’ve seen so far have reflections that are as good as in the one real picture above.

    Second, yes the PSP is capable of a render of that quality. No it will not look that good with multiple cars and scenery, but for a single car it IS capable of that kind of quality. Obviously those pictures are at a higher resolution because the PSP doesn’t need that high of a resolution on it’s screen.

    Finally, to those complaining that the brakes and rotors are smaller (and a few other minor differences)…um no. The actual photo is taken from a slightly lower angle. It looks to be about 3 inches lower. The angle will make a few things look slightly different. The actual photo also has the benefit of direct lighting which lights up the entire caliper and rotor. In the PSP shot, much of rotor and parts of the caliper are hidden because of the universal lighting. There’s a very small spot on the top right where you can see both the inner and outer edge of the rotor. It’s the same size. I will give you is the swapped carbon fiber and the coloring on the side vents.

  10. John

    @Damez I don’t think you understand what CGI is…

    If these are prerendered videos, they are rendered elsewhere and the horsepower of the machine (beyond just playing back the video) does not come into play, so there is no reason to believe the PS3 would have better pre rendered video because it can push more polys… the system does not push any polys to play a video.

    Now if you think these are live rendered somehow, I can tell you that the PSP can NOT rendered these live under any circumstances. Just won’t happen.

    I am not sure what you were trying to say, but I don’t think even the gist of it is right.

  11. Ricky

    I don’t think thats a comparison to a real life Corvette ZR1, it looks fake to me but then again thats just my opinion

  12. Oliver

    I have both Forza 2 and GT4 and I have to say Forza 2 was more entertaining, I’m not saying GT4 was bad. It think that GT series is trying to hard to simulate real cars and not concentrating enough on modes and how the car feel when you are holding a controller.

  13. GTfanboy12

    are you retarded masterlinkace?

    GT5 graphics are photorealistic GOT THAT PUNK?

    just you clean your glasses

    forza 3= little bit behind even with over 400000 polygons while GT5 has around 200000

  14. Redsuinit

    The tires are different sized, the actual rubber tire is thicker in the GT pic, resulting in a smaller rims, and smaller brake calipers.

  15. masterlinkace

    is it just me or does forza motorsport 3 look slightly better than gt5 on the car model graphics. i mean not to say that gt5 looks bad, cuz it looks amazing.

  16. Robert

    wrong abc, i want all the info and as much detail as i can get, dunno bout others posting on here but your WAY WAY WRONG

  17. abc

    this is bullshit i want gt5 news not this crap. no one cares about gtpsp anyways. what a waste of time. RELEASE THE BLOODY GAME ALREADY!…….

  18. PureAwesomeness

    In the real image there seems to be carbon fiber on the front splitter but none on the side skirt whereas the GT image has it the other way round. Weird.

  19. Damez

    Exactly why i stated that these images are PSP CGI images. Not gameplay images. The CGI images for GT5 on the PS3 will be even greater because of the ability to generate higher polygons.

    I don’t know how people can say these are good enough for GT5 on PS3, when in my opinion, they are no where near acceptible for PS3 CGI images.

  20. John

    It just keeps going and going…

    These are NOT PSP in game shots. These are not even PSP photo mode shots… the PSP can NOT crank out anythign even remotely close to this internally.

    The only way these images will be on a PSP screen are:

    Static artwork in some kind of slideshow or art collection.

    Video intro or some such.

    And either way they will not be at this resolution (PSP screen is not this resolution).

    PD fanboys will never give up defending this, but it’s pretty blatent what they are doing dropping these shots and getting everyone riled up thinking this is what GTPSP will look like…

    Guys these rival GT5/Forza3 graphics, what are the chances this could every come out of the PSP? Seriously… think for a second.

    And IF these DID come out of the PSP, what would that tell you about the sh*t job that everyone has been doing with the PS3 and 360? I mean if the PSP can crank this out, PS3 and 360 should be cranking out 3d hologram games in 1600p by now!

  21. Vivian

    the lightning is different by the real/GT PSP. because of that you will not see thing than you will see in the other picture. I hope you will understand:P

    sorry for my English

  22. Harry

    Haha, only way to tell which one is real is looking at the scenery.
    And for the people who think this is the GT on the PSP, no…just no…This is the GT5 on the PS3.
    Looks unbelievably accurate.

  23. Maximou

    It would be more confusing if it wasn’t with showroom lightning. D’ont expect GT5’s models to have more polys or details than that. I think it’s actually GT5 renders (look at the wheel, the circles are so fucking perfect already). So why do they say it’s GT PSP ?

    I’m dreaming about a mode where you can play GT PSP on PS3 and continuing at home @1080p/60fps, races you didn’t completed yet outside with the mobile device…

  24. ralph89

    If this was GT5 it would probably more confusing because of it’s lighting, proper shadows, and of course the real 200,000 poly of GT5 cars or maybe more.

  25. Damez

    Also, just stressing a point here – these a PSP CGI images. So you can expect the PS3 GT5 images to be even greater in terms of detail.

  26. jack

    @ demon, we’ve all seen the Forza bullshots, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve played the build or not, there’s no way the full game will look as good as those shots with all the AA and Blur they use to beef up those shots. Forza by no means looks bad, but it simply can’t be put side by side with real cars like GT does… forza kinda has a waxed out, plastically look to the car’s metal

  27. Jordan

    Thanks for the kind words, Dan. Keeping a news blog ‘fresh’ about a company as tight-lipped as Polyphony Digital can be really tough sometimes!

  28. demon

    Looks good cant wait its been way to long, this was a lunch title,
    @Tenacious D I would not bag out forza 3 just yet, I got to see the latest bild two days ago
    and I am gob smacked, the pics we have all been seeing are from an old old bild and the movies as well, now they have the tessellation effects switched on and HDR lighting with deferred rendering and ol tell you wait till you see this at comic con every gt5 fan will be shocked, there going to beat GT5 in graphics but gt5 is still a day one for me.

  29. Dan

    As someone who is hungry for GT news, especially as we near a major release, and yet with little or no fresh blood coming from PD, I thank you Jordan & co. for not only a highly informative newss page stuffed with insightful comments, but also little tid bits like this that can keep us entertained inbetween GTp sessions, major news items and other life stuff.

    I can’t believe this is going to be a PSP game; October can’t come fast enough!

  30. gtguy88

    Wow…that’s really off…the caliper & rotor are different sizes…and the corner lense is a wrong shape and the lower part of the bumper doesn’t really match the real one…

    Damn…maybe GT4 was less accurate than I though? If this is the “new” models and they’re that much off…

  31. Tiddy

    Looks great as per usual only thing i would say is comparing real life pictures to GT pictures would have been better as most of the “real” pictures are really glossy renders which makes the GT car look dull in comparison. However one thing i can say is the GTR is extremely accurate in GT5:P as we just took delivery of our GTR and its amazing to see how similar they are, the sound is pretty much spot on in the in car view aswell.

  32. Phos

    @ Watt
    In the “Beyond the Apex” video on GT5p they talk about how they can’t use CAD models since they are too data intensive. CAD models include all components and details down to the micrometer, so doing that would be near impossible on a consumer product.

  33. GreatServant

    It is impossible for PSP to have this kind of detail in game. This must be a photo mode or a pre-render. The poly count is way too much for the psp to run. The in game graphic that is shown in the psp GT trailer is more reasonable.

  34. Tenacious D

    What tommy says. I was expecting to see car models roughly on par with GT4. This is insane! Turn 10 who?? Forza what?!

  35. tommy

    This is from GT PSP?!!! Holy cow, if this PSP game looks this good then I can’t wait to see GT for the PS3…wow.

  36. Watt

    Wonder if PD have got the CAD-drawings that were used to make the first “photos” of the ZR1.
    Then PD didn’t have to design it from their own measurements, and could make it much more accurate?

  37. Phos

    Only 1 of those pictures is real. It’s the one of the brakes/wheel.

    All the other “real” pictures are CAD renders

  38. Big Right

    The real car looks like it has bigger brakes, but apart from that the models are unbelievably accurate.

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