Q&A with Slightly Mad Studios: Ian Bell [Read OP]

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I was looking through this list of Gran Turismo 6 cars with "adaptive tessellation". The ones marked with 4 stars apparently are fully (100%) adapted, at least according to the thread creator. The Dodge Viper GTS '13 and Bugatti Veyron 16.4 '13 are considered 4 stars. Not surprisingly, both of these vehicles are confirmed in one of the latest GT Sport videos. They made the successful leap from PS3 to PS4.

It makes me wonder if SMS has plans to keep their more important cars ready for next gen (P Cars 3). It's not to say that they would be forever future proof, but it seems a waste to leap a generation only to lose your hard work.
 
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Just a thought - this console generation shift, whenever it happens, will still be behind current top end gaming PCs. Given that pCARS(x) will be built with that generation of PC as the ultimate target, I'm personally not worried about it being able to exploit console generation (x) to the fullest.
 
I recall KazunorI making a big fuss over adaptive tessellation, stating the cars could be future proof. I'm not sure how accurate he was in that assertion.

Tessellation is no silver bullet. First of all, it only concerns existing geometry, it does nothing for textures, shaders, or any effects the cars use, and if some small detail is not modeled at all for any reason, tessellation won't make it magically appear later. Second, the complete car models have to be built with tessellation in mind from the beginning, otherwise the end result after tessellation have been applied won't look correct. Finally, the cars use many different meshes and if they are accurate as well (like the collision mesh have to be), then they may still need updating for each title, so they match the mesh constantly modified by the adaptive tessellation. In short, procedural generation of any kind for games usually only looks so great on paper.

Personally, I don't see the appeal of it for racing games at all, at least as far as the cars are concerned. In most cases extremely detailed CAD data is available for artists anyway, which help cut down the modeling work (it's still a lot of man hours though), so it's probably far better to approximate them more and more closely. There's no need for 100% parity either, we are already fairly close to the point where cars in sims are hard to distinguish from their real counterpart as far as geometry goes. Mostly what's missing is modelling the not always visible elements in the same detail, which isn't done today for optimization, but in maybe 5 years, I really think we'll have completely photorealistic cars in every minute detail, even with completely dynamic lighting.
 
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Rumors say next gen might begin next year: Will the car models from Project Cars 2 be transferrable to the next gen?

I recall KazunorI making a big fuss over adaptive tessellation, stating the cars could be future proof. I'm not sure how accurate he was in that assertion.

Yes. We are now at the polycount that adding more polygons gives us no discernible benefit. Improving texture resolution and material details is fairly easy (the former at least is just a new export).
 
Hi @IanBell I had a look through the thread an couldn't see anyone who has asked you these question, but its regarding cautions during the race, especially online races in an championship. I do understand if you can't answer these questions.

1. Will the yellow flag be removed when someone quits or is disconnected from an race, its quite frustrating to hear "caution yellow flag" when there is nothing there.

2. In the yellow flag sections will we be forced to go at an certain speed and also not overtake

3. If a major crash happens will there be an safety car period or something similar like a full course yellow

4. Will the flag indicator lights work at Le Mans
 
Hi Ian/The American

Just had a quick question about endurance events. Will there be minimum driver times in the single player campaign?

The reason that I ask is it seems strange to ask players to drive the full distance (single handily) of say a 24 hour race. Appreciate that you can bring the duration down to two hours with the sliders, but I wanted to get your opinion on a thought I had.

For example, if there were a 8 hour maximum time limit for drive time in a 24 hour event (split between the player and two AI team-mates), you could drive your stint and switch to the AI driver which would then play out like a skippable cutscene, or cut to spectator mode like the current system. If you wanted to get back into the action, you could skip through the AI's stint and get back in the car at their last pit stop.

Think this would make endurance races feel more real, and the AI drivers you would be partnered with may have different attributes (such as preferences to driving at night, poor weather etc). Looking at the forecast for the event, you could plan a strategy to say the player would start the race with a triple stint and then switch to the an AI driver who prefers to drive at night.

Thanks for taking the time to read my question.
 
Hi @IanBell I had a look through the thread an couldn't see anyone who has asked you these question, but its regarding cautions during the race, especially online races in an championship. I do understand if you can't answer these questions.

1. Will the yellow flag be removed when someone quits or is disconnected from an race, its quite frustrating to hear "caution yellow flag" when there is nothing there.

2. In the yellow flag sections will we be forced to go at an certain speed and also not overtake

3. If a major crash happens will there be an safety car period or something similar like a full course yellow

4. Will the flag indicator lights work at Le Mans
About 2 and 3, The American said that we have a Code 60 style system for road/street circuits and on the ovals, it's the same but they bunch up.
 
Hi @IanBell
Will each car in it's class have their own characteristics as their real life counterparts? GT3 for example - Will the Nissan GTR GT3 have it's strength down the straight and some of the other GT3 cars will have their strength in the corners?
 
Hi @IanBell
Will each car in it's class have their own characteristics as their real life counterparts? GT3 for example - Will the Nissan GTR GT3 have it's strength down the straight and some of the other cars will have their strength in the corners?

Weird question. I believe they are trying to recreate each of real cars individually, not the whole class. So if the simulation is good and the recreation is faithfull and based on real data, then each car should have it's own characteristic similar to real counterpart.
 
No offline championships at this time guys. I brought up the idea to "fill w/AI" the online championships but it is something we/SMS only briefly discussed. Mandatory pitstop is available offline.

No custom offline championships...what??! This is the one feature i want,as do a lot of people.

Why is custom offline chanpionships such a taboo thing in console racers....Assetto doesnt have this yet either.
 
No offline championships...what??! This is the one feature i want,as do a lot of people.

Why is offline chanpionships such a taboo thing in console racers....Assetto doesnt have this yet either.
Assetto doesn't have a lot of things. :lol::lol:

In all seriousness, i'm surprised as well. However, there are reasons for it and I appreciate that.
 
Assetto doesn't have a lot of things. :lol::lol:

In all seriousness, i'm surprised as well. However, there are reasons for it and I appreciate that.

What is the reasons? Surely it cant be that hard to put the option in....a feature of sim racing should be being to tailor your championship experience.
 
What is the reasons? Surely it cant be that hard to put the option in....a feature of sim racing should be being to tailor your championship experience.
I'd say it's likely they want players to experience the career championships, seeing as they've put a load of work into them, probably the core of the game to the devs. I'm hopeful they'll give us custom championships a few months after release. It's what I want very much as well.
 
IndyCar is listed on the website. They'll announce it officially later. Maybe sometime in May?

I know the official Indycar license is there.... I am curious as how if it is really incorporated in to the game not just an afterthought..... But those 900 HP Champcars !!!
 
I know the official Indycar license is there.... I am curious as how if it is really incorporated in to the game not just an afterthought..... But those 900 HP Champcars !!!
They'll release whatever information they have when they want to. ;)
 
So many people saying they want custom offline championships.
AC has this, at least on the PC version, and I put up a poll to see how many people use it.
So far the poll has 5 votes, 3 no and 2 yes.

Perhaps it's because so many people only use AC as a hotlap simulator?
 
So many people saying they want custom offline championships.
AC has this, at least on the PC version, and I put up a poll to see how many people use it.
So far the poll has 5 votes, 3 no and 2 yes.

Perhaps it's because so many people only use AC as a hotlap simulator?
The issue with AC is:
-The AI is not very good
-There's no official leaderboards (console version)
-There's no Championship mode on consoles yet...

I love AC physics, but the game is undercutting over the PC version. There isn't features so basics as leaderboards or custom mapping...

For me, I would love the offline Championship on PC2!
 
Good one :)

Joking aside. It's a new tyre model, new diff model, new throttle model and it's all being polished nicely. I couldn't resist having a jab at your wonderfully worded (but as a subtext) list of statements that pCARS1 was off in most tyre areas.

It wasn't. We had a camber bug which is fixed in the new model and we had an initial issue on wet tyres/dry track that was fixed around patch 4.
Well, just a few days ago I tried the Lotus 72 on a thunderstormy Watkins Glen and I was a hell of a lot quicker (around 5-7 seconds) when I used dry tyres instead of wet ones. But maybe that's because aquaplaning isn't simulated in PC1?
 
Yes. We are now at the polycount that adding more polygons gives us no discernible benefit. Improving texture resolution and material details is fairly easy (the former at least is just a new export).
I don't remember clearly, but didn't pcars 1 had many LOD for cars, including a LOD X, which was meant to be used exclusively for the Garage / Car selection, but not in race ? That would mean the asset are already future proof on that front.
 
So far, the only thing we do know about Australia is, no new Australian tracks. We may get more Supercars(don't quote me on that)- we'll have to wait for the car list.
If we get any Australian thing, it will be Supercars. Especially with Nissan on board.
 
I don't remember clearly, but didn't pcars 1 had many LOD for cars, including a LOD X, which was meant to be used exclusively for the Garage / Car selection, but not in race ? That would mean the asset are already future proof on that front.

Yes. I think PC used LODX on track however.
 
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