How Gran Turismo is Made: A Behind-The-Scenes Tour of Polyphony Digital

[sundaydriving]

in a country where hard work is culturally significant

Sad thing is a lot of these hard workers are simply busy looking busy waiting for their boss to go home so they can also leave.

 

[ShiftingGears]

Why not? Other devs actually go to different locations just to take accurate photos of the skies in that particular region, I mean why spend money when they could just Google it right?

Exactly.

Most AAA devs these day are scanning real life objects, I don't see any issues with it. It does not affect the gameplay but it makes the world feels more authentic. Just imagine a track based in Scandinavia full of banana trees all over the place

If someone told me they needed a trip to Scandinavia to figure that out I'd tell them they had to scan for rocks in their head.

If you're arguing for immersion, the suspension bridge in St Croix or 5 lane roads with 30 degrees camber at Alsace is much more jarring than any difference in vegetation.

Damn, to think we'd have Laguna Seca, Silverstone and Pikes Peak by now if a tiny handful of Polyphony's staff hadn't looked at some plants for a few hours...

You'll find with any business that inefficiencies add up. Would you rather new tracks sooner, or PD selecting the correct subspecies of plant in Croatia that you won't notice anyway?

 

[ArR29]

Exactly.



If someone told me they needed a trip to Scandinavia to figure that out I'd tell them they had to scan for rocks in their head.

If you're arguing for immersion, the suspension bridge in St Croix or 5 lane roads with 30 degrees camber at Alsace is much more jarring than any difference in vegetation.



You'll find with any business that inefficiencies add up. Would you rather new tracks sooner, or PD selecting the correct subspecies of plant in Croatia that you won't notice anyway?

I hope you're not serious. Do you honestly think they can find thousands of high resolution HDR picture of trees, plants, objects with different angles, height, and depth on internet? They don't just go to some country and took a couple of picture of plants and say to themselves "yep, jobs done time to go home." If you think scouring the internet for picture instead of sending a couple of guys in different locations is more efficient, then I don't think you understand how game development works.

 

[Jordan]

On this subject, they do research the area on the internet before they travel to the location for data capture. Here is the raw transcript from Yamauchi when responding to a question about how fictional tracks are created:

Often times it really just starts from a drawing. In that drawing, we write how long the straights are, how the curves are angled, the ups and downs of the track. And then we have a discussion with the landscape designer about what that world or environment is going to be like.

We ask, is this going to be the mountains of Japan, or the West coast of the United States, or a European Eifel area? That’s the kind of discussions that we have with the designers. And once that is decided, we actually send a team to that actual location to data capture that environment.

As a precursor to that, we investigate on the internet all these actual locations in that area that would look good for data capture. You decide OK I think we should make that the south of France, and we take the team over there, all together, and we study the geography, the vegetation of the area, and we do that research and photograph it all and laser scan it, and we bring that all home. And then, we fit all that data in various parts of the track, so that’s the process.

And of course, we will drive it and do adjustments along the way.

We don't know the technical standards or requirements needed for a texture to be useful in the game engine. It could easily be more efficient to send an experienced data capture team to an area for a few days to get exactly what they need instead of searching the internet to find acceptable textures. And we haven't even started on the legal issues and costs of using third-party images and assets in a game like Gran Turismo.

The real question is, if they laser scan tracks why is road feel still communicated very poorly through the FFB (and don't talk about the T-GT's T-DFB, because that's a canned effect)? Not being unthankful but I wish sometimes people who can get this close to Kaz would ask the real difficult questions. I imagine that would adversely impact your chances of getting an invite next time though

Nobody asks "questions" like that because they are really just complaints. There is no practical or polite way for him to respond to that — he's not going to throw his team under the bus and explain why his product is inferior — so you aren't going to get any good content for the article or video you're trying to make. These are interviews, not inquisitions or product feedback sessions. Treating them otherwise would be unprofessional and counter-productive.

 

[anthonyfa18]

Just Notices in these 2 photo the amount of ps4 and ps4 pro dev kits they have,

 

[Freeman_Cruz]

I don't have first-hand data, but I think that currently the modeling of cars in the automotive industry should be done with stretch marks and knots for reasons of precision and ease of use, so I do not believe that this process of reduction of polygons occurs as they do they say

Maybe some engineer more related to the automotive industry could correct me.

On the other hand, I think this is the fourth report I read about a tour of the Polyphony offices. For example:

https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20170727-polyphony-degital-studio-tour

I follow the world of video games exhaustively and I think these visits are quite rare. I don't remember similar visits at the offices of Bethesda, Naughty Dog or Rare, for example. So, criticism of the unusual secret of Polyphony seems unfounded.

 

[Lux Klonoa]

I follow the world of video games exhaustively and I think these visits are quite rare. I don't remember similar visits at the offices of Bethesda, Naughty Dog or Rare, for example. So, criticism of the unusual secret of Polyphony seems unfounded.

Well, they weren't exactly visits by the media (at least for one of them), but we've seen the insides of Naughty Dog and Bethesda at least. Multiple times for Naughty Dog, actually; they themselves filmed some making-of docs for Uncharted and the Last of Us. And Noclip did interviews inside Bethesda for Fallout 76. Dunno about Rare, though.

Meanwhile, the last time I've seen PD's offices was all the way back in GT5P's GTTV where they did a small 5-10 minute doc of themselves. That was it until now. So, given how they still won't interact with the community all that much (compared to a certain other racing dev), I think them being one of the most secretive companies ever is pretty much accurate.

 

[LeGeNd-1]

Nobody asks "questions" like that because they are really just complaints. There is no practical or polite way for him to respond to that — he's not going to throw his team under the bus and explain why his product is inferior — so you aren't going to get any good content for the article or video you're trying to make. These are interviews, not inquisitions or product feedback sessions. Treating them otherwise would be unprofessional and counter-productive.

With all due respect Jordan, I fully understand your difficult position and point of view 👍 I think there is a way to frame the "question" in a non-threatening and non-condescending manner though. A way that also stimulates discussion on how to make the game's simulation aspect better, which I'm sure is Kaz' main goal also (as much as possible while not completely alienating the casual playerbase anyway). And in fact better FFB and road feel would greatly add immersion and actually make "driving easier for everyone", which is GTS' tagline. I think with all you've done to support and grow the GT community over the years, Kaz would respect and be more likely to listen and answer the more technical questions coming from you than anyone else outside PD headquarters. Maybe think of it as a chat session between friends instead of an interviewer and interviewee.

Just a scenario of how the session could go in my mind:

Spoiler

Kaz: So this is how we create our tracks *explains laser scanning process and track surface data gathering*

Jordan: Interesting, what is the maximum resolution of laser scanning used?

Kaz: Ah..our laser can pick up to 3mm of resolution. As you can see it's a lot of data points per track!

Jordan: Wow, that's amazing! And can that high resolution be implemented fully in the playable game or does the track mesh needs to be simplified like the cars' CAD data?

Kaz: Unfortunately due to the limited processing power of PS4, even the Pro model, we have to cut down on detail and most of the tracks in game only have 10mm detail resolution on its surface.

Jordan: Ah... that's a shame. I've driven the roads around La Sarthe (example) and it's a lot bumpier in real life than in the game so I was wondering why. Hopefully this can be improved with PS5 next generation!

Kaz: Yes, we always hope to put in as such detail as possible, but often technology holds us back. We will keep working with Thrustmaster/Fanatec also to deliver better FFB in future games.

Something like that

Anyway, I've never interviewed people myself, and I have no idea how the atmosphere is on these kinds of tours, so the above is just a hypothetical situation. You're doing us a huge favour by writing up and posting all these photos, and I don't mean to sound ungrateful so keep up the good work 👍

 

[Lux Klonoa]

Ahem, I apologize in advance for bumping this thread up, posting in the wrong thread before, and tagging you twice on Twitter in the last 20-something days, lol... but it's been a month now, @Jordan. I hope you didn't lose your vids somehow, as a Japanese friend on Twitter and I have really been looking to seeing Daiki Kasho's solo performance.

If there's anything holding you back like you being busy lately or Sony NDAing you (especially if it's a new song that Daiki did), then I understand. We shall wait further, then. Till they reveal the next game, even, which (hopefully) won't be long from now.

 

[Jordan]

Ahem, I apologize in advance for bumping this thread up, posting in the wrong thread before, and tagging you twice on Twitter in the last 20-something days, lol... but it's been a month now, @Jordan. I hope you didn't lose your vids somehow, as a Japanese friend on Twitter and I have really been looking to seeing Daiki Kasho's solo performance.

If there's anything holding you back like you being busy lately or Sony NDAing you (especially if it's a new song that Daiki did), then I understand. We shall wait further, then. Till they reveal the next game, even, which (hopefully) won't be long from now.

Sorry it took so long. I didn't forget, I just had too many other things on my plate. Here you go!

 

[dimassa19]

Sorry it took so long. I didn't forget, I just had too many other things on my plate. Here you go!

A new Hit is coming.

 

[Lux Klonoa]

Sorry it took so long. I didn't forget, I just had too many other things on my plate. Here you go!

No biggie, man. I'm actually glad that you took your time to post this, 'cause some stuff recently took my attention as well.

Well, it's short, but awesomely sweet. Here's hoping they get him to do a live concert at one of the World Tour events next year, then.