[Tap In]

wow

[chroniceyestrain]

Gamespot has a couple different videos than on IGN http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/spor...w_6134801.html

Gamespot also mentions the low to the floor camera in the demo. Apparently that will be an actual camera angle in the game (that's what I deduct from their article anyway), though it won't be very effective when it comes to gameplay obviously.

If you're a fan of the NBA, I don't know how you can't be excited about this.

[Tap In]

All the footage, from the video to the screenshots are 100% gameplay. I repeat, these are not cut scenes. These are not an artist's interpretation of gameplay. This is NBA 2K6.

http://sports.ign.com/articles/655/655097p1.html

But the players aren't the only ones brought to life as you're going to witness an electrifying crowd complete with 10,000 individual models dispersed throughout the arena. And what better way to capture the atmosphere than through authentic arena lighting arrays sampled from actual NBA venues and a bounce lighting technique called dynamic specularity. Look at the yellow light on Shaq's armpit in the screen below. The light's coming from the yellow court. Amazing.

[Shifty Geezer]

Looks good in motion, except the animation. It looks unnatural with apparent shifts between mo-cap animation patterns. That's going to really stand out next-gen when the shading and everything else looks so fine.

[Stillmatic]

It looks fantastic. The jump in NBA games from PS1/N64 to PS2 NBA games got off to a very slow start. This time around the leaps alot bigger. I'm a happy baller

The only problem i have with the player models (and i'm being picky), is the amount of sweat in some of the pics, it just looks a bit over done in some places. Also the player jersey's aren't actually sitting on the models.

[3roxor]

Originally Posted by Tap In

wow

never seen a black man before?

[Laa-Yosh]

Wow, the player models look very very good. They have some pretty talented artists there... and the cloth is impressive too, especially if all 10 guys' shirts are simulated at the same time...

[liverkick]

The ball seems oddly out of place, not up to the same level of detail (sorta shiny yet blurry texturing) as the high quality player models. Everything else looks bloody amazing though, I wasnt expecting a first-gen sports title to make this much of a jump to be honest. The Live studio might be rather bummed after seeing this, although the improvements they say they're making with collision physics sound pretty promising. NBA games are the bottom rung when it comes to deep and accurate sport sims, so Im most interested how they're going to make the gameplay next gen as well. If they're still 2K/Live with a great new coat of paint it'll be very dissapointing.

[one]

Originally Posted by Tap In

http://sports.ign.com/articles/655/655097p1.html

All in-game OK, but what about 9:16 images? Also, 720p images in IGN have jaggies noticeable while images at Gamespot (1024x576) have no problem.

[Hardknock]

And this is confirmed 60fps

[Qroach]

9 x16 is just taking a screen shot length wise (in 16 by 9) on the xbox and showing it like a poster (rotated). instead of being wide its tall... whats the big difference? And to the few that think this wasn't real time, they are dead wrong.

[one]

Originally Posted by Hardknock

And this is confirmed 60fps

I'm not really sure about that (See Official Trailer 2 in http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/spor...2k6/media.html and it has a portion with score HUD that looks like real gameplay and it's not in 60fps)

Originally Posted by Qroach

9 x16 is just taking a screen shot length wise (in 16 by 9) on the xbox and showing it like a poster (rotated). instead of being wide its tall...

So it has some sort of photo-mode in which you can take 720x1280 snapshots?

[Hardknock]

Originally Posted by one

I'm not really sure about that (See Official Trailer 2 in http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/spor...2k6/media.html and it has a portion with score HUD that looks like real gameplay and it's not in 60fps)

So it has some sort of photo-mode in which you can take 720x1280 snapshots?

I'm not talking about the trailer, I'm talking about the actual game when it launches.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/spor...60_flashtop_bg

We didn't notice any specific frame rate issues in our look, and Thomas was quick to assure us that the game, complete with (or perhaps despite of) this detail, would be running at 60 frames per second at launch.

[Qroach]

So it has some sort of photo-mode in which you can take 720x1280 snapshots?

take a screeen shot at 1280x720 and rotate it clockwise or counter clockwise by 90 degrees.

[Shifty Geezer]

Surely a screenshot at 720p isn't going to have players lying down and the court up the left hand side of the screen.

[Gollum]

I just don't get how the first thing on someones mind after seeing this can possibly be a complaint. Something is seriously wrong with some people. Of course its not RealityTM yet, but what do you expect?

For a launch next-gen title, clearly the jumps in resolution, geometric- and texture-detail as well as lighting, shading and animation are incrdible. This is a game after all, everything is running in real time. I dare suggest many animation studios would have problems producing something of this quality as an offline rendering. The fact that this is gonna be playable in real-time in the very near future is freakin' amazing IMO!

And that's coming from someone who doesn't even care about basketball. I only hope other sports franchises will be able to make similar leaps, several of them look like major dissapointments in comparison so far...

[Qroach]

Surely a screenshot at 720p isn't going to have players lying down and the court up the left hand side of the screen.

huh? what's with you?

[Platon]

At least now we can see that the xbox360 doesn't have problems with physics, at least with cloth simulation...

[wco81]

Originally Posted by Stillmatic

It looks fantastic. The jump in NBA games from PS1/N64 to PS2 NBA games got off to a very slow start. This time around the leaps alot bigger. I'm a happy baller

The only problem i have with the player models (and i'm being picky), is the amount of sweat in some of the pics, it just looks a bit over done in some places. Also the player jersey's aren't actually sitting on the models.

Looks great but NBA games have been bottom rung in gameplay, particularly reproducing the flow. Got to admit I never tried NBA2K because after trying Live a couple of times, I was disappointed with hoops games.

If they can do better with things like forcefield and more fluid animations, they will do these visuals some justice.

[Acert93]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

Surely a screenshot at 720p isn't going to have players lying down and the court up the left hand side of the screen.

Maybe you can take snapshots and email them over Live! Or the devs, for a nice photo op--and considering these giants are 6'6" - 7'6"--decided to get a nice "shot" for PR reasons. The shot is not an action shot (looks more like a shot during a time out) so who knows.

Originally Posted by rabbit

I can't see anything indicating "in game" in those shots, or in that video.

Well, besides the big note on the IGN and Gamespot websites, someone has commented about a [USELESS] floor camera. My experience is sports games have a LOT of useless game angles that are unplayable. They may have just had guy moving the gamera while someone else played (like the recent PGR3 movies... someone was even changing the lighting in realtime on PGR3).

Obviously these are NOT game angles you would play with; but they do appear to be demonstrating how players move in the real game. i.e. it is not precanned animation. Your players will look like this, just fromt different angles.

I will agree this is not exactly the same experience you will have sitting back at a sideline or behind/infront basket perspective.

But the herky jerky animation transitions are a giveaway that this is ingame--with unplayable camera angles.

It's all some introductory front-end or replay footage at best.
It's as much "in game" as that Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer.

What button makes you twist a cigerette in your mouth again? Some of your motives are pretty clear. I agree that camera angle is useless as it does not represent how you will play, but comparing precanned animation with cinematic camera angles during a cut scene and using a "floor cam" of ingame play are totally different.

But hey, you have motives, which leads us to...

Besides, many of the shots are in 9:16 format, instead of 16:9 I'm sure they are prerendered using ingame assets.

I guess VC, IGN, and Gamespot are all lieing

I am surprised some of you would assume MGS4 was not pre-rendered (I never thought it was) yet you are willing to call out 3 sources and call this stuff pre-rendered even though the dev and mags are saying it is real. This is NOT like the E3 exchange:

Q: Is this realtime?
A: It is rendered to spec.
Q: But is this how the real game is going to look when I buy a PS3?
A: You will be playing this game on the PS3.

One is an evasive answer, the other is "this is the game running on real hardware". This is sad. We are finally seeing real games running on real hardware--for the first time on any of the next gen consoles--and you guys are holding your little grudges based on uninteractive media from E3.

Really, lets toss all degrees of objectivity out the window.

Originally Posted by one

I'm not really sure about that (See Official Trailer 2 in http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/spo...a2k6/media.html and it has a portion with score HUD that looks like real gameplay and it's not in 60fps)

Using streaming media to determine the frame rate Go read the acticle. If the final version is not 60fps we can crucify them. (Btw, a game can render at 60fps but the animation rate can be lower, like 24fps. Madden does this. You cannot judge the framerate of the game with the animation framerate.)

[Acert93]

Originally Posted by Platon

At least now we can see that the xbox360 doesn't have problems with physics, at least with cloth simulation...

My P4 ran some of the cloth physics demos well.

The key on cloth is how detailed is it (100 points? 1,000 points?)? How complex is the model it is interacting with? Is it self intereacting? How many instances of this program are running? etc.

So the question is not if it can run it, but how well. From the looks of it, it can do a passable job. It may not be the best architecture for it, but it appears any limitations had appropriate short cuts--at least in this game. I would not be surprised if they dedicated 1 entire core cloth physics Or maybe even using the GPU some for it.

[one]

Originally Posted by Acert93

Using streaming media to determine the frame rate Go read the acticle. If the final version is not 60fps we can crucify them. (Btw, a game can render at 60fps but the animation rate can be lower, like 24fps. Madden does this. You cannot judge the framerate of the game with the animation framerate.)

Have you seen the video? Before and after the scene with score overlayed, you see smooth slow-motion movement without HUD which seems like an in-game replay scene or sped-up composition for the trailer. There's clear difference.

[Acert93]

Originally Posted by one

Have you seen the video? Before and after the scene with score overlayed, you see smooth slow-motion movement without HUD which seems like an in-game replay scene or sped-up composition for the trailer. There's clear difference.

Originally Posted by GameSpot

We didn't notice any specific frame rate issues in our look, and Thomas was quick to assure us that the game, complete with (or perhaps despite of) this detail, would be running at 60 frames per second at launch.

Originally Posted by Acert93

Using streaming media to determine the frame rate

You do realize that there can be hiccups in capturing footage and that other factors can influence the impression given by streaming media.

Favorable 1st hand impressions from Press + Dev confirmation > Crappy low quality video capture

I am not sure why you are ignoring GameSpots first hand testimony of the footage on a TV screen in favor of a low quality captures.

Not trusting a devs outlanding claims? I can understand that. But GameSpot is backing them up. So, what makes you think BOTH are lieing?

[wco81]

That developer's interview is interesting. Sounds like they're using multiple threads on multiple CPUs, says AI will be "faster" is the word I believe he used. So it sounds like VC is trying to get the most out of the XeCPU in their first X360 game.

It sounds like they have no plans to port to the PS3 or haven't started at least.

VC could be a proxy first-party developer who will take the X360 to the limit.

[one]

Originally Posted by Acert93

Not trusting a devs outlanding claims? I can understand that. But GameSpot is backing them up. So, what makes you think BOTH are lieing?

30fps is not exactly a problem, as there are several titles in development that are under 30fps now. I don't think Gamespot is backing it's in 60fps as GS just relays "it would be..." comment by the dev, let's see again when it launchs