The mountain we're driving up is two kilometres high. In the distance, a patchy landscape of tea plantations and scrublands stretches out toward the horizon. Above us, bulbous clouds crawl by, scattering vast grey blankets of shadow.

The Audi R8 V10 weaves its way through snaking roads, the sun occasionally glinting across the windscreen, the crumbling surface almost palpable beneath the tyres. This is India, accurately and rather epically modelled into a racing game. At this height, at the very tip of the mountain range, the artists have had to think about the curvature of the Earth, and how this will affect sunlight and cloud patterns at the furthest reaches. This is where game visuals are going.

While we've known for months that DriveClub would take place in locations around the world, Evolution has only really showed Scotland so far – but while visiting the studio recently, we also caught glimpses of the impressive Canada and India environments. The art staff did what art staff do on racing games: they went on months of field trips to research architecture, geography and habitats; the difference is, the Evolution team seems to be trying to cram all of it into the game.

For each country, there are many miles of landscape, loaded with authentic local detail. Most of the circuits are inspired by real-life roads and the local street racing routes the researchers learned about. "All the detail we're putting in is equivalent to PC first-person shooters," says technical art director, Alex Perkins. "And then we're throwing a whole dynamic lighting system over the top."

As Perkins shows me the India circuit, he points out a drive along a river bed, through a valley of looming rock walls and out along a concrete overpass: "We've picked locations; and seasons that are indicative of the locations," he says. "I can think of three roads that we went along in this location that looked just like this; it's about capturing the soul of the roads and the networks". The seasonal element is important. Apparently, all the vegetation is accurate to the locations and the time of year – even the cloud movement is all real ("With summer clouds in the UK, the average lifespan is about eight minutes," Perkins points out nonchalantly at one point during the demo).

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Everything is then lit via a true 24-hour day/night system, rather than a baked in sequence of pre-set lighting changes. "We've developed our own capture technique so the lighting in shadow, the lighting in direct sunlight and the way the car highlights fall off over distance – they all maintain proper energy conservation values," says Perkins. "We had to redesign our entire materials system – how we actually collect the information; it's much closer to the process you'd have on a film set for compositing CG elements into a live action image."

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"None of the direct light or shade is faked anymore," says Perkins. "It's at the point where you can see things like dynamic lens flare when you look at the sun and you can see a bit of chromatic aberration because we're mimicking slightly cheaper film lenses to capture deliberate imperfections that will make the game more lifelike."

But there is more to it than simply making nice effects. It's about using environmental lighting to build atmosphere on a macro level. "One of the big things we're trying to do with the game, is to keep things as dynamic and changeable as possible," says Perkins. "The whole look and feel of the game changes dramatically based on the cloud covering – there's massive variation every time you play. And the light scatters properly, so when the clouds are injected into the scene, we get a real sense of scale."

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Car models too surpass anything Evolution has done before. While Motorstorm vehicles maxed out at around 23,000 polys each, DriveClub models are hitting 250,000, with interiors alone requiring around 60,000. Everything is authentic, from the fully functional speed and rev dials on the dashboard to the materials on the seats. Principle vehicle artist Neil Massam tells me that manufacturers are now having to rethink their approval procedures for racing games because the level of detail is so high.

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Kirkland is intrigued but reckons there's plenty of time to find that stuff. "You already have a lot of CPU power at your disposal," he says. "I think with many of the first generation PS4 titles, developers probably won't need to worry about it – they'll be able to get a lot out of parallelism across the CPU cores – but for teams who are a bit more ambitious, who want to do interesting things, it's just waiting there. We're doing some of that in DriveClub and I'm sure other guys will go further – and the platform guys will expose more of that functionality through the lifespan of the machine, unlocking more potential."

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MoeB said:

And it can all be yours for $399!

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The whole look and feel of the game changes dramatically based on the cloud covering – there's massive variation every time you play. And the light scatters properly, so when the clouds are injected into the scene, we get a real sense of scale."

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Beysus said:

With the game included?

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badcrumble said:

I wonder if it has the feel of 60fps.

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badcrumble said:

I wonder if it has the feel of 60fps.

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Beysus said:

With the game included?

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Grimløck;75230895 said:

Impressions still based off the E3 build? Evolution better bring the goods at Gamescom.

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Soul Destroyer said:

I'm really looking forward to DC. I think/hope evolution will have it nice and polished for release.

Plus I wanna play the Scotland track!

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Mik_Pad said:

Do we know the polycount of Forza 5 in game not autovista (I'm not sure if that's how it is called) models?

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Mik_Pad said:

Do we know the polycount of Forza 5 in game not autovista (I'm not sure if that's how it is called) models?

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Giant Panda said:

Evolution seriously sounds like an extremely inefficient studio. Some of the things they're doing are why game development costs are spiraling out of control. They are focusing on stupid shit like perfect star placement, exact cloud details, exact bolt placements, etc.

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King Beyond the wall said:

Drive club is free with playstation plus, so if you're a subscriber or will subscribe to PS+, then yes.

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Mik_Pad said:

Do we know the polycount of Forza 5 in game not autovista (I'm not sure if that's how it is called) models?

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schwabdizzle said:

I'll check out the Lite version on PS+ I doubt it will interest me since all sim racers are boring as shit. Maybe/Hopefully this will be different.

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GamerTime said:

I see a lot of wants, but what about FUN?

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The aim then, is authenticity but not simulation. "It sits in the middle between simulation and arcade," clarifies Rustchynsky. "It's grounded in realism, so the cars have a sense of weight, a tactile feel with the road, but we want to make sure it's easy to throw them around the corners, it's all about having fun with the cars. But there is a lot of depth – you want to shave milliseconds of your lap times, you can do that. But players can pick up the pad and hammer the throttle, the intricacies can be picked up later."

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SolidSnakex said:

It's not a sim racer. People that have played it have described it as feeling like PGR.

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SolidSnakex said:

It's not a sim racer. People that have played it have described it as feeling like PGR.

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The Omega Man said:

all those polys are nice and all but, what's the frame rate?
The guys who wrote the article couldn't ask that?

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SolidSnakex said:

Welcome to the world of a racing game developer. Nothing they're saying is out of place when it comes to that genre.

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nib95 said:

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King Beyond the wall said:

Drive club is free with playstation plus, so if you're a subscriber or will subscribe to PS+, then yes.

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Giant Panda said:

That doesn't mean they should do it though. There is no way to actually make money by adding these features in. I think it should be clear that very few people will have their purchasing decision for this game be made or broken on perfectly correct clouds and stars and such. A much better investment would have been adding features that people actually notice and care about such as additional cars, tracks, or modes.

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TrojanBlade said:

It better look close to this and the other reveal trailers...E3 gameplay was not even close...yes I understand the 35% complete argument...but then InFam:SS is further away from release and it looks so good already. Even at 35% I expected it to be better than most racers on current gen like the trailers showed it.

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Chiaroscuro said:

more likely a "demo" of the game is free for PS+ members. You know that the PS+ version is not the full version, but a limited selection of tracks and cars with microtransactions/DLC available to put it on pair with the retail version, right? And Sony never clarified how much content will be present in the PS+ version (althought I am not sure even if we know how much content is present in the retail version for start....).

I would really like that Drive Club stands as a PGR sucessor and lives up to its premisses, but so far it is a no.

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Chiaroscuro said:

more likely a "demo" of the game is free for PS+ members. You know that the PS+ version is not the full version, but a limited selection of tracks and cars with microtransactions/DLC available to put it on pair with the retail version, right? And Sony never clarified how much content will be present in the PS+ version (althought I am not sure even if we know how much content is present in the retail version for start....).

I would really like that Drive Club stands as a PGR sucessor and lives up to its premisses, but so far it is a no.

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makingmusic476 said:

What if they hired a guy that knows all about astronomy and that's it. They can't just tell him to start modeling cars!

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Giant Panda said:

That doesn't mean they should do it though. There is no way to actually make money by adding these features in. I think it should be clear that very few people will have their purchasing decision for this game be made or broken on perfectly correct clouds and stars and such. A much better investment would have been adding features that people actually notice and care about such as additional cars, tracks, or modes.

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Giant Panda said:

Instead of hiring that guy, they should have hired an extra modeler.

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SolidSnakex said:

It's just something that helps bring the world alive. Racing games in general have been criticized because the backgrounds often seem dead. All the usual obsessive detail is packed into the car and the background doesn't receive as much care. Evolution seems to be positioning this game as them putting as much work into making sure the environments feel alive as they did with making sure that the cars are as detailed as they need to be. Will people buy a game because of cloud/star patterns? Not necessarily. But the entire package when put together could push some over the edge.

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Kaako said:

Can I get a 50% build please this time instead of 35? Gamescom don't fail me now.
I'm glad they're not doing baked lighting.

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