Why do GT games look so freakin good?

[Cheezdoodles]

I just cant get over how real the cars look, is this only because of GT nailing their lighting engine perfectly, or are they applying some kind of technique that nobody else does?

Looking at poly numbers (and these are poly numbers of cars, its not like there is much room for artistic interpretation) GT5 cars are about on par with PGR4\Forza2, but GT5P cars look so much better.

 

[zed]

yes i wanna know the reason as well, i wanna nick there lighting model for use in my game
i started another post about it (but didnt get much sane input)
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=456232

 

[Darkon]

I just cant get over how real the cars look, is this only because of GT nailing their lighting engine perfectly, or are they applying some kind of technique that nobody else does?

Looking at poly numbers (and these are poly numbers of cars, its not like there is much room for artistic interpretation) GT5 cars are about on par with PGR4\Forza2, but GT5P cars look so much better.

Don't like both Forza 2 and PGR4 have on average 100K polys per car

 

[cloudscapes]

dunno about the lighting, but they can concentrate most of the nice visuals/polys/shaders when looking in one direction of the track, since it's rare that the driver drives the wrong way.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

dunno about the lighting, but they can concentrate most of the nice visuals/polys/shaders when looking in one direction of the track, since it's rare that the driver drives the wrong way.

But the option to change views is always there with a simple button press, so it's not like they can just force reject those pixels, unless they're able to do a check against said button press...

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Not that I know anything but I think its because of the lighting and the paint materials used. Doing some car modelling myself as a hobby I find that you can use a million poly's to build you car, but if you got bad lighting and materials its still not going to look half as good as a 100k poly car that nails the lighting and materials used.

 

[iceberg187]

Don't like both Forza 2 and PGR4 have on average 100K polys per car

Both feature higher poly counts that GT5, but it comes down to modeling and lighting, and polyphony runs circles around others when it comes to that.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Don't like both Forza 2 and PGR4 have on average 100K polys per car

PGR3 had 120k polys per car, i recon PGR4 is close to 200k from what ive read

 

[DJ12]

Both feature higher poly counts that GT5, but it comes down to modeling and lighting, and polyphony runs circles around others when it comes to that.

Forza 2 uses about the same, don't forget he said GT5 averages 200k per car meaning some will use more some will use less.

All I can find about Forza 2 is they use between 150,000 and 220,000 per car which for arguments sake works out similar to GT5s average figure (obviously there might only be one model that uses 220,000 polys in Forza and the rest use 150,000 for all we know)

I cannot find any figures for PGR 4, but when asked that specific question by IGN they didn't give an answer so I'm guessing it's not as high as you would like to think.

 

[one]

According to this interview with Dan Greenawalt, a car in Forza 2 has as many or fewer polygons as a car in PGR3 which is 80,000 - 100,000 polys, including the interior. So roughly a half of that of GT5P.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20070326/fm2.htm

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I don't think the difference in looks comes from the polygon amounts. PD guys just know their stuff little better than others when it comes to modelling cars.

 

[Phil]

Polyphony Digital are probably more obsessed with cars and are more enthusiasts (fetishist?) than all their competitors artists combined... That's my guess.

I really don't think the difference this gen is in the amount of polygons. The 4k polygon cars in GT4 were more spot on than any of their competitors.

 

[Arwin]

Yeah, they are perfectionists. They really go that extra mile to get the details they can afford in those parts of the car model where it counts. Ditto in terms of lighting and materials. They work really hard to get the exact same colors as the real cars for instance, and their lighting is something special too.

The problem with competitors is that they have too obvious deviations from reality, and those break the illusion. If you put cars from the different games next to each other, most of the time you will easily see what the difference is.

That said, the full car model does have a lot of polygons this time around ... I mean, 50 x GT4 ...

 

[nintenho]

I don't think the difference in looks comes from the polygon amounts. PD guys just know their stuff little better than others when it comes to modelling cars.

well they've been making sim racers for about 10 years and they spend around a month I think on every car.

 

[Arwin]

well they've been making sim racers for about 10 years and they spend around a month I think on every car.

For GT5, it's 180 days actually, per car ...

 

[nintenho]

For GT5, it's 180 days actually, per car ...

well they do now have to do interiors but is that 6 months just to model the car?

 

[Rangers]

I wonder this too.

I mean other than KZ2, I dont see PS3 and 360 looking that much apart.

Yet GT5 (car models) looks head and shoulders above PGR4.

Well, one thing I noticed is PGR4 has a ton of stuff going on (weather, tons of buildings, very busy backgrounds, neon lighting etc), while GT5 seems to have very bland, limited polygon backgrounds and trackside scenery, perhaps allowing them to concentrate on the car models?

 

[Phil]

well they do now have to do interiors but is that 6 months just to model the car?

I would think it's 180 days that it takes one single artist to model each car. If the work is split by 10 artists (Polyphony surely have quite a few artists) working on different parts of the car, it would be 18 days per artist per car.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Do a side-by-side. PD just plain nails the colors and reflectivity, where the lesser studios (i.e. everyone except PD ) just don't get it quite right. That's part lighting, part texturing, and part shaders.

 

[Darkon]

According to this interview with Dan Greenawalt, a car in Forza 2 has as many or fewer polygons as a car in PGR3 which is 80,000 - 100,000 polys, including the interior. So roughly a half of that of GT5P.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20070326/fm2.htm

I knew my memory wasn't failing, thanks

Do a side-by-side. PD just plain nails the colors and reflectivity, where the lesser studios (i.e. everyone except PD ) just don't get it quite right. That's part lighting, part texturing, and part shaders.

SCE Liverpool begs to differ