NFS Shift 2 Unleashed - Details

  • Thread starter LittleLefty
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I find it troubling that excitement is being equated to crashes. What? Don't you find any excitement in trying to pass someone cleanly, or blocking a passer effectively without flagrantly shunting them off the track?

REAL racing is excitement in the extreme, but has very few wrecks (at least compared to Shift) and few of them are deliberately caused by the drivers. To hear someone say that crash physics and plenty of wrecks is how to get excitement into a game, well, that pure rubbish! Ask David Brabham whether racing is boring unless there are loads of crashes!

Improved, more accurate HANDLING doesn't make a game boring. Heck, if you are intent on causing mayhem, better handling IMPROVES your ability to do it! That is, if you are any good! Problem arises, I suppose, when arcade weenies find it even harder than it is now to keep up with the pacesetters..!

Shift's excitement doesn't come from the crashes (at least, not for me). Shift's excitement, especially compared to GT5p or some of the pure sims, comes from how they managed to get the visceral racing experience translated to a static game. The engines snarl, they growl, they roar. The visuals blur, bounce and jostle you around. They dd a superb job of making you THINK you are in a racing car. But then they put street tires on them, and made you drive in the rain (but didn't SHOW it raining!). That's how I feel about the handling... To be honest, if they had simply showed rain and working wipers, we would all be PRAISING Shift's handling! But, in the sunshine, the handling is way too drift-y.

I'm sorry, but if crashes are what you think creates excitement, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution...
 
If crash physics are good and accurate, then people will be less inclined to crash, what with not being in the race any more... It's waaaay to early to start judging Shift 2 on 5 seconds of gameplay footage.

A spectacular crash always makes for a better wow factor than a car cleanly passing another one on the inside of a tight corner. And trailers are mostly created for wow factor.

Yeah once you're racing, the passing etc is intense, but not so interesting when watching a replay of random people you have no connection to doing it in a game!

I've never gone 'wow' or 'that's awesome' watching some overtakes in a replay of Shift, rFactor or whatever, but I have for some of the cool crashes, and certainly did watching that trailer :)
 
HeadsoupBob
If crash physics are good and accurate, then people will be less inclined to crash, what with not being in the race any more... It's waaaay to early to start judging Shift 2 on 5 seconds of gameplay footage.

A spectacular crash always makes for a better wow factor than a car cleanly passing another one on the inside of a tight corner. And trailers are mostly created for wow factor.

Yeah once you're racing, the passing etc is intense, but not so interesting when watching a replay of random people you have no connection to doing it in a game!

I've never gone 'wow' or 'that's awesome' watching some overtakes in a replay of Shift, rFactor or whatever, but I have for some of the cool crashes, and certainly did watching that trailer :)
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I can understand crashes creating a 'wow factor' but it has to have some driving and all, a perfect example is the NASCAR 2011 trailer, combined real racing with a spectacular crash at the end. Perfect trailer.
 
boxox
My guess would be that they don't really push that angle of it for nKP and iRacing is because, well, crashes look like total arse in those games due to them not having anywhere near the same amount of money. Is there a single sports show that opens without a crash montage? People just generally like crashes, I think you'll find.

I wouldn't read too much more into it than what you see: critical damage conditions, night racing, officially licensed series (which gets them out of 99% of all restrictions on bad things happening to cars), big grids.
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Big grid would be nice but since it's still on the current crop of consoles, I believe it will still be 16 gameplay and 12 online which will probably be the number for the PC as well (see SHIFT 1). Even 12 (AI cars) was pushing the console to its limit- my PS3 was chugging on most track and instead of dropping frames as most modern driving games would, in SHIFT 1 it was the game that slows down. And there's a noticeable deterioration in how the driving felt when there are more AI cars. Not a problem for online racers but those who enjoys single player, it's not so good. I do have to add that outside of Codemasters' AI in GRID (despite the noticeable rubberband effects is brilliant term of reaction), the one in SHIFT was more than decent to race against. Provided of course, they survive the first corner.
 
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^^ Check the trailer again and count, there are definitely more than 16 cars in the field, looks like 30+ :)
 
HeadsoupBob
^^ Check the trailer again and count, there are definitely more than 16 cars in the field, looks like 30+ :)
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Seriously wouldn't use the trailer as an indication. It's CGI and not in game render and is clearly showing the GT1 WC series which I believe has 24 cars (12 teams x 2 cars/team) . I would love full grid in SHIFT 2. But I can't see that happen unless SMS is willing to compromise the physics engine.

Edit- realized neither Porsches nor Z4s are GT1 cars. But I still stand my ground regarding CGI and the console limited power.
 
mykem
Big grid would be nice but since it's still on the current crop of consoles, I believe it will still be 16 gameplay and 12 online which will probably be the number for the PC as well (see SHIFT 1). Even 12 (AI cars) was pushing the console to its limit- my PS3 was chugging on most track and instead of dropping frames as most modern driving games would, in SHIFT 1 it was the game that slows down.
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I think they can squeeze a bit more out just from general optimisation (the renderer specifically is mentioned as being new) and if they take the GT5 route of footnoting everything I think they could take it further. Dropping custom liveries or using pure UVmaps rather than complete car skins (entirely possible with a licensed series) gets them a bit further. Setting it at night (where you can drop the track texture budget a lot) gets them some more. Limiting the number of unique cars (which could be changed on PC) at once and effectively duplicating car models between teams gets them some more (as with F1 2010).

The other thing I noticed is that they seem to use some very similar particle effects to current Shift 1 (heat haze, exhaust, sparks) fx/psx with what look like very similar limitations, which I wouldn't expect for something that's purely CG and out-of-engine. Motion blur and the centre console display (bgui) looks kind of overly familiar to me too..

And there's a noticeable deterioration in how the driving felt when there are more AI cars. Not a problem for online racers but those who enjoys single player, it's not so good. I do have to add that outside of Codemasters' AI in GRID (despite the noticeable rubberband effects is brilliant term of reaction), the one in SHIFT was more than decent to race against. Provided of course, they survive the first corner.
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The AI performance degradation / T4 car performance degradation was, at least as far as I can tell from having played with it, an error in how they handled thread management between cores (too much interaction with physx car body object > physx track surface and AI competing for the same resources) and I think this could easily be improved with better threaded optimisation. Certainly if you shifted the game off core 0 and used something like ProLasso it got a lot better on PC.
 
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boxox
I think they can squeeze a bit more out just from general optimisation (the renderer specifically is mentioned as being new) and if they take the GT5 route of footnoting everything I think they could take it further. Dropping custom liveries or using pure UVmaps ....


The AI performance degradation / T4 car performance degradation was, at least as far as I can tell from having played with it, an error in how they handled thread management between cores ....
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Entirely plausible. In SHIFT 1, another culprit for the game slowing down besides the grid size (ie. AI cars on the screen) was the environment. Not so much the Nordschleife despite the 3D trees (and swaying to boot) but instead Laguna Seca. Perhaps due to the openness of the track with its clear horizon and increased depth of field. It gets worst when you hit the sand (particle effects?). At Laguna, the slow down occurs only after Turn 9 towards Turn 11.

At Road America, it's the approach to Canada Corner. The fact that the track is more similar to Nurburgring (closed in with lots of trees), tells me it's an optimisation issue. Which explains the threading issues regarding physics/AI. The updates that was done about a month or two after the game was released minimized some of the issues- for example the physics while still affected by the AI grid number felt somewhat improved. The slowdown during AI races still persisted although it was less noticeable allowing you to run more AI cars than before.
 
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mykem
Entirely plausible. In SHIFT 1, another culprit for the game slowing down besides the grid size (ie. AI cars on the screen) was the environment. Not so much the Nordschleife despite the 3D trees (and swaying to boot) but instead Laguna Seca. Perhaps due to the openness of the track with its clear horizon and increased depth of field. It gets worst when you hit the sand (particle effects?). At Laguna, the slow down occurs only after Turn 9 towards Turn 11.
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There are a few different causes for slowdowns in general - and probably on consoles there are just raw gpu throughput limitations other than the problems with cpu management to add to it. The case I'm talking about specifically is the "car stops moving, sound loops, particle effects and lap timer keeps going" slowdown issue, which is almost always to do with physx related issue with large ai grids. The T4 cars tended to bottom out a lot more (low ride height / high downforce), which made the game spend a lot of time sorting out their collisions with the ground surface, and then having to feed that through the damage texture / vertex deformation damage system - which could get particularly nasty since there's generally no vertices to move around on the car underbody in the first place. And then the ai just wants more time than usual with more cars / faster cars anyhow. So they compete constantly and occasionally mess each other up.

At Road America, it's the approach to Canada Corner. The fact that the track is more similar to Nurburgring (closed in with lots of trees), tells me it's an optimisation issue. Which explains the threading issues regarding physics/AI. The updates that was done about a month or two after the game was released minimized some of the issues- for example the physics while still affected by the AI grid number felt somewhat improved. The slowdown during AI races still persisted although it was less noticeable allowing you to run more AI cars than before.
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There is actually a pretty mind boggling amount of optimisations done already (using multiple shader LODs, occluders to split up drawable areas of the track, fixing filtering types for different texture types, etc) but there is always more that they can do. For Shift 1 they basically just ripped stuff out of the game if they couldn't get it to work right on a particular console (ps3 uses some cut down looking shaders even at the nearest camera point, the 360 a little less so, pc comes off best but can still be improved with PCGH) so hopefully this time they're more familiar with what they can squeeze out of them :)
 
Just two questions: How many of you would have bought SHIFT 1 if GT5 would have been out at this time ?

and how many of you will buy SHIFT 2 now that GT5 will be out ?

It looks like SHIFT 1 but I cannot say more until I see some gameplay.
 
To me, Shift was more of a 'meh' experience. So, like several others have said, I'll look into the gameplay itself as well as the reviews. And...I'm not sure if I'll even check it out since GT5 will be out soon. Lol.
 
Shift 1 was great for me. except the campaign wich was just more like an arcade, no story. other than that it was good.
 
Shift NAILED the visceral feel of track racing. Great selection of tracks, great selection of cars, enough customization to keep most but the most fanatical happy, it was 'so close'...

'But yet so far'.... The drift-y handling marred it for those familiar with either real cars or more accurate sims like iRacing, GT4, etc.. But, for me, the only things needing REAL change were simply the car handling, and a better Lobby system allowing 'bashers' to be quickly excluded.

Then all I want is more tracks, more cars, and more tracks (did I already say more tracks?!). Maybe tire degradation (but ONLY if they make the handling more realistic) and fuel load issues and pit stops, but those are minor.

Shift came SO close...
 
I think Shift 2 will be really cool. The first once was awesome, I got into it for a while. I like how intense the driving can be so thats why i might get it. If you are a NFS fan hey go for it when it comes out i dont think you will regret it
 
NFS Porsche Unleashed was, I as recall, a succes. Let's hope that Shift 2 Unleashed will be as succesful as Porsche Unleashed.

Is the Unleashed part of the title a hint that's it's going to be a brilliant game?
 
If we are reading things into titles:

* sms get shown as the developer specifically

* no 'need for speed' in the title as with the shift 1 teaser - the game title is 'shift 2 unleashed' not 'need for speed shift 2 unleashed'

* I don't see black box mentioned anywhere :):):):):):):):):):):):):):)
 
IMO Shift was only limited by the amount of cars, and the shamefully low amount of cars you can keep in your garage. If Shift 2 fixes that, AND goes even more apesh** with the in-cockpit and on-track "experience" which I'm sure they will, it will be a masterpiece of gaming.
 
boxox
Haha, oh boy, a less obscure dig at turn 10 and PD:

“You have to make a choice with today’s tech. Either you go for – and this is harsh but it’s what I think – the bland graphics of GT and Forza, or you try to push the bar for what consoles can do. That’s what Slightly Mad is doing, and hence the decision was made to aim for 30 frames.”

:)
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Remember the first jab at GT5:

“Actually, when the footage of Gran Turismo 5 came out of GamesCom with the doors flying off, we were all like ‘what the ****? How are they able to do that?,” said Tudor.“But then we looked closer and saw that they had fitted a roll cage to the car, which is fine, but it’s not quite so realistic.”

Of course he knew not (at the time, he knows now) that car he was referring to, a WRC Subaru like all rally cars, comes with a rollcage.

It would be interesting to see if SMS could indeed match GT5 especially on the PS3 and 360. SHIFT1 was somewhat of a mess even at 30 fps. If blandness, means realism, SHIFT2 needs a bit of that. A few screenshots that might inspire SMS towards blandness (née realism):

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mykem
Remember the first jab at GT5:

“Actually, when the footage of Gran Turismo 5 came out of GamesCom with the doors flying off, we were all like ‘what the ****? How are they able to do that?,” said Tudor.“But then we looked closer and saw that they had fitted a roll cage to the car, which is fine, but it’s not quite so realistic.”

Of course he knew not (at the time, he knows now) that car he was referring to, a WRC Subaru like all rally cars, comes with a rollcage.
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He's talking about it from a car licensing perspective where one of the most infamous rules is that Nothing Should Ever Be Shown To Penetrate Into The Cockpit or the manufacturer pulls the plug. So generally doors flying off is a no-no. I am sure he was just expressing admiration at the clever workaround and assumed they'd fitted roll cages to road cars to get out of it.

Also, I think you missed the best taxi gamer shot of all:

Untitled-1-3.jpg


Alphatest shader party!

:)
 
TheROADKRAKEN
AND goes even more apesh** with the in-cockpit and on-track "experience" which I'm sure they will, it will be a masterpiece of gaming.
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I really like the helmet/visor effect here:

0007ms30.jpg


Much better you-get-the-idea-without-going-silly sort of thing along the lines of what SimBin did with Race:



Also, looks like they are starting work on integrating promotion with FIA GT:

 
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At the moment Shift is my favourite racing game. I just adore it. The only thing I wasn't keen on was drifting but thats because I can't do it.

I saw the teaser trailer for Shift 2 and although only giving away a bit looks as great as Shift 1
 
All i keep hearing from another forum i frequent is that Shift 2 essentially = Shift 1 + whatever they left out in Shift 1 due to rushed deadline.
 
boxox
He's talking about it from a car licensing perspective where one of the most infamous rules is that Nothing Should Ever Be Shown To Penetrate Into The Cockpit or the manufacturer pulls the plug. So generally doors flying off is a no-no. I am sure he was just expressing admiration at the clever workaround and assumed they'd fitted roll cages to road cars to get out of it.

Also, I think you missed the best taxi gamer shot of all:

Untitled-1-3.jpg


Alphatest shader party!

:)
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But that's a horrible example that SMS need not aspire to :) I'm hinting at the lighting and general look of SHIFT2. I doubt it will be much different from SHIFT1 which is very gamey (and it's not venison gamey) in look and execution. Things like short and selective DOF (used in SHIFT1) resulting in blurred background/trackside and the slightly muddle details on cars that I find bothersome. I understand why developers would choose the option/look (especially on underpowered consoles) but I'd much prefer definition even if I had to swallow a few doses of jagged edges here and there.

Here's a few good example from SHIFT1 in game replay:

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Now a lesson in lighting and tonal balance (and defined if not always refined edges):

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