Polyphony Digital Hires Ex-Ridge Racer Director for UX Design

Both are Ridge Racer originals. Left is an Assoluto Bisonte with the RT Solvalou paintjob and a Terrazi Troop with a Pac Racing Club livery.

Ah, that's why.
I've never played Ridge Racer, so that's why I didn't know them.
Thank you.
 
Ah, that's why.
I've never played Ridge Racer, so that's why I didn't know them.
Thank you.
Ridge Racer is filled with fictional cars, but they are so-well designed. There is only one real-life car in the series so far, though, based on a Honda NSX, but has the design of one of the cars in the game, the Soldat Raggio.

Imagine if GT7 gets any Ridge Racer influences for its game mechanics and design. I would sure love a UI based on Ridge Racer 7.
 
UI sure, UX not really.

I don't get why we need to click 3 or 4 times, with small load times, if we're in a dealership and just want to go to the home page (we have no other option than to go to the home page really), click 1 to go back to the manufactured menu, 2 to the region, 3 to the world and 4 to finally go to the home page.

Same if you're in a Career event / race. Makes no sense. "Hold circle" function would be much better.

Not to mention the livery editor...

Would be great to have instant menus in the next GT though. Judging by the performance info and demonstrations we saw last week, it shouldn't be a problem.

If there's something I miss from the old games are the instant menu navigation. :D


Last kinda instant menus were in the first Gran Turismo. Others had loads of loadings between screens. I would love to have this back. Even if it would meant less nice background imagery.


Ridge Racer is filled with fictional cars, but they are so-well designed. There is only one real-life car in the series so far, though, based on a Honda NSX, but has the design of one of the cars in the game, the Soldat Raggio.

Imagine if GT7 gets any Ridge Racer influences for its game mechanics and design. I would sure love a UI based on Ridge Racer 7.


Almost all cars in Ridge Racers (and Rage Racer) were based off a real life car (or cars)
 
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As long as it's... Ridge Racer Type 4.That game had a sexy UI, the music, beats. Not to mention that intro.. I wouldn't mind if PD went in that direction a tiny bit (from an aesthetic perspective), make it more personal. That was the first game I played back then where you pick a race team, take on other teams/manufacturers etc. Maybe.. this is giving us a hint in the direction of Gran Turismo 7! maybe!
 
In general the UI is excellent. Slick & fast.

My big complaint is the livery discover section and applying liveries themselves. It’s silly all the latest liveries, or indeed the top rated liveries, for an individual model aren’t all listed on one scrolling page. Likewise, we should be able to change livery when at a track.
 
The current UI/UX can be considered "functional" at best.
  • The cluttered and non-intuitive home screen layout. 90% of the home screen real-estate is dedicated to random human achievements, notable historical moments, and advertising in game scapes rather than showing me the cars in my garage that I love, my own scapes photos, or better yet directing me to the things I want to do in game like race, buy cars, or view my garage. Nobody cares about the Y2K bug in 2019.
  • The "recommended cars" screen being the default car selection, with no way of customizing the list by favoriting garage cars
  • The slow loading of menus and the fact that you have to wait so long to get into and out of sport mode and brand central
  • That brand central defaults to a dynamic scene that takes 7 seconds to load instead of the quick loading studio scene. It'd be nice if I could change the default to the studio scene
  • The search feature of "Discover" is awful.
  • That I have to select a photo/livery to see whether I've already liked it or not in "Discover". Makes finding 1000 liveries to "like" tedious.
  • Inability to control camera in brand central studio scene
  • Inability to change a car livery or view a car's appearance without "getting in it" first or loading the livery editor
  • Inability to change a car livery anywhere in a race
  • Being forced to exit out of a qualifying time trial to change a car
  • Being forced to exit out of a time trial if I want to change the tune of a car such that it is in another "class"
  • No record-keeping of conditions during fastest lap. Actual horsepower, car weight, tuning options, tire choices, weather conditions, penalty options, etc are all left out- only the wildly varying car class and whether BoP was enabled.
  • Inconsistent reconnection behavior after suspending PS4. Selecting some menu options will automatically reconnect, some will prompt you to reconnect manually, and others will just kick you back to the main screen. Why not just always automatically reconnect?
  • That I can sort by "date acquired" in the garage but I can never view when I acquired a car
  • That I can't sort by car value in the garage
  • That there is no filter or sort for "purchased" and "gift" cars, just a tiny pink icon.
  • There's no indication that a car is a duplicate in the garage
  • The arcade-like "performance" chart for cars that is useless
  • Replays forget the time diff between cars
  • Forcing me to choose automatic or manual before every single race. It's always the same!
  • Lack of independently customizable rear-view camera height
  • Inability to control replay playback with controller buttons, specifically stepping forward and backwards
  • No MFD options or display of vital car settings like brake balance in VR
  • No indication that DRS/KERS is available or deployed in VR
  • The inability to view splits in VR after a session
  • You can't "Adjust Cockpit View" in VR. You have to exit out and start a standard session in order to access this option
  • Inability to customize the HUD, such as disabling the recommended gear indicator or the floating Player names in sport mode
Hopefully bringing a very experienced and proven UI/UX designer on board will mean GTP will be slightly less salty during the next era of PD offerings.
 
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Last kinda instant menus were in the first Gran Turismo. Others had loads of loadings between screens. I would love to have this back. Even if it would meant less nice background imagery.





Almost all cars in Ridge Racers (and Rage Racer) were based off a real life car (or cars)
GT Sport should just have the Top Screen menu shows the "Arcade", "Campaign", etc. in any menu the player's in, not only in home screen.

The current UI/UX can be considered "functional" at best.
  • The cluttered and non-intuitive home screen layout. 90% of the home screen real-estate is dedicated to random human achievements, notable historical moments, and advertising in game scapes rather than showing me the cars in my garage that I love, my own scapes photos, or better yet directing me to the things I want to do in game like race, buy cars, or view my garage. Nobody cares about the Y2K bug in 2019.
  • The "recommended cars" screen being the default car selection, with no way of customizing the list by favoriting garage cars
  • The slow loading of menus and the fact that you have to wait so long to get into and out of sport mode and brand central
  • That brand central defaults to a dynamic scene that takes 7 seconds to load instead of the quick loading studio scene. It'd be nice if I could change the default to the studio scene
  • The search feature of "Discover" is awful.
  • That I have to select a photo/livery to see whether I've already liked it or not in "Discover". Makes finding 1000 liveries to "like" tedious.
  • Inability to control camera in brand central studio scene
  • Inability to change a car livery or view a car's appearance without "getting in it" first or loading the livery editor
  • Inability to change a car livery anywhere in a race
  • Being forced to exit out of a qualifying time trial to change a car
  • Being forced to exit out of a time trial if I want to change the tune of a car such that it is in another "class"
  • No record-keeping of conditions during fastest lap. Actual horsepower, car weight, tuning options, tire choices, weather conditions, penalty options, etc are all left out- only the wildly varying car class and whether BoP was enabled.
  • Inconsistent reconnection behavior after suspending PS4. Selecting some menu options will automatically reconnect, some will prompt you to reconnect manually, and others will just kick you back to the main screen. Why not just always automatically reconnect?
  • That I can sort by "date acquired" in the garage but I can never view when I acquired a car
  • That I can't sort by car value in the garage
  • That there is no filter or sort for "purchased" and "gift" cars, just a tiny pink icon.
  • There's no indication that a car is a duplicate in the garage
  • The arcade-like "performance" chart for cars that is useless
  • Replays forget the time diff between cars
  • Forcing me to choose automatic or manual before every single race. It's always the same!
  • Lack of independently customizable rear-view camera height
  • Inability to control replay playback with controller buttons, specifically stepping forward and backwards
  • No MFD options or display of vital car settings like brake balance in VR
  • No indication that DRS/KERS is available or deployed in VR
  • The inability to view splits in VR after a session
  • You can't "Adjust Cockpit View" in VR. You have to exit out and start a standard session in order to access this option
  • Inability to customize the HUD, such as disabling the recommended gear indicator or the floating Player names in sport mode
Hopefully bringing a very experienced and proven UI/UX designer on board will mean GTP will be slightly less salty during the next era of PD offerings.
Nostalgia filter; any things in the past are automatically flawless without bad trait. While the present thing is completely horrible.
 
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Nostalgia filter; any things in the past are automatically flawless without bad trait. While the present thing is completely horrible.

Sorry, but no. Not a single issue I listed with the current, "functional" UI/UX draws a comparison with a previous installment or even another game. It is a list of objective criticisms and issues.

My hope that upcoming installments will be better has naught to do with the hired designer's prior work and all to do with the fact that they have a dedicated designer, which may prevent future design flaws.
 
Could someone get me up to speed with some examples of this designer's UI work? I've been told some of his best work was in Ridge Racer 7. At any rate, I'd like some more tangible reasons to be excited for this guy joining PD. (I do really like the way the menus look in the series - at least from what I can see in some Google searching - but I'd like some more specific examples of his work that people especially like.)
 
Could someone get me up to speed with some examples of this designer's UI work? I've been told some of his best work was in Ridge Racer 7. At any rate, I'd like some more tangible reasons to be excited for this guy joining PD. (I do really like the way the menus look in the series - at least from what I can see in some Google searching - but I'd like some more specific examples of his work that people especially like.)

GT5 Prologue actually copied some menu cut scene from Ridge Racer 7, the New Car acquired scene which was very cool.
 
GT5 Prologue actually copied some menu cut scene from Ridge Racer 7, the New Car acquired scene which was very cool.
Were there any YouTube vids of that?

I also liked the music that played for buying cars in the PS2-era, as well as both GT5 themes, and the pre-patch GTS one. I wonder if there could be a way to assign a car-motif to each one?
 
Were there any YouTube vids of that?

I also liked the music that played for buying cars in the PS2-era, as well as both GT5 themes, and the pre-patch GTS one. I wonder if there could be a way to assign a car-motif to each one?

Yeah, there are very similar. I think it inspired GT5 Prologue.

Ridge Racer 7 Car intro


GT5 Prologue
 
The current UI/UX can be considered "functional" at best.
  • The cluttered and non-intuitive home screen layout. 90% of the home screen real-estate is dedicated to random human achievements, notable historical moments, and advertising in game scapes rather than showing me the cars in my garage that I love, my own scapes photos, or better yet directing me to the things I want to do in game like race, buy cars, or view my garage. Nobody cares about the Y2K bug in 2019.
  • The "recommended cars" screen being the default car selection, with no way of customizing the list by favoriting garage cars
  • The slow loading of menus and the fact that you have to wait so long to get into and out of sport mode and brand central
  • That brand central defaults to a dynamic scene that takes 7 seconds to load instead of the quick loading studio scene. It'd be nice if I could change the default to the studio scene
  • The search feature of "Discover" is awful.
  • That I have to select a photo/livery to see whether I've already liked it or not in "Discover". Makes finding 1000 liveries to "like" tedious.
  • Inability to control camera in brand central studio scene
  • Inability to change a car livery or view a car's appearance without "getting in it" first or loading the livery editor
  • Inability to change a car livery anywhere in a race
  • Being forced to exit out of a qualifying time trial to change a car
  • Being forced to exit out of a time trial if I want to change the tune of a car such that it is in another "class"
  • No record-keeping of conditions during fastest lap. Actual horsepower, car weight, tuning options, tire choices, weather conditions, penalty options, etc are all left out- only the wildly varying car class and whether BoP was enabled.
  • Inconsistent reconnection behavior after suspending PS4. Selecting some menu options will automatically reconnect, some will prompt you to reconnect manually, and others will just kick you back to the main screen. Why not just always automatically reconnect?
  • That I can sort by "date acquired" in the garage but I can never view when I acquired a car
  • That I can't sort by car value in the garage
  • That there is no filter or sort for "purchased" and "gift" cars, just a tiny pink icon.
  • There's no indication that a car is a duplicate in the garage
  • The arcade-like "performance" chart for cars that is useless
  • Replays forget the time diff between cars
  • Forcing me to choose automatic or manual before every single race. It's always the same!
  • Lack of independently customizable rear-view camera height
  • Inability to control replay playback with controller buttons, specifically stepping forward and backwards
  • No MFD options or display of vital car settings like brake balance in VR
  • No indication that DRS/KERS is available or deployed in VR
  • The inability to view splits in VR after a session
  • You can't "Adjust Cockpit View" in VR. You have to exit out and start a standard session in order to access this option
  • Inability to customize the HUD, such as disabling the recommended gear indicator or the floating Player names in sport mode
Hopefully bringing a very experienced and proven UI/UX designer on board will mean GTP will be slightly less salty during the next era of PD offerings.
I just select "Manual" once, from the options screen, before I started my initial time on a circuit and haven't been prompted since.
 
Yeah, there are very similar. I think it inspired GT5 Prologue.

Ridge Racer 7 Car intro


GT5 Prologue

Definitely would want more real car sequences like that. Including the GT Auto animations (that isn't in GT6)
But as like for the latter, it can slow down the game...
 
There was something that did stick out to me about RR7, at least when I played the demo once. It was how some vehicles had different HUDs. I think this could be real neat for GT, especially if it was combined with an idea I had - that is, to make controller mapping on a car-by-car basis (and thus, allowing clutch to be mapped to a button, ala Forza), have the unit readout depend on the vehicle (e.g. Nissan GT-R Premium Edition having imperial units, being a USDM model) and to make transmissions fused to a car, rather than a switchable option in menus. That last idea would basically encompass the options you can see in GTS when changing the transmission part; for example, the Honda Fit's full customize part is still listed as an automatic, even if you've set the transmission to manual, and I'd want the transmissions to be dependent on the car's model rather than the player's discretion, especially when newer automatics can sometimes shift better than a human.

IMO this could be better than something simpler, like changing the color of the HUD. But I think that like RR7, having multiple generalized HUD designs for particular types of vehicles would potentially be better development-wise than having an individual skeuomorphic HUD for every single car. But then again, PD would likely have the in-car displays already photographed. scanned, or otherwise on file, so I could see individualized HUDs being part of the view when you're not using the cockpit camera.
 
I agree the games UI looks great but there are soooooooo many unnecessary button presses. Some more shortcuts would solve most of them, especially if they added them to the top left home menu so you could jump from anywhere in game.
The one that drives me crazy is if your offline for whatever reason you have to accept the;

“your not connected to the internet blah blah blah yes I’m not reading this any more just go way already”

Message, about 1000 times after every menu selection :lol:.
 

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