Gran Turismo 4 delayed (again)

[gleemax]

GT4 has been pushed back to December 28 in Japan and Q1 2005 in the US.

In a statement, SCEA said: "Natural challenges with finalizing all the key features and localization issues across worldwide territories have led to the difficult choice of pushing back the release date in order to ensure that Gran Turismo 4 lives up to the exacting standards of the 36 million-plus fans worldwide that have purchased previous versions" [of the franchise].

Does this mean they might add online play back to the US version? It was a big feature to miss. I think online play is more likely if Q1 means February or March and not early January.

 

[Qroach]

Nope I doub that's enough time.

 

[gleemax]

They already have LAN play working. Do you think it would take more than an extra three months to finish online play? If so, then how long?

 

[Qroach]

lan is the easy part. When you don't have to worry about latency that is. Ther ecould have been a number of problems in getting it to work over the internet. who knows. The way I see it, if they don't have online working by now, they aren't going to get it working in time.

 

[gleemax]

How many months do you think it would take them to get online play working?

 

[zurich]

How many months do you think it would take them to get online play working?

As long as it takes in order to sell it as a seperate title/add-on

 

[London Geezer]

Well, the more thay wait the less likely they'll make 78 "sequels" (using the term loosely here) or "epilogues" before PS3 hits the streets... Good for us huh...

 

[sir doris]

This months issue of Edge has an interview with big dude behind GT and he thinks on-line is a long way off, so I wouldn't expect it in Q1 2005

He said he thinks 1Mb broadband is required for it and put the emphesis on the servers and the infrustructure for on-line as the reason it's not ready yet not on the Code etc.

How available is 1Mb in the US (I presume he means 1Mb both ways)?

Anyway from reading the interview I'm not looking forward to GT4 as much as I was. Seems to be really concertrating on B-Spec mode And when asked about AI he said they are less aggressive but didn't add much else appart from you are NOT going to think they are human competetors make of that what you will.

 

[Phil]

What is this B-spec mode exactly?

 

[London Geezer]

I'm still not really clear on why exactly online play is sooooo not viable on GT4. It's viable on many other games, why not GT4? What's GT4 doing that other games are not?

 

[sir doris]

This months issue of Edge has an interview with big dude behind GT and he thinks on-line is a long way off, so I wouldn't expect it in Q1 2005

He said he thinks 1Mb broadband is required for it and put the emphesis on the servers and the infrustructure for on-line as the reason it's not ready yet not on the Code etc.

How available is 1Mb in the US (I presume he means 1Mb both ways)?

Anyway from reading the interview I'm not looking forward to GT4 as much as I was. Seems to be really concertrating on B-Spec mode And when asked about AI he said they are less aggressive but didn't add much else appart from you are NOT going to think they are human competetors make of that what you will.

 

[cthellis42]

A smooth release this is not.

 

[London Geezer]

I just had a vision, this is the real story, how things really went with GT4.

Back in 2002 Kaz was having a bath while talking to Bill Gates, his secret best friend, on the phone. Casual chit-chat, How Britney looked hot in last night's 2002 VMAs, how one lost 40 million in the last 5 minutes while the other made 4 billion... At one point Kaz goes: "Yo Bill, I bet u that Buffy gets to continue at least until season 10!" and Bill goes "You kidding me? No way it's gonna continue after S6, maybe 7!"... And Kaz goes "Wanna bet? If i'm right, i get Halo2 exclusive, if you're right i'll include in GT4 every car the fans ask me to include".

So, to this day, PD is still trying to meet demand with the thousands of emails they get from fans asking them to put the Fiat 500 first model from the 60s and cars like that.

 

[Phil]

I'm still not really clear on why exactly online play is sooooo not viable on GT4. It's viable on many other games, why not GT4? What's GT4 doing that other games are not?

I presume each and every car requires so much of data that bandwidth requirement is very high. That includes simulation aspects, i.e. the exact position of the car on the track, weight, velocity, direction, friction force on the tires, heat of the tires (?), acceleration/deceleration, which gear the car is in.... and then multiply that by the amount of cars on the track and the framerate.

 

[London Geezer]

I'm still not really clear on why exactly online play is sooooo not viable on GT4. It's viable on many other games, why not GT4? What's GT4 doing that other games are not?

I presume each and every car requires so much of data that bandwidth requirement is very high. That includes simulation aspects, i.e. the exact position of the car on the track, weight, velocity, direction, friction force on the tires, heat of the tires (?), acceleration/deceleration, which gear the car is in.... and then multiply that by the amount of cars on the track and the framerate.

But that should all be done internally. no need to send that information through the net. All you need is the car position at any one time. then each PS2 will calculate all that on their own... Or that's how i'd do it at least.

 

[Phil]

Not quite... because your PS2 isn't predicting what happens next.

For example:

We have two PS2's running GT4 in 'online mode'. PS2 (1) and PS2 (2).

Lets freeze the game at the 489783 frame.

PS2 (2) just sent it's position data and only that. PS2 (1) receives the car's position without lag (we won't worry about lag in this example).

Now, how would PS2 (1) know where the car is heading as it renders the next frame? On the other hand, how does PS2 (1) know, what engine sound the car from PS2 (2) has to make if it doesn't know its engine RPM?

On the other hand, the position of the car being driven by PS2 (2) only tells PS2 (1) where it is... it doesn't tell it anything about what direction its facing, where the car is being steered to (visibly this is just as important as engine sound), if it's spinning, out of control, accelerating, decelerating etc. So, even if PS2 (1) wants to calculate where the car is, without the necessary information, it can't possibly predict the unpredictable driver playing on PS2 (2).



EDIT: well unless PS2 (1) predicts the difference in coordinates between last frame and current frame and calculates what the driver could have done to get his car from one coordinate to the next. This would be very taxing on the system though, I could imagine (imagine calculating everything, instead of just sending over the required data!).

 

[London Geezer]

You might be right, and i really have no idea how it really works, so i'm just saying that it seems a bit of a waste to be sending all that data through the net when most of it can be calculated internally.

How do other fast paced racing games like Burnout3 work online? Can't be much different, and B3 works mighty fine...

 

[Phil]

Yeah, but the cars in Burnout are much more limited in what they do. I can't imagine i.e. friction force playing a significant role as it does in GT4.

Depending on the friction force (may it be because of used up tires, heat, or simply the weight shifting onto the two tires on the right side because the car is tilting because it's going through a curve at high speeds), the car will either break out and loose control, get a certain acceleration/deceleration or both - in GT4 this is very important as both are driving under the same physics engine and showing this optically as well. All these factors have a significant impact on the way a car drives in GT4. In Burnout, those factors aren't significant, probably very simplifed as it's just an arcade racer. Simplyfied driving mechanics also mean less data that has to be sent over the network to determin in what situation the car is in and what it would do next.

 

[London Geezer]

Well, common sense would tell me that in online mode maybe we don't need all that, since 1 out of one million actually notices how the heat affects the friction or hwatever geeky thing they put in the physics engine... A dumbed down version would be enough..... But maybe that would be against PD's interests (of releasing 9 versions of GT4 Epilogue)...

In the end a slightly dumbed down version of GT4 would still be many times more accurate than 99% of the racers out there...

 

[Johnny Awesome]

IMO the reason is because the PS2 doesn't have the horsepower to do it without sacrificing something.