• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

SEGA Rally GC screens

twinturbo2

butthurt Heat fan
PleoMax said:
The game is 30FPS?

I could've swear it looked like 60FPS, it's so fast and fluid. If its 30FPS, it's pretty unnoticeable.
It's pretty common knowledge that it's 30. I don't notice much of a difference between 30 and 60 in my racing games, but that's just me.
 

Aaron

Member
twinturbo2 said:
It's pretty common knowledge that it's 30. I don't notice much of a difference between 30 and 60 in my racing games, but that's just me.
You are crazy and blind, methinks. One spin around the track in Forza 2, and every other racing game feels like it's stuttering along.
 

twinturbo2

butthurt Heat fan
Aaron said:
You are crazy and blind, methinks. One spin around the track in Forza 2, and every other racing game feels like it's stuttering along.
Meh, I just can't notice it in a racer unless someone tells me. In a sports title, then yeah, I'll notice it, but in a racer, as long as it's constant and fluid, it's fine by me.
 

Guy Legend

Member
Looks great. Between this and Virtua Figther 5 for the xbox, I hope Sega's games don't get lost during the holidays.
 

ram

Member
sega rally 3 (ps3) + g25 wheel + racing-seat = extreme fun

the game was a blast to play - at least in the bumper view - when switischng to "behind the car" the game was slow like hell. and the deformable skidmarks really make it something special - you can feel them very strongly :D
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
ram said:
sega rally 3 (ps3) + g25 wheel + racing-seat = extreme fun

the game was a blast to play - at least in the bumper view - when switischng to "behind the car" the game was slow like hell. and the deformable skidmarks really make it something special - you can feel them very strongly :D

Visually they are very pretty, and can be very flexible... but I would like SEGA programmers to maintain the road densely tessellated as far down in the distance as possible: the big problem for me with Motorstorm's normal maps is that they blur down relatively close to the camera (especially using the hood view which means that the ground is at a fairly steep angle from the screen's point of view) destroying a bit the purpose of the effect (road with 3D bumps).
 

PleoMax

Banned
Panajev2001a said:
Visually they are very pretty, and can be very flexible... but I would like SEGA programmers to maintain the road densely tessellated as far down in the distance as possible: the big problem for me with Motorstorm's normal maps is that they blur down relatively close to the camera (especially using the hood view which means that the ground is at a fairly steep angle from the screen's point of view) destroying a bit the purpose of the effect (road with 3D bumps).

Well i don't really understand half of what you said, but let me just say that what Sega Rally does is effectively change the 3D, unlike Motorstorm. Since motorstorm is a paralax effect(textures effect), it's bound be seen differently depending on where you are.
 

ram

Member
PleoMax said:
Well i don't really understand half of what you said, but let me just say that what Sega Rally does is effectively change the 3D, unlike Motorstorm. Since motorstorm is a paralax effect(textures effect), it's bound be seen differently depending on where you are.

yep - yep the skidmarks are completete 3d and looking good (all other textures are really colourfull and sharp as well).

btw. the game is really only 30fps.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
PleoMax said:
Well i don't really understand half of what you said, but let me just say that what Sega Rally does is effectively change the 3D, unlike Motorstorm. Since motorstorm is a paralax effect(textures effect), it's bound be seen differently depending on where you are.

I know that, but as you can see in the video and pics (where they show the geometry without textures: the wire-frame meshes)... ok, basically the ground has a certain level of detail in the close area around the car (when I say that the triangles density in the polygon mesh is high I mean that said mesh is subdivided/made of a lot of tiny triangles as opposed to a less detailed version of it in which the engine is using less triangles to represent the same object), but the road is not kept at the same level of detail further down the distance:

displacement12.jpg


As you move with the car the road is progressively refined and the displacement applied and modified according to where the cars' tires are passing (the displacement can and is dynamic in SEGA Rally).

The problem though is that the road is progressively scaled down in detail depending on the distance from the camera and thus the car as it would be insane to render the entire road at the same level of detail you see near the car.

1026_0007.jpg


http://www.gamersyde.com/gallery_6029_en.html#

1026_0010.jpg



The steeper the angle between the road's surface and the camera then less you will be able to appreciate the subtle and less subtle bumps in the road and if to that you add the fact that the deformation is applied to a lower and lower resolution surface the farther you go from the car you might have a more similar result to what you see in Motorstorm. You can even see in the videos how the bumps look better and better as you get close to them. This is a favtor under SEGA's control though of course.

IMHO, it is not something gamers should be worried about: the beauty of the 3D Road deformation is its flexibility: they can give you a nice variety of deformation levels (not just a "either deformed or not deformed" scenario) and also the ability of the deformation caused by a car passing by adding to the deformation caused by other cars passing.

I do always prefer modifying geometry rather than approximate it by using normal/height maps when possible so I wish SEGA Racing Studios the best of luck: hopefully the compromises they have made (to achieve this solution) pay off.

In Motorstorm the problem is also there when you use the 3rd person view camera: similarly to what you do with geometry (but for an entirely different reason: you are trying to avoid texture aliasing/shimmering) you can basically contribute to the texture's (and thus the normal map) blurriness in the distance by not taking enough samples from the texture maps (in the proper direction) for each pixel of the textured object you are trying to draw on the screen (anisotropic filtering) and/or moving the view so that the terrain is almost perpendicular to the screen by mip-mapping (using lower resolution version of the same texture as you move away from the camera and blending between mip-map levels to avoid the clear presence of lines separating them) .
 

Cruzader

Banned
llTll said:
ok what the fuck is this

1026_0039.jpg



please dont tell me its the PS3 version :(


Look at the pic's resolution...its 480x272, the psp's rez. :D

Also if anything why would you say that it seems like the PS3 version??? If anything it would indicate the wii version but PS3?? gimme a break and stop bashing ps3 will ya.
 

FightyF

Banned
Panajev2001a said:
Visually they are very pretty, and can be very flexible... but I would like SEGA programmers to maintain the road densely tessellated as far down in the distance as possible: the big problem for me with Motorstorm's normal maps is that they blur down relatively close to the camera (especially using the hood view which means that the ground is at a fairly steep angle from the screen's point of view) destroying a bit the purpose of the effect (road with 3D bumps).

Or a smart form of LOD which would take into account the nature of these tire marks. Ie. the depressions of the edges should have high resolution polys, the middle of the depression requires a lower resolution to make up for the width of the tire mark, and then the undepressed areas that are away from any depression can have very large triangles.

6hdfmef.jpg


So it basically applies LOD in a manner similar to the compression of images. Large blocks of the same color are effected, while details parts remain detailed.

Anyways, they know what's best...I ain't no expert in programming tessellation for terrain/large surfaces. :p
 

PleoMax

Banned
Panajev2001a said:
I know that, but as you can see in the video and pics (where they show the geometry without textures: the wire-frame meshes)... ok, basically the ground has a certain level of detail in t(...) but the road is not kept at the same level of detail further down the distance:

picture goes here

(...)


More cool pictures here

(This is all a blur)

and/or moving the view so that the terrain is almost perpendicular to the screen by mip-mapping (using lower resolution version of the same texture as you move away from the camera and blending between mip-map levels to avoid the clear presence of lines separating them) .

Dude, i just totally understood 100% of what the Architect said last week, when my sister was watching reloaded, i caught that part, and watching that part isolated from the rest of the movie, i sudenly realized everything, how the pieces fit in everything that is Matrix.

I already had understood about 90%, there was this thing or other where i really couldn't explain, but funny, it all makes sense.

Anyway yah, your post was all sorts of..... uuuh, Knowledgeable! Yeah that's it.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
PleoMax said:
Dude, i just totally understood 100% of what the Architect said last week, when my sister was watching reloaded, i caught that part, and watching that part isolated from the rest of the movie, i sudenly realized everything, how the pieces fit in everything that is Matrix.

I already had understood about 90%, there was this thing or other where i really couldn't explain, but funny, it all makes sense.

Anyway yah, your post was all sorts of..... uuuh, Knowledgeable! Yeah that's it.

Sorry, I must have become worse and worse at explaining myself.

The basic short summary is: although the bumps are real 3D carving the road, sometimes the effect can look "strange".
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
FightyF said:
Anyways, they know what's best...I ain't no expert in programming tessellation for terrain/large surfaces. :p

On this I agree, they know what is best (this is not a method you pull out of your hat in a day, it must have taken quite a bit to fully work out, not to mention they are running smoothly on both PS3 and Xbox 360, which means that they know their stuff :)).
 

Shinobi

Member
Sega Rally 2 felt fine to me. At least the arcade version anyway. The home version had no body roll implemented like the arcade version had and felt stiffer. SR2 arcade felt more refined than SR1, which had too much oversteer (particularly the arcade version). SR2 arcade also introduced the handbrake, which was magic to use (and something that's sorely lacking in the Initial D games).


Aaron said:
You are crazy and blind, methinks. One spin around the track in Forza 2, and every other racing game feels like it's stuttering along.

Depends how it's done...PGR3 is easily the best looking 30fps racer I've ever seen. If Sega Rally is at that level, I'll have no complaints.

Not to mention the fact that everybody's eyes works differently (by 2007 you'd have thought everyone would've accepted this fact by now). Some people thought Goldeneye on N64 was smooth as butter, while to me it looked like an eye searing flip book with 80% of the pages missing. Who's to say who's wrong? The only eyes we have are our own.
 

Fredrik

Member
ram said:
btw. the game is really only 30fps.
Seriously? Have you seen this yourself or is it second hand information that might be false?

Scary if true. It must be the "aiming for" that is jinxing it. I think almost every single game where the developer have said that they're aiming for 60fps has turned out to be 30fps so far this gen. Not good.

Next up: Ratchet ToD. 45fps and aiming for 60fps according to EGM. Be afraid. :/
 

camineet

Banned
The development team were originally aiming for 60fps, but it's widely known they only hit ~30fps.

From all the videos I've seen, Sega Rally looks like a 30fps game.

now while it's pretty difficult to tell the actual framerate of a game by one video, if you compare videos of 30fps games with videos of 60fps games, some people can see a huge difference in them. Much like, some people can see a huge difference when actually seeing & playing 30fps/60fps games on their screens. like Shinobi said, it all depends on the eyes of the individual.

personally, I cannot stand 30fps in racing games, but I'll give Sega Rally a chance, I really wanna experience the track deformation.
 
Top Bottom