Scapes or 3D 'Photo travel' Environments?

  • Thread starter DefNotJake
  • 27 comments
  • 2,014 views

Which do you prefer?

  • Photo Travel (in-game 3D Environments)

    Votes: 17 56.7%

  • Scapes (In-game cars edited onto a real life photograph)

    Votes: 13 43.3%
  • Total voters
    30
DefNotJake

DefNotJake

735
United States
Maryland, USA
Am I the only one that prefers 3D 'photo travel' environments we had in GT4, GT5, and GT6 over Scapes? I get the purpose of Scapes and how impressive it is, but they don't come close to being as good as having a 3D environment to place my car in, and have complete freedom in how I photograph my car. Really hope Polyphony don't view Scapes as a new replacement for what we had in previous games, because it really isn't. Really hope they combine the two features in GT7, and give players choice between the two.

It would be pretty weird for Polyphony to completely abandon Photo Travel, right when the consoles start getting powerful enough to allow them to create really convincing 3D spaces. (Like the one below already in GT Sport)

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I'm so used to Scapes now as it gives me more locations to choose from compared to the Photo Travel that GT4-GT6 had.

And after reading the article in regards in to Scapes almost a year ago, it was there I understood why they ditched Photo Travel in favor of Scapes.

Why did you decide to go with real-life shots instead of CG for the backgrounds?​

Kanzaki: In GT6, the predecessor to GT Sport, we had a feature called "Photo Travel," which was kind of the forerunner to Scapes. However, it only had around five locations at the time, and all of the backgrounds were made using CG, so everything from the roads to the buildings had to be painstakingly created in detail. To be honest, it was too expensive and a time burden. That's why with Scapes we wanted to try to use real-life photographs.

This resulted in us having a far greater crop of locations to choose from. There are 1400 Scapes locations included in GT Sport that are enjoyed by our users. We captured more than 60,000,000 images, and you can also change the colors of your favorite cars and apply your own decals, so the possibilities are almost endless. You can also share your Scapes Photos with millions of other users, which I think has created a new type of photography community that we haven't seen before.
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And after seeing this part of the GT7 trailer where Scapes now has about 2000+spots to choose from, the more I'm preferring Scapes these days.

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I personally prefer photo travel because it gives more freedom, Scapes are better from quantity and time consumption point of view, but in GT Sport, for example, they had a bunch of CG locations modelled and only used it to show off cars in menus. And I'm sure GT7 will have even more fully-modelled 3D locations like that. Why not just let us use photomode in those? That, alongside scapes, would be a very welcome addition.
 
OHM_fusion
Modelling photo locations would take too much time for already slow PD. Why not one or two high quality raytraced 3D locations (like the garage for example) and the Scapes for the rest. There's always on track photomode too.
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Yeah, probably Scapes is a way to get more locations to take a picture with, but yeah there'd be nothing wrong if Scapes can contain both a few 3D locations they manage to model in time along with the existing Scapes, or at least taking photos in other locations like circuits, GT Auto, garage, etc.
kraftwerkd
I'd rather they save those polygons for more cars and tracks.
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And take photos there.
 
I enjoyed more the Photo Travel from past games, but I'm fine with Scapes. I'd rather have the resources spent on cars and tracks too.
 
I absolutely loathe Scapes sometimes. As a tool, it is a marked downgrade from being able to freely move both car and camera around a fully modelled 3D environment. A lot of times, it's impossible to find a Scape that has JUST that right scale, composition, freedom of movement with the car, lighting, etc.. I realise that can sound like quite the absurd thing to say given the over 1000 locations Scapes offers, but try to shoot two or more cars showing them off in equal prominence and I think many will quickly realise most Scapes can barely fit ONE car, let alone three. God forbid you try to shoot multiple cars in motion while aligning their speeds and rotations without any assists.


I feel that Scapes is very artistically limiting, as most shots force photographers into a set composition and theme, such as these ones:


A lot of times, there are a lot of puzzling or unfortunate downsides to Scapes. Take Bonneville Salt Flats for instance: PD went all the way to the Flats to take Scape photos for the game... and that ONE photo they took isn't even on the salt... and has questionable lighting. It's situations like these that make me wish I had Photo Travel instead.


Heck, in GT5, you could even glitch into a car's interior and take amazing interior photos you can't in GT6 and GTS!


That all being said, I think Scapes is a necessary change from Photo Travel. It would be an insane amount of work to model locations to the graphical fidelity of a PS4. I think the scale and cost of bringing Photo Travel onto the PS4 could make Photo Travel its own, full priced game. I think PD realised this as they modelled the first few Scapes locations in 3D, and I give kudos to them for realising their limits so early instead of giving us a content rich, yet lopsided and inconsistent product like GT5. I think Scapes photos give fidelity that we would never see in any 3D model recreation of a real location, such as individual blades of grass, or intricate details like writing on signs and even interiors of buildings seen through windows. If you've spent any amount of time walking around a track even in GTS looking at foliage and trackside buildings, you'd never see anything as detail and... er... photorealistic as this:


Not to mention, Scapes gives us unprecedented variety in locales to shoot in. We went from five or so locations per game to 32 countries in one game!

While Scapes as a tool for creators is a downgrade, I feel that it's a necessary downgrade that still has its niches and uses.
 
There could be a solution for the multicar, free cam photo mode: using the already modeled race tracks in the game. Tracks are already modeled in the game, and offer some variety in the environments they are built in. This with the time of day/weather variation, gives players way more options. Imagine the ability to do something like this:

1634042855845.png


This allows much more freedom for the player to photograph as many cars as possible. Allowing for way more cars than any scape or photo travel location.
 
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RaY29rus
...but in GT Sport, for example, they had a bunch of CG locations modelled and only used it to show off cars in menus. And I'm sure GT7 will have even more fully-modelled 3D locations like that. Why not just let us use photomode in those? That, alongside scapes, would be a very welcome addition.
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Yup, this is my point. Some people seem to be getting at I want scapes removed or expect Polyphony to create a whole new Gigantic catalogue of 3D locations (like we had in the PS3 games). All I'm saying is, if they already take the time to create these highly detailed 3D space like the FIA building, racing garage, 'Brighton Antiques' warehouse, etc then it only makes sense to allow players to use those spaces for photography.
 
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dacc10
There could be a solution for the multicar, free cam photo mode: using the already modeled race tracks in the game. Tracks are already modeled in the game, and offer some variety in the environments they are built in. This with the time of day/weather variation, gives players way more options. Imagine the ability to do something like this:

View attachment 1085891

This allows much more freedom for the player to photograph as many cars as possible. Allowing for way more cars than any scape or photo trabel location.
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Imagine if we had all these beautiful horses in GT7...
 
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DefNotJake
Yup, this is my point. Some people seem to be getting at I want scapes removed or expect Polyphony to create a whole new Gigantic catalogue of 3D locations (like we had in the PS3 games). All I'm saying is, if they already take the time to create these highly detailed 3D space like the FIA building, racing garage, 'Brighton Antiques' warehouse, etc then it only makes sense to allow players to use those spaces for photography.
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Though as shown in Brembo trailer, the garage seems to be the one similar to the GT7 first trailer though....
1634050420734.png


Other menus seem to have detailed buildings like what you mentioned there and also the likes of GT Auto though...
 
It's a question of quantity vs freedom basically. I do miss the freedom of previous Photo Travel locations, but the sheer number and variety of scapes more than makes up for it in my opinion. In GT5 we had a lot of good locations, but in GT6 we had a lot fewer and they were not as good as GT5, so I didn't take too many photos. It's just a waste. In GTS sometimes I spend the whole day just choosing locations and liveries to create shoots, and I never get bored.

Having said that, I'd still like to see all the previous photo travel locations return (obviously touched up to current gen standards). Also let us use the various 3D backgrounds seen in the menu animations like wind tunnel, forest road, etc. They're already modelled so most of the work is done anyway. But moving forwards, just add new scapes to save development time.

With scapes itself, I'd like to see the feature expanded. Allow more than 3 cars. Allow us to "sync" movements of multiple cars in a panning shot. Allow us to add effects such as skidmarks, tyre smokes or sparks in moving shots for more realism. Who knows maybe in the future we can even have 360 panoramic shots that offer more flexibility in car placement, or even take our own photos using a specific camera and transfer it into the game! I just feel the technology with scapes has a lot more scope for improvement. Whereas with photo travel, we've seen what it can do, and it robs too much development time that's better spent on cars/tracks.
 
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Personally I think scapes (development-wise) are a much more efficient way of enabling diverse location/environment options for photomode than full 3D environments like we’ve had in GT4-6.

However

Clearly, PD have created 3D locations for cars to be placed that cycle through as menu background footage in GTS. Most if not all of these seem like they’re fully ready to be utilized in the exact same way that photo travel was in 5 & 6, and if they’re going to go through the effort of designing these scenes, I don’t see why we can’t have both implemented into the photmodes.

But again, I think effort would be better spent exclusively on scapes.
 
This area of the game is where PD should be outsourcing pretty much 100%, for either scapes or 3D areas. There are thousands of people around the world who could model a small 3D area based on instructions, doing it yourself in-studio is just a waste of your own resources that are better focused on the core of the game. I know people love photo mode, but until they change the entire game focus and genre, then it's still a car driving/racing game primarily, and that should be where they're focusing all of their time.
 
Lord Protector
Isn’t that what racing photo does?
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Yes, but with two major differences:

Without the help of a second player, it's impossible to put two or more cars with a custom livery on the same track. I would also love to be able to photograph some Gr. X cars with cars of other categories. Scapes allows you to do both of those.

Another annoyance of Replay photomode is that liveries are pixelated horrifically during gameplay. I'm not sure if this is due to me being on a base PS4, but liveries look much better in Scapes than they do in replays. If allowed to Photo Travel on existing tracks, I'm assuming that both cars and liveries can have their highest Level of Detail (LOD) as they do in Scapes.
 
Especially, when trying to photograph on pit lane. Can't be done on another track and PD pick and choose the some bad pit lane angles. Maybe, with the the added 1000 Scapes, we'll probably see the Nurb GP and Bathurst pit lanes.
 
I think using the existing tracks as 3D photo locations is the best solution. Either way, if they modeled a 3D environment for Photo Mode, it wouldn't have that much freedom anyway. Unless the location had a large surface to place multiple cars, it would have some of the limitations of scapes. Using a track, you have more space for more cars, whatever angle you want, whatever time of day and possibly weather you want, and all that, without the need to model new locations only for photomode.

Another thing that we should be able to use, is the dealership background (where the car spins around), and the GT Auto/Livery Editor backgrounds, like in GTS we had black, white and real lighting backgrounds, those are good neutral backgrounds when you want to focus on the cars.
 
XSquareStickIt
I think Scapes photos give fidelity that we would never see in any 3D model recreation of a real location, such as individual blades of grass, or intricate details like writing on signs and even interiors of buildings seen through windows. If you've spent any amount of time walking around a track even in GTS looking at foliage and trackside buildings, you'd never see anything as detail and... er... photorealistic as [Scapes]

​

While Scapes as a tool for creators is a downgrade, I feel that it's a necessary downgrade that still has its niches and uses.
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While I haven't had the opportunity to play GT6/GTS, I do remember using Photo Travel in GT5 and being impressed, but didn't think it could be sustainable. It was limited and honestly, just taking photos during a race I found was more entertaining for myself. Plus you could photograph your Standard vehicles on the track but not in Photo Travel which was kinda.. lame.

While a technological downgrade, Scapes seems like a means to quickly get a creative and beautiful shot without having to spend hours setting everything up. Sure that's part of the fun, but not everyone is that great at understanding the basics of photography, so having a vast selection of Scapes where the framing, composition and lighting is already fine-tuned makes it quite appealing to someone very new to the principles of photography.. which honestly I think is Kaz's intention. To be able to jump in and snap a beautiful and evocative photo without burning an afternoon.
 
XSquareStickIt
Yes, but with two major differences:

Without the help of a second player, it's impossible to put two or more cars with a custom livery on the same track. I would also love to be able to photograph some Gr. X cars with cars of other categories. Scapes allows you to do both of those.

Another annoyance of Replay photomode is that liveries are pixelated horrifically during gameplay. I'm not sure if this is due to me being on a base PS4, but liveries look much better in Scapes than they do in replays. If allowed to Photo Travel on existing tracks, I'm assuming that both cars and liveries can have their highest Level of Detail (LOD) as they do in Scapes.
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That’s true, especially if you save an online race replay and then watch it. Liveries of other people’s cars look awful.

I wouldn’t hold my breath for this to be implemented though, as there already are some track focused Scapes. I understand it doesn’t completely satisfy you needs sadly.
 
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