Amazing new PGR3 shots

[London Geezer]

Today was a bad day at the store for the ps2 . I brought in the pgr 3 video and encoded it in 480p (out xbox tv will run it ) and we had it running with preorder for the xbox 360 today right next to the new burnout game for the ps2... While the ps2 game looked great putting the pgr 3 video next to it and it was no comparison

Obviously...

I think you should get bonuses from MS though. I mean, all this for free?

 

[jvd]

Its part of the job ( I didn't work today though but went in to steal the nintendog demo haha (and some other demos the nintendo rep had )

But yea more reserves equals a bigger raise come review time . I'm already at 12.25 an hour there . I think i'm going to max out what i can make soon. But the discount is why i work that 5 hours once every two weeks haha .

Anyway when the psp was coming out i would bring my jap version in for people to see , i got alot of reserves that way . Same thing with the ds

 

[London Geezer]

Its part of the job ( I didn't work today though but went in to steal the nintendog demo haha (and some other demos the nintendo rep had )

But yea more reserves equals a bigger raise come review time . I'm already at 12.25 an hour there . I think i'm going to max out what i can make soon. But the discount is why i work that 5 hours once every two weeks haha .

Anyway when the psp was coming out i would bring my jap version in for people to see , i got alot of reserves that way . Same thing with the ds

Well i still think MS should give bonuses for that kind of work. Hey if you need someone to argue on an email to them, let me know, i'm VERY good at those kind of things

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But losing sales now on games that would sell anyway when they're released?? It's certainly not doing the company any favours. Why do they want to reward people for losing them money :?

 

[coldstorm]

Bizarre Creations Studio Update 08
A close-up on the drivers of PGR3 and the detailed animation system


Microsoft officially announced Project Gotham Racing 3 in Japan today, and released this brand new screen of the game presenting Shinjuku


nice except for the tree in corner that looks like it was pasted on.

 

[Wunderchu]

from: http://www.bizarreonline.net/index.php?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=43

A close-up on the drivers of PGR3 and the detailed animation system.


This week's been a bit of a funny one: I went down with the dreaded lurgy which has been going around (no doubt due to proximity to sniffling artists). Hopefully I haven't spread the germ; otherwise we could have a full blown snot epidemic on our hands! Yikes! After getting back to work on Thursday I found that the Bizarre fairies had shifted my bits and bobs to a new desk in my absence. I'm now parked next to POB, so he was obviously the one who drew the short straw last week!

In the meantime, I've managed to somehow end up acquiring Martyn's Xbox 360 development kit... so I'm now able to take my own screenshots among other things. Excellent stuff! Initial impressions of the unit are very good: it looks great, runs great, and feels great. It's a very exciting time to be a gamer; the coming months will be perhaps the most interesting our industry has seen. Now all I need to do is swipe a huge HDTV and 5.1 system from somewhere and I'll be set...

You can tell that PGR3 is really starting to come together now. Pick a random TV screen around the office and you're bound to see something which takes your breath away. For example, this week's development log featured this image which caught my eye:



As you can see, this is a close-up shot of a bloke driving an Ariel Atom. Gotham programmer Chris told me: "The driver is completely lit and shadowed in real-time - there are no pre-baked shadows in any of the textures used." In other words, those creases in the suit aren't drawn on by an artist. They are actually there, in the game, generated by virtual light sources like the sun or city street lamps. Chris continues: "The driver casts shadows onto the car interior and receives shadows from the car itself for maximum realism. There is also a high resolution bump-map that adds a fine cloth-like weave to the driver's suit." Although I personally think it looks great already, Chris is also keen to point out that "this is all work in progress, and needs plenty more tweaking..." Apparently it'll look even better in the final game!

When I asked about the animation of the driver, I was a little surprised at what I was told. As I'm sure you're all aware, we have motion capture facilities in the office here at Bizarre, and we have used the technology to realistically animate our crowd in PGR3. I assumed we'd use the same system on our drivers... However, the drivers themselves are a more complex system altogether than just a simple motion capture.

We can take basic motion capture of the driver's animations, but it won't work just sticking that into all of the cars. We have 80 cars in PGR3, and each one of those has a different dashboard layout and interior design. Using the same animation for two different cars would lead to the driver's hands or feet missing their targets. Nobody wants to see a driver change gear, only to miss the gear stick by two feet!

To compensate for this, the team here have made a different steering animation for every car in the game. This ensures that the hands of the driver always match up to the steering wheel correctly. These animations are then blended with some procedural animation to make the driver respond to g-forces as the car swings around corners. The final result is the driver accurately gripping the steering wheel as he is thrown around in the cockpit of a super car going over 170mph!

But what about changing gear, or pulling the handbrake? Of course, every car's gear stick and handbrake is in a different position - are these hand animated as well? Actually, no. Chris explains: "we use Inverse Kinematics (IK) to guide the driver's hands to the right position during gear change and handbrake animations." This means that the game actually creates the movements for these actions based on the co-ordinates which have been pre-calculated for the current car.

It's all very clever stuff, and will combine to make perhaps the most realistic drivers in racing game history. That's what we're aiming for anyway!

As a bit of a pop quiz for next time, here's a question for you. What is this crazy man doing with a rolled up map, a microphone, and the bonnet of my car?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's nice to see it developing. The lighting of the city has a realistic level of desaturation for the overcast sky. The tress are presumably just placeholders, and the two spectators aren't compositied correctly/ Looks like they've still to match the lightsources with the lightmaps or something similar/ But yeah, nice to see how things progess and how Blizzard are certainly reaching for next gen that looks next-gen, doing more than just relying on that extra RAM to provide a boost in quality.

 

[AlNom]

But yeah, nice to see how things progess and how Blizzard ...

Bizarre (Creations)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

 

[jvd]

But losing sales now on games that would sell anyway when they're released?? It's certainly not doing the company any favours. Why do they want to reward people for losing them money :?

What do you mean ?

Reserves are good . They give the publisher a good idea of how many they need launch day . THus if all stores taking reserves (gamestop , eb and whatever else ) get 500k reserves , they will put out a million copys . Its good for the store because someone has 5$ down they will come back to that store and buy the game . Its good for the customer cause they don't have to go crazy looking for the game

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But in the mean time you're losing existing sales. Between now and XB360 launch you might sell n thousand other racing games. Then when XB360 launches they see PGR and buy that as well. But if you show PGR on XB360, those people will reserve instead, skipping one title. You surely won't sell any more of PGR then when those same customers walk in the shop after its release, but you will miss selling the current gen titles.

 

[Dural]

Two new screens can be found at XboxCore, there is also a new shot of the Enzo interior at TeamXbox. The Vette looks hot but the textures in the London shot with the GT-One are a bit lacking.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

I would say "bumped for extreme justice" but that's not necessary. The C6 picture is simply :O :O :O :O worthy right now. Good god almighty, each new screenshot release is better than the last. We're reaching wow factor overload here. PEACE.

 

[mistan]

Surely they could have used many more polys and better textures on those pedals in the Enzo interior.

 

[Dural]

Well, since nobody posted it in here... the new studio update from Bizarre includes an amazing 3d picture.

 

[dukmahsik]

Well, since nobody posted it in here... the new studio update from Bizarre includes an amazing 3d picture.

wow just wow

What you're looking at here is a McLaren F1 LM, parked up in front of the (rather unimaginatively named) Tokyo Metropolitan Government No 1 Building. As I mentioned in the last update, Charlie has been working on tweaking the lighting values for the cars; here are the fruits of his labour. Pay particular attention to the reflection of the building on the car body, and also the beautiful shimmer of the sun hitting the roof at certain angles.

The car casts shadows on itself, and the road below it. You'll have to ignore the skid marks all over the place... that was me having a bit of fun before we started making the screenshot! Also, check out the specular effects on the tarmac as the sun shimmers off of it. Using the reflections and specular as a guide, you should be able to work out where the sun is in the sky when we made this screenshot!

Finally, you'll notice that the there are actually some advanced camera effects involved here. These have been implemented by Dave to simulate a real-life camera in the game (all adding to the realism we're striving to achieve).

"Motion blur" means that things in the distance are blurred, whilst the stationary car is kept in focus. Also, we make use of a technique called "depth of field". If you pause the animation and rotate to certain angles, you'll see parts of the car are blurred if they are nearer or further away from the camera. This is because the lens is actually focused at the middle of the image, and other things become "out of focus", just like in real-life. These are two really nice effects which we haven't been able to use before, but due to the awesome power of the next generation of hardware we can now implement them in our games.

And if you look really carefully, you should be able to see the exhaust fumes I was twittering on about a few weeks ago!

I've got a whole bunch of other cool stuff to show you, but it'll have to wait until next week for the time being. As the project gets closer to completion there are loads of excellent opportunities for me to swipe cool stuff to put in the updates. Also, as other things develop at Bizarre, there might be a chance for me to puzzle you with some random strangeness... Watch this space!

 

[Tap In]

very nice

I think the next month or two we will start to see more of the real Next Gen stuff like this.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

wow just wow

If you're going to quote someone else please mention who you're quoting and if possible provide a link. Otherwise it looks like you're writing this.

 

[dukmahsik]

If you're going to quote someone else please mention who you're quoting and if possible provide a link. Otherwise it looks like you're writing this.

yes i appologize, that's the quote from the dev from that link..

 

[bankrupt]

I haven't read it myself yet, but here's a postmortem article at gamasutra for PGR3.




http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050906/gillen_01.shtml