How in the Frank Bruno did Forza III do it?

[Robin]

You take the words I couldn't say right out of my mouth Famine, thanks 👍

Thats not Famine above you!

Porting 360 cars to another 360 game is fine because its in the same generation and less noticeable a dip in quality. Porting PS2 cars to PS3 is very noticeable and quite ugly in some of the footage I have seen (that vid showing standard cars).

PD should know better that with a game this size they should have taken on double staff temporarily, outsourced the standard cars and GT PSP and delivered the game they have been selling all along which turned out to not be true (everything shown so far was premium only to hide the fact 80% of the game was a port).

Robin.

 

[Coxis]

Thats not Famine above you!

I'm sure he's aware of that, look at the time both alba and the previous poster submitted their respective posts.

 

[Devedander]

They didn't "upp res" GT4 cars. You can't increase details that aren't there - the real world is not CSI: Miami. Take a picture with a 10MPi camera. Reduce the image to 1MPi. That's GT4. Now try and blow the 1MPi image back up to the size of a 5MPi image - that's a giant mess, and not what we'll see in GT5... We'll see the original 10MPi image reduced to 5MPi.

To be fair famine, that was a bad example. Even in the world of digital pictures you can enhance... true not CSI kind of enhancing where you can read a license plate off a reflection in a water droplet off an ATM camera but still... upscaling and interpolating can actually make a low res picture better. Almost certainly not as good as the original but you can intelligently extrapolate some lost detail in an image.

Then to go to 3d modelling you can do more... if you have a wireframe with x number of vertexes, you can extrapolate the curves from those vertexes and build more vertexes on that surface to recreate a smoother curve.

A long time ago ATI did this with some video car drivers where they took blocy models and guessed at the curves in hardware rendering curves where before their were only odd polys. Suddenly cardboard looking legs and arms fleshed out and were round... although suddenly square guns suddnely inflated like balloon animals also.

The point is that if you want you can actually upscale a 3d model with reasonable accuracy. Especially if a person is there to monitor the process and limit the procedure to areas it works on.

 

[AzRimGT]

Answer is simple. GT5 will have quite a bit more content than FM3. 3D implementation, Day-Night cycles, possible weather (rain,snow), just to list a few, take time out of your production.

 

[Spagetti69]

Forza's models are not anywhere near PD's premium ones. It's not that hard to figure out.

So what........... What is your point. You stated an obvious fact.
Woop de do I can see the stitching in the seatbelt fabric.


Glorious.

 

[evilfoxhound]

To people who love Forza 3 so much, can you just go and play Forza 3? Instead of constantly sucking it off on GTplanet.

It wil be a massive favour to us all.

 

[crazedmodder]

Now I read some of this thread and noticed that there are a lot of wars going on. If you think maybe I'm being a fanboy or jerk don't take my post that way it's not my intention.

Thats not Famine above you!

Porting 360 cars to another 360 game is fine because its in the same generation and less noticeable a dip in quality. Porting PS2 cars to PS3 is very noticeable and quite ugly in some of the footage I have seen (that vid showing standard cars).

Read this part of Famine's post:

Take a picture with a 10MPi camera. Reduce the image to 1MPi. That's GT4. *snip* in GT5... We'll see the original 10MPi image reduced to 5MPi.

Both GT4's and GT5's car models are derived from the same set of even more detailed models. They were downgraded for GT4 and those that will be repeated in GT5 will be downgraded slightly less.

To put this in terms that relate to GT's car models, when PD creates a model for a car they create it to the best quality they consider reasonable based on time, tools and budget (probably). This means that many of their models may have been too highly-detailed for use on the PS2. They would then take those models (let's call them originals) and create lower quality models (copies) that would allow there to be x amount of cars on screen + the track on the PS2 without lag. They still have the higher-quality original which is what they are using to create the standard cars.

It's not about what console is being ported to what console, it's about how well the original models were made.

It's similar to if you are creating logos. The designers who create logos would usually create them in a vector graphics format which can be enlarged with no loss of quality and would be the "original".

Now let us say that company saves a copy in raster format on their website at say 50px*50px then the same logo is used elsewhere at 500px*500px. That doesn't necessarily mean that they just enlarged the 50px*50px image, they could have taken the original and made another copy at 500px*500px. As a result both images at 100% magnification would look identical meaning there was no loss in quality going from 50px*50px to 500px*500px.

or

An artist/graphic designer creates an image in say Photoshop at a resolution of 4096px*4096px.

If they want to put a sample on their website or share it with friend through e-mail, facebook, etc then they would probably save a lower sized copy let's say a web-friendly 1024x768. But if they want a higher-resolution image to put up on FTP to share with someone or to print it they can go up to 4096px*4096px with no loss in quality. That is because that is the resolution the original was created at and any copies up to that resolution will be identical in quality.

Of course this is all while ignoring compression artifacts because we're pretending there are none to be able to compare other artifacts.

Now is this the way PD actually did it? We don't know unless someone from PD specifically states it but my assumption is that maybe the original GT4 models are not created up to GT5 quality but they are still a lot nicer than the copied GT4 models were. I find the standard cars in the video look nice and I saw some people posting screenshots before saying it was ugly but taking a screenshot of a video and using it to compare quality is not really ideal.

I don't know why Forza fans are getting so offended. You guys shouldn't worry so much you're in a Gran Turismo forum of course people are going to be bashing Forza.

So what........... What is your point. You stated an obvious fact.
Woop de do I can see the stitching in the seatbelt fabric.

Glorious.

That's fair but you're acting like his post was pointless. The thread title is: "How and the h:censored:l did Forza III do it?" so it is fair game for people to critique Forza's models versus Gran Turismo's. I won't speak about the quality because I don't own the game but his post was legit.

 

[sparkedglory]

Off topic: All this talk about vector and raster graphics is getting me excited about studying graphic art and design in college.

 

[Devedander]

Of course this is all while ignoring compression artifacts because we're pretending there are none to be able to compare other artifacts.

How do you think upscaling DVD players take a 480p image and bring it up to 1080? It's not truly putting back real info but it's intelligently interpolating what's there.

This process happens in stills also. Open a bmp in MSPaint and zoom it 400 percent. You see a bunch of chunks. Do the same in photoshop, it will intelligently smooth and do it's best to make the iamge still look good blown up.

And again, this is all in the 2d image world, when dealing with 3d models and wire frames the same rules do not necessarily apply as I illustrated above.

 

[alba]

Thats not Famine above you!

I was referring to Famine's post so yeah, that's why I said Famine. Hmmm?

 

[crazedmodder]

How do you think upscaling DVD players take a 480p image and bring it up to 1080? It's not truly putting back real info but it's intelligently interpolating what's there.

This process happens in stills also. Open a bmp in MSPaint and zoom it 400 percent. You see a bunch of chunks. Do the same in photoshop, it will intelligently smooth and do it's best to make the iamge still look good blown up.

And again, this is all in the 2d image world, when dealing with 3d models and wire frames the same rules do not necessarily apply as I illustrated above.

I know how upscaling works, you end up with a better image but you will still have artifacts, it will not be perfect even if algorithms are really good. Comparing a dvd upscaled to 1080p and a blu-ray will show the difference in quality. Also another factor is the quality of video/image we are upscaling. If it's crap it will continue to be crap. I am also familiar with adding vertices and smoothing to clean up 3D models.

The problem is that we don't know for sure whether they upscaled GT4 models, upscaled original models that were better than the GT4 models, used the original models as-is or if they downscaled super-high quality models.

* I'm guessing upscaling/downscaling aren't the proper words to use for increasing/decreasing the amount of polygons/vertices on a 3D model but I'm not really sure what the proper words are.

Anyways, that's why I posted:

Now is this the way PD actually did it? We don't know unless someone from PD specifically states it but my assumption is that maybe the original GT4 models are not created up to GT5 quality but they are still a lot nicer than the copied GT4 models were.

I don't really know how they did it but that was just one of the possibilities. I just wanted to explain that not all hope is lost, even if they're just upscaled the results can still turn out really good.

Also you just made me think of another good example, movies. Take all of the old movies that are being re-released on blu-ray and look much better than DVD is because they were shot at such a high-quality that a DVD couldn't contain it all (probably on film). So when time came for blu-rays they just took the high-quality original and put it on blu-ray. Of course it probably takes more work than the way it sounds here but that's the general idea.

Another question is ... how good were the original models that PD made?

--edit-- Oh it's probably because I quoted Famine's post. I just quoted it to provide another example for Robin, not everything he says is correct but the idea is right.
Sorry for the confusion I'll take out the extra stuff from the quote so it's just the stuff that is right.
--edit2-- Fixed ... my bad Devedander!

 

[Devedander]

I know how upscaling works, you end up with a better image but you will still have artifacts, it will not be perfect even if algorithms are really good.

Yes I understand upscaling and interpolating is almost never going to be as good as going back to the original real data, but I brought it up because Famines post pretty much was saying it wasn't possible.

It is, to varying degrees of quality.

I didn't mean it to come across so rudely the way I asked if you know how upscaling works either... just realized thats how it looks now that I re read my post.

 

[JAGUAR1977]

This premium vs normal car discussion has shown what a wide and diverse fanbase GT has.

I would say there are two basic groups, simulation enthusiasts vs car collectors.

I myself want to see cars, tracks and features pushed to their technical limits to achieve the most realisitc simulation experience.

We are now in the 3rd generation of Playstation hardware and it's time to move on the from the limitations of old GT games where cars are only represented by a basic visual model and physics engine.

The ultimate aim of the GT series is to perfectly simulate cars and to do this you need to replicate much more than the visual side.

 

[Devedander]

This premium vs normal car discussion has shown what a wide and diverse fanbase GT has.

I would say there are two basic groups, simulation enthusiasts vs car collectors.

I would say there are 3 groups:

Racers
Ricers
Collectors

Racers honestly don't care about graphics much at all, they really want the action

Ricers are graphics whores

Collectors are obsessive compulsive types that want as much as they can get

All groups probably have a good deal of overlap but honestly I would say 80-90% of GTP falls mostly into the ricer category.

 

[sparkedglory]

I would say there are 3 groups:

Racers
Ricers
Collectors

Racers honestly don't care about graphics much at all, they really want the action

Ricers are graphics whores

Collectors are obsessive compulsive types that want as much as they can get

All groups probably have a good deal of overlap but honestly I would say 80-90% of GTP falls mostly into the ricer category.

Good thing I'm a racer.

 

[evilfoxhound]

Racers
Ricers
Collectors

I'm a bit of all three.

Does that make me "bi"?

 

[Tenacious D]

Hrm... that's an odd view of the GT Planet spectrum, Deve. It may be like that, but I get the sense that the demarcations are a lot more vague than that. I think as PS3 owners, most of us are graphic fiends. As racers, I think most of us hunger for realistic physics. As GT fans, I think at least a majority of us are used to a game with a freight train load of cars to collect.

I suspect that most of us, even ones that threw a fit and refuse to touch the Standard cars with a USB drive will still buy the game and end up racing a good many of them.

 

[The Vanishing Boy]

-> I'm more of a Racer AND a Collector.

 

[JDMKING13]

I would say there are 3 groups:

Racers
Ricers
Collectors

Racers honestly don't care about graphics much at all, they really want the action

Ricers are graphics whores

Collectors are obsessive compulsive types that want as much as they can get

All groups probably have a good deal of overlap but honestly I would say 80-90% of GTP falls mostly into the ricer category.

👍 don't forget immature

 

[HLRJigsaw]

I would say there are 3 groups:

Racers
Ricers
Collectors

Racers honestly don't care about graphics much at all, they really want the action

Ricers are graphics whores

Collectors are obsessive compulsive types that want as much as they can get

All groups probably have a good deal of overlap but honestly I would say 80-90% of GTP falls mostly into the ricer category.

You forgot an "all of the above" option. I'm a stray from the FM community and I want a step up not a step across. I bought my PS3 for this game and I'll end up blowing alot more. I expect alot because alot has been promised. If I only race two hundred cars.......so be it. I will not drive any car that doesn't have an appropriate engine sound. Until E3 2010 they made it seem like every single car in this game was getting the "premium treatment". I'm a little angry at PD right now. I'll get over it. FM did an admirable job at there game in a short time frame compared to this game. It's death by a thousand scratches why I stopped playing FM3. As it stands right now GT5 has it's first scratch. I really hope the racing is rock solid.

I didn't mean to go off on a rant there but I guess I needed to get this out.

 

[Tenacious D]

For now, a step across is about all we can count on. Welcome, by the way.

 

[HLRJigsaw]

For now, a step across is about all we can count on. Welcome, by the way.

Thanks!
Something else that would help is a solid community. I've been on these forums for a while now. The best I can see is this is a great community.

I'm not trying to hyjack the thread.

In last years E3 if you remember. Dan G had stated that Turn Ten also had help from other MS partners on how to wring the most they could out of the 360. I think you'll notice that the scenery has a real Halo feel to it. At least thats what I see.

 

[Hun200kmh]

I'm a bit of all three.

Does that make me "bi"?

No, that makes you a "tri"!

 

[alba]

I'm what they call an... enthusiast. I've been called a fanboy on the gtp live chat though so yeah!

 

[SuperCobraJet]

I would say there are 3 groups:

Racers
Ricers
Collectors

Racers honestly don't care about graphics much at all, they really want the action

Ricers are graphics whores

Collectors are obsessive compulsive types that want as much as they can get

All groups probably have a good deal of overlap but honestly I would say 80-90% of GTP falls mostly into the ricer category.

Very interesting observation there Double D. Oops, make that Triple D.

Racer, numero uno here.
The other two are down there somewhere on a lower tier.

 

[cjmodiano]

I'd rather have moderate interiors than no interiors at all. Oh, GT is so damn beautiful that there's no way they would insult themselves by putting in not totally beautiful interiors?....well... then... explain standard cars!!

GT lead on and let its fans down on this one BIG TIME.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

well... then... explain standard cars!!

As has been said, PD found the limitations of th PS3 in rendering those 200 cars. I'm not sure the console can handle 1000 of them.

 

[The_Paladin]

As has been said, PD found the limitations of th PS3 in rendering those 200 cars. I'm not sure the console can handle 1000 of them.

Who said that? because is pure BS, the console doesnt draw all the cars at the same time, at max its going to draw 16 of them at once. There simply no limitation that doesnt let you have X number of cars in the disc, there it doesnt matter if the model is 4k or 400k polygon.

The true is PD went for so much obsesive detail in their cars that they went out of time, this is a text book example of the "perfection is an enemy of the good work" .

 

[Devedander]

As has been said, PD found the limitations of th PS3 in rendering those 200 cars. I'm not sure the console can handle 1000 of them.

Chalkin this up to another user who doens't really understand how things work...

No offense but I really wish those who didn't really know what they are talking about would be a little more reserved with their opinions and contributions.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Who said that?

Kaz. He said that in modelling the interiors of the cars, he found the limits of the system. I think he may have actually be referring to the Blu-ray disc rather than the actual PS3. After all, space on a disc is a finite resource. A lot of things have been said, so Kaz's exact words have been muddied a little, but the general idea is that they only included two hundred premium cars because they physically could not get all one thousand done.

And even if they could get all one thousand modelled, it would add years to the development time with all the other features Polyphony wanted to include in the game. They obviously weren't willing to cut day/night transitions and photo mode or the online stuff or anything else they've introuced for the sake of getting all one thousand interiors modelled.