Trackside 'life'...

[BanjoMaster]

Howdy

Sorry for going on a bit of a question bender over the last couple of weeks, but here's another:

What are your plans for trackside objects and people? I don't recall seeing any shots featuring any trackside or support vehicles/personnel, or any spectators. Would be interested to know how you intend to tackle it, if at all?

Cheers

 

[Leonardo Ratafiá]

@KunosStefano Ciao Stefano, does the enviroment has moviable objects, like tires in chicanes, guardrails or anything like that?


3 dic Stefano Casillo ‏@KunosStefano
@LRatafia yeep there is he possibility to create it.

 

[BanjoMaster]

Cool. What about animations (banners, people, etc.)? Sorry, I don't use Twitter

 

[Mapu]

I'd be ok with no animated crowd; saves FPS.

 

[BanjoMaster]

You obviously wouldn't want a fully animated crowd of 30,000 in a grandstand, that would grenade your PC. But what I have seen done quite effectively is the odd animated spectator/figure in amongst a larger static crowd. It does enough to trick the eye into thinking the whole crowd is alive. It's another one of those things you don't notice you notice (if you catch my drift), but it makes a tangible difference to the immersion in my experience. If used sparingly it could work well.

 

[Mapu]

Yes, I understand what you mean.

Though I get bad flashbacks from another game with animated crowds and other seriously overdone nick-nacks.

 

[BanjoMaster]

Haha, I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same game; Shift 2?

I think Shift 2 had quite a few nice ideas with regards to trying to increase the level of immersion within the game through modelling 'living, breathing' trackside environments. The problem is they had these ideas and then gave their programmers and artists a bucket of Sambuca each before they started implementing them! Some of the ideas could be looked at again, maybe with a bit more restraint this time though...

 

[XN-Sigma]

You obviously wouldn't want a fully animated crowd of 30,000 in a grandstand, that would grenade your PC. But what I have seen done quite effectively is the odd animated spectator/figure in amongst a larger static crowd. It does enough to trick the eye into thinking the whole crowd is alive. It's another one of those things you don't notice you notice (if you catch my drift), but it makes a tangible difference to the immersion in my experience. If used sparingly it could work well.

Ah yes that would work, one thing I notice whenever I see an F1 race is that the most noticeable crowd movement is from people waving big *insert car brand/country here* flags, AC could have many static people sitting and the ocasional guy with a flag and stuff.

 

[Leonardo Ratafiá]

will this sim support different trackside object hardness (if that's the correct word) like if there are some wheel barrier in a chicane, will they be as hard as the armco guardrail when you hit it? it can be also at the end of the gravel traps, so the can gets less damaged

 

[Hampus Andersson]

Blasting down Nords in the middle of the night, hillsides lit up by people camping with lights in tents and some camp fires.

Would be neat.

 

[Justin McLeod]

How do you guys feel about animated pit crews?

 

[BanjoMaster]

Blasting down Nords in the middle of the night, hillsides lit up by people camping with lights in tents and some camp fires.

Would be neat.

That's the kind of thing I'd love to see, and exactly the kind of thing which sucks you in and makes you believe you're really there. It'd also be good if the sound angle was remembered as well - incidental sound samples (campire radio, the odd vuvuzela, drunken German singing) coupled with visual devices like the campfire all add up in my opinion.

 

[BanjoMaster]

How do you guys feel about animated pit crews?

A requirement, and I don't think Kunos would go all out on the visuals the way they have done without planning to go the whole hog on things like pit crew either. I might just take them a little while to get there is all.

 

[Luka Deu]

I still don't get one thing. Alldought the graphics in AC is really beautufil, and I mean that is the best looking sim, I still cant figure it out, that GT5 on machine that is 6 years old, looks amazing and have no problems whith FPS (even in 3D). And you have a lot of trackside life on it. And I must say that lighting, cubemaps and replay's are better than in AC TP(dought AC is the first that is coming close). Where is the catch. Here are exsamples. In phisics AC is lightyears ahead!

 

[Luka Deu]

Blasting down Nords in the middle of the night, hillsides lit up by people camping with lights in tents and some camp fires.

Would be neat.

You mean like this

 

[Justin McLeod]

I still cant figure it out, that GT5 on machine that is 6 years old, looks amazing and have no problems whith FPS (even in 3D).

It does have FPS and tearing problems though.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Gran...y-About-60-fps-Frame-Rate-Issues-161939.shtml

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-gran-turismo-5-tech-analysis

While it is playable and looks very good, sacrifices were made. I think the replays are also backed down to 30fps so it can look better also.

 

[Hannes-Joshua Thor Barthel]

also there is alot of blur things and sometimes extreme depth of field going on in gt5 .. which makes it look more exciting and washes out all the things that maybe don't look so pretty..

also there is one advantage of consoles and with exclusive titles that one is even bigger... there is only one kind of hardware.. so the developer can realy squeeze all out of that one hardware..

 

[RaceNut]

The physics computations are generally more complex in PC sims and that requires more processing power. It also makes a difference if the AI controlled cars use the same physics as the player car or more simplified physics.

 

[Hannes-Joshua Thor Barthel]

The physics computations are generally more complex in PC sims and that requires more processing power. It also makes a difference if the AI controlled cars use the same physics as the player car or more simplified physics.

but that should be more cpu related then graphics related.... and I didn't found a game yet which stresses my cpu alot... my cpu is like "you can open this application 5 times if you want" there is only one thing that can bring my cpu to the edge yet and that is my music production...

 

[RaceNut]

but that should be more cpu related then graphics related.... and I didn't found a game yet which stresses my cpu alot... my cpu is like "you can open this application 5 times if you want" there is only one thing that can bring my cpu to the edge yet and that is my music production...

That's fine if you have a high-end PC but, many people don't and they have to consider the larger market or they are limiting sales.