Gran Turismo 7 Revealed for PlayStation 5

  • Thread starter GTPNewsWire
  • 1,404 comments
  • 151,578 views
Then why they selected a highway system in the first place?
I agree with you on that for strictly racing. I don’t even join those events in sports mode, but if your racing with people you know or just cruising the track it’s pretty fun. AC and PC2 also have Highway tracks which I find fun especially PC2 because of the weather and day to night transitions.
 
Yea looks very good at night.. but for all the people saying it looks dull I mean it’s a highway what else do you want?

Exactly my point, it's a fantasy track. They could've chosen anything, why base your fantasy track on dull, grey, highways looked down upon by dull, grey buildings? It's not like they make for good racing either. It seems to have been to appeal to the car culture/illegal midnight racer crowd so they would still buy an otherwise serious motorsport themed game.
 
Exactly my point, it's a fantasy track. They could've chosen anything, why base your fantasy track on dull, grey, highways looked down upon by dull, grey buildings? It's not like they make for good racing either. It seems to have been to appeal to the car culture/illegal midnight racer crowd so they would still buy an otherwise serious motorsport themed game.
Again GTS is not the only game that has some type of highway freeway track, and while you find the track boring looking or whatever you call it to me it’s fine. Reminds me of driving a highway in Tokyo. I’m not looking for the flash, and even though GTS doesn’t have real time weather the highway becomes better looking as it becomes night. That’s something I can appreciate. What I also appreciate is the fact I can take my car to Tsukuba test on the track and also go to Tokyo Expressway stay in one lane and push the car at a different limit compared to a track where you go all out. So again you might not like the track or the design or feel it Has a midnight racer appeal, but I’m glad it’s in GTS and hope we get it in GT7 with other Tokyo city streets we’ve gotten in past GT’s.
 
A few signs lit up at night don't really change much. Compared to other city tracks in games they're factually very dull and lifeless. Does anyone live in this version of Tokyo? I've seen no evidence, other than the chequered flag guy.

I mean your opinion is your opinion but personally I can't think of many words that worse describe it than "beautiful".

Then why they selected a highway system in the first place?

It's a highway in the middle of a concrete jungle. It's meant to look that way. If you grew up with the Shutoko Battle Series (Tokyo Extreme Racer as it's known in the Western world) and watch Wangan Midnight and play the Maximum Tune series, these tracks hold a lot of significance. In previous games we have the Special Stage Route tracks which tried to ape Japan's highways, but Tokyo Expressway is a lot more realistic in terms of scenery. Unfortunately the layouts are not exactly the same as in real life, but that's probably because PD wants to avoid direct street racing comparisons.





^You can see the inspiration for Tokyo East's esses in the last video. The looooong straight and tunnel is based on the Wangan Line. Tokyo Central is based on some parts of the C1 Loop. Tokyo South is a bit hard to place but the docks area is reminiscent of Yokohama and the pit building is based on a real life building too.

Yes they're bad for pack racing, but you gotta remember the street racing that happened here in the 90s was mostly between 2-4 cars only. The main challenge is how precise you can be driving between those walls, and avoiding traffic (obviously not something we have in game). At night with billboards and neon signs from the nearby buildings, it doesn't look so bad. But the problem is most of the time of day options are at daytime and most of the races we have are also at daytime, which contributes to the grey lifeless look. It's fine, it's realistic. Not every track has to look like Kart Space. In fact, most real life circuits also look pretty dull during non race weekends without spectators and all the banners/flags/etc.

Basically, if you grew up with tuner culture, these roads are as significant as any famous road race in the world (e.g. Pikes Peak, Isle of Man, Mille Miglia, Targa Florio). The only difference was the racing wasn't sanctioned. I'm in no way condoning street racing, but at least this way we can imitate that safely in a game environment. Are they the best fictional tracks PD ever made? Definitely not. Am I glad that PD decides to add them? Yes.

Hope that helps explain why some crazy people like me like to drive on these boring, grey, lifeless highways :) 👍
 
Last edited:
In previous games we have the Special Stage Route tracks which tried to ape Japan's highways, but Tokyo Expressway is a lot more realistic in terms of scenery
Only in terms of scenery , I prefer the SSR7 to the expressway concerning the wangan "feeling"

IR
 
Only in terms of scenery , I prefer the SSR7 to the expressway concerning the wangan "feeling"

IR

I do miss the bridge, but SSR7 is even more boring scenery wise than Tokyo Expressway so I can't imagine how many people will complain if PD decides to bring it back for GT7 :lol:
 
In my opinion Tokyo Expressway is too short... it must be minimum 15-16 km (~10 miles) with long straights ..

IR
 
It's a highway in the middle of a concrete jungle. It's meant to look that way.......


Right from the start. This video shows you can create lively surroundings even there. All sorts of different thing around the track, including colours different from 50 shades of grey!
Trees, bridges (where there are people standing on it), different buildings around with different colours, trains crossing above you, highway system you are driving through, some factory coloured in Croatian flag and so on.
Thats a lively track.

Note:
The horrible sound of crossing drainage is there too. I dont mind it, if it ocassionally there, but hearing it every 1.5 second starts to take life from me.


In my opinion Tokyo Expressway is too short... it must be minimum 15-16 km (~10 miles) with long straights ..

I think the width is bigger problem.
 
Last edited:
... assuming that inter-player gifting will be possible and that the icon isn't simply for a cache from which you collect your GT7-earned rewards at your convenience.
 
Just the same problem Polyphony had with GT5/6 where they had to reuse old PS2 assets and models because they don't want to get help from outsourcing companies. Their track modeling team is great and very talented, it's just the amount of work that goes into the graphical fidelity in modern games take so much time and effort that it's impossible to keep all of the tracks more graphically consistent with each other without having outsourcing help (which is cheaper than hiring new full time employees + these outsource companies have literally 1000s of artists dedicated to just creating art assets). Pretty sure 99% of modern AAA game developers use outsource companies for development help in addition to the Forza and Project Cars devs.

So when Polyphony try to do all of the art themselves, they only have a very limited number of people and time to focus on high fidelity art graphics for only a select amount of tracks or objects, and in order to meet their release deadline (even with a 4-5 years dev time) they have to reuse old art assets or slightly touch them up to make the game have more content. Or they release a game without much content despite a 4 year dev time (GTSport) and still be graphically inconsistent because they had to rush new tracks like Alsace, which looks like they just quickly made in an internal procedural track creator. That's why Spa in GTSport is using the same building models as the ones in GT5/6 even with that long gap between the games. They could have outsourced those buildings and got better looking ones but Kaz doesn't like to outsource for some reason.

Those buildings don't even really bother me graphically, and LeMans in GTSport is easily the best looking version out of the other racing games even if some buildings might not have as much detail.



But it's the ugly tracks like Alsace where you see the limit of Polyphony trying to do everything in-house and it makes me question why they don't just outsourced their fictional track props and art to a cheap third party company. I can see why for real track circuits where Polyphony wants to make everything themselves to be as accurate as possible, but that's not required for the fictional tracks. And with 3d photogrammetry scanning objects and props, there's not even much artistic talent involved in that, it would look the same as if Polyphony made the objects using photogrammetry.

You can read about how outsource companies have become highly important in modern game productions here: https://theoutline.com/post/3087/ou...e-in-china-horizon-zero-dawn?zd=1&zi=i6sx52v2

Hong Kong in GT4 still looks incredible, but it's mostly just 2D photos used as textures and was much easier to make. I can't see Polyphony having 6-7 city tracks again with modern graphics unless Kaz allows for outsourcing help. At least he started budging for the car model outsourcing after the huge content backlash GTSport had.

I will vote with my wallet. If Forza 8 looks better with a better car list, I'll buy a series X first and a few months later a ps5.
By the way, those awful hitboxes better be gone in GT7...
 
I like the layout of Tokyo East, but having a fast track with no run off with bad collision physics and a temperamental penalty system is just highlighting all of GTs shortcomings. Terrible design decision.
So you're saying that street circuits don't have a place in GT anymore?
 
So you're saying that street circuits don't have a place in GT anymore?

No, I'm saying that if you're going to design unrealistic circuits, at least play to your strengths.

Think of when F1 was in Adelaide. It was a good street circuit, there was run-off on the fast corners, and grass verges on the slow corners. You weren't going to bounce off the wall by going 10cm off the racing line.

Tokyo East is narrow and has no run-off on any fast corner.
 
Just the same problem Polyphony had with GT5/6 where they had to reuse old PS2 assets and models because they don't want to get help from outsourcing companies. Their track modeling team is great and very talented, it's just the amount of work that goes into the graphical fidelity in modern games take so much time and effort that it's impossible to keep all of the tracks more graphically consistent with each other without having outsourcing help (which is cheaper than hiring new full time employees + these outsource companies have literally 1000s of artists dedicated to just creating art assets). Pretty sure 99% of modern AAA game developers use outsource companies for development help in addition to the Forza and Project Cars devs.

So when Polyphony try to do all of the art themselves, they only have a very limited number of people and time to focus on high fidelity art graphics for only a select amount of tracks or objects, and in order to meet their release deadline (even with a 4-5 years dev time) they have to reuse old art assets or slightly touch them up to make the game have more content. Or they release a game without much content despite a 4 year dev time (GTSport) and still be graphically inconsistent because they had to rush new tracks like Alsace, which looks like they just quickly made in an internal procedural track creator. That's why Spa in GTSport is using the same building models as the ones in GT5/6 even with that long gap between the games. They could have outsourced those buildings and got better looking ones but Kaz doesn't like to outsource for some reason.

Those buildings don't even really bother me graphically, and LeMans in GTSport is easily the best looking version out of the other racing games even if some buildings might not have as much detail.



But it's the ugly tracks like Alsace where you see the limit of Polyphony trying to do everything in-house and it makes me question why they don't just outsourced their fictional track props and art to a cheap third party company. I can see why for real track circuits where Polyphony wants to make everything themselves to be as accurate as possible, but that's not required for the fictional tracks. And with 3d photogrammetry scanning objects and props, there's not even much artistic talent involved in that, it would look the same as if Polyphony made the objects using photogrammetry.

You can read about how outsource companies have become highly important in modern game productions here: https://theoutline.com/post/3087/ou...e-in-china-horizon-zero-dawn?zd=1&zi=i6sx52v2

Hong Kong in GT4 still looks incredible, but it's mostly just 2D photos used as textures and was much easier to make. I can't see Polyphony having 6-7 city tracks again with modern graphics unless Kaz allows for outsourcing help. At least he started budging for the car model outsourcing after the huge content backlash GTSport had.
Polyphony do outsource work, a studio called ModelingCafe have created vehicles for GT Sport and there was another company that leaked GT7 that Polyphony have been working with. So while I agree with most of your post, and it definitely appears that Polyphony haven't wanted to outsource work in the past, it does appear that they are doing so now. So hopefully your fears may be alleviated in some way.

The flip side of outsourcing work is that you can still lose graphical consistncy becuase of outsourcing work as well. Having dfferent studios making different assets for your game can leave you with inconsistencies between assets beucase they are being created by different studios and the level of control over them as a whole is less as a result. But it can certainly help pump up the volume of content.

In terms of staffing, I think Turn 10 who pump out (of have been pumping out) Forza Motorpsort titles every couple of year like clockwork (unti recently) have a considerably larger number of employees working on Forza Motorpsort than Polyphony have.

Funny bro, if that were true then GT7 in small gameplay gifs should look even more mindboggling like PS8 graphics, instead it barely looks better than GTSport gameplay gifs. 👎

If you really think Polyphony trying to do all of their environment art assets by themselves with only 180 employees won't be left behind by other devs taking advantage of oursourcing help with hundreds and hundreds of artists assisting, then good luck. The city environments and buildings in PGR4 on an Xbox360 game were already more detailed and impressive than Tokyo Expressway in GTSport. Also take into account Sony gives Polyphony all of the time in the word to make their games, PD was able to spend 4 years on a single racing game and still managed to release tracks looking like Alsace and Dragon Trail in addition to the low track count at launch. The big racing titles from other developers have a limit of a 2 year dev cycle on an even smaller budget.

I imagine you wanted something more than gifs though, so here's direct-feed gameplay shots of PGR4 (reminder it's an Xbox360 game). Imagine how more detail Tokyo Expressway could have been, and how many more city tracks we could have gotten if Polyphony had actually allowed for help from outsource developers. At least Hong Kong, Amalfi, and George V Paris could have been remade by now too considering GTSport is now a whopping 7 years old since GT6 released... But if you want to defend Polyphony's outdated development practices, go ahead. Just don't get so defensive when their flaws are compared to the competition.

5n1jtd.png


97cdkpb.png


93zskz6.png
While those pics look fantastic for their generation, the graphical leap to GT Sport is very noticeable. And going back to 2 year development cycles, Turn 10 don't do that anymore, and they have many more staff working on Forza Motorsport than Polyphony do.

I'm not defending Polyphony where they do make odd choices (and they've made some very odd ones in the past) but I think your information or opinion about how they work is out of date.
 
Last edited:
It's a highway in the middle of a concrete jungle. It's meant to look that way. If you grew up with the Shutoko Battle Series (Tokyo Extreme Racer as it's known in the Western world) and watch Wangan Midnight and play the Maximum Tune series, these tracks hold a lot of significance. In previous games we have the Special Stage Route tracks which tried to ape Japan's highways, but Tokyo Expressway is a lot more realistic in terms of scenery. Unfortunately the layouts are not exactly the same as in real life, but that's probably because PD wants to avoid direct street racing comparisons.





^You can see the inspiration for Tokyo East's esses in the last video. The looooong straight and tunnel is based on the Wangan Line. Tokyo Central is based on some parts of the C1 Loop. Tokyo South is a bit hard to place but the docks area is reminiscent of Yokohama and the pit building is based on a real life building too.

Yes they're bad for pack racing, but you gotta remember the street racing that happened here in the 90s was mostly between 2-4 cars only. The main challenge is how precise you can be driving between those walls, and avoiding traffic (obviously not something we have in game). At night with billboards and neon signs from the nearby buildings, it doesn't look so bad. But the problem is most of the time of day options are at daytime and most of the races we have are also at daytime, which contributes to the grey lifeless look. It's fine, it's realistic. Not every track has to look like Kart Space. In fact, most real life circuits also look pretty dull during non race weekends without spectators and all the banners/flags/etc.

Basically, if you grew up with tuner culture, these roads are as significant as any famous road race in the world (e.g. Pikes Peak, Isle of Man, Mille Miglia, Targa Florio). The only difference was the racing wasn't sanctioned. I'm in no way condoning street racing, but at least this way we can imitate that safely in a game environment. Are they the best fictional tracks PD ever made? Definitely not. Am I glad that PD decides to add them? Yes.

Hope that helps explain why some crazy people like me like to drive on these boring, grey, lifeless highways :) 👍

Honestly I think Kaz didn’t do the Shuto justice. At least he could’ve made the actual C1 Loop instead of improvising like he did. If he did Shuto like Assetto Corsa, then I think it would have definitely been leaps better to race on.
 
Not buying this game at all or a PS5 if it ends up looking just like GT Sport and bare bones content at launch like the last 3 games they made.

PD's Development Cycle Sucks.
 
Not buying this game at all or a PS5 if it ends up looking just like GT Sport and bare bones content at launch like the last 3 games they made.

PD's Development Cycle Sucks.

It isn't necessary to say it on all threads, I think we have understood
 
Not buying this game at all or a PS5 if it ends up looking just like GT Sport and bare bones content at launch like the last 3 games they made.

PD's Development Cycle Sucks.

It's not great that they tend to play catch up and content is fed after the fact to account for releasing them early, but I would take a full bore GT Sport (GT7) any day of the week. So with that said, I'll buy two to make up for you sitting this one out.
 
Back