PGR4: New Snow on the Ring trailer

[scooby_dooby]

Well I'm not gonna go through and parse that novel! But I'll try and respond to the key points.

The fundamental bone I have to pick is that these ARE NOT 'ingame' shots. Bizarre has never released actual ingame shots. There's a reason my image represented that actual gameplay, and not replay shots.

In the end, it's how you define ingame, and I think his interpretation is completely different than what most would say if you asked them, I've never disputed those shots can be generated within the game, but they are not the game itself.

And his claim that they are, I think is nothing but a disengenous play on words:

As for specifics, I'm not a graphic developer, or a major 3d enthusiast. All I can say is that I was very dissapointed in the disparity between the PR released shots, and the actual gameplay.

The resolution was lower, resulting in a muddier less crip image, there were jaggies everywhere and flickering was a constant annoyance. Those are basically my beefs. I've spent hours playing PGR3, and the IQ is nowhere close to the PR shots, if it's only resolution, AA, Motionblur and AF then so be it, they must make a huge difference.

Hell, even the garage in PGr3 looked amazing, but as soon as you started racing the IQ took a nosedive.

Now, would you consider the garage view ingame as well? I wouldn't.

Technically it is. Are these graphics generated within the game? Yes they are.

Are they the graphics you experience while playing the game 99% of the time? No they are not.

I think it's a ridiculous stretch to take an extremely minor section of the game, release all your screens from that section, and claim they are 'ingame'. So no, I do not really agree he's right, I think he's using a technicality to give a completely false impression.

And what titles don't do this?? Games like Lost Planet or Gears of War did not release 100% screenshots of cut-scenes, but rather actual gameplay shots. In fact, the vast majority of games do release actual gameplay shots. So this 'everyone does it' argument holds no water as far as I'm concerned.

Yes, almost every game post some BS screens at some point or another, but they also show real screens as well.

Bizarre Creations has never released real gameplay shots, and still are not, and they are still pretending that 'ingame' = replay mode, which is ridiculous IMO.

 

[Arwin]

I'm getting the feeling that for PGR, it's very easy to distinguish in-game from the rest - the hubcaps in-game all look like discs, and in the rest they look like the real thing. It's kind of like GT4 in game and GT4 car selection screen, where you had the same distinction (I think GT3 had that already also, but the in-game GT4 ones looked slightly better than in GT3 as they had at least some depth. GT-HD currently seems to attempt to keep them 3D all the time, but that does mean they don't turn as fast as you'd think).

 

[Cheezdoodles]

I'm getting the feeling that for PGR, it's very easy to distinguish in-game from the rest - the hubcaps in-game all look like discs, and in the rest they look like the real thing. It's kind of like GT4 in game and GT4 car selection screen, where you had the same distinction (I think GT3 had that already also, but the in-game GT4 ones looked slightly better than in GT3 as they had at least some depth. GT-HD currently seems to attempt to keep them 3D all the time, but that does mean they don't turn as fast as you'd think).

No they dont. If your standing still in game it looks exactly the same as in photomode\car selection, when you start moving thought, the "alloy-while-moving" look isn't the best however.

Oh, and no car in PGR3 has hubcaps.

 

[Capeta]

I would actually like to see replays in PGR4 use higher poly counts on the cars along with better motion blur, lighting and other effects than when playing the game since more resources are freed during replays. One of my favorite aspects of racing games is watching replays of my own driving skills in my chosen car racing around a city along with other competing cars. In fact I like to save these replays in the gamesaves and play it back every once in awhile just to watch the cool cinematic camera angles and my own driving performance.

 

[Jesus2006]

No they dont. If your standing still in game it looks exactly the same as in photomode\car selection, when you start moving thought, the "alloy-while-moving" look isn't the best however.

Oh, and no car in PGR3 has hubcaps.

They are replaced by hubcaps once you start moving (and on other cars, there are a couple of screenshots showing that effect), afaik.
And no it does not look the same in photomode and "ingame", definately not. Even the garage looks different from the actual ingame (e.g. higher res/AA).

 

[Cheezdoodles]

And no it does not look the same in photomode and "ingame", definately not. Even the garage looks different from the actual ingame (e.g. higher res/AA).

The comment was made specifically about the "hubcaps". The "hubcaps" are the same, when your standing still, photomode or ingame

 

[Arwin]

The comment was made specifically about the "hubcaps". The "hubcaps" are the same, when your standing still, photomode or ingame

Ok, I didn't know about the standing still. However, that's a bit of a moot point in a driving game.

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Garage

They are replaced by hubcaps once you start moving (and on other cars, there are a couple of screenshots showing that effect), afaik.
And no it does not look the same in photomode and "ingame", definately not. Even the garage looks different from the actual ingame (e.g. higher res/AA).

For me, when I saw PGR3 in the store demo a long time ago, I thought Garage look was amazing for real time graphics. I though "this is next gen"! Very beautiful And it was real-time! I can move and look from anywhere. But, when I go to driving-mode, it looks very different. Then I am dissappointed. Jaggies, bad textures, sprites. To me this is not next gen. Then I saw Gears of War demo and I thought "wow this is amazing" but has bad effects. Then later they made effects better.

 

[Rangers]

For me, when I saw PGR3 in the store demo a long time ago, I thought Garage look was amazing for real time graphics. I though "this is next gen"! Very beautiful And it was real-time! I can move and look from anywhere. But, when I go to driving-mode, it looks very different. Then I am dissappointed. Jaggies, bad textures, sprites. To me this is not next gen. Then I saw Gears of War demo and I thought "wow this is amazing" but has bad effects. Then later they made effects better.

I dunno what's wrong with you people but PGR3 was next gen as all get out.

I remember being rather amazed at the game. Thinking "this is next gen" as I played it, flipping the camera view all around the car at high speed in sheer amazement, in the very early days of 360. :smile:

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Next gen

I dunno what's wrong with you people but PGR3 was next gen as all get out.

I remember being rather amazed at the game. Thinking "this is next gen" as I played it, flipping the camera view all around the car at high speed in sheer amazement, in the very early days of 360. :smile:

When you see PGR3 driving more next to old consoles it is much better and it is next gen but I think after seeing amazing garage mode maybe I have too high expectations. For me garage mode was like real place but then driving mode was like a video game.

 

[iceberg187]

 

[Neb]

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/657/6hfb38nab5.jpg

Nice to see that the rain drops are making splashes now!

 

[RobertR1]

Are they realtime splashes though?

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Ok, I didn't know about the standing still. However, that's a bit of a moot point in a driving game.

I dont see your point.


Its done in Forza 2, all GT games (Dunno about GT:HD, i don't look at rims while i race, looks semi-convincing in replay mode thought ), all NFS games. I have never actually heard somebody making a bad point out of something like this. (GT4 got some bad mouthing for their actual 2d rims, but thats completely different)

I also dont see your argument about "since its a driving game its a moot point", Its a driving game, the only time you see your rims is when your doing something other than driving. Further, its not like they immidiately turn into that sort of hubcap once you start moving, they model the induvidual spikes and actual alloy up to a certain speed, then it switches to a more blurry one, and then to a even more blurry one (they all rotate etc).

Hubcap-speed-rims are there because its hard to accurately rims going around at a fast enough speed... or something. It either looks to slow, or doesn't look very convincing.

With decent sized alloy rims, you don't need a high speed before all you see when watching from a side angle looks like the "hubcap" fenomenon.

Even with my cars normal sized and normal looking alloys you only need to reach 70-80 km\h before the human eye will be very very troubled to see induvidual spikes.

 

[Capeta]

Arwin, aren't you the guy that said FM1 didn't have shock compression/dive?

 

[arhra]

Hubcap-speed-rims are there because its hard to accurately rims going around at a fast enough speed... or something. It either looks to slow, or doesn't look very convincing.

If they just animated the static models for the rims, they'd suffer a very extreme example of the wagon-wheel effect (temporal aliasing). Until systems are fast enough to do ludicrously-high-quality motion blur on the rims, the 2d textured standins are going to remain an unfortunate reality.

Would be nice if someone would work out a nice shader to model the way light and specular reflections work on a blurred, spinning rim, though.

 

[Kfyh]

@Joshua Luna: Nice collection of pictures, I'm grabbing them all right now. Are there any 720p shots or in-car shots in that list?

Ok, I didn't know about the standing still. However, that's a bit of a moot point in a driving game.

I dont see your point.

I think what Arwin meant was, its a moot point because you can't see your wheels while you are driving.

 

[Paul_G]

I think what Arwin meant was, its a moot point because you can't see your wheels while you are driving.

Are you sure he doesn't mean it's a moot point because the point of a driving game is to be driving? How it is when standing still isn't really an issue. That's how it came across to me anyway

 

[Kfyh]

Are you sure he doesn't mean it's a moot point because the point of a driving game is to be driving? How it is when standing still isn't really an issue. That's how it came across to me anyway

Yeah you could be right, it's not like i'm going to argue over the meaning of something someone else post. I guess we should just let Arwin respond.

I've gone through the image Joshua Luna post and PGR4 looks really nice. Sometimes i think the environments outshine the cars (the McDonalds screenshot) and the perspex in front of the headlights seem to dissappear from certain angles (there's a ferrari and maserati shot where the headlights look a bit off) but this game looks great.

Question: How were some of the screenshots taken without the car being blurry due to motion blur?

 

[nintenho]

just so everybody knows, gamespot captures are usually bad so you shouldn't use them.