An Indepth Look into the Apparent Downgrading of Graphics Since Prologue + Pics!

Robin · Mar 29, 2005

I have posted this many times but people have seems to not get or notice what I was talking about.....this thread is here to PROVE that GT4's graphics are worse* than Prologue's.......

*well proven highly on one track only!

I was horrified to discover what had happened to the NY track in particular on my first GT4 outing..... The tracks graphics were abismal to say the least! The whole track has been downgraded in its level of polygons to the point where everything on the buildings, treckside objects etc etc and now blurred. :grumpy:

One many ask how can the final build be lower in quality from a test / demo that is now over a year old..... well this is why...

-The cars graphics have been uped to a very high level
-All those physics elements that make the car lunge / pitch / roll around corners
-Backfire
-Mapping of the reflection on the cars bodywork
-The inclusion of the pit crew

Of cource you might say that these are much more important.....who needs to read billboards when I can have a car which is jucy-ily realistic and with flames comming out the back!

.......well PD agreed with you because they thought that the racing elements would sell the game....NY might aswell be grey polygon blocks as the buildings if all you need is the track..

I do like the new features in GT4 but I dont see what was so wrong with Prologue, the cars seemed to look ok.......

My point is the graphical downgrading to me is dissapointing......We were promissed the best PD could give.......the best graphics to date........the most features to date.....I kinda feel let down in a sence..... :guilty:

When im driving in on 'in car view' I dont really care how uber amazing it looks.....Prologue was fine......and so were the AI opponents...I want to look at the scenery as well as the track..

And so we come to the proof......I have found that the whole NY track is approx half the graphical rate it was.......And there are annotated pics at the bottom of this post to prove it.....

Luckly it seems only the NY track suffered this badly......some other tracks have stayed the same with some looking just slightly downgraded.....with only the Prologue tracks to go by goodness knows how amazing tracks like Hong Kong would have looked like in development form!

I probably think I am being to picky.......ure probably right! but I just wanted to raise this issue with you.......GT5 will probably even have virtual pigeons!

Give me your input on this.......have you noticed the downgrading in NY...its quite an obvious difference.....unless.........there is something wrong with my disk *shock horror!* :crazy:

Sorry about the camera quality...taking pictures of a TV is not really the best way!

Prologue pictures are always on the left with the GT4 comparison on the right.....

Have fun!

👍

Robin

LandoAWD · Mar 29, 2005

You are WAY overthinking this. The intro is not in-game footage, and this is the case in most games on the market.

Edit: apologies...wording got me. I confused "Intro" with "Prologue".

Continue. :dunce:

Spazum888 · Mar 29, 2005

you know you just ranted about street signs and cardboard people???

GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!!! :irked:

kensei · Mar 29, 2005

GT4 has a much more details physics engine that Prolouge did. As I remember Prolouge had a GT3 style physics engine (slight update if you will). Sure everything looked shiney'er and more detailed in Prolouge. Cars had more shine. Backgrounds had more detail, especially signage. However the game play sucked. The physics were all emssed up. Braking sucked. DFP support sucked and in general the game was rough from a gameplay standpoint.

GT4's graphics have been tuned down. The cars are less shiney and the background, esepcially NYC, are more pixelated. That frees CPU power for the new physics and AI (though the AI needs work). Physics, car feel and over gameplan in GT4 are lightyears beyond Prolouge.

You can fetish over backgrounds and people, all low res stuff that you only really se ein passing if you are playing the game. If that stuff is important to you go nuts...however I'll take GT4 with it's more realistic physics and better gameplay over the more pretty/detail backgrounds and shiney cars of Prolouge.

The PS2 can only do so much...

ewitspaul · Mar 29, 2005

This is one part that kind of disappointed me because in Prologue, you could've see my apartment building's number perfectly saying "145" but now all I see is little whiting instead of numbers.

Greyout · Mar 29, 2005

GT4 has plenty of other problems to worry about, I am not concerned about blury textures that fly by at 120 mph.

Aipex · Mar 29, 2005

The Prologue disk had far less content on it, thus allowing for higher resolution texture maps. I'm sure they were forced to revert to lower res maps because of the amount of content in GT4. Not really that big of a deal, it's all flying by at over 100MPH anyway

Swift · Mar 29, 2005

All I have to say is that when I'm trying to concentrate on driving, I'm not worried about reading street signs. Infact, the only signs I care about are the ones telling me how long to the next corner. :cool:

Sambert · Mar 29, 2005

Another example:
Go to Fuji 90s(GT4 full game) and note the pixilated (almost looks like video compression) of track when it comes into the centre of the screen. Particularly noticeable when cornering.

zonekill · Mar 29, 2005

yeah, I was a little bit shocked to see to blurry textures at NY.
I liked the detailed billboards!!! from Prologue.

T5-R · Mar 29, 2005

32Megs of System RAM and 4 Megs of Video RAM are only capable of so much. Just look at all GTs on the PS2 in split screen...

What I'm more dissapointed with is the Jag S Type R isn't the drift machine it was in GT:C unless you stick on street tyres with hard on rear soft on front & then its near impossible to drive. Although still strangely fun :sly:

kensei · Mar 30, 2005

Aipex
The Prologue disk had far less content on it, thus allowing for higher resolution texture maps. I'm sure they were forced to revert to lower res maps because of the amount of content in GT4. Not really that big of a deal, it's all flying by at over 100MPH anyway

Wrong.

The texture maps display resolution wa slowered to save CPU space for the more CPU intensive physics and AI.

Disc space means absolutely nothing. I bet if you could hack out the texture maps of both Prolouge and GT4 they would be the same. At the same time you could hack back the higher resolution texture maps in GT4 but you'd probably crash the PS2, get jumping frames, get the dreaded fuzzy screens and have the AI stand still (you'd probably have to hack the AI off in your pretty texture maps GT4).

Thirdeye · Mar 30, 2005

I never had the pleasure of playing prologue, so this is all new to me, very interesting!

Lukas · Mar 30, 2005

i'll just go from 200mph to a full stop in the middle of races to read signs............yeah, it matters!

/sarcasm

MikeCUK28 · Mar 30, 2005

I still think its interesting, what PD have chopped and changed in the game.

twista3004 · Mar 30, 2005

if this is the worst of ur problems be grateful

xcsti · Mar 30, 2005

Didn't PD take measurements on the cars with insane levels of detail so that they wouldn't have to remap them for GT5, just downgrade them for GT4? I assume they did the same for tracks, allowing them to work on other things for GT5. The next PS will resolve everything or so I hope.

dbartucci · Mar 30, 2005

twista3004
if this is the worst of ur problems be grateful

I don't think it's ungrateful to point out the details in tracks have been reduced significantly from Prologue to the full version. Besides, no one is complaining, Robin and the other posters are just bringing to our attention.

apexracing · Mar 30, 2005

Seems a bit pedantic to me, checking all the graphics and complaining that a few textures aren't quite as nice. GT4 is still a beautiful looking game, even if you considered the smaller textures.

Overall, I had much rather have tons of new cars and tracks, instead of just a few with better detail. PD have done an excellent job with GT4, given the aging PS2's limits.

GuyNamedJohn · Mar 30, 2005

Hey guys, snicker all you want over robin2223's observant posts, but I got to admit, the quality of some of the locales in this game appalled me.... to be completely honest.

I mean New York (*shudders*) is... just... ugh. I thought this build was rumoured to have a somewhat decent "flicker" filter built in? The amount of interlace flicker evident on many of these tracks combined with 2D, blurred-out trackside objects is at times shocking.

I have mulled over this one. I have wondered: Does this game actually run faster than 60 fps? sure feels like it. I have wondered: Would I trade off maybe 15 frames per second in exchange for less graininess and less flicker? In exchange for a track that is cleaner, more solid, and whose upcoming corners are easier to SEE?

Short answer, hell yeah.

Maturin · Mar 30, 2005

Dude, get a life.

exhorst · Mar 30, 2005

........I was horrified to discover what had happened to the NY track in particular on my first GT4 outing..... The tracks graphics were abismal to say the least! The whole track has been downgraded in its level of polygons to the point where everything on the buildings, treckside objects etc etc and now blurred.......

oh my goodness, when you are going at speeds at around 100km/h you can hardly read billboards, most of the races at NY you go at over 200km/h! Why would you even care if you can't read what the signs of the shops say, does it really matter??? :confused:

Oh no! how horrifying it is to not be able to read the sign, "Computer Shop" at NY
So, is all you do during a race is turn into the wall and see if you can read the f*^*$%&* sign?????

If people really cared about this tiny issue in the game then im sure a thread for this would have started a long time ago

LaBounti · Mar 30, 2005

Ha, never noticed and to me itsno big deal. I only notice the pretty cars and not trackside textures.

By the way if anyone cares the ring does not stream load off the disc, all 12 miles fit in the ram. I opened the tray just to see what happens before the start of the race and b-spec it.

StevenDunn99 · Mar 30, 2005

I suppose now would not be the time to say, try GT4P NY with the 60Hz 'fix' using AR Max ? ;-))

Yeah, it is always disappointing to see a drop in graphics but I'm sure it's not deliberate and not major, I mean there must be a good reason some of which have been discussed here. Personally I HATE the NY track, the Golds took me longer here than elsewhere and I can't imagine what Mission 11 will be like. (I'm still Golding the licenses, 62 down so far). I'm impressed with what PD have got out of the PS2 so far.

Steven

GroupB · Mar 30, 2005

Your pictures also show another change between Prologue and the final game. The rally cars in Prologue featured the license plates they actually ran with (check out the P22MRE on the Evo IV Rally Car).
But pop in the final version of GT4 and most of the newer rally cars have their license plates blanked out or blurred out. Same thing with driver names on the rear side windows. I'm guessing it was done for legal reasons.

EDIT: Real-life Evo IV pic; note P22MRE on hood

hitman146 · Mar 30, 2005

well did you take the pictures with a camera of the sreen or are they sceen shots (because the quality is ****

Famine · Mar 30, 2005

Good job, robin.

It's pleasant to note that there's someone as pedantic as me out there. I'm impressed - and that doesn't happen a lot.

Everyone else - note that robin wasn't complaining, or passing judgement on the evil PD. He merely spotted something which piqued his curiousity and followed up on it.

GuyNamedJohn · Mar 30, 2005

Famine-
Amen. 👍

exhorst
So, is all you do during a race is turn into the wall and see if you can read the f*^*$%&* sign?????

You might be surprised, and I can assure you of one thing--once Forza comes out and everything trackside *is* readable and not just a smoothed-over pixelated blur, GT4 will look even 'worser'. :yuck:

I guess I've just been playing too much of the X-Duke, coz after you've spent months playing games like Race Driver 2 or PGR2, it's a tough transition back to the old flicker factory.

Yo LaBounti dude I didn't know that! Twelve miles of meticulously rendered Ring all fit on PS2 RAM!? They said it couldn't be done!

Super Jamie · Mar 30, 2005

GuyNamedJohn
"just you wait till game x comes out, it will be 10 bazillion times better"

i had noticed a drop in quality in new york from prologue to gt4, but hadn't really looked hugely into it like this. it's not something that bothers me greatly, as they've improved the physics engine so much that new york is now enjoyable to drive, instead of the annoying understeer-fest it was in prologue

i would much rather higher res textures on the cars than the scenery, from some angles the large sparse areas of the speed 12, and even large rear quarters of the evos, look really pixellated and cheap, makes me feel like i'm playing gt2 again

hitman146 · Mar 30, 2005

isn´t it logical that gtp has better grafics than gt4 because gtp needs less space than gt4 because of the 60 cars and only some tracks. gt4 is a huge game where pd took of some polygons of the buildings trying to make the game work on the simple ps2

An Indepth Look into the Apparent Downgrading of Graphics Since Prologue + Pics!

Robin

LandoAWD

Spazum888

kensei

ewitspaul

Greyout

Aipex

Swift

GT Sport is looking good...

Sambert

Backsliden Member

zonekill

T5-R

kensei

Thirdeye

Lukas

MikeCUK28

twista3004

xcsti

dbartucci

apexracing

GuyNamedJohn

Maturin

exhorst

LaBounti

StevenDunn99

GroupB

hitman146

Famine

GTP Editor, GTPEDIA Author

GuyNamedJohn

Super Jamie

hitman146

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