The Big Forza 2 Thread *
- Thread starter Cheezdoodles
- Start date
Thanks for reuploading. Did you manage to snag the yellow NSX aswell?
Yup. But I had to recompress:
http://www.hungryspoon.com/random/m0dus_exclusive_yetagain.jpg
http://www.hungryspoon.com/random/m0dus_exclusive_redux.jpg
Hey Tap In, I decided to respond to your comment here instead of the Halo thread. I hope that is ok
It isn't a matter of Turn10 falling short of 1 technical goal but a lot of the expectations they set themselves and then continued to mention them in PR. Like I mentioned before I 100% understand the need to alter your design goals, even cutting features, if they preclude you from achieving your primary goals. The problem was Turn10 felt compelled (pressured from MS?) to hype the game, and seeing as there was no worthy gameplay footage to show they made a choice to hype of graphical features they were never able to deliver, even after a 6 month delay. (My opinion? Hype the gameplay and let the graphics speak for themselves).
And it isn't just one feature, but quite a few features and content:
- 4xMSAA. Part of their holy triad (720p - 60fps - 4xMSAA) of Turn10 PR, it now appears that the game shuffles between no MSAA to 2xMSAA and 4xMSAA to maintain a framerate of 60fps.
- Reduction from 12 cars on the track per race to 8 cars on the track per race.
- 3D animated grass. Was shown in some old shots and now replaced with very sprase sprite grass.
- Motion Blur. Dropped because it was "not needed" ... but it si good enough to apply to replays.
- Per pixel reflections @ 60fps. This may change, but at least one current video clearly has reflections updating slower than the framerate. Do car reflections still reflect other cars?
- Reduction from over 60 tracks in 18 environments to over 45 tracks in 12 environments.
Turn10's site changed their paths (someone else can try to figure them out), but here are the old pages with all the data. (here here and here)
And some other features (like dust build up on cars, cars departing paint on walls/cars they touch and receiving paint from such, etc) haven't been shown in ages. Hence my question: "Where is all the ingame 720 direct feed video?"
What rubs me wrong the most was how they really did shove a few things down our throats (4xMSAA being an example), pimped it over and over again in interviews and pitpass reports, and and so forth. On the MSAA it was just a couple months ago the Che confirmed 4xMSAA as Xbox.com was noting 2xMSAA. Just really, really poor PR -- and where is our gameplay footage? Not replays, not photomode shots, but stretches of real gameplay?
Things can still change, but the game goes gold in a week. Unless they are intentionally releasing really old footage and plan to introduce a ton of new graphical features in the last week or two I am not holding out much hope for many of the missing features. Notably the non-edge aliasing has been present in all their shots and aside from apply AF recently they still show a lot of shader aliasing, aliasing in some reflections as well as aliasing render targets.
That isn't to dog on the game (the little we have seen). It sounds robust and deep and the cars look pretty good (although some tracks look really plain, flat, and too colorful/not saturated enough... I was expecting environments more like this). The sound is great, car component and aesthetic customizations look insane, they are bringing back their strong AI, deeper online play, richer damage modeling, and have fixed the two biggest issues with Forza Motorsport 1: 60fps and no force feedback.
The game looks good, and should play great. And they have made some nice strides lately (more AF applied, at least in photomode; decal resolution was increased; general lighting model was greatly improved). But the PR has been horrible and they have missed a lot of the targets they themselves set. And IMO the game looks average for a 360 game in quite a few areas -- far below what I expected from a 1st party title delayed 6 months that gutted 33% of its content to focus on what was to ship. But graphics don't make a game. If I wanted graphics I would just wait for PGR4
Delays, cuts, and lack of progress have marked a lot of titles on the new consoles so this isn't completely surprising. Downgrade grenades all around. But I do expect more class from game dev PR. I think a number of companies have handled it well (Bungie, Ubisoft, Bethesda come to mind) when things were not going the way fans expected.Petrol Heads should love the game. No doubt. So never mind me
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tut tut tut =D
The gamespot video from a week or two ago was a 60fps ingame one. There was no motion blur/dof. Although gamespot reencoded it to add their damn logo, in the process making it 30fps, so each frame was a double.
They were using a special devmode replay camera, with AI driving it as they recorded. They even said this had a bug where the sound wasn't positional to the camera.
And it looked just as good as the replays, just sans dof/motion blur (which funnily enough is only noticeable in it's absence on the external replay-like camera positions).
The gamespot video from a week or two ago was a 60fps ingame one. There was no motion blur/dof. Although gamespot reencoded it to add their damn logo, in the process making it 30fps, so each frame was a double.
They were using a special devmode replay camera, with AI driving it as they recorded. They even said this had a bug where the sound wasn't positional to the camera.
And it looked just as good as the replays, just sans dof/motion blur (which funnily enough is only noticeable in it's absence on the external replay-like camera positions).
Nope. Gamespot video was also a replay. The only gameplay video seen has been off-screen which can hide detail and cover blemishes. I have to agree that it's concerning that the only good captures/videos are coming from Turn10. Here is what gameplay looks like as captured by Teamxbox from the media preview build. This isn't what I would call a second generation first party game either. I guess we'll all see for ourselves soon enough.
The screenshot from Teambox doesn't look to bad. Nice lightning and view but the low AA, unlit spectators and bilinear filterng (?) stands out as bad. But there seems to be large difference in colors between screenshots and some look to colorful.
But it is going to be released soon so then we will see for shure how it looks.
How colors affect (colors and HDr increase, cheap example)
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w193/NebulasPhotoPocket/CheapExampleRetouched.jpg
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NovemberMike
Regular
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/image_viewer/frame_lead.php?pid=928379&img=69
GTHD doesn't look so hot in gameplay either (Those trees look like billboards, there are noticable jaggies on the car, and I am pretty sure I can see the polygons on that hill. Probably looks absolutely stunning in motion.
Many videos of GT:HD are from replay which seems to add better effects and make it look better than ingame play (like in GT4). Here is grabs from ingame play from GT:HD and it looks OK but not that hot. Such things as shadows from trees that dont fall on car, billboard trees, lack of AA (although 1080p helps).
Although the game has great color calibration and good lightning that makes it look more like reality (and photo like textures).
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w193/NebulasPhotoPocket/PDVD_000-1.jpg
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w193/NebulasPhotoPocket/PDVD_001-1.jpg
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w193/NebulasPhotoPocket/PDVD_002-1.jpg
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w193/NebulasPhotoPocket/PDVD_003-1.jpg
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w193/NebulasPhotoPocket/PDVD_004-1.jpg
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w193/NebulasPhotoPocket/PDVD_005-1.jpg
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GT:HD uses 2xAA at 720p, none at 1080p/1080i. Do you know what resolution was used the shots you posted was? With that much compression it's hard to tell, but I'm guessing they are even more compressed framegrabs from an already compressed 480i capture.
Here is the video from which the grabs are from.
http://www.gametrailers.com/downloadnew.php?id=15887&type=wmv&f=
source video from gametrailers is heavy compressed, just look at this . . . anyway, GT:HD is just demo/work in progress
Ah, it was just the downscaling on your grabs along with all the extra compression that made me think they were rendred at 480 lines and upscaled. That video is a 720p capture and shows 2xAA, while the game shows far more aliasing in 1080 line modes since they don't use any AA for that.
Forza 2 is a work in progress as well isn't it? At least for one more week..
yes it is, but is much closer to final product, than GT:HD to GT5 . . . this is obvious, or not?
The compression rate for the videos vary but are generally good compared to other sites. If the grab you linked to comes from the same video as my grabs then youre grabs are of much less quality than my grabs.
I might add that my grabs looks almost the same in detail at 1280x720, it's just that photobucket free edition only allows 1024x768 photos (1024x576 widescreen rescale).
But neverthless they where taken to point out low AA, tree shadows that don't fall on the cars, billboard trees. Something to think about when talking about the effects that are in Forza2! :smile:
That depends, where are there GT5 screenshots (non-replay mode)?
The question is, how to now how much better GT5 will look over GT:HD considering GT:HD only renders one car. Of course it's still some time untill GT5 is released but there are many things to think about.
I agree on that, it`s pointless comparison until GT5 shows up (one month before release) . . . personally, I don`t care about accurate trees reflections or some details around track IF cars look photorealistic (just my graphical preferences in driving games)
NovemberMike
Regular
I am the exact opposite. Photorealism is an illusion that has to be maintained, and bad shadows or a lack of attention to the surroundings is quite jarring. It is somewhat like the uncanny valley effect, where you might have a near perfect model that doesn't move quite right and is unnerving while a slightly cartoonish model that acts charming and moves realistically will be enjoyable (my personal comparison of the graphics in GTHD and Forza).
