Sneak Peak at Forza 3!

Автор: HallieGuy | суббота, 22 августа 2009 г.


A couple of weeks back,  Ryan and I got a chance to go over and tour the Turn 10 studios, where the developers and testers are putting the finishing touches on Forza 3. Ordinary, getting out of the office in the middle of the day to go play video games is a sweet enough deal by itself. But the really cool part?  We we got to take the tour with drifters Rhys Millen, Dai Yoshihara, and Chris Forsberg, who were all in town for Formula D Seattle! Obviously we were both curious to see how their real driving skills would translate to the virtual world, and we got plenty of opportunities to see them behind the wheel.

But before we were set lose on the pimped-out gaming consuls, Content Director John Wendl—who actually races in reality—gave us some background on the just how much technical effort has gone into giving Forza 3 its striking realism, and we were both pretty impressed. Basically, Wendl explained that the team’s goal has been to turn gamers into car-lovers and vice-versa, and they want the exquisitely rendered cars to be the stars of the game. Drivers can select from 400 machines—everything from a Honda Fit, to a classic Aston Martin DB7, to a Lamborghini Gallardo is on the menu—and there are whole teams slaving over their specs to insure they both look and perform like their real-world counterparts. If you flip one over, the undercarriage will be exactly what you’d see if you put the car on the lift. The only things you won’t see the cars do? Catch on fire or kill the driver, which seems reasonable enough.

Getting the physics right was a top priority for the Forza team, and while there was plenty of stuff that went over my head—”10% mpre polygons.” Um, great…—I was fascinated by the insane amount of work that went into rendering the tire performance accurately. When you come ripping into a corner in Forza 3, the game will compensate for the flex in the air of the tire, and if you watch the replay, you’ll be able to see the sidewall roll over. As you’d expect, the math behind this kind of detail is unreal, and while Turn 10 has reams of data from companies like Michelin and Toyo to make it easier, the task is still akin to modeling a complex weather system.

Of course, a giant portion of a cars personality comes from its engine note, so all the cars in the game have been recorded on a dyno. And since there are innumerable options for customization, they all have to be run with different  exhaust set-ups. While he was pointing out just some of the systems left over from recording, Wendl told a funny story about how a Microsoft executive volunteered  his Aston Martin DB7 for the project, and was horrified when he saw that the people swapping out the pipes on his baby weren’t English technicians in lab coats, but hammer-wielding, cigar smoking gearheads with greasy hands.

Pissed off executives aside, customization is one area where the Forza team has really hit it out of the park. Basically, everything is on the table. Players can change the car’s camber, caster, toe, spring settings, and gear ratios, and also perform major surgery by swapping internal components like cams and valves. If you’re up for it, full engine swaps are possible, but getting the car to a point where it won’t be all over the track is going to take some serious tuning—just like in real life.

After about half and hour of walking around the studio, we got to see the pros have a hand at playing the game, and obviously, it was pretty entertaining. None of them had the mad skills of tester Landon, who was actually recruited to work at Turn 10 after people from the company spotting videos he’d produced through the last version of Forza. I got some video of Rhys Millen and Chris Forsberg running laps, but unfortunately, when I took the footage of Dai Yoshihara, he was on a course that the folks over there want to keep secret until the game drops in October. Oops. I can’t say anything about it, other than it’s pretty sick.

To be honest, I was a little nervous about playing in front of professional drivers, but eventually I had to swallow my pride and give it a shot. Now, I haven’t habitually played video games since my Atari 2600 broke years ago, but I can  safely say that if I had this game at home, it would be extremely difficult to leave the house. Ever. I’d need to get a steering wheel—I can’t imagine playing with a standard controller— but the laps that I took around Monza actually had me sweating. Apparently, we’re getting a copy of the game after it comes out, so now all we have to do is figure out a way to get an XBox 360 for the office…



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