Slashdot Mirror
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!
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
Oh come on. The joke doesn't work unless someone mods me down as redundant. Please? Someone?
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.
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
'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.
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
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.
So basically you are angry because Microsoft's marketing was so successful that you went out and spent a lot of time and money getting a game you didn't even know for sure would be good.
The only requirement Halo 2 has to fill in order to be considered a good game is : do you have fun playing it. Check the XBox live numbers : a lot of people do.
I loved the Halo:CE campaign. I loved the Halo 2 campaign, even though I felt less involved in the story. I like playing Halo 2 over XBox live, even though I'm not that good at it. The texture popup bothers me, and gives the game less of a quality feel. But I still have lots of fun playing.
There is no such thing as a perfect game. If you thought Halo 2 would be the last game you would every play because everything else would pale in comparison, that's YOUR fault. If you thought that when finishing Halo 2 on Legendary Cortana (or Master Chief, whatever you're into) would come over and have sex with you, that's YOUR fault.
How about doing what I do : I only paid full price for a handful of games (Halo 2 was one of them, Halo:CE wasn't). All others were at least half price, just by waiting a few months. And by that time, I have read plenty of reviews so I know what to expect. The result : I've never felt cheated.
And how exactly is Microsoft "forcing" you to buy an XBox 360 and Halo 3 ? If you feel the need to know the continuation of the story, it means you're interested in it. So you like their product.
But like a lot of immature Slashdotters you want everything for free, right now, and on your terms. Other people live in the real world.
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.
As someone who has finished the PC version of Halo, I have to say I don't know why it has such a following. The story is ok, but a little convoluted, I haven't heard anyone argue that the levels aren't repetitive and boring, and the graphics, for their time, were a move forward but nothing spectacular.
The only true redeeming quality was the fact that you could have good online multiplayer in a console. Other than that, I only expected Halo 2 to have slightly better graphics since it's on the same system and the same convoluted storyline.
I think the selling point of the Halo series is not the storyline but the online console multiplayer capabilities.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Modern video hardware supports in-memory compressed textures. I'm guessing the ATI chip supports the DTX standard natively, which offers variable compression rates depending on how you wish to allocates your bits for alpha channels, and what final quality you want. So, your calculations are a bit off (by at least a factor of 4), I'm afraid.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.