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PGR3 Achieves Near Photo Realism
rtt writes "After some accused them of faking screenshots, Project Gotham Racing 3 developer Bizarre Creations have released some more information to prove their critics wrong. Thanks to the extra grunt of Xbox 360, trackside buildings are covered in 1024x1024 textures that are so detailed, they really do look like almost photo realistic. From the article: 'This week, the debate moves on to Textures. Thanks to the extra grunt of the Xbox 360's ATI-designed Xenos GPU, the trackside eye candy is clothed in super-sharp 1024x1024 textures, rendered in astounding detail.'"
"rtt writes "After some accused them of faking screenshots, Project Gotham Racing 3 developer Bizarre Creations have released some more information to prove their critics wrong. Thanks to the extra grunt of Xbox 360, trackside buildings are covered in 1024x1024 textures that are so detailed, they really do look like almost photo realistic. From the article: 'This week, the debate moves on to Textures. Thanks to the extra grunt of the Xbox 360's ATI-designed Xenos GPU, the trackside eye candy is clothed in super-sharp 1024x1024 textures, rendered in astounding detail.'""
Welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department :P
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
me. in-game. non-replay. scenes. already.
/. as usual.
A texture file which you can import from an actual photo image makes a news story these days.
Even the reflection of the SUV is faithfully recreated in game! Stunning! Seriously, couldn't they have photoshopped it out? Other than that, the screenshots they've been showing have been very impressive, and the PGR gameplay is great fun. Should help shift a few X360s if it really is a launch title.
This comment was formatted for readability, but I forgot the line break tags
I was astonished when I saw the pictures. The pictures do look real, until you realize the repetition. Check out this image to get an idea of repetition. It looks real, but only if you look at half the image. Pretty nice still!
Thanks to the extra grunt of Xbox 360, trackside buildings are covered in 1024x1024 textures that are so detailed, they really do look like almost photo realistic.
From the article quote in the summary:
'Thanks to the extra grunt of the Xbox 360's ATI-designed Xenos GPU, the trackside eye candy is clothed in super-sharp 1024x1024 textures, rendered in astounding detail.'"
Now if only someone would reveal the texture resolution of those trackside buildings. It must be really high. Like 1024x1024 or something. I'm also wondering if perhaps that extra resolution is possible because of the extra grunt of the Xbox 360's ATI-designed Xenos GPU. You tell me.
Considering the first games on any console look crap I wonder what others look line in the future(cleaning up saliva as we speak). And let's not forget the PS3 is supposed to have more power.
I don't see this would be hard for folks to believe.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand graphics programming: high-rez textures are relatively easy. It's getting the light in the gameworld to behave dynamically and realistically and to interact with those textures realistically that is the hard part and requires serious programming skills.
I could be 100% wrong, so, anyone with some insight care to elaborate or clarify?
Big Textures don't make games,
they only make pictures.
nothing travels faster than light - except the mind
I may be wrong here, but in the past 10 years or so of video game development, I haven't seen many improvements in the subtleties of the environment.
Let's take [generic street racing game]. The textures have gotten upgrades in terms of detail. Sure I can see the sides of these buildings as I fly by them at a simulated 150 miles an hour... not that I see very much of them, but they are becoming considerably more detailed. But there's still no traffic whatsoever. I mean there's the occassional pickup truck, and every now and then a semi, but you just don't see a traffic jam or a motorcycle gang.
Then there's [generic circuit racing simulation]. The cars are looking absolutely stunning, and the details of the track are becoming even more impressive... but again, something seems to be missing. You don't see pit crews, audience, or any detail more finite than the race track and the cars.
Don't get me wrong, what they're doing is impressive, but at a (simulated) couple of hundred miles per hour, you don't pay attention to the fact that the textures on the fire station are at 1024x1024. In fact... dropping the res down 480x480 probably wouldn't be too noticable for most users, even those with proper HDTVs.
One could argue that at those speeds, one wouldn't notice many of these details, but many would add something to the total experience.
It seems to me, though, that the use of these resources would be better utilized by making the experience more satisfying. Oh well.
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
So why dont they just show a movie of a car crashing into one of the buildings? should be fairly easy to do. Until then I cry FAKE.
Never could figure out why my girl liked my bitch tits, then I found out she was a lesbian.
That with consoles capable of more than even top end computers, what will become of PC gaming? (Much less the PC itself)
Those who study history are doomed to watch others repeat it.
Anonymous Coward does its job again by allowing one more fanboy to voice his opinion without showing his face. Congrats loser, you just proved to us all you are not only a coward but a complete fool at the same time.
Outside of the guys who play online, is there any reason at all to get a 360?
I watched the MTV special, and I still don't know what the hell I saw.
I watched the E3 videos, and kept waiting for the exciting new titles or demos. Perfect Dark? I don't think so.
I don't give a shit about higher resolution textures. Where are the games? Four years of Halo is enough. Microsoft is always claimed to have the money to buy anything they want in the console market. But outside of Rare, where are the new games and developers?
Instead of reading pointless articles about large scanned photos of buildings, why aren't we reading about Microsoft taking Grand Turismo away from Sony? It's getting very late. The 360 hitting the shelves is only a few months away and I keep waiting for the Big Surprise that I always hear rumored about from MS. And all we get is crap like this.
A console is made to do one thing: play games. If it's difficult to run a *nix server on it, who cares?
I don't want to run a LAMP server on a game console; I want to make my own games. Where do I start?
Other traffic wouldn't make much sense in a PGR-style racing game, but the developers at Bizarre are adding crowds all over the track in PGR3 that respond to your actions (including running in terror if you slam into a barrier they are behind). These are race context specific, too, so that the bigger the race the bigger the crowds you will see. No real photos of these crowds have been released of these crowds yet, but at least the developers are striving to make the world feel less empty than it has in the past.
And one thing a lot of people seem to be missing (presumably because they haven't played any of the PGR games) is that you don't spend all of the race at such high speeds. PGR is really based on skillful driving more than most racing games even, and this is usually demonstrated through taking turns as perfectly as possible. This nearly always involves slowing down quite a bit, and this happens pretty frequently. So players will get plenty of chances to see the environment up close.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
And how does PGR1 and/or PGR2 in any way make you think Bizarre won't make a great game? Your post sounds like some kind of cliche gameplay over graphics argument to me, but that's a ridiculous complaint to make for a PGR game. We already know the gameplay is going to be freaking amazing since it's a PGR game - there's no news in that.
That doesn't mean there won't be some great new gameplay features in PGR3, of course. But implying that the gameplay might not get the same attention as the graphics is ridiculous.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
The main thing they're going to try is to push Halo 3 around Christmas or so, or whenever the PS3 hits the market. I am specifically NOT buying an Xbox 360 because of Halo 2 being cut in half. It was an insult to all the people like me who prepaid, bought friends copies of the game, and waited in line to get the deluxe super duper versions of Halo 2. Their use of such a transparent method of pushing another fucking "episode" of Halo has made me encourage my friends not to buy a 360, not to buy Halo 3, and if they must, rent the system and the game when it becomes available to do so. Microsoft pissed me off for the last time with that, and Sony will get my next gaming system dollars because of it. Fuck Halo 3, and fuck the 360.
'till I see the game running. Those images look very nice indeed, but I'm not getting excited untill I see real live screenshots of the game iteself running on real live 360 hardware.
The textures in GTA:San Andreas look almost as good in isolation. Whislt I can't say the graphics in that game are bad, in fact they're very nice considering the age of the game enigine, it 'aint photo realistic.
We've been hearing about photorealism in games for a long time now, ever since the birth of the CD rom, but it's yet to happen. Im not saying it's impossible, but I think it's going to take more than some nice textures to make computer graphics indistinguishable from photos. Heck, Hollywood can't manage it, even with huge render farms, it's not going to happen on a games console anytime soon.
Also, most games that have attemted photorealism in the past have been a bag of wank.
make me wish I had mod points.
Not only are you NOT discussing what the article is about, all your post is is a childish attack on Halo 2. Why doesnt a good seller like that deserve a sequel? Pushing an episode? Its called marketing, stupid. I dont pretend to know the inner workings of MS, but, you seem to think you do.
Ever hear of a cliffhanger? You know, continuing story? something to make you WANT to play the game again. I can imagine your reaction to a lot of movies. Do you ask for your money back often if the movie leaves openings for a sequel?
Speaking of disappointments, Gran Turismo 4. Delayed...delayed...wont ship with online, will have to pay for it later...Now we arent making the online part. IMO, it was just GT3 with a few more cars and slightly prettier graphics. Thats the reason Sony WONT be getting my console dollars ever again. FUCK SONY and FUCK thier PS3
Who cares how nice the buildings look if the cars look like crap? Feels like different people are doing the cars and buildings, the car designers wouldn't know subtlety if it poked at them.
This is just more work of the Hype Factory.
It's a good strategy to make a big deal of those who say your game must be faked! "Look, it's so real people think its fake!!!!"
It looks like a video game to me. Nothing unbelievable.
Now I've seen Everything
In the first article about this POS game, the rendering of the cars looked like absolute shit. Who fucking cares if the stuff you are passing at speeds on the sided of the track are rendered in high detail? How about rendering the cars in high detail and then adding some real gameplay to that lame ass played out POS game. Just my opinion.
When the GeForce256 (original GeForce) and Voodoo5 came out, the press were yelling "photo realism" and the players were yelling "we have enough graphics power." When the GeForce2 came out, the press again yelled "photo realism," and the players screamed "we have enough graphics power." When the GeForce3 came...oh nevermind, you get the idea.
The point is, EVERY iteration of hardware, someone yells "photo realism" or "we don't need any more power." Well, the fact is, even with hardware being able to render a billion polyons a second, we still aren't able to get what the Metropolis Light Transport algorithm can do with just 10k polygons. So, to the post about PGR being PR: stop it, they're just textures, and they're not photo realistic (unless you like calling photos in games photo realistic...no puns intended). No, not even close. We're still MANY orders of magnitudes away. We don't even have true real-time area lights yet!
As for the rest of you that keep on yelling "we have enough graphics power:" no, we don't. But neither do we have enough gameplay. But I tend to agree...get the gameplay first, then worry about the graphics. Please, FF series...less movies, more game (same goes to all those eye-candy, no gameplay games out there)!
I don't know anything about what the goal is, but beautiful backgrounds and models don't mean much if they're static and if you can't interact with them as in life. I'd rather see processing cycles dedicated to creating a sprawling city where no buildings are repeated... Or, as his is a racing game, making crashes as realistic as possible, so you feel like you're hitting a real physical object (and damaging that part of your car.)
No more games where the edge of the road is a giant wall, and where your car is a uniform block that runs until it hits something and explodes.
If you slap a large photo of a building on a texture, then it will be photo realistic as long as the geometry is fairly flat, and you don't get too close.
Let's do some math, shall we?
1024*1024 texture * 4 bytes per pixel (1 per channel = 32 bit) * 4964 textures / 1048576 (bytes in a megabyte) = 19856 megabytes = 19.390625 GB of data.
19.3 GB won't fit on a Dual-Layer DVD. What does this mean?
1. Less than half the textures are going to make it in-game
2. Not all the textures in that photo (and thus the game) are 1024x1024
3. Compression
While 2 is probably what the devs are going to choose, I certainly hope that they don't use 3. Most compression schemes like JPEG are lossy compression, which means that when the texture is "blown" back up to it's 1024^2 resolution, it won't look nearly as good as those pictures make it out to be. In motion this won't cause a problem, but on closer inspection it could look almost as blocky as current-gen games.