What happened to the replays?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Blank_Redge
  • 44 comments
  • 3,391 views
Blank_Redge

Blank_Redge

Messages
743
United States
Los Angeles area, CA
The GT franchise has far and away been my favorite console-based car racing franchise since its inception. One of the things I felt was consistently better than the competition (by a WIDE margin) was the quality of the replays, after the race. Sitting back, and soaking in how well (or poorly!) you did, against the field.

So... what happened?

Depending on the camera angle, I keep seeing dark patches in the corner, or on the sides of the screen. I saw this during the demo / GT6 Academy as well, but I chalked it up to it being a demo.

Also, I've noticed that the replay will sometimes stutter; the frame rate takes enough of a hit to be noticeable.

What happened, PD? How'd you manage to take a step BACKwards in an area that you had sewn up so tightly? o.O ?
 
Blank_Redge
The GT franchise has far and away been my favorite console-based car racing franchise since its inception. One of the things I felt was consistently better than the competition (by a WIDE margin) was the quality of the replays, after the race. Sitting back, and soaking in how well (or poorly!) you did, against the field.

So... what happened?

Depending on the camera angle, I keep seeing dark patches in the corner, or on the sides of the screen. I saw this during the demo / GT6 Academy as well, but I chalked it up to it being a demo.

Also, I've noticed that the replay will sometimes stutter; the frame rate takes enough of a hit to be noticeable.

What happened, PD? How'd you manage to take a step BACKwards in an area that you had sewn up so tightly? o.O ?
Click to expand...
I think the dark band at the edge that sometimes appears is some kind of artefact of the motion blur that is applied. It isn't a big deal in my book.

I don't see stuttering in replays, occasional frame rate drops. Nothing to get too excited about.

There are too many moments of sheer beauty in some of the replays to get uptight about stuff like this. Some of the replays I've seen in low light at Matterhorn, for example are superb.

It is real achievement that PD have management to extract this out of older hardware.
 
bodger
I don't see stuttering in replays, occasional frame rate drops.
Click to expand...
Perhaps "stuttering" is too strong, but I've seen frame rate drops bad enough that it interrupted the enjoyment of the replay.

There are too many moments of sheer beauty in some of the replays to get uptight about stuff like this.
Click to expand...
A masterful film by Akira Kurosawa that's interrupted every minute or so with someone talking on their cellphone isn't as enjoyable as an uninterrupted film. Obviously, we're both fans of those moments of beauty. Those interruptions snap me out of the narrative, though.
 
Mount panorama is sadly horrible with shadows flickering. Probably the best track or one of the best and it looks bad :guilty::(Other than that graphics and replays are very good. Stage5 looks so nice now. They added motion blur too on replay which can be distracting in cockpit view. But replays are pretty good
 
Oberheim
I think it's an intended vignette effect.
Click to expand...
This had crossed my mind, but the fact it usually only happens to one edge of the screen made me doubt that. You could be right though.

gtracedriver1
Mount panorama is sadly horrible with shadows flickering. Probably the best track or one of the best and it looks bad :guilty::(Other than that graphics and replays are very good. Stage5 looks so nice now. They added motion blur too on replay which can be distracting in cockpit view. But replays are pretty good
Click to expand...
I agree with you here. I think the Bathurst track is a case in point of for GT6 in general; lots of superb moments with some real nasty stuff.
 
Oberheim
I think it's an intended vignette effect.
Click to expand...

If so it doesn't work as intended as I also thought it was some kind of horrible artifact/bug! It just looks awful.

The motion blur is a good addition, & adds realism as well as a better sense of speed. However, not only does it blur fast moving objects, like the edges of the track that are moving fast, but it also blurs everything in front of you when watching with in car view like buildings etc, which is very unrealistic. I hate the fact that we don't get motion blur when playing, but do in the replays, & that yet again PD haven't give us any option to adjust the intensity of it.

Some of the camera angles are ruined my not being in focus until the object car reaches a certain point, i'e; really close to the camera, like turn 3 at Brands. This ruins the look of some parts of the replay too imo.
 
gtracedriver1
Mount panorama is sadly horrible with shadows flickering. Probably the best track or one of the best and it looks bad :guilty::(Other than that graphics and replays are very good. Stage5 looks so nice now. They added motion blur too on replay which can be distracting in cockpit view. But replays are pretty good
Click to expand...


Mount panorama is an embarrassment.
Is that really how they want us to remember the ps3? It's a glitch fest with some of the worst aliasing ever, unspeakably terrible shadows, and to top it all it still has frame rate problems.

Gt6 is the worst looking Gran Turismo ever.*

Way to go, photo-mode fans.

*yes, not in direct comparison, but in terms of what the respective consoles are capable of, what works, what you expect.
 
I notice that the blur only appears when the front of the car approaches the edge of the screen - when coming straight towards or away from the camera, or in a long shot there is no artifact. This leads me to think that this is an attempt to anti-alias the shadow of the player's car (or whichever car the camera is told to follow). You'll notice that the opponent's car shadows are still mostly jagged or aliased. Like the 'smear' tool in PhotoShop, if used near the edge of a picture.

A few seconds into the replay the whole screen dims to a microscopic degree - possibly because of this jury-rigged shadow blurring effect.
 
bodger
It would be more distracting than you think.

It would probably come with a processing overhead as well, the replays run at 30fps...
Click to expand...
Oh, I didn't know the 30fps things during the replays... and yes, it could be that way in some sense...
Thanks for the answer.
 
Elconio
Replays looks great to me. Why are people not enjoying the game and complaining about every little detail i asked myself?
Click to expand...
The curse of competition - bad enough when a game from another company (perhaps one that runs on a newer generation machine) surpasses GT in some aspect; very annoying when an older version of GT did it better...
 
Watch several replays this evening and still see nothing strange at all. Dunno wich older gt can look better than this?
 
gtracedriver1
Mount panorama is sadly horrible with shadows flickering. Probably the best track or one of the best and it looks bad :guilty::(
Click to expand...
Just got to Mt. Panorama and Matterhorn last night, so I've now seen the disappearing / reappearing shadows firsthand, both on cars, and on roadside objects like barriers.

C'mon, PD. What's going on?
 
The first thing I did when I got the game was drive at mt. Panorama in arcade and was so sad. The track looks great in night, evening or early morning. But the default afternoon time it is horrible. It is most buggy track and choppy as well :yuck: It was not until the month before release when it was confirmed so they were right at the edge to get it complete I guess. Hopefully they can fix or make it better via patch.
 
The problem I have with replays is that too many of the views are so freaking low. They model all these really sweet looking tracks, and then hide their glory with a camera that sometimes is in the grass! And you can't see squat of the race from that view. I almost feel like cheering when I see a roof in some of these replays! Monza and La Sarthe are particularly bad about this. In particular, La Sarthe makes no sense with so many low angle shots. This is a high speed track. If anything would benefit from panoramic views, it would be twisty courses like Ascari, and long sweeping tracks like Daytona and La Sarthe.

For the love of God, Kaz, you and your team should sit down with GT2 and 3 and watch some replays! They had the BEST replay views out of the series. I hope if they don't mix things up in an update, they give us the tools to change replay cams. Sigh. :(
 
I really miss the smooth 60 fps replays of last gen GT3 and GT4 games. Now it's all 30 fps just to push the visuals further, but I am not noticing much differences between gameplay 60 fps and replay 30 fps other than camera angles.
 
Also it seems that replays sometimes look like they've been passed through the "micro" effect from photomode (is that the right term?), where the cars look like toys. Very strange and a bit depressing. This did not happen in GT5, or any other GT for that matter..
 
The replays are different for sure, but they convey excitement and speed much better as a result of the changes, in my opinion.
 

Latest Posts

Back