NintendoLife published the first of a multipart feature with Shin'en Multimedia about the development of FAST Racing NEO and the techniques they used to develop the game.
It partly explained was how a team that small could develop such a game. For example, on one stage, they developed their own technique for procedural geometry:
Episode 1
Source:
A Glimpse Behind the Scenes of FAST Racing NEO - Part One (NintendoLife interview)
Episode 2
Episode 2 - about optimizing and a DS cameo
Episode 3
Episode 3 - creating the landscapes
It partly explained was how a team that small could develop such a game. For example, on one stage, they developed their own technique for procedural geometry:
Episode 1
There are always technical challenges when targeting great visuals and 60fps, and every track in FRN was made in a different fashion and needed other techniques.
For 'Alpine Trust' a big contribution was the procedural geometry (see image above). We had the vision of a very dense valley with thick forests along the track and dangerous rocks and mountains that could get in the way when you do jumps. Creating such a location by hand takes a lot of manpower. It also doesn't allow to modify anything later.
So we developed a set of procedural networks that created all this geometry when you load the level. The hardest work was to find the right formulas to create a natural and interesting look. We are pretty happy that we used that technique because otherwise it wouldn't have been possible.
Source:
A Glimpse Behind the Scenes of FAST Racing NEO - Part One (NintendoLife interview)
Episode 2
Episode 2 - about optimizing and a DS cameo
Episode 3
To achieve the look we were aiming for we researched all the tech currently available. We made very high resolution ground textures and added distant normalmaps to avoid repetition. We used a lot of procedural foliage and scattered hundred of thousands of rocks and pebbles; we also implemented atmospheric scattering, high quality soft shadows, god rays and so on.
This was fine, but we still needed iconic large assets that add scale to the environment. And what can be bigger then mountains or cliffs? The common technique is to sculpt or displace them using special tools, but these models lacked scale and shape. So we tried out 3d scanning and this was the key. We made hundreds of photos from nearby rocks and even created a small in-house photo studio for smaller assets.
Then we processed these images with special 3D scanning software. The resulting files looked marvellous but were gigabytes in size with a gazillion polygons, so we had to hand tune them to something we can use in a real time game. These final models gave us silhouettes and details, nearly impossible to sculpt from scratch. On top we added highres textures for details and normal maps.
Episode 3 - creating the landscapes