london-boy said:
Personally, i'd prefer playing using other less gimmicky views.
The car interior view would be bloody perfect if i was using some kind of high-res VR goggles. On a TV, that limits your view quite a lot and doesn't really add to the realism, apart from going "oooo" at the pretty interior.
On VR goggles, that view would occuy your whole field of vision, it would be the same thing you'd see when driving in reality, so it would be the perfect view.
That is a general problem and that has been one of my desires for VR.
On the other hand I really like their cockpit view. Every racer that has given the option I have driven in the 3rd person chase view--and usually pretty far out at that! I need to see the track... the downside is you lose a lot of the sense of motion and everything is zoomed out so you don't see as much detail.
A couple things have made me EXCITED about PGR3's cockpit view.
1. Widescreen. Being 16:9 instead of 4:3 really gave the cockpit view a MUCH better view of the track. Not once in the video did it feel unnatural.
2. The body lean. Note how the driver leans naturally for corners and the field of vision shifts. This reminds me of how I drive in go-karts!
3. The head "bob" seemed to react to the bumbs on the track and give the interior view a real sense of having depth. Most 3D cockpits are sooo boring because they never move!
4. It seems the right stick (or shoulder buttons?) is used for a quick look. If the accellerator is on the shoulders the Rt stick would work well--I hope it is analog so you can take 1/3 angled glanced and are not forced to a full 90degree look.
The subtle things, like camera work, are maybe the most important things this gen. Would any of us be happy with the same uninteractive cockpit? I know I would not. I guess this is the step between realism and believability.
From the small snapshot we have seen I am pretty excited about the cockpit view--this from someone who HATES that fiew in most cases. FINALLY a game that adds some cool features to make the cockpit view seem desirable. I would have never thought.
Where do we go now? As much as I want a HMD, how about this: Use EyeToy like TrackerVR? I am not sure it is the same level of calibration or not--and you may need a funky hat!--but it seems very plausible to do something similar.
Obviously racers have some way to go--but this is definately a step in the right direction. It does pose an interesting question: HOW do you rate a first gen game if you are IGN or GameSpot? If PGR3 plays well it will be head and shoulders it seems in every way to the "arcady sim" racers on the market. If you rate it too high though future BETTER games will be hard to place. If PGR3 gets a 9.5 what do you do if a half dozen better racers appear on the market? If you go too low you are required to judge all future games in relation too it--so what happens if PGR3 turns out to be one of the BEST racers this gen?
I see that problem every gen... kind of hard to give a graphical rating to a first gen game.
Personally, it makes me think it would be nice to create a dynamic rating system, where scores change over the time of a console. e.g. we would NOT end up with the GT3/GT4 mess. There is no reason from a buyers perspective for a newer better game to be ranked lower. Yes, there should be a note: "Only an upgrade to the prequal" but rating vastly superior games lower is I dunno... odd. Everything should be relative to what is on the market at the time IMO.