DIRT: Colin McRae Off-Road

[Graham]

New screens:

Mentally remove the motion blur, and that track really does look quite average.

The shots have very high contrast in their lighting, so the darker details are missing. I'm thinking this is what makes it look less rendered.

Something funny about the motion blur in that shot too. There are no obvious errors. The transition from road->car shouldn't be so accurate (unless both are rendered separately). Also some oddities with the depth of field in the 2nd shot.

Overall though it does look very nice. I'm just inclined to believe these are photo mode shots for the time being.

 

[London Geezer]

Mentally remove the motion blur, and that track really does look quite average.

Uhm sorry but how does one "mentally remove blur" to then judge how average the picture is??

The shots have very high contrast in their lighting, so the darker details are missing. I'm thinking this is what makes it look less rendered.

Heh, that is exactly the same effect the "Dynamic Contrast" option in some TVs (most LCDs) has on the picture.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This looks too good to be true. A game developed on a middleware engine and it looks a hell of a lot better than Motorstorm AND it's coming out early 2007?

It's their own engine (check the earlier part of this thread), and as for looking better than MS, I'd say it just looks different. Seriously, there's one car and some fairly close-cropped scenery. The smoke looks like lots of alpha blended particles and the dirt is easy enough to do if you write to textures with some algothmic muck.

It does look very good, notably because of the attention to detail in the foliage that doesn't look like SpeedTree clones, but it's not unbelievable by any stretch IMO.

 

[MrWibble]

Uhm sorry but how does one "mentally remove blur" to then judge how average the picture is??

I'm mentally imagining it as a top-down 2D sprite based racing game, and it's really not a patch on GT3.

 

[London Geezer]

It's their own engine (check the earlier part of this thread), and as for looking better than MS, I'd say it just looks different. Seriously, there's one car and some fairly close-cropped scenery. The smoke looks like lots of alpha blended particles and the dirt is easy enough to do if you write to textures with some algothmic muck.

I don't think Algorithmic Muck was supported in hardware last time i checked. Do you have a link?


Anyway, am i the only one who never liked the CMR games? And i LOVE racing games. Don't know, i always found them so flat... Not sure if it was the scenery or something else, but it always felt like an Outrun game. Flatter than Nicole Richie.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't think Algorithmic Muck was supported in hardware last time i checked. Do you have a link?

Oops, I may have breached NDA Forget I said anything; RSX does not have an AMPU built in, no siree.

 

[patsu]

Just finished reading xbdestroya's PSSG interview...

Mentally remove the motion blur, and that track really does look quite average.

You mean like... mentally stripping MS Word and realize that it's merely a Notepad ? Doesn't make sense.

The shots have very high contrast in their lighting, so the darker details are missing. I'm thinking this is what makes it look less rendered.

Something funny about the motion blur in that shot too. There are no obvious errors. The transition from road->car shouldn't be so accurate (unless both are rendered separately). Also some oddities with the depth of field in the 2nd shot.

Overall though it does look very nice. I'm just inclined to believe these are photo mode shots for the time being.

Perhaps. The shots look great indeed.

 

[Graham]

Ok fine, so maybe I didn't make sense

What I mean was try and look past the motion blur. Apply a mental fourier transform if you must damnit.

If you look at the wall (?) to the right, you can see a pretty bad case of repeating texture(s), and the transitions between road->edge->random wall->grass above is very sharp, and frankly quite strange. Maybe it's some odd way the road was constructed, but it doesn't look too flash. It seems odd they would release a shot like that, you'd expect some great vista from the first convincingly ingame shot.
The trees up top also concern me, as they almost look like they may be 2D. It's just the motion blur is making it very hard to tell. :/

I'm naturally rather cynical when it comes to screenshots these days.

 

[rounin]

PS3 DIRT screenshots

8 new screens from Playsyde from the PS3 version of the game.

Looks quite impressive to me ! I like how while the car models aren't super impressive, they've managed to make the over all look nice by having good effects.





More at the link.

 

[PiNkY]

Textures and motion blur sure look good, but the car/track modelling rather not so...

 

[pipo]

*bump*

Some interesting comments.

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=72336

"DIRT has all new and visually stunning engine that is pushing next-gen hardware to the max right from the off."

"The damage, particle effects, post-production, car physics, car audio and AI are all far in advance of anything we have yet seen on next gen."

Lofty aspirations, especially held against titles like MotorStorm, which is the best of the launch titles, at least as far as Raeburn is concerned.

Colin McRae: DIRT launches for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC in June. The three versions will be almost identical, but Raeburn admits that Microsoft leads the way with its online service:

"Xbox Live set the benchmark with regards to online console gaming, so it is a compliment to Microsoft that we are endeavouring to replicate much of this on the PS3 and PC platforms."

Nice to see those guys are pushing hard.

 

[Capeta]

I really like the art style of this game especially the lighting. Is this running at 60fps?

 

[Acert93]

I really like the art style of this game especially the lighting. Is this running at 60fps?

30fps with motion blur (heh, they cite PGR3 as the reason for this). I believe past ones were 60fps.

 

[blakjedi]

Does fps matter anymore? or is it more representative for a game to have say 60 i/o inputs per second (or 120/180 0r 240)?

 

[TheChefO]

30fps + motion blur is better for the marketing dept than 60fps w/o motionblur. It enables them to use *actual screenshots* that look better than their 60fps counterparts.

Racing games should always aim for 60fps though as it is integral to the experience.

If this game ends up looking anything like the screens that have been released so far, I will be able to forgive it's limited 30fps.

Perfect lighting.