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Turn 10: Nighttime racing & weather "isn't a minor thing" to add in Forza

Archaix

Drunky McMurder
I don't really understand this, can someone explain? Why can't they just create a engine or whatever that lets them use any track with any time of day or a few weather options? Why wouldn't that be easier than using pre-baked lighting? Is the issue that they think it wouldn't look as good?

Personally I would give up some graphical fanciness if I could pick any track at any time of day with a choice of weather.



It's certainly more resource intensive than using pre-baked lighting. They wouldn't have the power needed to devote to their awesome crowd, for one.

2577427-getphoto-1.jpg


They're clearly impressed with the lighting solution used.
 
I wonder if he thinks their game will be better than Driveclub in any significant way... Everything I've seen from Driveclub blows this game out of the water.
DC isn't even a sim. I will be buying it day one, but it's an apples to oranges comparison. Sims are definitely more complicated to create since you have much more calculations to run to keep things "real". This is more for weather, not night time driving.
 

Kei-

Member
This is the biggest differentiating factor between Gran Turismo and Forza for me. I was out of GT since 3, between GT 3 and 5, I got and really enjoyed Forza 2. Especially the livery editior. This was a big deal to me (and a lot of other people I'm sure). But when the weather and time of day were announced for GT5, that put me over the edge, and that was completely justified when I actually played it.

The amount of replay value and variation it adds to the game is completely understated. You won't really understand it until you actually play each track in different conditions. When you play the same track you've been playing for several iterations of the game, but now you can barely make out the corners, or see the car ahead of you because of all the water in your face and have to completely re-adjust you brake points to compensate for sliding and visibility, it makes for a completely different track essentially.

This trumps a livery editor for me by a lot. That said, it would be nice to have both. Hopefully GT7 has a livery editor.
 

Xater

Member
Project Cars seems more and more like it's going to be better than Forza or GT. Hope they deliver an awesome console version.
 

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
This is fucking embarrassing.

Welcome to the next generation of racing games, where its the same but worse but hey LOOKATHESEGRAFIX
do you know what a simulation is

or care for changes they make to driving models?

"This game had to release before GT6. Sorry."
More like, it had to be released for X1 launch.

I don't even really care for weather and night time racing. The community features they took out of FM5 is far more disappointing and what made Forza so awesome.
 

Skeff

Member
The only reason it would be so difficult is that they wrote the engine with fixed time of day and pre baked lighting, its only so difficult because they took shortcuts making the engine.

I wouldn't expect night racing or weather in any mainline forza entry on xb1, as it would require a major engine overhaul due to the decisions they made with forza 5.
 

Xanadu

Banned
do you know what a simulation is

or care for changes they make to driving models?

the driving model always got better (well lets ignore 3) but for next gen i thought they would really go for it having the features we've always been asking for but no, night racing and weather are ESSENTIAL for racing sims
 

Radec

Member
People are buying their games even without them. I dont see them spending time and money improving their game.

Worst case is that they will introduce it via DLC.
 

Len Dontree

Animator. Respect knuckles.
No game has topped Rallisport Challenge 2 for night and rain / snow racing for me. I don' think GT5's implementation of rain on select tracks was anything to write home about, but the time of day changes were certainly very cool (I haven't seen GT6).
 

Beant

Member
First sim to have livery + full weather/night wins in my book. Ill go 100% all in on it.

edit: oh and if its gt7 the cars cant sound like vacuum cleaners.
 

Harp

Member
Forza 5 is not even a Forza game let alone a next gen title. It sad that, they think everything is ok. Forza 6 will just be forza 5 with some of the missing cars and tracks from forza 4. It am shocked every time I go an look to buy a car in forza 5 that the veyron is dlc. It make me feel like I got jacked out of my 60 bucks. Ohh you want to check out the world's fastest street car in a game you just paid for? Ohh that will be another 10 bucks!
 

coolasj19

Why are you reading my tag instead of the title of my post?
DC isn't even a sim. I will be buying it day one, but it's an apples to oranges comparison. Sims are definitely more complicated to create since you have much more calculations to run to keep things "real". This is more for weather, not night time driving.
Do you mean the calculations for the physics of every car? How intensive are those really? I would think most of the processing is done in graphics.
 
I just doubt there'll even be a Forza game with night/day, weather and real-time lighting and 60fps@1080p. I mean I'm sure development will get better on the Xbox One but so much better it can achieve that? Maybe it can but I'll be amazed if they do it. Not even sure if GT7 can on the PS4 but that's more likely. Hope I'm wrong about Forza though.
 

shandy706

Member
Only speaking of weather here. I'd prefer they did it right or didn't do it at all. While visually appealing I've yet to play a console game that does a good job simulating actual realistic traction in different forms of weather.

Not including night time makes no sense to me. Hopefully it's all in 6.
 
I think Drive Club is going to make a very good case on why you shouldn't rush for launch.

Not including night time makes no sense to me. Hopefully it's all in 6.

It's because Forza 5 has prevailed lighting on the track. Only cockpit view has real time lighting.
 

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
It's too hard to drive in the rain. Dan Greenawalt, Forza 3, 2009:

The game is as you’ll probably have come to realise now, is a visual treat. Instead of choosing to incorporate weather conditions which Greenawalt comments would “actually take a game that has simulation physics and take it to a level where I don’t even think our assists could make it easy,” Turn 10 decided to invest in the game’s graphics and its HTR lighting. That’s abundantly clear when you care to look around at the game’s high detail textures, huge draw distances and naturally impressive rendering of the cars themselves.


Graphically the 360 could do it, but it would be hard to pull off. 60fps is really important. Dan Greenawalt, Forza 4, 2011:

Eurogamer: Gran Turismo has weather effects and night racing. Why doesn't Forza 4? Have you explored the possibility?

Dan Greenawalt: Every version we explore night and weather. We whittle down thousands of ideas, and we have these autonomous teams. We hire specialists. We build the game like an onion. At its core is a drop-dead amazing simulation engine. But we always assume we're wrong, and then find the best way to make it better. It's that commitment that makes me confident we have the strongest simulation, because we build partnerships other companies just can't, and we have a commitment to getting it right at our core.

We then build assists and fun gameplay and things on top of it without ever sacrificing that. Well, part of that is a solid 60 frames per second. And I mean solid. When you start doing multiple projected shadows off of the front of the car... we have 16 players, so 16 cars times two, so 32 projected shadows. That is a very graphically intense thing.

Now, that's totally possible on the Xbox 360, but it means the specialists we have in graphics would need to work on that problem, and it would be a hard problem.
The hard problem we chose to take on with our graphics this version was Image Based Lighting, and working with Hollywood. Every version, we look at this long list of features we would do, and they are divided into these different autonomous groups that have the specialists that could actually do it. We just can't take a network developer and say, hey, why don't you do a new particle system. It's not that they're smart guys, but we hired them because they are so good at delivering network code.

Graphically, doing huge particle effects, we would have to have that group that was developing IBL, and that took a long time for us to get it right. We had to implement a whole new way of thinking through the partnership with Hollywood. We'd have to have them working on that from the ground up. So that's the type of thing where we could do it. We could do it on this hardware. But it didn't prioritise higher than IBL, because the IBL and the way the game looks now is stunning, and it's universal. It helps everybody, no matter what type of player you are, having a beautiful looking game that runs at 60 frames per second is awesome.

The things I've read on forums, people saying, well, I wish they didn't do this feature - first, that shows a lack of respect for the people who are going to love that feature, which is fine. I don't expect gamers to respect people the way I do. But, the assumption in that statement is, we have 350 people, why don't you just move them all on to this other thing I want?

It's like, I can't move artists onto it. That's not going to help. I can't move networking devs. I can't move my physics developers. I can't move my AI developers. To hire the best in the industry takes years. Years. To hire the type of guys we get, you have to take people from Hollywood and other game companies. It's the only way you get senior talent. So you can't just decide, we want to do more, let's just staff up.


Hey man, it's really hard to do. Also, 60fps is really important. Dan Greenawalt, Forza 5, 2013:

Adding night and weather to an existing course "is not a minor thing, it is not a 'add a little bit of time, throw it in' thing," Greenawalt said. "When we do things, we do it all the way. That means physics, that means changing conditions, that means everything. So that is not the sort of thing that is easily undertaken in a patch.”

So, what about building a new course around rain and darkness? Greenawalt explains, “To build a new track that would work at night and in wet would mean a bespoke track. Everything we build is bespoke."

To start from the bottom up means at least another nine months of development -- that's just to get the course up and running, never mind modifying it with new water and car physics, and new lighting.

"If we wanted to make one of those tracks work with the added particles or projected shadows, and of course adding the physics to do something like night and wet, it means re-engaging those tracks. I’m not trying to give an excuse, I’m trying to give context as to why this is an order of magnitude higher than something like Drag and Tag, and other things we’re looking at from the community.”

Greenawalt explained that "it’s fair that people ask for the features they want, and we’re here to make fans happy." He knows that both night racing and weather are staples of the genre. "It’s not where we chose to put our investment in Forza Motorsport 5. We chose to be 1080p and 60 frames per-second, and have that solid performance.”



But hey I'm totally sure Forza 6 will have it.
 
yeah let's make it harder to see and slippery. I don't understand people.
lol.

Next thing you know they'll include garbage like hairpins and chicanes on the tracks to force you to slow down. I aint got time for that nonsense.

But hey I'm totally sure Forza 6 will have it.
"Thats just not our focus with Forza 6, and would have taken resources away from our new smellovision feature. Whats a new car without that new car smell?"
 

AndyD

aka andydumi
So it won't be in Forza 6. Thanks for the heads up.

This is pretty much what I get out of it. Unless they completely scrap the engine for a fully real-time engine for future games. Otherwise everything is "bespoke" because everything is canned and pre-calculated.
 
It's too hard to drive in the rain. Dan Greenawalt, Forza 3, 2009:

Graphically the 360 could do it, but it would be hard to pull off. 60fps is really important. Dan Greenawalt, Forza 4, 2011:

Hey man, it's really hard to do. Also, 60fps is really important. Dan Greenawalt, Forza 5, 2013:

But hey I'm totally sure Forza 6 will have it.

Ha ha, great finds! I'm sure he'll still be making excuses and hollow apologies four years from now and saying "the Xbone is powerful enough, honest, we just can't implement these things because reasons".
 

Kei-

Member
sounds like a blast....

Heh, sarcasm aside, I don't see why you wouldn't like the option for the extra challenge. If it doesn't sound like a blast, don't play it, until you decide you want something different and more challenging from the game.
 
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