About the speed sensation of F-Zero GX and WipEout HD
I noticed a detail in F-Zero which fakes its speed sensation quite a lot,
which is cool for what the games is, an arcade racer. They do it by changing
the 3d projection, i.e. by manipulating the field of view (fov), i.e. by
moving the projection reference point's z-coordinate (prp.z) quite a lot.
During perspective projection the prp's z value becomes a multiplier for the
x and y coordinates scaling their projection on the screen, kinda like this;
screen.x = prp.z*x/z and screen.y = prp.z*y/z. Now if you run over a speedpad
you can see how the screen stretches a lot. Likewise on higher speeds or by
using a boost. This stretching makes things look faster on the screen. If you
look at WipEout HD for example, you can see that the stretching is very low.
They only manipulate the prp.z value just slightly. Hence, the speed sensation
in WipEout HD is more, say, natural. Perhaps they did it that way to not make
the game an arcade racer, where such kind of stretching are cool. At least
back in the days.
This way of faking the speed sensation makes one believe playing an utterly
fast game. But it's just the stretching on the screen what makes one believe
that the game is so fast.
Lets give an example.
Look at this video of F-Zero GX, starting 0:43.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRxQT5g2XJg
And look at the speedmeter as the craft starts. Before the speedpad gets hit
the velocity is about 800km/h. Slow, isn't it?
About 800km/s is the highest speed class in WipEout HD, i.e. phantom speed.
Now look at this video of WipEout HD, it is played at phantom speed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxpzCrf8mKE
Seems a bit faster at about the same speed.
Going back to the F-Zero GX video you can see that once the speedpad gets hit,
accelerating the craft to about 1100hm/h, the geometry obviously narrows
towards the center of the screen, i.e. stretching is applied. Then the craft
accelerated to about 1500km/h - 1700km/h and one can see that things within
the center of the screen gets smaller and smaller. Hence, the stretching is
much stronger to produce this sensation of speed, but producing at the same
time kind of an unnatural perspective, which is cool for such kind of games,
mind you! However, without the stretching the game would be perceived way
slower.
Hence, comparing both games solely on the speed, or sensation of speed, is
rather misleading. F-Zero {GX} and WipEout {HD} follow different visions. And
if you play the games that way, it becomes obvious to you.