Gran Turismo 4 Hands-On Impressions - Gran Turismo 4 Previews for PlayStation 2 at GameSpot
this sounds cool. I am not going up my PS2 for a xbox, yet
Gran Turismo 4 Hands-On Impressions - Gran Turismo 4 Previews for PlayStation 2 at GameSpot: "Earlier today, far from the crowded and noisy E3 show floor, we met with Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi to check out some of the all-new features that will be appearing in Gran Turismo 4 later this year. Yamauchi, who is the president of Polyphony Digital and senior vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment, was in a particularly buoyant mood having recently ordered himself a new Ford GT40 and, as we were soon to discover, devised a way to incorporate his love of photography into his latest game.
For the bulk of today's presentation, in fact, Yamauchi discussed the previously unannounced 'photo mode' that will be appearing in the game, which allows you to take photos of your favorite cars, organize them into slideshows, share them with friends online, and even print them out at a resolution of 1280x960 if you have a photo-quality printer you can plug into your PS2's USB port. In addition to taking photos from your saved action replays, GT4 will allow you to stage your own photo opportunities simply by selecting a location, placing a car in it, positioning your camera, applying any effects and filters you like, and then hitting the shoot button. The photo mode's ease of use belies a surprisingly sophisticated system that allows you to use different lenses, adjust the field of depth, apply motion blur effects, and even choose different types of camera film. One of the walls of the room we were meeting in with Yamauchi was literally covered with photos taken in-game, and it wasn't long before we were encouraged to have a go ourselves.
In the final game, you'll be able to set up photos using any of more than 500 cars (from more than 80 manufacturers, some of which no longer exist--the cars date back as far as 1886), 50 courses, and 16 locations created exclusively for the photo mode. The options available to us represented only a small fraction of those, but after only five minutes or so of playing around with our shot of a classic Corvette on one of the Italian street circuits, we were ready to commit our efforts to paper. Incidentally, the options when setting up your shot won't be unlimited as far as car and camera positions go--we were basically presented with a top-down view of the environment with designated areas for the car and camera highlighted in red and blue respectively. When you're producing photos and distributing them online, the file sizes will be kept very small since they really contain nothing more than the positions of objects. We soon discovered that the same won't be true when printing them, though--our postcard-sized photo, which could easily pass for a photograph at a glance, took almost five minutes to travel from the PS2 to the printer.
The other new feature of Gran Turismo 4 that Yamauchi was eager to show off was what he referred to as the game's 'human elements.' Not only will you be able to see realistically animated drivers inside all of the cars now (complete with helmets that show off the game's real-time environment mapping as well as the cars do), but you'll also find that the spectators have evolved from cardboard cutouts into fully 3D, animated models. The crowds aren't content to just stand behind barriers and clap as you race past either, and particularly during rallies you'll see spectators stepping onto the track to get a better view or to take photos before jumping out of the way when you approach. The spectator animations are extremely realistic and, like those used for the drivers, have been created using a human physics engine rather than motion-capture techniques."
Gran Turismo 4 Hands-On Impressions - Gran Turismo 4 Previews for PlayStation 2 at GameSpot: "Earlier today, far from the crowded and noisy E3 show floor, we met with Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi to check out some of the all-new features that will be appearing in Gran Turismo 4 later this year. Yamauchi, who is the president of Polyphony Digital and senior vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment, was in a particularly buoyant mood having recently ordered himself a new Ford GT40 and, as we were soon to discover, devised a way to incorporate his love of photography into his latest game.
For the bulk of today's presentation, in fact, Yamauchi discussed the previously unannounced 'photo mode' that will be appearing in the game, which allows you to take photos of your favorite cars, organize them into slideshows, share them with friends online, and even print them out at a resolution of 1280x960 if you have a photo-quality printer you can plug into your PS2's USB port. In addition to taking photos from your saved action replays, GT4 will allow you to stage your own photo opportunities simply by selecting a location, placing a car in it, positioning your camera, applying any effects and filters you like, and then hitting the shoot button. The photo mode's ease of use belies a surprisingly sophisticated system that allows you to use different lenses, adjust the field of depth, apply motion blur effects, and even choose different types of camera film. One of the walls of the room we were meeting in with Yamauchi was literally covered with photos taken in-game, and it wasn't long before we were encouraged to have a go ourselves.
In the final game, you'll be able to set up photos using any of more than 500 cars (from more than 80 manufacturers, some of which no longer exist--the cars date back as far as 1886), 50 courses, and 16 locations created exclusively for the photo mode. The options available to us represented only a small fraction of those, but after only five minutes or so of playing around with our shot of a classic Corvette on one of the Italian street circuits, we were ready to commit our efforts to paper. Incidentally, the options when setting up your shot won't be unlimited as far as car and camera positions go--we were basically presented with a top-down view of the environment with designated areas for the car and camera highlighted in red and blue respectively. When you're producing photos and distributing them online, the file sizes will be kept very small since they really contain nothing more than the positions of objects. We soon discovered that the same won't be true when printing them, though--our postcard-sized photo, which could easily pass for a photograph at a glance, took almost five minutes to travel from the PS2 to the printer.
The other new feature of Gran Turismo 4 that Yamauchi was eager to show off was what he referred to as the game's 'human elements.' Not only will you be able to see realistically animated drivers inside all of the cars now (complete with helmets that show off the game's real-time environment mapping as well as the cars do), but you'll also find that the spectators have evolved from cardboard cutouts into fully 3D, animated models. The crowds aren't content to just stand behind barriers and clap as you race past either, and particularly during rallies you'll see spectators stepping onto the track to get a better view or to take photos before jumping out of the way when you approach. The spectator animations are extremely realistic and, like those used for the drivers, have been created using a human physics engine rather than motion-capture techniques."
posted by Ian at
Saturday, May 29, 2004
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