Project Gotham Racing 3: Crowd Control

[Red Cloak]

X360 Final Kits once again showing their muscle. From Bizzare's 12th game update.

Remember; the following screenshot is just a test, and not representative of the crowd size which will be present in the final build of PGR3. There won't be 35,000 spectators per corner in the finished game... we want to have other objects in the game as well! Winking Smiley This was just a test to show how crazy our crowd rendering system is. You can still expect many thousands (yes, thousands) of spectators per track... but the full game running with 35,000 might be pushing it a bit!

This is just a single corner. It's ridiculous; that's a helluva lot of people! The most remarkable thing to me was that this was all running at the game's normal frame rate. Not a bit of slowdown. It takes a while for our expectations to adjust to the "next generation" of video games, but I suppose things like this are what we will be seeing from now on... (!)

Seeing all of these virtual spectators shuffling around and waving their arms is a memorable sight. In the newer builds of the game some of the crowd have cameras, and if they're a few rows back you can see them holding it above their head before taking the photo. They've even got a flash! Remember all of these guys, gals, and even children are motion captured for extra realism.

What you can't see here are the extra details added around the courses to make things seem more "lifelike". There's ambient traffic, camera crews, racing teams (complete with huge big rigs), massive spectator stands, etc. etc. In fact, if you look carefully, you'll be able to see some Bizarre Creations staff members skulking around in the masses. There are also some Bizarre t-shirts in there too...

Link to Bizzare Creations (http://www.bizarreonline.net/index.php?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=53)

[kokyunage]

I say replace anyone behind the first two rows with sprites and use the spare polygons somewhere else.

[TheEpicOfTyler]

I say put them ON the track and incorporate Havok physics.

[TheKeck]

I say stop developing racing games and spend the money on genres I enjoy.

[Rirath]

I say it looks just like a real crowd... if everyone wore mono-color shirts and was made up of a handful of polys, with eerily bright faces. Funny, though... now impress me with the actual game.

(Obligatory Penny Arcade)
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2005-09-12

[jacktion]

Are these polygonal? The faces look like sprites or something. Is the body polygonal with a real picture of a face pasted on? Something ain't right.
Pretty damn impressive though.

[civx]

Good thing having lots of people in a crowd fixes the gameplay. I was worried there for a minute.

[snubber]

I'd be more impressed if it didn't look like a collage done by a 2nd grader. It looks like someone just snipped heads out of a magazine with safety scissors and then glued them to bodies cut out of construction paper. Wowzers!

[civx]

I'd be more impressed if it didn't look like a collage done by a 2nd grader. It looks like someone just snipped heads out of a magazine with safety scissors and then glued them to bodies cut out of construction paper. Wowzers!

BUT THERE ARE 35,000 OF THEM YOU SHOULD BE AMAZED THIS IS THE NEXT GENERATION OK

[Hizawky]

BUT THERE ARE 35,000 OF THEM YOU SHOULD BE AMAZED THIS IS THE NEXT GENERATION OK


That zombie game with 1,000 zombies on screen makes me excited. Having 35,000 pieces of code pretend to watch me race? Not so exciting.

[GrinR]

Congratulations for finally applying technological power to even nicer graphics that have absolutely nothing to do with gameplay. Too long has power been wasted on making 1990's gameplay look better without changing a thing! I look forward to crowds of thousands who are completely non-interactive!

Hopefully sometime soon we can just throw away our controllers and just watch the pretty graphics in real-time rendering!

[Rirath]

That zombie game with 1,000 zombies on screen makes me excited. Having 35,000 pieces of code pretend to watch me race? Not so exciting.

Exciting indeed, especially the out-there gameplay of both action/survival AND some weird Pokemon Snap-esque photography gamepaly.

[RandomViolence]

Nnnnrrrggh... I want me some next gen right now...

I know it's a sequel... it's not new gameplay. I'm betting there aren't even going to be that many new cars between 2 and 3. Somehow, though... I need this game. This and Oblivion could keep me sealed in a room until 2006.

PGR (and Ninja Gaiden, too for that matter) embody a certain style of game that I've decided I love to death. It's the "I'm gonna kick you in the balls until you do it right" style. I miss some of those older games that wouldn't fucking relent until you perfected it. It can seem like an artificial way to inflate game length to some, but that's what easier difficulties are for. Getting gold medals in PGR takes fucking perfection, and that's the sort of challenge I really thrive on sometimes.

[Offworlder]

Oy.

Well, unlike the twittering naysayers, I find this stuff interesting. It's a TEST. It isn't supposed to look great. It's so the devs can get an idea of what their limitations are.

The fact that they're able to put 35,000 animating 3D characters on the screen without flinching the frame rate is pretty impressive. While I'm sure the amount of spectators in the background will probably not have an enormous impact on PG3, it bodes well for the tech and it's nice of Bizarre Creations to share it with us.

[Rirath]

The fact that they're able to put 35,000 animating 3D characters on the screen without flinching the frame rate is pretty impressive. While I'm sure the amount of spectators in the background will probably not have an enormous impact on PG3, it bodes well for the tech and it's nice of Bizarre Creations to share it with us.

Tech demos can do a lot of funny and funky stuff with good frame rates that we'll never actually see. Ever seen the tech demos that come with the standard next gen video card? When have you ever seen a game that looks like them within the same generation?

Same deal with most the tech demos shown at E3... Even the ones that were real time really have nothing to do with what the tech can actually do, unless we're just watching movies now. It's the same as going into your favorite FPS/RPG/whatever and summoning monsters until the game crashes or your cpu/gpu bogs down. No point, no real results... just amusing.

[Orphiuchus]

I've always hated the way that no matter how good a racing game looked, all the spectators were just cardboard cutouts. This is a big plus for me.

[The Radical Cleric]

Somehow, though... I need this game. This and Oblivion could keep me sealed in a room until 2006.

Wow! A whole month? :eek:




:D

[EvilBob46]

Red Cloak must seriously be working for Microsoft. EVERY SINGLE one of his threads praises the Xbox to no end or pisses on Sony. Behold the power of the final kits! Sony loses developer X, another Japanese developer jumps ship! Sony in bed with GameSpot! Blah blah blah

While those comments, often blown out of proportion and obviously biased one way, are annoying, the incorrect information he has spread take the cake. Especially how he embarrassed Evil Avatar by spreading a rumor suggesting that the PS3 nVidia GPU is less powerful than the 7800 because he was too **** to read a fucking quote from a magazine or just skimmed over it in his fandom without actually trying to r-e-a-d t-h-e w-o-r-d-s.

Just a rant on my part, take it as you will.

[Zanzibar]

Are these polygonal? The faces look like sprites or something. Is the body polygonal with a real picture of a face pasted on? Something ain't right.
Pretty damn impressive though.

They look polygonal but without goraud shading on them. They basically look unlit save for a single light value being passed to each character. Still probably 400-500 polys per character. If the goraud shading were applied to all of them, I think it would slow down quite a bit, but if they only did it for the ones in the first 50 feet or so...

Sorry, you naysayers, it's damned impressive. Picture watching the White City battle from Lord of the Rings with this many characters onscreen for your background.

[RandomViolence]

Wow! A whole month? :eek:




:D


Bitch. A month and a half of 16 hour-a-day gaming is a lot!



Leave me alone!

*cries*

[Murmillo]

I say replace anyone behind the first two rows with sprites and use the spare polygons somewhere else.

The crowd ARE the spare polygons.

[Evil Dude]

I hope it got something to do with pgr3 spetactor mode where other player could login and spectate a race and you are one of the dude in the crowd. You could have custom face also, taken with the xb360 camera.

Now that would be next gen to me...otherwise, meh...

[RandomViolence]

Red Cloak must seriously be working for Microsoft. EVERY SINGLE one of his threads praises the Xbox to no end or pisses on Sony. Behold the power of the final kits! Sony loses developer X, another Japanese developer jumps ship! Sony in bed with GameSpot! Blah blah blah

While those comments, often blown out of proportion and obviously biased one way, are annoying, the incorrect information he has spread take the cake. Especially how he embarrassed Evil Avatar by spreading a rumor suggesting that the PS3 nVidia GPU is less powerful than the 7800 because he was too **** to read a fucking quote from a magazine or just skimmed over it in his fandom without actually trying to r-e-a-d t-h-e w-o-r-d-s.

Just a rant on my part, take it as you will.

fuk yuo, sony spamboi!!11 yuo r tying to kepe teh 360 down n makes us teh sorny beleevars!111FRAGGLE

[Thenetcase]

I say stop developing racing games and spend the money on genres I enjoy.

I say you're a freakin' moron.

-TNC-

[Deadend]

How many can they shove in there with lighting effects?

[The Radical Cleric]

:D :D :D

[Tyrant]

pfffft what kind of next gen shit iz this suposed ta be?!! they look liek ps1 characters!!!!! god, gt4 has better looking spectaters than this..

you know, whenever i play racing games, i drive as slowly as possible so that i can check out the crowds and bitch on message boards about how they should take their time and make awesomely realistic, animated ones cuz they're the fuckin core of the game.

[Eric_T_Cheng]

Will there be ragdoll physics for the crowd when the cars slam into the crowd?

[MasterKwan]

This along with DOA is one of my "must have at launch titles". I spent many an hour with PGR2 going for gold and I expect it to be just as fun in PGR3. I hope they model Nurbergring a little better. It wasn't bumpy enough in PGR2. I always wished they'd model some of the smaller east coast tracks too like VIR or even Summit point. I'd love to get some virtual practice in.

The only thing Xbox and 360 need are decent wheels and pedal. All the current wheels are just trash.

[Offworlder]

Tech demos can do a lot of funny and funky stuff with good frame rates that we'll never actually see. Ever seen the tech demos that come with the standard next gen video card? When have you ever seen a game that looks like them within the same generation?

True enough, but it is worth pointing out that this is not quite the same thing. Unlike one of those tech demo's with a cow dancing under disco lights, whipped up by the vid card manufacturer without concern for A.I. or user interface, this is a very simple test that some developer threw together in order to push the boundaries within their very functional game engine.

I'm not saying we should get all sweaty and hyperbolous. I just think it's sort of neat, and I can't for the life of me understand why it warrants any sort of negativity from anyone.

Then again, this is a forum on the internet. So clearly I'm insane.

[bapenguin]

I don't care...that's pretty friggin incredible. No piece of hardware right now can pull that off in real time....

[Zanzibar]

Then again, this is a forum on the internet. So clearly I'm insane.

Yoink!! Thank ye.

[Twigz'N'Berries]

Will there be ragdoll physics for the crowd when the cars slam into the crowd?
Now that is a good question. They better have blood smears for them too when you ram 'em.

[Twigz'N'Berries]

X360 Final Kits once again showing their muscle. From Bizzare's 12th game update.

http://www.bizarreonline.net/news/images/studioupdate/hugecrowd_full.jpg


Well, here is the PS3 Vision Gran Turismo crowds. At least some of them...sorry for the size.

(image removed due to complaints about its size)

[Paranoia]

8 awful looking crowd.

[phantomhitman]

thanks for shattering my monitor with that big ass pic you ass

gt4.5 5 vision whatever is not appeling to me anymore. I loved the gt series but it got boring. 3.5 million cars to choose from, 10 that I actually used or wanted. I can only hope the forza series can compete on the 360, or either they make the gt series look better. Give me more parts for my car, or custom stuff, not crowd that I will only see when I am bored out of my mind and drive slowly around the track backwards.

[score]

For the love of god. Will someone please fix the width of this article.

[MasterKwan]

My problem with Forza is they totally screwed up the brakes. They pretty much unusable without ABS. They're on or off. You're either locked up or they're doing nothing. Even PGR did a better job with the brakes. Tire modeling's kind of crappy too. Sure PGR's an arcade game in comparison still, they got the acceleration and braking down pretty well.

[GrinR]

Twigz N Berries vs This Thread

TWIGZ FTW!!!

[Twigz'N'Berries]

I took it out you whiny _____. Its one freaking page and it allowed you to compare the crowds. But since it got everyones' panties in a knicker, I took it out. Go look it up if you missed it.

GrinR, shouldn't you still be getting gangbanged on this forum regarding your stupid post about people who bought Steel Battalion. You f-n little troll...

[score]

I've been reading the preview for this in Edge and dribbling over the screen shots like everyone else but one thing puzzles me. So far in all the screenies the cars don't seem to reflect off each other but everything else reflects off them (clouds, buildings etc). Maybe its something they're going to be adding in closer to completion (if they haven't done already) but I'de prefer them to work on something like that than uber crowds of bystanders.

[Morratut]

Oy.

Well, unlike the twittering naysayers, I find this stuff interesting. It's a TEST. It isn't supposed to look great. It's so the devs can get an idea of what their limitations are.

The fact that they're able to put 35,000 animating 3D characters on the screen without flinching the frame rate is pretty impressive. While I'm sure the amount of spectators in the background will probably not have an enormous impact on PG3, it bodes well for the tech and it's nice of Bizarre Creations to share it with us.

Well said.

Your all a bit harsh. It's only Bizarre showing there thoughts and tests with us. It's interesting :)

[phantomhitman]

Its fine to show a test of what they could do but they did state that there would be thousands of spectators on each track regradless. It does add a little realism to the game, however, as everyone knows, there will be something wrong with the game. People will start pointing fingers saying they should have used more time and energy for the cars, menus, online options, or tracks rather than the crowd.....that is how it goes. I will still pick it up anyways :p

[Demo_Boy]

umm I dont see any actual cars in the shot.

So add what 8 cars to the scene, how many peds can they draw now? I'm thinking not so many.

Prove me wrong Bizzare!!!