Cycles in Time and Weather

  • Thread starter Thread starter JohnBM01
  • 19 comments
  • 2,543 views
JohnBM01

JohnBM01

21 years!
In Memoriam
Messages
26,911
United States
Houston, Texas, USA
Messages
JMarine25
GTPlanet, let's examine something.

The most realistic aspect about racing is the ability to endure over a period of time. Time flies, right? So let me examine cycles. No, I don't mean motorcycles, I'm examining cycles of day.

To me, the 24 Hours of Le Mans is the ultimate proving ground for racing. I know I've said that since my debut, but it's true. NASCAR has Daytona, IRL has Indy, F1 has Monaco, and Le Mans kind of outshines all of them. The ability to endure on an 8 mile/13+ km course that combines Bugatti and roads of Le Mans, France makes for an incredible chance to prove your skills.

The point I want to make in this case is the cycling of day. One moment, it's racing the afternoon which gives way to evening, then sunset, then twilight, then night. As realistic as Gran Turismo is, many of us dream of having more put into Gran Turismo 4, if not GT5. The Le Mans enduro is day-to-night-to-day, same as Daytona. Petit Le Mans is day-to-night, same as Sebring (Sebring is coming up on March 20th). I haven't played Sega GT enough to know what it it's like, but I heard it had realistic changes in time. So based on that, you can race in the evening, and see the skies get darker and shadows growing longer until lights brighten up the track. But if GT were to undertake this phenonmena, what would have to be done? Or at least, how can you come close?

I'll start.

In racing games, I often notice how much detail goes into each track you can race. Sometimes, a track is so detailed, that if you run a script to have day cycle into night, it would mean that textures all around would have to be darkened, lights would have to be turned on, and not to mention car lights being turned on to cut through the darkness. So in games like Le Mans 24 Hours, every track is done so that you can race them in the rain. You can race Le Mans, Bugatti, Road Atlanta, Catalunya, Suzuka, Donnington Park, and Brno in the wet or in the sunlight. Racing in championship mode, you begin to note in later races that weather changes pretty rapidly. At one point, it's blue skies and sun, but later on, a little rain falls. Then MORE rain falls (trust me, out-of-nowhere rain at Suzuka can get ugly).

It would be a tall task for Polyphony Digital to make these changes as realistic as possible. Now when a cycle in time is undergone, you have to think about what happens during a cycle of day. You see the sun reflect off of tall buildings as the sun sets to the west. Then, lights are turned on to prepare for night. People still working in downtown will be there as lights from the buildings are on. Or if you are on a road course, the lights come on and conditions can get dangerously dark. If more GT tracks had rain, you'd begin to notice the skies go from sunny to cloudy. Once there are dark clouds, you might see a little lightning rule the skies (I know because Houston is hell in the summer). And then, your race grows into a matter of "get out them racing slicks!" If PD wanted to pull this off, it would be a tall task. Lots of considerations have to be made to make things as realistic as possible. And rain? The most you'll get is the Special Stage Route 11 course in the wet stuff.

Anyone want to explore day cycles or weather changes in relation to GT? Go ahead.
 
I think a change in time conditions should be only really inplemented in the longer endurance races. Most of the short races are really too short for the weather too really take affect (speaking hypothetically of course if it was included in the GT series). So the variable condition IMO should only really be aplied in the longer races and should affect yours and other cars stratergy. That'd be cool.

On a side note: one thing that really irked me in GT3 was on the night courses the headlights of the cars didn't actually have any affect on the surroundings of the track. Where as in real life and in games like Le Mans 24hours they illuminate the raod, other cars and parts of the track. Only a small thing, but I'd like to see it :).
 
I think time changing over time is a wonderful idea, but weather not so much so, I'd want time change over the course of an endurance race as long as it wont affect the system too much
 
It is an interesting consideration. I'd say to leave it to tracks that are like Amateur and up. Ridge Racer classic had time changes. A three lap race going 120 or 135 was so "slow" that daytime went into evening, then night, then morning and day again. Rage Racer (1996), had time cycles, but were no more than later in the afternoon, then to evening, and then night. Keep in mind that these games had three-lap races mostly. Ridge Racer had a makeshift 24 Hour cycle, Rage Racer had time changes which were mostly one time of day to later on. Speaking of the RR series, I'm surprised Ridge Racer V's "99 Trial" didn't have time changes. You race around Sunny Beach for 99 laps, and it is still afternoon. If I recreated RRV, 99 Trial would have time cycles either from daytime to night, or day-to-night-to-day. But, there are no time changes in that game.

Now back to Gran Turismo. Here are ideas I envision with GT Endurances:

Grand Valley 300km: afternoon to sunset
Special Stage Route 11: twilight to night, or night to sunrise
Tokyo R246: daytime to night

and these are "concepts," until GT4 comes out:
New York: late afternoon to twilight
Fuji: afternoon to sunset
Tsukuba: late morning to late afternoon

If you don't have a PS2, then "Test Drive Le Mans" is a decent racer for your money. It's made by the same people, but is a PS1 example of time changing. You race Le Mans in this TDLM, you're racing against 12 (opposed to 8) racers on a Le Mans variation with laps as long as 1:30, maybe 1:45. So if you don't have "Le Mans 24 Hours," get TDLM. I have both of them, and it will be interesting to see what PD would be able to do if they pulled off the time changes.
 
Nice suggestions, but unfortunatelly, I'll kick you back to the reality.

As Kazunori told me, there is NO WAY that any of daytime / nightime changes will happen in GT4, not even the weather changes. Only thing PD was considering in August of 2003. (when I spoke to him) was inclusion of wet circuits for all the tracks in GT mode, but even that - due to reasons of graphical enhacments that directly effect other things on screen, such as number of other cars on the tracks (4 only in wet mode in GT3)- was still in considerations. I really don't know what they did in meantime and what they will do until the September, October, but IMHO, we will be more than lucky to get wet condition for all the tracks only.

Maybe - and just maybe - they could do something about it with inclusion of HDD support, but then only the players with HDD could use that kind of features, so I'm not so sure that will happen.

Also don't forget that GT4 will present significant upgrade in graphic engine (read as: pushing the 32MB of PS2's RAM to the very limit) of the game, with hi-resolution graphic for both cars and surroundings, multi-layering in surfaces of cars, upgraded lighting, much detailed surroundings and probablly various other effects such as sparcles, dust, water, snow and so on.

Waether and daytime changes, yes, but IMHO, not on PS2.
 
We know that it won't be possible for any of that stuff in GT4, but I think John (me certanly) mean in future GT titles.
 
There is no doubt that Deep Forest and Grand Valley are two classic courses in the GT series. I also think that Grand Valley would be challening to race in the rain. Deep Forest... maybe a nice snowstorm. And I think that Deep Forest should go back to races in the sunset like in the past GTs. (opens can of PepsiSI (no typo)) As far as time goes, you know that I like a city race at night. So then, it should be a good thing to see the SSR11 event go from evening to at least midnight. If you want to REALLY stir things up, why not do what I'm doing in a personal experiment... how about a race from evening to sunrise? Now that is a REAL all-nighter. An analogy to a raver would be an endurance would be early night to sunrise (of course, all you do is party and hit on girls).

Now time changes, that would have to take a lot of physics consideration and not to mention retexturing if need be. Le Mans 24 Hours has the same textures when competing in the Le Mans enduro. Only possible changes is the moon and the stars when at night. Now, that technology is as old as early 2000. This also applies to chrome mapping, versus environment mapping today. If GT wanted to crack that barrier, a lot of re-texturing as well as different lighting schemes would have to be implemented. Think about if you were racing Tokyo Route 246. You go around and later in time, you see the sun go down and the sky changes colors. Then as the sun really goes down, you begin to see the moon (of course, seeing the stars in the sky is always a lovely touch). Then maybe later on, you'll see fireworks exploding in the sky as people try to have fun outside of the course. Then when the sun shines over beautiful downtown Tokyo, it's morning. Then the environment mapping tends to work a little more as it tries to capture the rising sun, and not to mention some of the lights being turned off. And a 24-Hour race in Tokyo is done for.

Gran Turismo probably won't give us Le Mans (or if you WANT them to, reply at this forum: https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39723 ), but if time changes were to be considered, it would be very interesting and makes real racing even more real. I mean, who wouldn't race Grand Valley in a high-powered GT car while testing time? I think it's a great idea, if not for GT4, then at least a future GT. I can't bet that there will be one by the time it's March 11, 2024 (I'll be 40 years old by then), but it would be a great consideration, even when the PS6 or PS7 will be out by then as well. Anyhow, while we're still young, it would be a great consideration. Just imagine.
 
With Le Mans being on, I'm finding some nice topics and bringing them back in honor of this year's great race, here is a very late update.

Some time past the last post (which was mine), there was mentioning in some magazine (PSM, I believe) that racers would be able to race any track in any time of day. Also mentioned was the ability to race a track with any such weather conditions. As of now, rain and stuff probably won't be possible until GT5 (meaning, awaiting the PS3). But this is the latest update, even though it's pretty old.
 
Does the day turn into night in the enduro races now that GT4 is out?

If not then you think its something that might make into GT5 for PS3 considering the uber number of cpus in that monster?
 
What is up with these 6 month or older threads of mine being reborn? These were my old threads with my usually long(er) posts. If I want history, I'd look at one of my childhood pictures. Yeah. Five years old with an afro. Solid! (-thank you, "Undercover Brother!")

Well, Enkur, my fellow Texan, I've heard that there are no time or weather cycles. And you bet I'd like to see this happen in GT5. As I said, some effects are kind of unnecessary with wet graphics. Like I said, I don't think I've ever seen a car reflected beautifully on tarmac of off-road. The only time I've seen a car's reflection is if a car was standing still on a shiny floor. But I think PD can kind of cheat the rules and not have this sort of effect. The only thing that can be reflected during rainy tarmac races would be the lights. It's perfectly fine to have head lights and tail lights reflected. Actually, I think ALL tracks can have rain (or even snow) modes.

In terms of rain effects, I haven't seen very many games with great rain effects. But I had to name one, I have two for you. I remember playing MotoGP 2 on the PS2, and when I raced one track, damn! When it's wet, it's hard to see. It really felt like there's real challenge in wet weather driving. And then "Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3" had some nice rain and snow effects, even if not dramatic.

So I think PD has some options with weather. In terms of time cycles, I don't really know how PD would pull it off. Maybe in a future post, I can talk about it more.
 
I have Test Drive Le Mans for the Dreamcast and the 24hr. of Le Mans is as realistic in terms of day/night as you could get, in my opinion.
 
Well, this is a very interesting topic to discuss. Will check this regularly.

I play Flight Simulator 2004 too and one of the game's features is the ability of downloading real weather data from jeppesen servers. The data is read by the game and voila!

Clouds, rain, winds appear. Then it rains rains rains rains rains rains and the sun comes back.

It would be nice the day when GT4 connects automatically to internet to download real weather data of those circuits.

But, where in the world is Apricot Hill?
 
A day and night cycle would not be nearly as hard as one would think; the hard part comes in interpolating the day and night skies (; this requires just a set of filters, the math for which is pretty easy to obtain). Lighting the cars is not a problem because as it is the shader that shades the cars creates a cube-sample of its environment (; it is dynamic).

Come to think of it, the shadows and lights on the track are probably pre-computed, and this is probably the big reason why they didn’t add a dynamic sky. If the shadows and lights were dynamic (which would be necessary for a dynamic sky), that would be a huge performance hit, which would mean the game wouldn’t be as pretty overall. This would also explain why they didn’t add real headlights.

But back to my point: hardware allowing, and considering the track lighting was dynamic, adding a dynamic sky (and headlights) wouldn't be that big of a deal.
 
Does anyone remember playing Stunt Race FX for Super Nintendo? The city courses would change to dusk after a few laps and on some of the canyon races, I think it would begin to rain on the second lap.

It was a pretty neat little game when it came out 10 years ago
 
Being an endurance race fan, this (and the 6 car fields) is what bugs me more about GT4. But I can understand that with the graphics detail this game has, there's no more room for day/night cycles and weather changes.

I will not run the 24 h races in GT4 (running them in B-Spec is something I only consider because of the prize cars for those races, but even so ...) because of this.

What I really want is a "LE MANS 24 HOURS 2" game for endurance racing. Alternatively, I want GT5 in the PS3 to have all that the original "Le Mans" game for the PS2 already has: 24 cars in the race, weather changes and day/night cycles.

Allow saving while in the pits would be nice, too. I think GT4 doesn't allow it because there must be something in the structure of this game that makes it impossible. And, btw, I think that's why B-Spec exists. Even KY would imagine that, without mid-race saving ability, this game couldn't have races longer then the ones we already got in GT3).
 
LM24H for the PS2 had one fatal flaw, if any- long loading times. The graphics weren't at GT3 level (since GT4 wasn't out around the timeLM24H was out), but it did manage to get as many as 20+ to a track.

Then too, I think PD said they "preferred" a pack of six cars. I don't know if that's really true, but that's what I've read or heard. To get all these cars onto one track is going to be challenging to say the least. Even worse if you wanted to have 220 cars compete in the 24 Hours at the Nurburgring. If you want a big pack of cars, I suggest either "Le Mans 24 Hours" or "TOCA Race Driver 2." RD2 didn't have time cycles for what I know, but I think I've seen as many as 24 to a track with usually flawless frame rate. And loading times weren't excessively boring. So if I were you, I'd probably look for TOCA Race Driver 2 if you want big packs, then LM24H for the cycles in time. Combine the two, add some Gran Turismo magic to it, and you may have a winning package for Gran Turismo 5.

I'll go back to rediscovering my youth playing through GT4...
 

Latest Posts

Back