Forza 2 Interview + Wireframes

[Hardknock]

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360...6206/forza-motorsport-2-20060817105852043.jpg

IGN: In simulation racers of this sort--Gran Turismo, TOCA, the original Forza--there's often an emphasis on a variety of cars that overshadows any attachment to a single vehicle. Will Forza 2 do anything to make it easier to "live with" just one car in the game?

Dan Greenawalt : In the original Forza Motorsport, the player leveled by winning races. This leveling granted access to more races. It also unlocked cars and discounts on parts for the player. For Forza Motorsport 2, we've added a car leveling component as well. The goal is to encourage the player to invest time racing in one car. As the car levels, it will unlock rewards and discounts for itself and other cars in its brand as well as other brands entirely. It's a pretty cool system, chalk full of real-world branded relationships. Also, it really "sets the hook" deep.

IGN: Will there be any true force feedback support in Forza 2? Hard-core racing fans bemoaned the lack of true force feedback in the original Forza, which was limited by the lack of any true force feedback wheel available for the Xbox. Will Forza 2 be able to support USB-based steering wheels (like Logitech's excellent wheels) to supply true force feedback? Or will Microsoft's first-party racing wheel provide force feedback equal to what gamers have available on other systems?

Dan Greenawalt : Yes, Forza Motorsport 2 and the Xbox 360 will support true Force Feedback. We've been working with an internal Microsoft hardware team to develop a true Force Feedback steering wheel that can also run wirelessly. We also have several prototype wheels from 3rd party that we are tuning the game with.

IGN: Sixty frames per second--will it happen? High frame rates are especially good for certain genres, racing being one of them, but will the pressures to up polygon counts and dazzle with special effects keep Forza 2 from running at 60 FPS?

Dan Greenawalt : The Xbox 360 was new hardware last Holiday. The development community has learned a ton about optimizing the power on the box since then. Forza Motorsport 2 is currently running at 60fps with 12 high-poly cars, far superior shaders and higher texture resolution. Truth be told, creating a beautiful game for the next-gen consoles is less and less about the poly counts. Getting the next-gen look is all about shaders, texture resolution and texture tricks such as normal mapping.

The rest of the interview here: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/726/726206p1.html

 

[Cobra101]

Good stuff. Thanks.

 

[slapnutz]

cool. Cheers.

btw, i hope people dont start to believe that those are ingame wireframes. If anything, its proberbly a hi-polymesh for normal/virtual displacement mapping.

Nevertheless, i'll just be happy if the game is at least as "long" as GT4. That was the only problem with Forza... it was to short.

 

[TrungGap]

I have a feeling I'm going to be broke...sigh.

 

[mckmas8808]

cool. Cheers.

btw, i hope people dont start to believe that those are ingame wireframes. If anything, its proberbly a hi-polymesh for normal/virtual displacement mapping.

I'm glad you told me that because I thought that wireframe was in game. I was like "Damn that car is like 1 million polys"

 

[zed]

from a guesstimate i'ld say that shot was 50,000 polygons max (nowhere near a million) the lines are extra thick and antialiased thus looks more than it is
but anyways, its created with some curve model method eg nurbs, or bspline patches
also i assume the xb360 gpu doesnt support native rendering of quads, only triangles

 

[quest55720]

Sounds great to me I hope they don't forget about good net code.

 

[nintenho]

I hate that time of the year. Isn't 12 cars a bit crowded for a sim racer?

 

[darkblu]

Dan Greenawalt : The Xbox 360 was new hardware last Holiday. The development community has learned a ton about optimizing the power on the box since then. Forza Motorsport 2 is currently running at 60fps with 12 high-poly cars, far superior shaders and higher texture resolution. Truth be told, creating a beautiful game for the next-gen consoles is less and less about the poly counts. Getting the next-gen look is all about shaders, texture resolution and texture tricks such as normal mapping.

good for them. had they included at least one in-engine/in-game screenshot it would have been truly great. not that i don't appreciate real-life photos of ferraris on the track and source-assets wireframes, but i'd have appreciated more at least one shot relevant to the talk from the interview.

 

[Graham]

I'm pretty certain those are in game models.

Don't see any reason why they can't be 50k poly cars, probably less though (I'd guess those are 20-30k models). A quick rough count would put each wheel at around 2k (counting segments etc). As mentioned in the interview, poly counts really don't matter too much, it's all fillrate and what you do with the pixels.

For comparison, the stanford bunny is a good example, it's 68k polygons, (wireframe).
I managed to get it rendering at 1500fps, which is around about 105 million/tris/sec. (x1800xl) So you can see it's no trouble really. (pic). 12 50k poly cars at 60fps is 36 million tris/sec, making it quite possible. I've had 20 bunnies rendering full screen at over 60fps as well.

 

[czekon]

why it can't be in game

PGR3 car model

 

[AlNom]

Sounds great. Now someone just needs to remind them about AF (just in-case)....

I hate that time of the year. Isn't 12 cars a bit crowded for a sim racer?

Not for Nurburgring.


....and that's about it.

 

[scooby_dooby]

why it can't be in game

PGR3 car model

looks like the garage car model which has a large step above the ingame car model.

 

[AlNom]

looks like the garage car model which has a large step above the ingame car model.

Are the models different between garage and in-game? I thought it was just the lighting effects and resolution that are different.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Are the models different between garage and in-game? I thought it was just the lighting effects and resolution that are different.

The garage models really blow me away, while the ingame not so much. I think it's higher level of AA, better lighting, higher resolution. Don't know if it's higher poly or not, but there really is a big difference between the two.

 

[Hardknock]

why it can't be in game

PGR3 car model

PGR3 uses 80k poly models (split 50/50 between interior and exterior). Forza 2 doesn't model the interior extensively so they have more polygons for the exterior to use. I'm expecting 60k + polygons just for the exterior.

 

[Type_Raver]

why it can't be in game

PGR3 car model

Because theres no textures on it

 

[slapnutz]

I'm pretty certain those are in game models.

Don't see any reason why they can't be 50k poly cars, probably less though (I'd guess those are 20-30k models). A quick rough count would put each wheel at around 2k (counting segments etc). As mentioned in the interview, poly counts really don't matter too much, it's all fillrate and what you do with the pixels.

For comparison, the stanford bunny is a good example, it's 68k polygons, (wireframe).
I managed to get it rendering at 1500fps, which is around about 105 million/tris/sec. (x1800xl) So you can see it's no trouble really. (pic). 12 50k poly cars at 60fps is 36 million tris/sec, making it quite possible. I've had 20 bunnies rendering full screen at over 60fps as well.

Yeah i only recently saw this image and now i'm not 100% sure about my initial comment. Those extra thick wireframe did throw me off a bit.

However Forza 2 will have to undertake serveral addition tasks which your bunny example is missing (or at least you didnt mention) such as Lighting model, Textures/shader model, shadows, reflections, 12 car A.I, Physics model, Full Race Track model, Dobly 5.1 Sound system.

However i do NOT disagree with you RE if the Frame rate is sustainable.... however i'm not sure if those models are around 50k-60k. I guess a polycount would have been helpful

Nevertheless i dont think Forza 2 will have 80k car like PGR3 for 3 main reasons. 1) It as more cars on screen. 12 in total...... 2) More detailed Physics model running at 60fps..... 3) Game will run at 60fps.... unlike PGR3 which is 30fps.



HOWEVER!!!... I'll still buy the game on release day.

 

[Acert93]

Nevertheless i dont think Forza 2 will have 80k car like PGR3 for 3 main reasons. 1) It as more cars on screen. 12 in total...... 2) More detailed Physics model running at 60fps..... 3) Game will run at 60fps.... unlike PGR3 which is 30fps.

Damamge as well. But imo at some point there are deminishing returns. Getting 4xMSAA will also help smooth things out. PGR3 in areas with high contrast shows quite a few jaggies. Jaggies are far more annoying than slightly less contoured edges and angles imo.

 

[Powderkeg]

Comparisons to PGR3 frame rate shouldn't be made since the rendering engine for PGR3 was complete before they had the info they needed to implement tiling. The guys at Bizarre have said that if the game was released 3 months later it would have been running at 60 FPS instead.