GT5 damage modeling.

[Master_Yoda]

"peaking at a recent Japanese event, Polyphony Digital head-honcho Kazunori Yamauchi-san confirmed that he expects to see real-time damage in the next instalment of Gran Turismo (GT5) on the PlayStation 3.

Talking with Eurogamer a while back, Yamauchi briefly mentioned that GT4 will be the last Gran Turismo game on the PS2 and he has now made it fairly clear that a next-gen version of GT5 is on the boards.

Ever since the first Gran Turismo on PSone, the inability to damage cars has been a big criticism of the series. Polyphony previously couldn’t include car damage because the majority of car manufacturers didn’t want to have realistic models of their cars being damaged in video games.

Fortunately now, it would appear that Polyphony, after four iterations of the sector-leading franchise, have managed to convince the motor industry to allow car damage for the next Gran Turismo game.

Yamauchi and his team are maintaining that they will only include realistic car damage when they can create realistic car physics/handling that reflects the damage of the vehicle. No further details have been revealed yet, like as to whether the cars will be able to flip"

Is this true?

 

[nd 4 holden spd]

Well look, if they have realistic handling they better not think that it's like the V8 supercars 1 game, they have to remember that most people are still only using a controller with a simple button, not pedals. And they better make that the computer gives way when it should, or overtaking will be impossible, unless you have an unfairly faster car.

 

[Master_Yoda]

Well look, if they have realistic handling they better not think that it's like the V8 supercars 1 game, they have to remember that most people are still only using a controller with a simple button, not pedals. And they better make that the computer gives way when it should, or overtaking will be impossible, unless you have an unfairly faster car.

I only copy and pasted from some web site i found, that had a interview with PD.

 

[Nift]

Well look, if they have realistic handling they better not think that it's like the V8 supercars 1 game, they have to remember that most people are still only using a controller with a simple button, not pedals. And they better make that the computer gives way when it should, or overtaking will be impossible, unless you have an unfairly faster car.

Good point. The one problem I have with the handling is that the sensation of Gforces can't be achieved through a video game. I think we would all be better drivers if this was possible. The only feel one receives is dual shock vibration with the controller. Even the wheels I have tried are somewhat bizarre to use without the gforce sensation. They tinker too much and the game would almost become unplayable.

 

[un_peacekeeper]

Well look, if they have realistic handling they better not think that it's like the V8 supercars 1 game, they have to remember that most people are still only using a controller with a simple button, not pedals. And they better make that the computer gives way when it should, or overtaking will be impossible, unless you have an unfairly faster car.

With the DS2, I don't think you are even going for any realism, so why complain. Buy a decent wheel, race with it, and then ask for more realism. Most people that want realism are already equipped with the DFP.

It would be completely retarded to have AI cars just letting you pass. Ever heard of defensive racing? It is trying to not people pass you. Of course, have the AI not hitting you when you clearly passed most of him/her/it is obvious a major need, but them giving way? That's rubbish.

 

[Nattefrost]

Obviously, they shouldn't give way, where's the competitivity in that? Opponents should only let you pass if you're either in a higher class race (and it isn't clear whether or not multi-class races will be held on the same track at the same time, would be nice though) or if they're a lap (or even more in and endurance) behind.

This isn't anything new. I wonder just how "recent" this event is? If Kaz still only "expects" to see damage, it would mean they haven't even started serious work on it, or he would be able to confirm real-time damage, not only expect it. Seems to me like it's an old event.

 

[Dave A]

Kaz mentioned damage playing a part in GT5 last year shortly after the E3.

 

[Mt. Lynx]

Obviously, they shouldn't give way, where's the competitivity in that? Opponents should only let you pass if you're either in a higher class race (and it isn't clear whether or not multi-class races will be held on the same track at the same time, would be nice though) or if they're a lap (or even more in and endurance) behind.

This isn't anything new. I wonder just how "recent" this event is? If Kaz still only "expects" to see damage, it would mean they haven't even started serious work on it, or he would be able to confirm real-time damage, not only expect it. Seems to me like it's an old event.

I assume they are working on it, but wether or not we´ll actually get damage is not certain at all. That probably depends on how well they get it implemented into the game. If it´s not the best damagemodelling out there by it´s time for release, I think Kaz will pull the plug on it.

 

[Nattefrost]

I assume they are working on it, but wether or not we´ll actually get damage is not certain at all. That probably depends on how well they get it implemented into the game. If it´s not the best damagemodelling out there by it´s time for release, I think Kaz will pull the plug on it.

Might be the other way around. If the damage modelling isn't good enough, they'll simply delay the game. I thinks that's more likely. Imagine they spent 2 years working on damage, Sony wants them to release the game but the damage still needs some work. Are they going to throw away all that work and again release a GT without damage? Doesn't sound like PD to me.

I expect Kaz would have made the decision by now. Either there's damage in GT5 or there isn't, and they don't bother to put a team on it. I believe that if Kaz says he thinks damage will play a major role, it will. But we'll still have to wait and see.

 

[Mt. Lynx]

Might be the other way around. If the damage modelling isn't good enough, they'll simply delay the game. I thinks that's more likely. Imagine they spent 2 years working on damage, Sony wants them to release the game but the damage still needs some work. Are they going to throw away all that work and again release a GT without damage? Doesn't sound like PD to me.

I expect Kaz would have made the decision by now. Either there's damage in GT5 or there isn't, and they don't bother to put a team on it. I believe that if Kaz says he thinks damage will play a major role, it will. But we'll still have to wait and see.

I think you are right! I didn´t even consider the possibilty of delay... silly me .
But I expect a pregame of some sort, like GT Prologue, or a post game like GT Concept. And I also expect it to be a hint of things to come, so atleast a video of damage should be in there, and 20 car grids should be in too. But like you said; we´ll have to wait and see.

 

[Revolution.]

I sincerely hope that damage is included, that would be the icing on the cake for GT5.

 

[Tedehur]

I sincerely hope that damage is included, that would be the icing on the cake for GT5.

I've always missed realistic damage in Gran Turismo, and I decided a few time ago that I will only buy the PS3 + GT5 if there is realistic damage.
Else I'll stick with the PS2 and games I already have.

 

[amar212]

Damage will probably be mechanical only - like some way of malfunctioning the certain parts of the car after the damage occured - as it was with wheel axys damage in GT2.

When speaking about damage issues in GT series, philosophy of the series should be taken into concern together with hardware limitiations.

Philosophy of all games states a main idea about issues of maintaing the car. From downforce improvement after the washing from the very first game, to mileage and oil, to final-cut in GT4 which has offered a invisible yet existing overall wear of the mechanical parts - all games are giving the player emotional and subjective relationship with the cars in garage, unlike any other game that exists.

If you do not care about your car your car will become scrap. Period.

Other games - even the GTR and TOCA with its superior-to-GT damaging and so on - does not transfer the damage or wear through the game. And transfering of it through the game should be a impreative when GT's philosophy is taken into concern.

And to have visual damage which cen be seen in race, in garage, which can be repaired in repair shops in the moment you collect enough money to repair it depending of the costs and so on - you need a hard-drive. And PS3 will not have a hard-drive as far as all specs are considered.

Now comes the video-game-bussines issue. You can't make a game that needs a hard drive to be sold without hard-drive. Or to make that visual damage option could only be used if you have a hard-drive.

You can track legal and bussines problems of exactly the same kind via Microsoft's troubles it has with developers and fact it gave non-hard-drive X360 on the market which is a problem for many genres and games that are developing right now.

Notice that no memory cards could uphold all the data you would need to store through the game structure of GT series if visual damage would exist and being transfered - you'd need at least a 1GB memory card with high-speed data transfer or probabaly even more when resolution and polygon count of all needed layers for dispalying damage sould be shown, stored and propperly displayed when wieved or whatever. You could easily solve it via high-capacity Sony's MemoryStickPro cards, but then again you would hurt a company's core-division of earning ridicoulous amounts of money via selling low-storage flash-memory for big bucks, as Memory Cards for PS nodoubtfully are. 8 MB for 30 euros. Or X360 64MB for 35 euros. Cost-to-benefit ratio is enormuos in that venue.

You can make a game that requires a hard-drive to play and then to sell it with the hard-drive but then you get a majority of non-hard-core buyers that will not buy the game, because there is no bussines-model that would allow you to give the HD for free - and for a game that must be a zillion-copy seller, you need a normal street price, not a 100$ price tag (as it was for FFXI with HD for PS2).

And even with 100$ priice for both game and HD, you'd still loosing money because of HD value (manufactoring, transport, packaging, retail, product support and so on) because some kind of PS3's HD will probably be high-tech HD and not basic HD as it was with PS2.

Oh, and one more point. PhotoMode. Wrecking you car and then doing a photomode pics of it should reqire enourmuos job of moddeling every little aspect of the vehicle to achieve the wanted perfecion of philosophy behind the PhotoMode.

There are many reasons why I do not expect visual damage in GT5. But I would so love to be wrong.

But if mechanical damage should be the "damage" that we can expect from next GT then game could easily be with us in some time of 2007.

 

[Mt. Lynx]

^What you say makes alot of sence, and another issue PD has to consider is casual gamers. Full damagemodelling has to be optional, for the sake of casual gamers. That makes this even harder.

However, a sneakier type of damage could be implemented, IE only in-race damage. Once yo´re finished with the race/championship, the car is no longer damaged. That would be against PD philosophy, but still a possibility.

 

[Dave A]

no damage wouldn't require that much memory to save. It could save on the memory card for each car, at the end of the day all the card needs to save is numbers, it doesn't need to store an actual 3d model of the car and the state it's in. You don't need a HDD for visual damage, theres two ways to do it, the first is to have it fixed at the end of each race, the cost taken out of your winnings. You wouldn't need a memory card even for that, the second is for it to be left upto you to fix it as and when you want to which I agree goeas more in line with wat GT is about, you'd need that to be saved onto a card but as I said, all the card would store is numbers, no actual 3d model or anything like that, not much memory would be needed.

 

[Elvisdostie]

Yeah... I don't think the way Amar212 thinks at all. Damage was never in the PS/PS2 versions of the game for 2 reasons: Corporate pressure and hardware limitations... The 1st one is obviously not a problem anymore. The 2nd reason, however, is confusing. I don't think that hardware limitations meant lack of storage space. PD couldn't do it because the hardware in the PS2 wasn't able to handle the "on the fly" calculations. Kaz was clear that he didn't want damage for the sake of damage. He sees no point in having damage skin 1/2/3/4...I can respect that. He want realism and you better believe that 7 core processors with as much raw speed as the Cell has is more than enough to add up the numbers.

As for saving a damaged car, first off, the PS3 will work with most storage card...this meens that a 2-5 GB memory card is relatively affordable but space isn't even an issue because all those bumps, scratches and whatever you see on a broken car is nothing more than a math tag that says "this goes here, and that goes there".... 1 car will take ks to save...not megs.

 

[amar212]

I dot not want to go in deep. But just imagine the quality of modelling for actual visual damage for both GT game standards and for PS3 game standards.

That means ability to scratch the car, to brake the lights, to crash the bonnet, to brake windows, to have rear panel gone off and so on. Nothing which we haven't yet seen on other games. But Catch22 is to make it transferrable.

And f you're going to do it by standards mentioned above, then you have to model the engine, interior and so one in full 3D since you need it for both replay zoom-in feature and for PhotoMode. Not to speak about dust and dirt layers for every car which are not just transprency layers but actual coloured dirt and dust in PS3 graphics I guess.

Then you need to apply the algorhytams to transfer the state of every car in that very moment through all the scenes inside the GT mode where you actually see the car: in-game, replay, garage, all GT Auto shops and PhotoMode. So if you have a M3 with broken window, shattered rear light and scratched right side on front bumper it have to look the same way through all game untill you decide to fix it. And now transfer that logic to all of 500+ cars in your garage.

Not to mention people like us who would go and try to explore every little aspect of that features just to find the glitches and bugs and report them to the whole world.

And not to even mention beta-testing of such an options which would take a decade.

To me, it would be phenomenal to have something like that but somehow I doubt it. And no memory card could ever hold it, as far as I think so. And yes, I'd love to be wrong .

Oh, and Elvis, I have all the corporate reasons on the world to belive that you won't be able to save game data on anything else but PS3 memory cards or PS3 HD (bought separately ). I highly doubt that SCEE will sacrfice it's gigantic venue it gains from selling the most expensive flash memory in the world even for it's own company Memory Stick standard.

Becuase revenues for Sony Electronics (which makes electronics devices, toghether with Memory Sticks) and Sony Computer Entertainment (which makes PS and PS's memory cards and so on) are listed separately in Sony Corp. annual reports. Logic is very much simple there.

 

[Elvisdostie]

Welcome to the Next gen, my friend! It's about time we saw a real difference in technology other than a graphic polish don't you think?

I see your point, but I think your thinking in obsolete terms. 1 processor out of 7 is more than capable of rendering a car in full 3D (Body, undercarriage, engine, whatever) at all times during the race. In fact, there might be 500 cars, but all you need is 10 templates tops. Car dimensions, engine weight, frame rigidity are nothing more than some of the various fields in the template. Add to that speed, tyre wear, and all other little things and all you need to program is "This part of the car touches this surface at this speed...how does that material react?" If Excel can do it, so can next-gen harware. I realize that this was oversimplyfied, but you get the idea.

I believe that we are officially done with a simple graphic upgrade from gen to gen. From now on, the available hardware will give us more of what we always wanted but were too afraid to ask: a realistic world on disc! Think of what GTA accomplished on outdated systems... Multiply that by 50, and you have a good idea of what the PS3 can do.... with more than twice the storage space to do it.....

Here you go, Amar, this is the best I could find... Old, but, you know, it's all we got... I see your valid point, but it appears that Sony wnats to push Blu-Ray and is getting less and less preoccupied by the cash cow that is the memory card...:

The PS3 comes with six USB slots, three times more than the PS2. The machine also comes with a Memory Stick slot, a compact flash slot, and an SD card slot for additional external media. However, the PS3 does not have a Memory Card slot, despite its backward compatibility with the PS2, raising the question of how players will transfer game saves.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6126832.html?q=ps3 sdcards

 

[Appie]

hope they will if not its who cares

 

[Dave A]

I dot not want to go in deep. But just imagine the quality of modelling for actual visual damage for both GT game standards and for PS3 game standards.

That means ability to scratch the car, to brake the lights, to crash the bonnet, to brake windows, to have rear panel gone off and so on. Nothing which we haven't yet seen on other games. But Catch22 is to make it transferrable.

And f you're going to do it by standards mentioned above, then you have to model the engine, interior and so one in full 3D since you need it for both replay zoom-in feature and for PhotoMode. Not to speak about dust and dirt layers for every car which are not just transprency layers but actual coloured dirt and dust in PS3 graphics I guess

With regards to saving all of that, it's still just numbers, it still doesn't take up a lot of memory to save onto a memory card.

With regard to the car modelling, yes your right, it means modelling everything inside the car and out, and theres no reason to believe they won't or can't do that.

With regard to the programming, all yuo need is a few templates and a desent damage engine combined with the physics engine. You set properties for each template and then you apply one of the set templates to each car. It's not rocket science, Beta testing a system like that doesn't require you to smash up every car in every possible way, just each template would need to be tested colliding with different objects, thats all.

 

[Gabkicks]

do you guys really think that pd doesnt have the manpower to create efficient, full damage modeling for cars without delaying the game to 2010

 

[Elvisdostie]

With regards to saving all of that, it's still just numbers, it still doesn't take up a lot of memory to save onto a memory card.

With regard to the car modelling, yes your right, it means modelling everything inside the car and out, and theres no reason to believe they won't or can't do that.

With regard to the programming, all yuo need is a few templates and a desent damage engine combined with the physics engine. You set properties for each template and then you apply one of the set templates to each car. It's not rocket science, Beta testing a system like that doesn't require you to smash up every car in every possible way, just each template would need to be tested colliding with different objects, thats all.

I agree with that... I do see beta testing as a lengthy process, though.

All in all, We are speaking of what Kaz said and really want it to be the truth... but I can't forget that GT4 was late because they were working on the online play...remember that?

 

[Dave A]

Yeah it's lenthy, it always will be for a GT game, but my point was, having damage in a GT game won't make it stupidly lenther respectively speaking, it won't be for example twice as lenthy as it would have been before or anything like that.

 

[amar212]

Welcome to the Next gen... raising the question of how players will transfer game saves.

Do not get me wrong, I do not want to be harsh at any way - all I speak is from perspective of tracking down all the info and knowledge and putting it in overall context.

On "conceptual" PS3 model shown so far there is slide panel on the upper left which "hides" slots for old-school controllers and MC's and slots for other flash-media types. Since PS3 will be totally backward-compatible all of us can expect to use old PS and PS2 cards and controllers form the moment you get your brand new PS3 out of the box. It is a bussines imperative for Sony and one of the key stategic elements in wiining the "Next-Gen Wars" - on both market, media and PR.

However, simple math should resolve all doubts about the future of existing bussines model for game-save storage media:

Fro saving a game you need a PS memory card. Through time every user will buy at least one. Myself have 4. Some people I know have even 10. But stick to basic 1 - for 90 million consoles sold you've at least sold 90 million MC's. Multiply that by 30$ (and it was much more in the early years) you get 270 million $ of revenue just for memory cards alone. By dividing it through very simple revenue-to-profit algorithm you have at least 50 million big ones just though memory cards sale. No company will ever doubt the profit from such a product. And it will make such product mandatory for game saves for every cost. It is logical.

And for The Cell power - I see it's power used for controlling and calculating levels of mechanical damage to all cars on the field, changable lighting on tracks, maybe even time-of-day changes, 15+ AI field-routine and behaviour, spectators and pit-crews behaviour, controlling GPU for various heat, particle and lighting effects on both cars and surroundings, in-car views, pause-to-replay and pause-to-photomode options, controlling the multi-channel APU, and so on. To achive visual damage together with mentioned above...somehow I doubt.

And before that you have to program it, to design it, to modell it, to optimise it and then test it. And you have to loose as less time as you can.

But as I said before - I'd so love to be wrong.

 

[Dave A]

I'd love you to be wrong too . At the end of the day though, we can all speculate and theorise all we want regardless of how much we know or don't know about modelling, programming and the PS3, we still have to wait and see.

With regards to the memory cards, I think the Sony merory stick has a possiblity of being used, but your completely right about the memory card, it's a no-brainer profit wise.

 

[Elvisdostie]

Absolutely... I was surprised when I saw those slots. The will be a memory card slot. They have to put one in for B/C as you said. I just think that they realize that mainstreaming it to memory sticks is also a financially viable path. I've been thinking that since Mem Sticks came out...What surprised me was the support of other formats...

As for the processing power, as Live4Speed mentioned, all we are doing is speculating, so I guess i have alot of faith in what those Cells can accomplish. I'm just tired of getting polished versions of games I played before. I want genuine progress... I guess it affects my judgement!

 

[amar212]

I just think that they realize that mainstreaming it to memory sticks is also a financially viable path...

With such differe in-corporate policy between divisions I seriousely doubt that any PS3 game could ever be saved on anything but propietary PS3 memory card. SCE makes huge profit form PS product and it will never give a piece of that to SE. And overall - it remains the most expensive data medium on the planet in capacity-to-price ratio.

But I also understand why did they make a strategic move towards use the Memory Sticks inside PSP because it will affect the consumer's thinking about interchangable media-type when deciding what other digital product to buy - such as digital camera, mp3 player or digicam. It was their only move so far towards the prospects of overall company. But usage of MS on PS3 for game save would not do good for both SCE or Sony Corp. in genral revenus.

As for other media-type slots on PS3 only possibility I see is to allow to watch photos ar MPEG-4 movies. But due to manufactoring costs it could easily happen that SD and xD slots on "conceptual console" dissapear from final design like they've never existed before...

 

[SavageEvil]

I'm pretty sure that Kaz and company were going with real-time damage, so that means upon impact the game with deform on the fly, but about transferring the data after the race, from the get go wouldn't it be easier to have a car model of rearrangeable data. But considering PD has Blu-Rays to play with, I don't think they will run out of space for holding any kind of data. Forget how they will hold all the data, and worry about if the collision physics will make sense and how deep the damage will go, such as totally immobilizing your car, engine failure, tire destruction. I wonder.....

 

[Elvisdostie]

The fact that they've held up on damage due to its realistic impossibility brings my hopes up...

As for the awesome Mem card exchange, i guess we'll see when we'll see.... You make alot of sense, amar, i just think I do too.....

 

[amar212]

OOps, just one more issue I didn't notice - goes to something that Live4Speed said.

Of course there is no need to save whole 3D model on card, that is obsolete. All GT games had "algorytham save" which saved just data for certain algorythams which were applied to certain game-engine elements when needed. That is why replay data is so small, toogether with game save and so on. It's not an issue at all.

But having an option to save a enormuos amounts of variables for each and every car in the game that needs to be transferred through gameplay requires totally different approach. You have to determine the maximum space needed for the game-save - as all games do - and to occupy it in advance. Reason? Because you just can't display a message "Insuficient Memory Space on Memory Card (PS3) For Saving Damage Data. Please, insert another Memory Card (PS3) in Port 1 or buy a HD (PS3)" in the middle of the game.

And I just can't imagine how much memory space would you need for data variables of all parts that can be damaged on every car that must be transfered in game that has so many cars, but somehow I think you'd need much. That is my point.

And again I would love to be wrong .