[360, PS3] Need For Speed: Shift

Phil said:
Edit: I've been living a bit under a rock lately, but is Shift from the Burnout Team or not? If it is, I'd find it hugely disappointing, since 60 fps was a priority in the old days for them.
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Yes and no.

Yes, Criterion Games had a hand in SHIFT's development (they are more than just the Burnout team ;)). No, they weren't the sole developer.

The Burnout team has a 2010 deadline for their pet project, with Black Box returning to develop the franchise the following year. (Apparently EA wants to keep the property's annual release schedule but doesn't want to burden a single developer with the task.)

Slightly Mad Studios is standing in the limelight (to legitimize what would have otherwise been a laughable proposition: a Need for Speed sim brought to you by the arcade ancipital, Black Box and Criterion Games), but they aren't the only ones on stage.

"Need for Speed SHIFT delivers an authentic and immersive driving experience developed by Slightly Mad Studios in collaboration with executive producer Michael Mann at Black Box and senior vice president Patrick Soderlund at EA Games Europe."

– Electronic Arts
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Offstage, a destitute genius Blimey! Games, a mysterious investor who kept them afloat (let's call them 'EA' for lack of a better term), Criterion Games, and Black Box have worked to make Patrick's vision of a driver-based experience a reality.
 
Ive been measuring framerates recently + 30fps does NOT cut it at all (yes I know this number is because of tv blah blah)
but 40fps is the minimum that should be aimed for
in fact the difference going from 30->40 is nearly as big as going from 40->60
 
We're talking about an engine that can run unlimited threads, detailed physics parameters running at around 400 Hz on consoles.
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Whereas the physics and AI threads are running at a full 120hz
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Downgraded already ? That's rather large drop too.
 
I have a feeling you'll all forget about the physics refresh rate and focus your rage on the extreme camera quaking blurry concussion nightmare you'll experience the first time your car makes contact with anything that's not terrain.
 
V3 said:
Downgraded already ? That's rather large drop too.
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If my hunch is correct, this isn't a downgrade at all but a change in methodology from serial solutions to more distributed ones. I imagine it would be akin to moving graphics rendering from a CPU to a GPU. :oops:

Slightly Mad Studios' physics model seems to have parallel scalability.

SHIFT is built on the most advanced physics engine we've made, and is by far the most advanced and realistic physics engine of any of the mainstream racing games. We're talking about an engine that can run unlimited threads
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And this is a prerequisite for Criterion's (distributed computing) game platform. Once the model has been bolted on, it should be a lot easier to tune within a distributed environment as opposed to a non-distributed one. So the pervasiveness and/or complexity of a physics system would boil down to the allocation of resources.

We're running a more complex physics engine than anything on the market. No physics engine runs faster ... 420Hz I believe as of now, on the consoles. We're still working on the final settings, though. If we find higher gives any advantage, we might raise it and vice versa.
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Ostepop said:
Two completely different things.

Physics needs high refresh rates in racing games because it needs to model the movement of the cars etc, regardless of what the framerate the game is. While people can argue about the gains\cons with 60vs30fps (imo this game looks worse than GT5\FM3, so in this case its only cons), physics are different, aspecially for anything that is going to move fast.

A car moving at 200km\h equals 55,5 metres per second. 120 hz physics refresh rate means that the Cars movement etc is only updated once every 27,7 metres. This inpacts how the car reacts to your input, and how accurately can model what happends.

Forza 2's physics ran 360 refreshes per second, 120hz is nothing to brag about. Im sure GT5 uses a very high number as well.
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I think Forza 1 on xbox ran at 180hz physics, but still good for a NFS game to be this realistic, I dont think anyone will really care if a NFS is a simulator or not. ;)
 
Not necessarily. As with graphics, realism has to do with the complexity of the model(s). A non-real-time simulation may not update quickly, but it is more accurate than one operating in real-time.

Again (like graphics), the speed that an engine is running is a rough indicator of continuity. A swift physics engine, like those in F1 simulations, is less likely to fall back on slight-of-hand (impulses) and more likely to manage the interaction of forces over time.
 
When you first start the game, you'll only have two choices: Start Career and Options. Choosing Start Career immediately puts you behind the wheel of a BMW M3 with all assists turned off for a solo lap at Brands Hatch.

[…]

After you complete this orientation lap, you're then put in a two lap race on the same course, and your finishing position will determine how much cash you get to start your career [...] After this, then everything else opens up, including the Quick Race and online options.

-IGN
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I like the direction EA is steering the franchise, and its ambitious attempt to provide a 'one size fits all' solution for an entire genre with a title that tries to encompass everything from arcade antics to sobering simulation.

I like the company's renewed commitment to quality:

"We're trying to much more aggressively put in at least two to three months of polish time back into the schedule," [Frank Gibeau, EA label boss] said. "So a game is actually functionally complete, content complete, then we go in and we put it through mass amounts of tests, massive amounts of replay-throughs, so that we can really get those five, 10, 15 points on Metacritic."

"Dead Space was one of those titles that had a lot of polish built into it, and a lot of the games that we're doing right now like Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age and Need for Speed Shift also have built-in polish."

It wasn't always that way, Gibeau said. "Three or four years ago, products were coming in hot, hitting the market hot. ... You know, last year's Need for Speed finished tests, and that was it. There was no time in the schedule [for polish] because of the way the studios had been set up. We had to break the cycle and give very careful consideration to polish times. We have to have that polish time at the end of the project, or none of it matters."

- Gamasutra
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But the game's potential and kinetic synergy is not as cohesive as I had hoped it would be.

SHIFT is billed as a pick up and play game™ for everyone—an arcade game that, when cornered, will mirror reality more believably (and enjoyably) than the iconic GTR2. But the opposite seems to be the case: you will have to put it in a straight jacket first.

I doubt its mainstream audience will want to be force-fed obsessive gameplay, and SHIFT seems to be serving it by the plateful ...

Turning off all assists is like letting the bogeyman out of the basement (or a simulator out of its cage). And we all know what THAT means. Some of us are going to be stars in a new horror flick.

Never mind all of the N00bs in busted BMWs; it won't be pretty for sim enthusiasts either when they are caught with un-calibrated steering wheels, foot pedals and such.

Surely there is a better way to introduce a new IP to consumers without pissing them off.

For casual players especially, the first few outings are about everything BUT racing. It is a time for exploration and sightseeing and, when they finally come around to it, getting a feel for how to control the car. It is about testing boundaries—seeing how much damage you can inflict or be afflicted with—and learning how to stay within them.

Arcade games hide convoluted play mechanics behind a (default) level of difficulty that is best suited for amateurs. I think SHIFT should have followed suit.

The only rational explanation I can think of for a casual sim to begin as a full-on simulation is to fulfill the requirements of a licensing agreement. BMW first—first in marketing; the first selectable car in demonstrations; first to the cover shoot; and the first vehicle players drive in-game. It is a spoiled celebrities' list of demands normally associated with Ferrari and Porsche.

You will probably be able to keep the BMW M3 (whether that's the GT2 racecar or a production car remains to be seen), though it is unlikely to be useful in Career mode until you have climbed the racing class food chain. And it makes sense. There are plenty of starter cars in the game's portfolio.;)
 
PGR4 had a good balance of arcade and realistic handling in a pickup and play driving game and it ran at 30fps. I think this game could be very good without having to be all tech specced out as long as the framrate is consistent and the graphics and handling of the cars are good.
 
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