What's with the craptastic shader?

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Duke

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Seriously. 5 years to make this game and my car's shadow is a huge pixellated blob? Or when the replay is against a dark background my car grows a weird halo?

I ran a race at Grand Valley where I got pushed off course. In pausing before I hit the wall, I realized that there were individual blades of grass being thrown up, each one lovingly rendered.

Yet the headlight covers on my FD look like they were modelled out of Lego.

Really, PD?
 
Really Duke? This game took so long because there are over 20 tracks with 70 variations, over 1000 cars (which they shouldve taken out premiums and slow cars that wouldve saved time, no wants wants to drive a Honda civic), track creator (not anything special but...), weather development, time changes, physics, graphics...etc., STOP COMPLAINING
 
I'm with Duke. There's stuff that's amazingly detailed, and stuff that's just an eyesore. It'd be a much more pleasant game to look at if the level of quality was a little more even across the game.

The one that irritates me is the long distance tree "aliasing" effect, which appears to consist of making every other pixel transparent. I'm sure it's easy on the poor overstressed PS3, but look good it does not.
 
The compromises are strange. The shadows, yeah, are strange, hopefully its something they can fix, if they ask most of us, I think its safe to say that we'd sacrifice the blades of grass for decent shading.
 
I understand what he's sayin'. So much of the game is high class, ei 'blades of grass' and then its like Polyphony took a big dump on the game with the jaggy shadows, the weird black outline around the cars when they go through the sand on replays, limited options like no 'HUD off' option, one track with snow, weather and time options only on some tracks, to me that just doesn't make sense. If they work so hard on making blades of grass you think that same effort and thought would have gone into the things I just mentioned. I"m not complaining, I love the game, it's just odd decision making by Polyphony. What do you guys think?
 
about tracks with/without weather/time change: I don't think that from programmer point of view it is really difficult to make a certain track weather/time dependent if there is already another one with these effects. I think it is simply a good chance for Polyphony to create DLCs. You want this track also with rain and lovely sunset? Pay 3.99$ and it is yours. But we will see.

Of course this doesn't explain the thing with the grass and the shadows. Maybe another team was responsible for shadows than for the grass, and they got less salary :)
 
Really Duke? This game took so long because there are over 20 tracks with 70 variations, over 1000 cars (which they shouldve taken out premiums and slow cars that wouldve saved time, no wants wants to drive a Honda civic), track creator (not anything special but...), weather development, time changes, physics, graphics...etc., STOP COMPLAINING

What I'm saying here is that they wasted time on some completely irrelevant things and completely blew off other things that are quite important.

Why bother modeling blades of grass when I'm hurtling by at 100+ mph? Who gives a crap if those 100 spectators that are mostly hidden behind the saftey barrier are in 3D and move as I race by?

Yet I have to watch an animated Keith Haring painting in the shadows on the back of the car I'm chasing? I have my choice of high or low beam headlights, neither of which actually casts any light on the roadway?

I'm a firm believer in the 80/20 rule - you use 20% of any given tool or game 80% of the time, so they damn well better get that right. It's like after all the complaints, PD decided that they would spend 80% of their time on the 20% of the game no one gives a crap about.

I also don't understand the steps backward. They already had 100s of aftermarket wheels modeled. Why pick the ugliest 10 and limit us to those? Why did we lose the Nordschleife (unless it will be unlocked later)?

Some of my chief complaints from previous games are much improved. The handling physics are great. The AI continues to improve; though they still show a marked tendency to drop anchor mid-corner, at least they don't bulldoze you off line as if you weren't even there.

And I like driving slow cars. I'm not complaining about that, though I would have preferred to see decently-modeled interiors for all cars (that's my favorite view) rather than fetishly-perfect interiors for some. Haven't driven any rally stages yet but hopefully the dirt physics are up to par as well.


But they definitely spent serious time on some things that are utterly irrelevant to gameplay at the cost of others that are fundamental to it.
 
I hope Kaz remains as the creative director for GT6. I also hope he is removed from leading the next effort. Kaz is obsessed with aesthetics, maniacally detailing cars is missing the point, we will never notice most of it and we won't care. There is detail here we will never notice in our cars in real life. And really, 1000 cars? Who cares about 1/2 of them?

All those useless nuts and bolts have come at the expense of what could have been a great game, SIX years in development. Seriously.
 
Why did we lose the Nordschleife (unless it will be unlocked later)?

Fear not, it's unlocked in the AMG Driving Academy!

As for what you are saying, I agree 100% with all of it.
 
Sometimes the shadows look positively awful, but on other occasions, they look great, dont ask me why, because I don't know.
 
I hope Kaz remains as the creative director for GT6. I also hope he is removed from leading the next effort.

Amen to that. What we're seeing in this game is a failure in leadership. $60-80m (by some reports the second most expensive game made) and in almost every aspect its competitors have it beat. If it looked as good as prologue, we wouldn't be complaining. The fact that it almost never does look that good can only point to severe resource management issues.

On a side note, I hope we all smack the next guy that says Porsche is in competing games because 'other games' have bigger budgets.
PD is not some tiny operation, it is by far the biggest kid on the block.
 
I hope Kaz remains as the creative director for GT6. I also hope he is removed from leading the next effort. Kaz is obsessed with aesthetics, maniacally detailing cars is missing the point, we will never notice most of it and we won't care. There is detail here we will never notice in our cars in real life. And really, 1000 cars? Who cares about 1/2 of them?

All those useless nuts and bolts have come at the expense of what could have been a great game, SIX years in development. Seriously.

Remove Kaz from the development team? Are you crazy? No one can do it better. How would you like it if Dan Greenwalt took over?
 
How would you like it if Dan Greenwalt took over?
Well since the physics are already pretty well worked out, I'd *love it* if he took over. He'd communicate with fans, develop the online aspect, outsource modeling when needed, and generally have us a new game to buy by this time next year. He'd probably call it GT5v2.0 to be mean, but that's just how he is.

Manabu Akita from Enthusia or somebody from the Sega GT team might make more sense though. Less of a language barrier with the dev team.

Really there just needs to be somebody to balance out 'the Kaz factor' sometimes.
 
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I think PD tried to implement to many features.. And those premium cars are so detailed that 90% of gt5 gamers wont notice if poly count was cut in half. If they tried to make graphic overall good and not some super detailed and some ps2 graphic(even some ps1 sized pixels when there is smoke) then it would look much better IMHO. But even with it flaws it look better then any consol racing game IMO.
 
Duke, what sort of television have you got? I'm seeing what you're seeing, but haven't really complained because my TV a 26", but really old. Like 22 years old at least. Are shadows also questionable on high-definition sets? If so, that saves me the cost of getting something higer-def.



Really Duke? This game took so long because there are over 20 tracks with 70 variations, over 1000 cars (which they shouldve taken out premiums and slow cars that wouldve saved time, no wants wants to drive a Honda civic),

WHAT? I want to drive a Honda Civic! I want to drive kei cars. I also want to drive cars much faster. That's what Gran Turismo has always been about...the slower ones as well as the faster ones! :facepalm:

track creator (not anything special but...), weather development, time changes, physics, graphics...etc., STOP COMPLAINING

Your entire post is pretty much a complaint. 👎

I want all this stuff. Especially weather. I've been waiting years for weather effects since GT3 allowed us to race a couple wet tracks.
 
Am I the only one who thinks GT5 looks better than prologue? Sure the shadows look bad , but not on every race.
 
I really do agree, but shadows are at the bottom of the "what was PD thinking?" list.

I'm still wondering what became of the leaderboards that are listed on the box, why cars are apparently coated in glue, disappointing track editor(no P2P?), limited to sending one car a day, single player being affected by online load.......
 
I really do agree, but shadows are at the bottom of the "what was PD thinking?" list.

I'm still wondering what became of the leaderboards that are listed on the box,

Probably coming thru DLC let's hope.
 
Remove Kaz from the development team? Are you crazy? No one can do it better. How would you like it if Dan Greenwalt took over?

Read what I wrote, twice more. Better than Kaz? Given that the buck stops at his door, after ~6 years he has made a good mess of it. Three years after Prologue we get a huge step backwards. At times GT5 looks far worst than GT4.

Kaz is a great guy, the GT series is "his" baby, all I am saying is that someone else, a project manager, should lead future efforts, set goals and DEADLINES.
 
Have we seen any proof of these individually rendered grass straws then? I've only noticed some quite poor grass textures.
 
I agree that the shadows are quite jarring to look at, especially in replay mode.

From what I've read, PD confirmed that leaderboards are coming later for the Arcade TT modes but no mention of lap/race leaderboards in the career mode. The leaderboards at the end of each race in Forza 3 are wonderful, it seems like it wouldn't be too terribly difficult just to copy that.

Also, the game seems to reset my best lap times on tracks after every race in A Spec races. It makes it impossible to compare my different cars' times in the actual races and forces me to take both cars to Practice Mode to compare them. Am I just missing something?
 
Well since the physics are already pretty well worked out, I'd *love it* if he took over. He'd communicate with fans, develop the online aspect, outsource modeling when needed, and generally have us a new game to buy by this time next year. He'd probably call it GT5v2.0 to be mean, but that's just how he is.

Manabu Akita from Enthusia or somebody from the Sega GT team might make more sense though. Less of a language barrier with the dev team.

Really there just needs to be somebody to balance out 'the Kaz factor' sometimes.

Thats exactly what I would write in. LOL
 
It's weird because you can see where they switch it to the low resolution shadows that look all jaggedy and where it's still normal. That distance is not that much. It's already running at 30fps in the replay camera mode so it's odd that the PS3 can't push it just a little bit more there. Just seems odd decision choice, more like an oversight during optimization for replay cameras than actual problem.
 
i dont think the gt series will be fully up to par untill like gt7 or gt8. by then ill be 60. i do agree that they spent too much time on some things and not enough on others. things like interior views on a miata, blades of grass, but pixely shadows. they spent time making cars like an 80's volvo and a diahatsu copen and and 72 different nissan skylines but no non turbo z32 300zx's, or 96 mustang gt's, but then they add cars like prius and the honda insight but no regular corvette, c4, c5, or c6. then they said they werent going to do damage unless they could make it realistic. i hit a wall at over 100mph and my bumper was hanging off a bit but the car still drove fine. come on PD even toca race driver 3 can imitate mechanical damage. then they neglect to address problems like muscle cars sounding like little hyped up toyotas, and things like all of the performance parts being the same price for all cars. they didnt allow us to change rims on "standard" cars nor can you paint the stock rims. and you cant remove the wing on a car that comes with one. (i know this doesnt help performance. but neither does painting the car, and they decided to do THAT!!) it just seams like for a game that took this long to make they just focused on all the wrong things and not enough on others.
i like it and i def think its the best racing sim game available, but i def think they did a half ass job on a lot of it. if PD reads these forums and create downloadable updates for the game i will be very happy. there is just a couple things they need to address.. i can do with the pixely shadows if they make the "standard" cars look as good as the "premiums". or just make packages available to upgrade a "standard" cars to "premium" cars. even if they only do them one by one and make us pay for the ones we want. itll be better than what we have now. i would deff say they need to fix gt5 before they start trying to develope a gt6. maybe come out with a gt5 extended edition. or a DL or CD that you can install to your ps3 to upgrade the game. well enough babling. what do you guys think about all this?....
 
i mean in one video kaz said that gt5 prolouge was only about 10% of the way to his full vision. so il give him that.
 
o and just throwing this out there i think they sould make tanner faust's ford fiesta rally car and ken blocks 3 gymkhana cars. more sports cars and less volvo wagons, gokarts, daihatsu midgets and hybrids. this is a racing game not a POS car collector game
 
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