Gran Turismo Sport: General Discussion

[ImaRobot]

Play the ball, not the man!

Says the person that constantly has an issue with playing the ball, not the man.

 

[Obelisk]

@Johnnypenso You need to consider how many departments are within the team and how many members are in each team, on top of their regular work flow.

Someone else in this thread already mentioned how many staff were on the vehicle modelling team, so I'll just quote that here:

One car modeler takes around 6 months to make one car. There were 50 car modelers credited in the GT6 End Movie. That means every car modeler will make about two cars every year, and this game was in development for about 4 years (2013/2014-2017). This means that every year, around 100 cars are completed in terms of modeling by the 50 car modelers. This means that around 400 cars would be modeled in that time period. But we will only have 150 cars at launch. Pretty strange, no?

This is assuming that A) They immediately started work on GTS the moment GT6 came out and B) All employees are in perfect health and do not have odds and ends that happen during their lives. Several of the staff could have had deaths in their families during development and had to take time off. Some could have gotten severely ill, etc. 400 is an idealistic number, but I'll be generous and say about 300-350 models are possible, assuming they focus on that and don't work in sync with other departments.

Sound design is a challenging thing, so I did some research into how this works.

In the GT6 End Credits, I saw two audio design leads, seven audio designers, with three support staff from Power House amuse. It isn't a simple process, recording sound and using it in a game. This quote from Greg Hill (lead designer for several Colin McRae games, PCars 2, DiRT) does a good job simplifying the explanation:

"For engine sounds most people think we just record a car and throw the sound into a folder and it magically just works in the game. Game sounds are interactive - unlike passive sound like movies where the sound is baked onto an audio track. Our way of working is different from recording, editing and implementation. So sound has to be recorded a certain way so it can be decomposed and reconstructed into a ‘sonic model’ and linked to the physics so the player has full control over every parameter. Engine sounds are modulated in so many ways like RPM, Engine Load, Drivetrain Flex, Gear Shifts, Transmission Whine and the way it reacts to the environment (cockpit, chase view, trackside)."

I couldn't find any conclusive evidence on how long it takes to do audio work for one car, but it's safe to say that this takes a long time to get perfect on top of the modelling. Let's use a rough estimate of a week per car to get their sounds right, and I feel like that's a conservative guess.

On top of the 6 months per car model, you have an added week for every car's sound. Assuming perfect work records and timelines, this is another 150 weeks or 36 months on top of the car work. If every modeller did one car at once and completed their work on time, then sent it over to the sound team, they would be done with the car models in 18 months, but the sound would take another three years on top of that.

This is assuming the sound team all works on one car at the same time. Let's assume that every audio designer does one car at a time, without the audio leads or the support team mentioned above. That brings us down to 22 weeks of work time on the car sound. This is another five months on top of the 18 months of car modelling.

Right there, that's two years of development time. This isn't taking into account the code work (which, from my own time in college IT classes) can take an utterly ridiculous amount of time and composes the bulk of the work in the game. This also isn't taking into account the track development, music design, UI design, AI, etc.

So 150 cars over four years seems about right, and the rest of the models - if they do have them - are on backlog for the DLC.

 

[jm79]

Says the person that constantly has an issue with playing the ball, not the man.

I'm guessing you don't see the irony here?

 

[ImaRobot]

I'm guessing you don't see the irony here?

Yeah, I did. That's why I replied to said post.

This is assuming that A) They immediately started work on GTS the moment GT6 came ou

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...o-7-is-in-the-works-standard-cars-set-to-stay

Doesn't look like it was immediate, but 6 months isn't too long a time frame. The rest of that paragraph was really grasping, though.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

maths

The major issue here is that it doesn't take into account overlap. That time to work with the audio needs of a particular car? That'll happen during the six man-months to create it. Same with coding other aspects of the game. It's very unlikely the audio team simply sits and waits for a car to be modelled before starting any audio work on it.

 

[zzz_pt]

This is assuming that A) They immediately started work on GTS the moment GT6 came out and B) All employees are in perfect health and do not have odds and ends that happen during their lives. Several of the staff could have had deaths in their families during development and had to take time off. Some could have gotten severely ill, etc. 400 is an idealistic number, but I'll be generous and say about 300-350 models are possible, assuming they focus on that and don't work in sync with other departments.

When Kaz says 6 months to model a car he's talking, obviously, about 6 months of 8h of work a day. All those factors are meaningless because when someone is sick or on holidays, they're not working.

Also, as I've said here, considering that: 1) some cars were added to GT6 as DLC after launch, 2) vision GT cars were modelled by the brands who took part in the project and 3) and directors / chiefs aren't probably modeling as much as modellers themselves (if at all), that number could go into the 250/300. Still, we have around 150 (?) cars in GTS's final version.

Even if you're generous with the numbers and point to 300 cars in 4 years, we need to take into account:
- After GT6, PD hired more people
- There are a lot of duplicates in GTS's ~145 cars (like Gr.4 and Gr.3, the Tomahawks, 2 M6s with diff liveries, Acura and Honda duplicates, diff fictional Vision GT versions for diff categories, etc)
- 35 are Vision GT cars and they were probably all modelled by the companies who created them, not PD.

So that leaves us with what? 145 - 35 = 110 cars that include several duplicates.

 

[Scaff]

Just to make it clear, if anyone thinks a member is targeting a person rather than the point, then they should be using the report button. Not making it an off-topic discussion.

When Kaz says 6 months to model a car he's talking, obviously, about 6 months of 8h of work a day. All those factors are meaningless because when someone is sick or on holidays, they're not working.

Also, as I've said here, considering that: 1) some cars were added to GT6 as DLC after launch, 2) vision GT cars were modelled by the brands who took part in the project and 3) and directors / chiefs aren't probably modeling as much as modellers themselves (if at all), that number could go into the 250/300. Still, we have around 180 cars in GTS's final version.

Even if you're generous with the numbers and point to 300 cars in 4 years, we need to take into account:
- After GT6, PD hired more people
- There are a lot of duplicates in GTS's ~145 cars (like Gr.4 and Gr.4, the Tomahawks, 2 M6s with diff liveries, Acura and Honda duplicates, diff fictional Vision GT versions for diff categories, etc)
- 35 are Vision GT cars and they were probably all modelled by the companies who created them, not PD.

So that leaves us with what? 145 - 35 = 110 cars that include several duplicates.

I did the math on that one a while back.

GTS has 80 unique cars, the rest are variations on those 80, and as such would not take as long to model.

 

[Obelisk]

The major issue here is that it doesn't take into account overlap. That time to work with the audio needs of a particular car? That'll happen during the six man-months to create it. Same with coding other aspects of the game. It's very unlikely the audio team simply sits and waits for a car to be modelled before starting any audio work on it.

I wasn't sure how they worked. If there's the overlap, that just keeps it at around 18 months since the audio team will be done ahead of the modellers. I'll admit it was an oversight on my part.

Still doesn't change the fact that coding and debugging the game takes a :censored:ing ridiculous amount of time in comparison. Even in a modern IDE with error highlighting, a single bad line of code can cause about 300 other lines of code to barf (throw errors) and resolving that can take a good while. And then there's cleaning the code and making it maintainable.

 

[Symtex]

in the meantime, Turn 10 is able to do 700+ cars in 2 years. Can we all agree that PD is really slow at modelling cars ? Every single car in Forza 6 and 7 have the Forza Vista which is a super high resolution models that blows away any car modeling ever done in any modern games. I love GT series but I can't excuse PD for giving us so little content over the extended period of time they had to deliver GT Sports.

 

[AKps3]

in the meantime, Turn 10 is able to do 700+ cars in 2 years. Can we all agree that PD is really slow at modelling cars ? Every single car in Forza 6 and 7 have the Forza Vista which is a super high resolution models that blows away any car modeling ever done in any modern games. I love GT series but I can't excuse PD for giving us so little content over the extended period of time they had to deliver GT Sports.

So you say T10 build 700 cars in 2 year?

 

[jm79]

The major issue here is that it doesn't take into account overlap. That time to work with the audio needs of a particular car? That'll happen during the six man-months to create it. Same with coding other aspects of the game. It's very unlikely the audio team simply sits and waits for a car to be modelled before starting any audio work on it.

Maybe game development is a complicated business and doesn't operate according to casual forum assumptions of logic or 'math'.

Also, maybe creative decisions are being overlooked a touch. These guys aren't sweatshop workers.

 

[Lord Kacperov]

in the meantime, Turn 10 is able to do 700+ cars in 2 years. Can we all agree that PD is really slow at modelling cars ? Every single car in Forza 6 and 7 have the Forza Vista which is a super high resolution models that blows away any car modeling ever done in any modern games. I love GT series but I can't excuse PD for giving us so little content over the extended period of time they had to deliver GT Sports.

They modeled 150-200 cars in 2 years, not 700. They modeled all those cars in the span of 4-5 years.

But we don't exactly know how fast PD is. We don't know how many super premium cars PD have modeled in total.

 

[Obelisk]

Maybe game development is a complicated business and doesn't operate according to casual forum assumptions of logic or 'math'.

Also, maybe creative decisions are being overlooked a touch. These guys aren't sweatshop workers.

It was a gross oversimplification on my part to make a point. Creative design can take a fair amount of time too.

 

[ron86]

in the meantime, Turn 10 is able to do 700+ cars in 2 years. Can we all agree that PD is really slow at modelling cars ? Every single car in Forza 6 and 7 have the Forza Vista which is a super high resolution models that blows away any car modeling ever done in any modern games. I love GT series but I can't excuse PD for giving us so little content over the extended period of time they had to deliver GT Sports.

Turn 10 outsources the car modelling (or parts of it) to some studio who makes car models for various game franchises, i sadly forgot its name but it had a website where all their big customers where listed.

 

[Zlork]

in the meantime, Turn 10 is able to do 700+ cars in 2 years. Can we all agree that PD is really slow at modelling cars ? Every single car in Forza 6 and 7 have the Forza Vista which is a super high resolution models that blows away any car modeling ever done in any modern games. I love GT series but I can't excuse PD for giving us so little content over the extended period of time they had to deliver GT Sports.

I hope you know that Turn10 use cars already modelled in Forza 5, 6 and Forza Horizon 2 and 3 ?

Microsoft have two studios : Turn 10 and Playground Games + 500+ outsourcings.

 

[NLxAROSA]

Maybe game development is a complicated business and doesn't operate according to casual forum assumptions of logic or 'math'.

Also, maybe creative decisions are being overlooked a touch. These guys aren't sweatshop workers.

I'd say pretty much this. I still prefer PD doing a more focused title with less content (though of high quality) and no asset reuse (e.g. sounds, etc.) than coming with another mega title with fairly bland / similarly feeling content. Their physics based rendering (completely from scratch) is also absolutely gorgeous. It's obvious they ran into things that slowed them down along the way. We can only guess as to what exactly.

 

[Symtex]

They modeled 150-200 cars in 2 years, not 700. They modeled all those cars in the span of 4-5 years.

But we don't exactly know how fast PD is. We don't know how many super premium cars PD have modeled in total.

That's the problem. Every single car should be treated the same way. No such BS as premium or super premium. How can you choose which children you love the most ?

 

[SlipZtrEm]

I wasn't sure how they worked. If there's the overlap, that just keeps it at around 18 months since the audio team will be done ahead of the modellers. I'll admit it was an oversight on my part.

No worries. The thing to look at would be man hours. A quick scribble suggests 200 employees, at 40h a week for 48 weeks would be 384,000 man-hours a year, or 1,536,000 over four years. Obviously that's an inflated number given any sort of issues that arise.

Still doesn't change the fact that coding and debugging the game takes a :censored:ing ridiculous amount of time in comparison. Even in a modern IDE with error highlighting, a single bad line of code can cause about 300 other lines of code to barf (throw errors) and resolving that can take a good while. And then there's cleaning the code and making it maintainable.

Yeah, but we're talking about car modelling specifically. That other stuff is not something the modelling team will have to deal with.

in the meantime, Turn 10 is able to do 700+ cars in 2 years.

No, no it hasn't, not even close. It's done maybe 100 cars in a year, but that remains to be seen for FM7, since only a handful of the revealed cars are new-to-franchise.

 

[ImaRobot]

What I feel PD should do is look into outsourcing. What people don't understand is that outsourcing doesn't mean the work is going to be worse. These outsourced companies hire people just the same as any other company would do, to pretend that they can't get good modelers like PD has doesn't make much sense. The quality is determined by your goal. It's not worse just because its outsourced.

 

[Symtex]

No, no it hasn't, not even close. It's done maybe 100 cars in a year, but that remains to be seen for FM7, since only a handful of the revealed cars are new-to-franchise.

They launch the Xbox One console with Forza 5 and it had more cars than GT Sports. Of course, they re-used the model for FM6/FM7. During that span of 4 years, Turn 10 did 5 Forza games with 2 studios. PD did GT6 on PS3 and now GT Sports. Maybe they need a bigger team ? Is it bad if they outsource they car model if they meat their standard ? I think the reality is that we are all a little biased toward GT. If Forza launched with the same content as GT Sports, I think most people would be really disappointed with Turn 10 Studio but because we have that long history with GT, we give PD a lot more slack that we should.

 

[zzz_pt]

Maybe game development is a complicated business and doesn't operate according to casual forum assumptions of logic or 'math'.

Also, maybe creative decisions are being overlooked a touch. These guys aren't sweatshop workers.

What type of creative, strategic decision could possibly be made during the process of making a 3D model of a car? After de decision being made about which cars are going to be in the game (that can have some back and forth, negotiations, direction, etc) and distribute the work by the modelling team, there's nothing in the way of finishing it within the 6month period Kaz (and other devs) talk about. It's pretty much a maths issue.

And of course they aren't sweatshop workers. I've worked in a gaming company and the artists (vector, marketing, 3D, etc) are pretty relaxed during their workdays. They're well treated.

It's possible to model a car in less than 6 months. But no one would be a 3D modeller/artist if they had to work like sweatshop staff.

Edit: too late @SlipZtrEm you're fast man ^^

 

[jm79]

What I feel PD should do is look into outsourcing. What people don't understand is that outsourcing doesn't mean the work is going to be worse. These outsourced companies hire people just the same as any other company would do, to pretend that they can't get good modelers like PD has doesn't make much sense. The quality is determined by your goal. It's not worse just because its outsourced.

Well it depends on the outsourcer of course, and the specific situation, but the common assumption is that this outsourced work will be worse.

It's a cost saving method. I've seen many many complaints about the quality of this stuff in the past.

If you want it done well the way you prefer, do it in house, the exact way you prefer. I think that's PD's (previously stated) philosophy (?). And it may be wrong, but they're allowed it - it does make sense in some way. Each to their own, etc.

Edit: @zzz_pt - Also, some of these outsourcer's working conditions may be more sweatshop than you think!

 

[SlipZtrEm]

They launch the Xbox One console with Forza 5 and it had more cars than GT Sports. Of course, they re-used the model for FM6/FM7. During that span of 4 years, Turn 10 did 5 Forza games with 2 studios. PD did GT6 on PS3 and now GT Sports. Maybe they need a bigger team ? Is it bad if they outsource they car model if they meat their standard ? I think the reality is that we are all a little biased toward GT. If Forza launched with the same content as GT Sports, I think most people would be really disappointed with Turn 10 Studio but because we have that long history with GT, we give PD a lot more slack that we should.

Without wanting to take this even further off-topic, I feel it's worth pointing out we have multiple threads around the boards for versus comparisons:

• Project CARS 2, Forza 7, GT Sport - General Discussion
  
• FM7 vs. PCars 2 vs. GT:Sport
  
• GT Sport vs Other Games: Comparison Video Thread - video only, admittedly

Yes, FM5 got positively hammered by some members of this community back in 2013 for its lack of content, not just compared to GT6, but also FM4. And yes, despite GT Sport launching four years later with less cars and less tracks, some members have no qualms with it. But these may or may not be the same people.

Two different approaches, by two different franchises.

 

[Obelisk]

@SlipZtrEm going back to the code thing. I'd argue that the engine for the car animations and the sound engine are still part of the raw code needed. That said, those would likely be done first.

 

[NLxAROSA]

What type of creative, strategic decision could possibly be made during the process of making a 3D model of a car? After de decision being made about which cars are going to be in the game (that can have some back and forth, negotiations, direction, etc) and distribute the work by the modelling team, there's nothing in the way of finishing it within the 6month period Kaz (and other devs) talk about.

Well obviously there is at PD. The numbers don't add up, so the easiest explanation is that the magical '6 month per car' no longer holds at PD. But why? Too much detail? More to model because of VR, etc.?

 

[zzz_pt]

Edit: @zzz_pt - Also, some of these outsourcer's working conditions may be more sweatshop than you think!

Freelancing, for example, can be tough but, on this AAA level, you make more money too. On the other hand, Kaz has said he's not a fan of outsourcing.

Several AAA companies outsource some stuff. But the people they outsource too are top quality and far from being like sweatshop types. Especially when we're talking about creative stuff, art and modelling.

Well obviously there is at PD. The numbers don't add up, so the easiest explanation is that the magical '6 month per car' no longer holds at PD. But why? Too much detail? More to model because of VR, etc.?

Not necessary. They can be lying about the 6 months (unlikely IMO). They can have less people working on modelling now than back in GT6 (weird but not impossible until we know the numbers), they can have already the other 150 cars lined up for DLC (stupid decision but I don't know what to expect at this point), something else we have no idea about.

The numbers don't add up, that's for sure. At least with the information we have atm.

 

[Symtex]

Without wanting to take this even further off-topic, I feel it's worth pointing out we have multiple threads around the boards for versus comparisons:

• Project CARS 2, Forza 7, GT Sport - General Discussion
  
• FM7 vs. PCars 2 vs. GT:Sport
  
• GT Sport vs Other Games: Comparison Video Thread - video only, admittedly

Yes, FM5 got positively hammered by some members of this community back in 2013 for its lack of content, not just compared to GT6, but also FM4. And yes, despite GT Sport launching four years later with less cars and less tracks, some members have no qualms with it. But these may or may not be the same people.

Two different approaches, by two different franchises.

Yeah sorry. Didn't mean to start a vs fight here. I was just pointing out that we have a certain level of biases that often impact our judgement. How much little content can PD launch a game and get away with it ? Are we going to be micro-transaction to hell in the next week to get the additional content ? How far can PD pushes our loyalty before we start saying enough is enough ?

I don't have answer to any of these questions. I think we have to be honest with ourselves and recognize that we are often lead to make irrational decision based on loyalty, history etc... That aside, I am really concern how online experience will be on consoles. You can bet I will try to stay away from public lobby (if possible) because I know it will be a ram fest on Turn 1.

 

[GordonS]

There won't be microtransactions in GTS.

 

[jm79]

Without wanting to take this even further off-topic...

Yes, FM5 got positively hammered by some members of this community back in 2013 for its lack of content, not just compared to GT6, but also FM4. And yes, despite GT Sport launching four years later with less cars and less tracks, some members have no qualms with it. But these may or may not be the same people.

Some people said something in the past. Some people said another thing?

Errrrrr.... good point?

Back on topic:

Can we all agree that PD are, despite all that I've said, slow as hell?
I mean, quality is quality and all that, but bloody release something!!

 

[AKps3]

Outsourcing can be good and bad
http://przemyslawjanowski.weebly.com/lecture-reviews/week-4-ben-curtis-artist-at-evolution-studios