New test drive shots (not 56k friendly)

[jvd]

According to the article the cars are being outsourced

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/8454/Next-Generation-Outsourcing-for-Test-Drive-Unlimited/

 

[AlNom]

so when do we get complex weather effects?

 

[Shark Sandwich]

Wow that's very impressive. The only flaw I notice is the repetitive textures on the road in the second picture. That's definitely just nitpicking though

I looked at some of the other pics. I really like the tropical environment! Too bad we'll be flying through those streets so fast we won't notice it anyway.

 

[AlNom]

hm... think we'll get full reflections on these cars?

 

[Inane_Dork]

They need to use dramatically more polys per car if they want the reflection to stop warping like that. Or maybe if they normal mapped the reflection it would help reduce the erratic look of the reflection.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I think it's just a VERY uneven wax job...

 

[hey69]

it could use some draw distance in the first and third pic

overal looking good, and nice to see where it goes on the grafx department.
and things can get only better!

 

[Confidence-Man]

There are even more new screens here:
http://www.xboxyde.com/news_1653_en.html

Seems like there's going to be motorcycles too. A Test Drive first?

 

[rabidrabbit]

Please tell me those pics are from xbox version, not xbox360.
The lighting is just horrible on those shots, and all those jaggies!?!?!?? What happened to "HD-era"?

 

[Kolgar]

I'm not going to say "Xbox 1.5," but these screens do leave me wanting more.

But then, it may just be the game. I saw footage on G4 a couple of weeks back - some of which seems to appear in these screens - and it had a low-poly look that really took me aback.

What I've seen of PGR3 seems much better from a technical standpoint. I'm sure the 360 is capable of much more than this game is letting on.

 

[Acert93]

Wow that's very impressive. The only flaw I notice is the repetitive textures on the road in the second picture. That's definitely just nitpicking though

In motion the repetitive asphalt tiles stick out a lot actually The vids I saw had a lot of repetitve textures and the paint lines were very square. They can fix this of course, but the question is will they.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Repetative road textures, like repetative grass, is unforgiveable in this age of multi texturing. Take two random textures and the texturing coords scale them to different sizes, say make one texture 0.8 x the sizew of the other texture. Set a suitable blend mode (multiply) and you eliminate repeating patterns.

At first glance this pics look fairly good, but that seems to be more art direction than anything. Jaggies, low poly models and low texture quality. Im guessing these are dead-early development WIPs - XB360 is capable of a LOT better!

 

[Shark Sandwich]

Yeah there really is no excuse for repetitive textures. I'm not as concerned about the quality of the reflections or anything like that. You don't even notice those when you're actually playing anyway.

In order for a racing game to look good in motion (IMO), the most important things are:
good AA and AF
good draw distance
non-repetitive texture maps
CONSTANT 60 frames per second

Those are the things you notice most when you're zipping through environments at 100 MPH.

 

[Farid]

First thing, those screenshots aren't new at all. There's already a build looking better than that.
That said, it's true that the game doesn't look incredibly next-gen, but you have to understand that Eden Studio is not a big studio and they're working on two titles at the same time. The other project is supposed to have more importance (Don't ask the platform, I don't know for sure).

They can fix this of course, but the question is will they.

Well, this "problem", that I also hate, is supposedly coming from textures memory limitation, and from the track editor.
To make the road lines "smooth" you have to tweak every of thoses lines, by hand or with an app.
The problem is that they don't have the time to do it manually (It would be a crazy job to do it, for such a little effect), and they didn't automatized the task (In the track editor) neither, it seems.
So I guess it's final. But it isn't really noticeable when you drive. So...

 

[therealskywolf]

For a moment, that looked real.

 

[Shark Sandwich]

For a moment, that looked real.

Wow that does look a LOT better than the slightly scaled down version you get when you go to that site. I was thinking "wow this is jaggy as hell". Glad to see that was due to the way the image was resized.

 

[jvd]

Remember they have the higher res pictures too

vs

and these are dev kits so the fsaa isn't enabled

 

[blakjedi]

the xbox 1.5 comments are really irksome... This isnt directed at anyone in particular but but did Sony hit the mark in devaluing x360 with that one remark

 

[Shark Sandwich]

the xbox 1.5 comments are really irksome... This isnt directed at anyone in particular but but did Sony hit the mark in devaluing x360 with that one remark

It seems that way, unfortunately. Sony is using the same strategy against 360 as they did against the Dreamcast. Namely, convince people that the competition is inferior technology, and that their own system is so much more advanced, it's a fundamentally different type of machine.

 

[Qroach]

The funny thing is when this game is ported over to PS3, it will look identicle.

PS3 doesn't have a button you press that provides better usage of polygons & textures. That's all up to the art team invovled. Some games will look better then others.