How did PD get the game to look the way it does?

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Barso
I own a 360 with forza 2 and PGR4 and from the screenshots it seems GT5 will trounce the 2 360 games in graphics by a long way.
But what I would like to know how did polyphony digital get the PS3 with its weaker RSX GPU to produce graphics like this?
They look so much better than forza2 and PGR4 and I cannot wait to play GT5
I know the developers of forza2 are a really talented bunch but if GT5 is the start of the first generation of games that will put the 360 to shame then bring it on.
Sony should let polyphony digital share there PS3 development skills with other developers.
I just hope I won't be disappointed.
 
Barso
...Sony should let polyphony digital share there PS3 development skills with other developers.
I just hope I won't be disappointed.
Click to expand...

Or..............



PD could keep it's secrets so that Sony can finally have it's big break.
 
Kinda off topic but let me just say this, PD and even more KY's main intrest is a great racing game

Most other game developers(EA) are intrested in profits. Forza and PGR are both great games and the 360 it self is very capable but with out the need to go the extra mile and spend the extra time(money) to do the renders and perfections that PD does, the other companies just wont do it.

EA: just look at the NFS series, its gone to total heck and it doesnt show signs of coming back :(
 
It's simple. All the people at PD know what they're doing. Unlike those chumps that work on Windows.
 
one thing I think PD do is use a scaner to scan the IRL car, thats why the cars are spot on..

I've said it before, the car models in both Forza and Forza 2 looks worse than in GT4!
 
Its not only Gran Turismo that dominates in graphics.. Uncharted to this day has one of best graphics on consoles. I don't think PS3 is weaker in RSX GPU then the Xbox360 even tho if some numbers state so or not.. I think the Cell processor is real treat for a console, sure its harder to develop games, but they say its like a puzzle box, more challenging but more rewarding in the end.
 
I must say I too am EXTREMELY impressed by the graphics. What impresses me so much is that I don't think my very powerful (Core2Duo @3.2Ghz 8800GTS) PC can output such beautiful images. I'm a PC snob but I have to tip my hat to Sony and PD.

Especially Daytona is jaw-dropping.
 
I'd love to know it too (Who don't lol). It's amazing to see those real-time renders, and I can't believe that photorealism according to the fact of any 3D render engine for PC needs hours to create one decent frame with a similar quality and visual complexity. As people said, PD's crew know what they do, and that's a keypoing of the GT saga success.

Salu2.alexwrc
 
it's all about what the hardware can do and how smart the the programmers are (they have to be in order to use and misuse the HW's processing power and capabilities to the maximum of its abilities and/or to think of clever solutions for the technical limitations that the target platform has and/or other difficulties that they will encounter during the design and development phases of the project), and how hard they are willing to work.

the japanese people are hard workers, that's why most of their products are of excellent to perfect quality.
 
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The fact is, PD concentrated mainly on the cars. That's where their prowess lies.

For starters, the tracks are very bland looking, when compared to, say, something like Forza or GTR, more detailing has been put into those games than what has ben done in GT.

Secondly, AI is a bit gimped when compared to the likes of Forza. Don't get me wrong, Forza's AI is not perfect, but it's leaps and bounds ahead of what GT is doing.

Thirdly, the physics are not exactly up to scratch as the aforementioned racing games. Again, Forza's physics are not perfect, but they do outshine what GT is doing currently.

Lastly, but not my final gripe, GT was touted to have been a launch title, so I'm guessing that its inception was started at around the same time as Forza 2. Therefore, it has a lot more development time behind it and it's still not finished. I don't believe we will see the final game much before Q1 2009.


Don't get me wrong people, I love car sim games and I own both 360 and PS3. I have played Forza to death and have also played the Japanese version of GT:P(currently awaiting for my Euro copy of GT:P to arrive), but I feel that GT is more about showcasing cars and being a 'driving' sim, whereas Forza is more concentrated on the physics and AI to be more of a 'racing' sim. Both are great games in their own merits.
 
Barso
I own a 360 with forza 2 and PGR4 and from the screenshots it seems GT5 will trounce the 2 360 games in graphics by a long way.
But what I would like to know how did polyphony digital get the PS3 with its weaker RSX GPU to produce graphics like this?
They look so much better than forza2 and PGR4 and I cannot wait to play GT5
I know the developers of forza2 are a really talented bunch but if GT5 is the start of the first generation of games that will put the 360 to shame then bring it on.
Sony should let polyphony digital share there PS3 development skills with other developers.
I just hope I won't be disappointed.
Click to expand...

The PS3 has a extremely powerful and capable processor, regardless of the GPU. Xbox360 could not do this even if PD were had the controls.

We are only starting to see what the PS3 power has to offer, most games so far are developed off the xbox hardware and ported to PS3, this makes for average PS3 games.
 
I've seen drifting in Foza 2 and in GT5 and it blows away Forza 2, the impact is amazing. The theoretical power of console doesn't matter as long as the game looks great like GT5 does, what's the point in X360's power if games on it look worse and I don't believe in the first place that RSX is weaker, it may be different technology, but I'm not sure about its abilities, I'm not a programmer. And the tracks even in GT4 looked better than in PC games even if there are more polygons and stuff on PC, it was about the lighting used I guess that made GT4's tracks look adorable and real, just like the cars look. Tracks in GT4, GT5 look more credible that's the final verdict that matters.
 
MowTin
I must say I too am EXTREMELY impressed by the graphics. What impresses me so much is that I don't think my very powerful (Core2Duo @3.2Ghz 8800GTS) PC can output such beautiful images. I'm a PC snob but I have to tip my hat to Sony and PD.

Especially Daytona is jaw-dropping.
Click to expand...

I agree, I have an 3.0 duo with dual 88gts and When I play Rfactor or GTR2 or Race07 on HIGH graphics, there is not as much detail then GT5,, but they do have better smoke effects and damange systems...

Daytona does look amazing. But I think Zuzuka and FUJI look really AMAZING. Especially FUJI, when you see the mountains and the green forests. The graphics have so much detail on the environments its just chills your spine.

just a quck example
Pic
Pic
 
That's Photomode, filtered and more than twice the screen resolution.

In-game graphics quality are downgraded quite a lot, there are no fancy filters that make the image so slick, you see jaggies here and there.

If you play 6-7 feets away from your TV you'll barely notice the lack of those filters, but if you have a setup like mine, playing about 1.5 feet away from a 26" TV, well... You'll see cardboard-like low-medium textures in the circuits and still you'll see hipcups, tearing, some pop in, poor anisotropic filtering, jaggies and all that stuff, the PS3 is not a black magician, what you see is what you get. But indeed the cars look amazing from everywhere you look at them.

Also, don't be kidding me, a dual 8800 setup would blow away the RSX (7900~7950 equivalent) anyday, is just a matter of developers and resources, just think what PD could do with at least one card like that, and just think of the electricity bill if the PS3 had one of those :yuck:
 
I really don't think it's an issue of sheer compute/graphics power. By comparison the PS2 is dwarfed by any modern PC (I think someone put it around the level of a 400 MHz PII), yet GT4 still has a more realistic feel (IMHO) than Toca 3, FIA GTR2 or rFactor, all of which I have on my PC. The PC games are beautifully detailed but they look cartoonish, and the presentation is sorely lacking (the whiney crew chief with the pommy accent commenting on my race drives me nuts in GTR2).

After all these years the opening sequence for GT4 still gives me goosebumps :D
 
PD can eek so much out of seemingly so little (well, at least so little in the case of the PS2) because they have a fixed hardware spec.

They know exactly what they've got to work with, exactly how it's going to work, every nuance, subtlety, bug and feature that the hardware and it's drivers provide.

Developing for 'the PC' is very different to this. The game has to run well enough on the minimum specs, but also excel on the best of the best.

They've no idea what versions of drivers people will have, what combination of hardware, even what operating system. This is a serious disadvantage, and goes a long way (by my understanding) to explaining the apparent logical flaw as to how a small box with frankly horrendous specs:

* CPU: 64-bit/128-bit "Emotion Engine" clocked at 294 MHz
o System Memory: 32 MB (MiB) Direct Rambus or RDRAM
o Cache memory: Instruction: 16 KB (KiB), Data: 8 KB + 16 KB (ScrP)
* GPU: "Graphics Synthesizer" clocked at 147 MHz
o Pixel pipelines: 16
o 4 MB Video RAM

can produce GT4 style graphics, whereas a pretty powerful PC couldn't produce something of such quality. Just compare those numbers above to any PC of the last 5 years, they are truly, truly horrendous.
 
Stonie
Thirdly, the physics are not exactly up to scratch as the aforementioned racing games. Again, Forza's physics are not perfect, but they do outshine what GT is doing currently.
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I can't agree with that at all. I'm assuming were are talking about FM2 here as the originals physics model was very poor (power on oversteer in FWD cars!!!!!). FM2 was a big improvement over FM, but its a long way from being good.

Weight transfer is very poorly modelled, with resulting body roll also completely non-existent. Once again front wheel cars are not modelled well with understeer being for less evident than it should be. For me FM2 is far to oversteer biased, it may well give it appeal to the drifter and FnF crowd, but it doesn't make it a good sim.

Basically I don't agree that FM2 outshines GT at all, rather than FM2 appeals to a 'demand' for easy oversteer, and unfortunately the physics involved in the real world also include rather a lot of understeer.

Regards

Scaff
 
Nice posts by Strop and Scaff.

Stonie, it's only Prologue. I know PD has had all this time to work on this stuff, but I would have been disappointed with a release-issue GT that would have been little more than an upgraded GT4. I think people are beginning to evaluate it as a full game because it just keeps looking more and more complete and impressive (private races! Ferrari F1!).

I can only assume many of the issues you have (true or not) will have been improved/addressed/disregarded (depending on accuracy) by the time GT5 is released. Prologue is an impressive intro, and I like that they waited and worked to get it right.
 
NoxNoctis Umbra
Its not only Gran Turismo that dominates in graphics.. Uncharted to this day has one of best graphics on consoles. I don't think PS3 is weaker in RSX GPU then the Xbox360 even tho if some numbers state so or not.. I think the Cell processor is real treat for a console, sure its harder to develop games, but they say its like a puzzle box, more challenging but more rewarding in the end.
Click to expand...

There are alot of high-end PC's GPU's that can't compete with RSX, the same comparison can be made with the Cell. They were made for each other and the combined effect is synergistic. I suspect as time goes by, good as Prologue looks, GT5 will be even better in every way. Sony/PD move slowly for good reason.
 
mustang245
There are alot of high-end PC's GPU's that can't compete with RSX
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That's not strictly true, nVidia themselves explained that it's around 7800 GT(possibly GTX) level.

As such, An nV 7900GTX, ATI X1900XT(X) and the majority of high end ( nV 88xx series, equivalent AMD/ATI cards) are a whole lot more powerful.

It's all in the code/drivers (magic...)

EDIT:

Given how flexible the Cell is, I don't know whether perhaps they would use that to do some of the image processing, which would of course bring sheer performance levels up, but I don't know enough to say that with any confidence :s
 
letdown427
That's not strictly true, nVidia themselves explained that it's around 7800 GT(possibly GTX) level.

As such, An nV 7900GTX, ATI X1900XT(X) and the majority of high end ( nV 88xx series, equivalent AMD/ATI cards) are a whole lot more powerful.

It's all in the code/drivers (magic...)

EDIT:

Given how flexible the Cell is, I don't know whether perhaps they would use that to do some of the image processing, which would of course bring sheer performance levels up, but I don't know enough to say that with any confidence :s
Click to expand...

"Combined effect is SYNERGISTIC". Seeing is believing...
 
I'll be seeing next Friday, and I'm pretty sure I'll be believing too :)👍
 
Well, let's see...

When you can take however long you feel like to create the game, spend as much money as you want, skimp out on things like track detail, damage, physics, and AI, etc., you will be surprised at how pretty the cars look.
 
VIPERGTSR01: it all depends on the product, the porting programmers and the platform that they want to port it to.

you played the bad ports.

come on PD, where are the skid marks?
 
It's rare to play good ports, but it does happen.
 
VIPERGTSR01: when you hire bad port programmers or pressure the good ones to meet a very tight deadline (rushing them to have a working build ASAP), that is what you get.
 
You have to remember, regardless of a game being a port or a exclusive, every game on a console is programmed for one set of hardware and one set of hardware only.

On a PC a game has to be made with so many sets of hardware in mind, the range of hardware is near endless.

Therefore, you can and should always get better use of a graphics card out of a console. A 7800GTX in a console, with a game made for that one specific set of hardware can nearly produce quality graphics as fast and as good as a 8800GTX in a normal home PC.
 
eastley: they are not obliged to support all of the hardware parts and configurations that exist on earth. most of the game developers choose to support them and, almost always, that means that the resulting products are of inferior quality (in most cases graphics-wise).
 
Greek
eastley: they are not obliged to support all of the hardware parts and configurations that exist on earth. most of the game developers choose to support them and, almost always, that means that the resulting products are of inferior quality (in most cases graphics-wise).
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Well, dir!!!

They still have to support a wide range, hence as you said inferior graphical power/quality.
 
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