lack of cars, tracks

[benjidordoni]

@The_Shadow_Edge

@benjidordoni

1. The old assets did not look that bad. GT is holding over models from the PS2 era. Forza’s models are still mostly from the X360 era. Pretty good in most respects.

That’s what you say now … and then we are five to eight years into the Xbox One lifespan and we start to see the disparities in quality that represent the different generations at which the models are derived; at which point, the decision to cut them will be all the same

In five to eight years’ time, there will be enough next-gen models that you won’t be slashing the car list by more than half. It’s pretty far from “all the same”.

@The_Shadow_Edge

@benjidordoni

2. The supposedly “new” assets that they’ve “rebuilt” have all of the same minor inaccuracies and paint glitches as the old ones. Sounds suspicious. Also, you can’t re-scan fantasy tracks… no excuse there other than time and effort.

Remodeling for the new generation quality standard does not mean that strange artifacts or inaccuracies are no longer present. It means the vehicle models have been reworked for higher polygonal depiction and sharper rendering under the capabilities of the new hardware. Any preexisting anomalies can easily stick around if the time is not available to identify and rework those models exclusively. Hence, I don’t believe we’ve ever seen the Turn 10 team use the clichéd “built from scratch” phrase.
As for tracks, you can indeed rescan fantasy tracks. The development team can use scanned assets from the real world to comprise a fictional environment. That is how we got Prague. Sure, the location of Prague is an actual place, but a good deal of the environment is the ingenious effort of the team to use real assets to build a fictional racing locale. If they want, they could scan a particular road surface, geography and architecture anywhere in the world and use it to create the fictional (yet laser scanned) representation of, say, Maple Valley. Either way, the theory for the vehicle models holds true for the tracks. Some of Forza Motorsport 4’s fantasy (and real) track models were nearing 10 years of age. Rather ancient in terms of gaming industry expectations.

“Forza Motorsport 5 is a cinematic automotive journey starring the world’s greatest cars and tracks. Built from the ground up to take advantage of Xbox One and the vast power of the cloud, no game better delivers the wide-eyed thrill of racing.”

Forza.net: The official home of Forza

“The pack features a collection of vehicles built from the ground up for the new generation that car fans can collect and customize while putting their virtual driving skills to the test.”

Forza Motorsport 5 Hot Wheels Car Pack Now Available - Xbox Wire

“When asked why Forza 5 is missing the iconic Nürburgring track, Greenawalt explains that the new graphics engine in Forza 5 necessitates that all tracks be rebuilt from scratch.”

Gaming and Video Game News & Reviews | Engadget

That’s just the first three results, man. I don’t know what sort of fantasy world you live in to claim otherwise.

If you really are updating a model, why would you skip over things like miscolored blinkers or wonky panel lines, especially if one of the selling points of your game was to have cars recreated in painstaking detail? The answer? You don’t. The models were not “rebuilt from scratch”, as Turn 10 really did claim. You claim that the anomalies were not fixed because time was not available, which matches my claim that they simply didn’t put the time and effort into it.

As for the tracks, Prague is a track that is in the game and original to it, and therefore is not one of the tracks I am referring to; tracks that did not use a laser-scanning method in their creation. Tracks like Fujimi and Camino Viejo were missed greatly. If Bernese Alps, a track introduced with the graphical standard of FM4 (!) could be re-created, why not the others, which arguably needed it more?

The issue boils down to future-proofing. If a developer that re-uses content realizes that said content is getting old, they should have a plan to replace it. T10 begins making their game for the next generation and set the bar very high, meaning they had nothing “future-proofed” according to that standard, so things that weren’t “improved” in time were dropped. I would rather see a developer plan for this in advance so that I don’t lose any content between Game A and Sequel B, because the old content from Game A has already been upgraded. That sounds way nicer than the content being gone from B only to reappear in sequel C.

[The_Shadow_Edge]

@benjidordoni

snipped

Fair enough and good work on the research. I did after all say “I believe” and not “I know for certain”.

All that aside, I stick to my aforementioned statement that I - a huge fan of the Gran Turismo franchise since its inception - have witnessed the downfalls associated with holding onto old assets and it isn’t pretty, neither graphically nor symbolically as a series once revered for its attention to detail.

Now that I am a Forza fanatic, I am thrilled to see Turn 10 go against what has seemingly become the grain in this small market of console racing sims and is forging an identity that embraces quality over quantity. In due time, the rosters of vehicles and tracks will be brought back to levels that will make even the virtual hoarders happy while establishing an assortment of assets that looks to be more diverse than ever before. Thankfully, with laser scanning now becoming the standard for these sorts of games, the need to rebuild from scratch should be alleviated, giving gamers a reason to find something else to complain about.

[benjidordoni]

@The_Shadow_Edge

@benjidordoni

snipped

Fair enough and good work on the research. I did after all say “I believe” and not “I know for certain”.

All that aside, I stick to my aforementioned statement that I - a huge fan of the Gran Turismo franchise since its inception - have witnessed the downfalls associated with holding onto old assets and it isn’t pretty, neither graphically nor symbolically as a series once revered for its attention to detail.

Now that I am a Forza fanatic, I am thrilled to see Turn 10 go against what has seemingly become the grain in this small market of console racing sims and is forging an identity that embraces quality over quantity. In due time, the rosters of vehicles and tracks will be brought back to levels that will make even the virtual hoarders happy while establishing an assortment of assets that looks to be more diverse than ever before. Thankfully, with laser scanning now becoming the standard for these sorts of games, the need to rebuild from scratch should be alleviated, giving gamers a reason to find something else to complain about.

Also fair enough. Opinions are opinions, after all.

Gran Turismo really is a sad story. After I got fed up with how FM5 was turning out I bought a PS3 and GT6 in protest, and found out they had things worse than we did, just in a different way. For the most part the Standard cars aren’t too bad, and a lot were given updated, “premium-level” exterior models, but every once in a while there are some that are so awful it does break immersion. But the real issue with GT is that Polyphony hardly ever communicates with their fanbase, even less than T10. And they rarely ever deliver on promises, like that cool track maker…

But that’s another story. I think FM will eventually be back to my standards, probably with FM6. But if anybody comes out beforehand saying that there’s now some new standard of graphical fidelity… I’ll just stick with Mario Kart.

[HLR_Mick]

One man’s ported is another man’s remodelled. The only assets in FM5 built from the ground up are the assets that are new to the franchise. A lot of stuff fell by the wayside, but the content and modules that made the cut were the most viable and/or design-prioritised ports from the parts bin. Game development is a business, not a playground. Of course they made maximum use of what they already had. Marketing spin is just that. Marketing spin.

[Furia636]

@WearyMick

One man’s ported is another man’s remodelled. The only assets in FM5 built from the ground up are the assets that are new to the franchise. A lot of stuff fell by the wayside, but the content and modules that made the cut were the most viable and/or design-prioritised ports from the parts bin. Game development is a business, not a playground. Of course they made maximum use of what they already had. Marketing spin is just that. Marketing spin.

Yeah I really doubt that every asset was rebuilt (as they said).

[The_Shadow_Edge]

@WearyMick

Of course they made maximum use of what they already had. Marketing spin is just that. Marketing spin.

In my years of marketing, I’m not sure what kind of “spin” is being made of taking out content to ensure it is of an adequate quality for the new generation of gaming. Turn 10 knew the risks of coming to the table with a smaller car and track count and did so anyways knowing full well it would be a benefit for the future of the franchise. That’s no “spin”, that’s ensuring a degree of consistency within your product.

Now, if you want a true example of marketing spin, again I refer you to a racing title I had spent thousands of hours playing long before Forza Motorsport was even a thing. Nowadays, Gran Turismo is still boasted as “the real driving simulator” having over 1,200 playable vehicles and an impressive count of racing circuits without ever mentioning that more than half of the game’s assets have been carried over from the Playstation 1 & 2 era and several date as far back as 1999 … before some of its current consumers were even a glimmer in their parent’s eyes. Now that is spin.

So, spout out catchy lingo like “spin” all day long; but, we are in a thread titled “lack of cars, tracks” and, as far as I am aware, no attempt to glorify - or “spin” - those counts being smaller than Forza Motorsport 4 have been made. In fact, most of the spin was in the heads of the posters of this very forum … anticipating Forza Motorsport 5 as having more content than its aged console predecessor which had accumulated 8 years of assets (some from the original Xbox days).

Anyhow, the proof is in the pudding and yes there can be a middle ground; not everything has to be so black or white, ported or rebuilt from scratch. There is such a thing as remodeling aging assets and it is being done. Then again, if you don’t personally see the difference in the vehicle and environment renderings between what we had on the Xbox 360 and what now exists on the Xbox One, there is just nothing that could possibly be done to convince you of the improvements. But, I guarantee that two or three titles from now as the series continues to become more visually impressive than it already is (just as things had progressed from Forza Motorsport 2 to 4), people would be crying foul on Turn 10 for charging its fans to pay its entry fee every two years for models of Xbox 360 quality. No doubt about it.