Why DriveClub on PS4 will dominate playstation racing games

Playstation Racing Games of the Future - DriveClub PS4

By Mont brown
7th August 2013

Evolution’s art employees went on weeks and months of field journeys to analysis, geography, architecture and habitats for DriveClub.
The mountain we're driving up is 3 kilometres high. in the distance, we see an uneven landscape of tea plantations and scrublands stretches out toward the horizon. Above us, various shapes of clouds appear, scattering large grey blankets of shadow.

The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren manoeuvres its way through winding roads, the sun sometimes sparkling across the screen, the crumbling surface almost palpable below the tyres. This is Republic of India, accurately and rather epically modelled into a sport racing game. At this height, at the very tip of the mountain top, the artists have had to think about the curvature of the world, and how this can have an effect on daylight and the shapes of clouds at the highest peaks. This is where video games are going visually.

While we've known for months that DriveClub would happen in locations round the world, Evolution has only really showed Scotland so far – however while visiting the studio recently, we also caught glimpses of  Canada and the Republic of India environments. The art team did what art teams do on racing games: they went on months of field journeys to research design, geography and habitats; the distinction is, the Evolution team looks to be trying to cram all of it into sport racing game.

For each country, there are several miles of landscape, loaded with authentic realistic detail. Most of the circuits are inspired by real-life roads and the street racing routes the researchers discovered on their months of field trips. "All the detail we are putting into our design is very similar to first-person perspective shooting games," says Alex Perkins director of technical design. "And then we're throwing a full dynamic lighting system over the top."

As Alex illustrated the India circuit, he points out a river bed along our drive, which leads through a gorgeous 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 3 roads that we went by during this location that looked rather like this; it's about capturing the soul of the roads and the networks." The seasonal feature we added is vital to create a much more authentic visual experience. Apparently, all the vegetation is correct to the locations and the time of year – even the cloud movement is all real ("With summer clouds in the United Kingdom, the average time is 8  minutes," Alex mentions at one point throughout the demo).

Everything is then lit via a real 24-hour day/night system, instead of a baked in sequence of pre-set lighting effect changes. "We've created our own capture tech so the lighting in shadow, the lighting in direct daylight and the way the car highlights fall off over distance – all of them maintain correct energy conservation values," says Perkins. "We had to revamp our entire materials system – how we actually collect the information; it's much closer to the method you'd have on a movie set for compositing CG parts into a live action image."

This transference to cinematic technique – the type of things that would have been absolutely impossible to render in real-time on current machines – This may well become a topic in console games in the future. "The first time you really see a composited CG component used directly in a major film, like the T1000 walking through the roaring fire in the terminator two, that is where we are now in games," says Perkins. "You have to consider ensuring consistency in real-world lighting in that method, but in film, its graded to match the lighting conditions on a scripted  shot-by-shot basis, which clearly we can't do; for us. Everything has got to be dynamic to interpret the camera position and the lighting conditions in real-time."

Displaying flare

For a short while, we have seen effects like lens flare coming back into games to mimic the sense of viewing recorded footage through a screen, the sense that you are somehow in a movie; but this is all turning into much more as lighting technology matures.

"None of the direct light or shade is faked any longer," says Perkins. "It's at the point where you'll be able to see things like dynamic lens flare once you look at the sun and you'll see a bit of optical aberration because we're mimicking slightly cheaper film lenses to capture deliberate imperfections that will make the video game appear much more realistic."

But there's even more to that than merely creating nice effects. It's about using lighting in environments to develop atmosphere on even the smallest level. "One of the things we're doing with DriveClub, is to keep the environment constantly changing, in a dynamic way," says Alex Perkins. "For example the game looks and feels different based on the cloud covering – there is massive variation anytime you play. And the light spreads across correctly, so when the clouds are injected into the scene, we get a true sense of scale."

Car models also goes beyond anything Evolution has done before. While vehicles on Motorstorm reached a max limit of around 23,000 polygons each, DriveClub models are striking 250,000, with interiors alone requiring around 60,000 polygons. Everything looks and feels very authentic, from the fully functional speed and rev dials on the dashboard to the materials on the seats. Principle vehicle designer Neil Massam tells us that car manufacturers are currently having to rethink their approval procedures for racing games as a result of the amount of detail being so high.

What's fascinating is the increasingly close interaction between audio visual fidelity and car handling. In the first-person screen view, the head movement of the driver is meant to convey the sensation of what the car is doing beneath you. The team has apparently spent a protracted time acting on tyre feel, the tactile input from skidding on tarmac, the imperfections of which are procedurally generated.

There are intricate audio cues on what the tyres are doing, resulting in demands for more memory from the audio designers.  "We have studied in great detail the tyres of hundreds of different states, we know what they are doing at any one time, and clearly the audio guys want to copy that as much as possible, which implies upping the number of samples. Audio feedback is a huge part of the handling experience in driving games, and a lot of developers forget that."  Says Game director Col Rodgers.

As for DriveClubs handling, we spoke to Paul Rustchynsky.  His team includes ex-staff from Project Gotham, Gran Turismo, and Grid 2. From our demonstration session, the focus seems to be upper-end arcade; cars are mostly durable and corner well, however they'll slide out enthusiastically if the road is missed. For me, the result is somewhere between Need For Speed and Forza.

"We begin with the real data – they provide us the CAD [computer-aided design] modelling of the cars and all the smallest of details on the engine torque. We add that straight into the game, but we then check up on the characteristics of the cars – we study reviews we watch videos, in some cases we get to drive them – and we consider what makes it stand out? we try to implant those aspects into the personality of our cars." Says Roger.

Keeping it Authentic

The aim then, is genuineness but not simulation. "We are aiming for the middle between simulation and arcade," clarifies Rustchynsky. "It's grounded in realism, therefore the cars have a sense of weight and feel with the race course,  but we also wanted to make it is easy to throw these vehicles around corners as well. It's all about having fun with the cars. But there's plenty of depth – if you want to shave milliseconds of your lap times, you can do that. But players can grab the pad and hammer the throttle, the intricate details can be picked up later."

To me, this definitely makes a lot of sense. I've grown completely disillusioned with hybrid sims that simply rack up the driving force assists to make an easy mode – you frequently find yourself feeling like you are controlling a toy vehicle. "You have to take care when designing racing games of taking controls away from the players," says Paul Rustchynsky. "The feedback we have had so far  from skilled drivers,  and folks from the manufacturers, always helps to let us know we are heading in the right direction. It is always about making sure our focus is clear; we want to make sure players will feel what the vehicle is doing while maintaining full control.

"We've spent plenty of time refining how we manage player inputs. If the player throws a car round the corner then touches the stick in the opposite direction we'd like to understand how much opposite lock to give them at that point. Give them an excessive amount of lock and they're going to spin, insufficient  and they're going to under-steer. It's simply all about refinement and iterating. We feel we've got the sweet spot now."

Some of this sounds like drivers ed for racing simulation, and some claims are very bold, but all of it hinges on seeing a the finished demo. We've still only seen and tested the early build, that is only a third complete, and while the full scale and dimensions of the environments is clearly apparent, there's many polish left to include if this is going to match the next-generation racer we're being promised. No doubt a lot more will be disclosed at Gamescom, where we'll also discover more regarding the game's approach to matchmaking, and the smartphone application that will accompany it.

Right now, a lot of the talk is concerning the potential of the Playstation 4, the reserves of power bolted away in its design. The Rich Feature Set, mentioned by Mark Cerny. We very briefly throughout my visit to Evolution, spoke to studio group technical director Scott Kirkland regarding the PS4's graphics processing unit, which supports compute – a way of utilising the processing power of the GPU for general process tasks. There is a likelihood this might have a profound result on the possibilities available to developers, with ramifications for AI, physics,  and lighting, etc, but is this already being exploited?

Kirkland is intrigued, but he reckons there is plenty of time to find all that out. "There is so much hardware power from the Playstation 4 at your disposal," Said Kirkland. "I think with many of the first generation PS4 titles, developers most likely won't have to worry about pushing the next gen limits just yet – they will be able to get lots out of parallelism across the central processing unit cores – but for teams who are a bit more daring, who wish to do interesting things, it's simply there waiting for them to take advantage of it. We're performing some of that in DriveClub and i am sure other guys can go even further than that – and the platform guys will expose more of the PS4'S functions through the time period of the machine, unlocking additional potential."

Its good to share

Toward the end of the studio visit, I mention that reference that Perkins said earlier, regarding the complexity of the landscape, and the way it resembles the detail of a first-person perspective shooting game. I ask curiously if we could be heading into a  future of shared servers – Will Evolution get along side Guerrilla and build an internet landscape which will house each racing and First Person Shooter games; so you will have supercars speeding it on highways as army units battle all around. "It's technically possible," said one of the game admins. "That is a great idea."

That's part of the fun right now – game developers working to get to grips with the next-generation, understanding what is going to be the new technical standards, the new structures that will form how games of the future will operate. Especially when you consider what we now know the PS4 is capable of anything is possible.

Click on link to below to pre-order your copy of drive club now.