The amount of work that it would take to pull this off is not trivial.
It's not just a matter of texture resolution, it's a matter of what is coded into the track from physics properties to simple detail level.
In order for a repeate of inputs to produce the same results, the interactions between the car and the track must be aboslutley the same. If the track is slightly different, the results will be different. An exagerated analogy would be the totally flat track of Pole Position and tracks of more modern (but still 2d racers) that have some physics propteries built in. Even if the tracks have the exact same turns and lengths, repeating inputs will not result in the same results as one on track, some things will happen differnetly.
We are talking porting an entire physics engine over to the PS3 along with all the track physics just so show the replays with more flash... ignore the fact that any differences in game engines have to be overcome for this replay engine (ie things that exists on one platform and not another like damage control or open wheel collisions).
The myriad of potential problems that comes from trying to pull something like this off puts the idea beyond the realm of unlikely right into just a plain bad idea.
So they cannot just take a mesh of a track, make only graphical alterations to it, leaving all other parameters the same? They don't necessarily have to create a new version from scratch every time they move from one platform to another, nor do they have to rebuild the physics engine completely from scratch, and the PS3 should have no problem emulating the PSP engine for the purpose of a hypothetical replay theater. It seems to me that the biggest difference between versions (of the tracks) is the resolution that the tracks are being displayed in. I don't see why it is necessary that they change the physical properties from one version to the next (except when upgrading to an engine that can take into account more factors). Also, given that the physics engine is actually
based on the GT5 physics engine, I don't think such emulation would be difficult to achieve.
Bar from that that such something requiring so much manpower and with such a stunning result would be still not mentioned anywhere 2 months before release and I believe it's even after the code has been finalized... and remember, as shown in the webpage screenshot above, these shots are actually being portrayed on the PSP screen... not on some other console or on a TV outside the PSP...
Aside from a trailer and a couple of interview questions, the features of GT5 itself have been kept largely a secret. There are some things that can be inferred, like photo mode and parts customization, but any new features have not been discussed yet aside from what is in Prologue already, and the ability to take your cars with you from one GT to another (which no one outside of PD knows exactly how this will work). This hypothetical GT PSP replay theater (or, as I also suggested in an earlier post, a GTPSP-->GT5 photo mode, which I find more likely) might not be revealed yet because Sony's marketing division has decided to keep it under wraps until they begin revealing more information about GT5 itself. This would be daft, but so was the PS3, and the margin of loss on the first batch of PS3s.
Well there is no way to know 100% until the game is released.
Truer words have not been written.
Yes you are still part of society...
Society is an abstraction, and thus does not exist as a functional entity. It is individuals who write laws, individuals who enforce laws, individuals that take resources and turn them into finished goods, individuals who trade money for goods and services which make the market or economy, itself an abstraction, function. It is individuals who declare and wage war, who decide what and how to tax, and how to spend tax revenue.
The lack of a good third person impersonal pronoun in English, like the German 'man,' other than 'they' seems to have prevented my point earlier from being made, and led to my society paragraph being read as facts regarding myself. It was meant to be a thought experiment.
No let's not and just go ahead with the reasonable generalization that none of us like being lied to nor do we like false advertising. Does that not accurately describe you?
I agree, no one likes false advertising, and nor do I. However, if people did not have the impression that laws were successfully protecting them from false advertising anywhere close to 100% of the time, I think it is reasonable to assume that they would take more time to consider both discrepancies between advertised screenshots and the known capabilities of a console, and a publisher's history of advertising, including whether or not they have a reputation for duping their customers. Who would want to do business with a firm that habitually lies to its customers?
Difference is FDA ensures that the claims the drugs makes are reasonably accurate. Discovering fatal characteristics down the line is not analogus to these bullshots.
I mentioned how false advertising laws and laws meant to prevent the manufacture and sell of harmful products both lead to unintended consequences, but I refrained from comparing them directly.
However, if we do consider the topic of false advertising with regards to medicine, couldn't the safety of a drug be one claim of a drug maker that later turns out to be false? There are plenty of examples in the pharmaceutical industry of companies, and sometimes even the FDA (to my knowledge, a much more rare occurrence), approving drugs that they know have side-effects that are not listed. In these cases, the law provides a sense of security above and beyond the reality. For example,
here is a 1979 feature of 60 minutes in which they discuss the side effects that the 1976 swine flu vaccination had on a (thankfully low) number of people, in the feature case, paralysis.
If you wanted to make it analogus, finding out drugs can be fatal would be somewhat equivalent to finding out that these screenshots somehow break your PSP after a certain amount of use. That would assume these screenshots actually are accurate representations of what you will see on the PSP in the first place.
Both things I mentioned involved a false sense of security due to the way the law is set up, but I wasn't comparing them directly.
So sorry, your analogy is flawed, FDA discovering a drug has side effects is not the same as FDA allowing a drug to make false claims, which is the analgoy of what is happening here.
As stated above, I didn't compare the two directly. However, stating that laws that are meant guard against false advertising and laws that are meant to safeguard health in fact have unintended consequences would be, I believe, an apt comparison. In the quote below, I did mention false advertising where I could have perhaps left it out and still have made my point, but it was not an analogy. Rather, I was trying to make the point that a good dose of consumer skepticism is a good thing (which it seems we both agree on) even in a field considered to be well regulated, but that the law can lead people into wrongly assuming that such skepticism is not necessary. It is always necessary.
So, even in the health industry, even when we have laws against false advertising, and even when we have an organization set up to try to prevent the production and use of dangerous drugs/etc., it is still prudent to check out medicines and foods before you use them, or else you could be seriously harmed, or worse, even as folks have a false sense of security, believing that the FDA is protecting them.
I found the analogy--between a publisher using touched up screenshots to make consumers believe that a game has more entertainment value than it actually has compared to drug for which the drug maker makes a false claim that it will cure cancer--to be an interesting comparison. One discusses subjective values on the part of the consumer, and the other discusses a life or death scenario which is taken advantage of (hypothetically) by a pharmaceutical firm. But when is the last time someone actually claimed to have a drug that could cure cancer? There are extraordinary claims made in the field of medicine, but, to my knowledge, the ability to cure cancer is not one of them, at least not recently, whereas touched up screenshots and dangerous, but approved, drugs are recent and regular occurrences.
Who was talking about always? We are talking about here and now and these screenshots.
My mistake.
Go ahead and play devils advocate, but the only time is of any value (including entertainment value) to play devils advocate is when the devil actually has a decent platform to stand on. When the devil is just blowing hot air, it's of no value at all.
Having attended the meetings of a debating society on occasion, I've heard far more outlandish topics defended to great effect. For instance, one topic was whether or not buildings on campus named after racist individuals should be renamed, and it had the surprising outcome of failing (i.e. the buildings should retain their names both for historical purposes, and because there are completely different standards of ethics today as opposed to the nineteenth century), which surprised me, considering the political demographics of the members.
As for a devil's advocate position being of no value, I have to disagree, even in this case. Such a position can always lead to the elucidation of a topic (etc.) that may otherwise be overlooked, and speculation can lead to ideas not previously considered, and even when speculation turns out to be just that, it can lead to the utilization of new ideas in the future.
[Edit] I found even
higher resolution pictures at Gamespot. Looking at size, 1280x720 pixels, they look more likely to be from a GTPSP-->GT5 photo mode, or simply from GT5's photo mode, and have thusly, in the latter case, been mislabeled as PSP screenshots (the most likely scenario, I believe, considering that GT5 appears to be just around the corner).
rologue.
