VG247 interview with Dan Greenwalt
Interview by Patrick Garratt.[/I]
Full Interview here
http://www.vg247.com/2010/02/03/interview-forza-motorsports-dan-greenawalt/
You were pretty slavish as regards hitting 60fps, and did receive some criticism from the community for apparently trading off some poly budget to achieve it. In retrospect, are you glad you stuck to the 60 frames goal, or could you have created something more visually attractive if youd lowered the target to, say, 30?
We get asked this question a lot by the press and my answer hasnt changed much from Forza 2 to Forza 3. The reality is that racing games running at 30fps have to deal with visual shuttering artifacts in the environment and backgrounds that fly by your field of view when the car is traversing at high speeds. So you then go and mask that using motion blur for your environments, which end up eating into your GPU cycles, which take up resources from other features you want on-track.
It really turns into a trade-off for the type of visual direction youre trying to achieve, and with Forza Motorsport, the visual style is clear, crisp graphics, and highly-detailed environments and textures. But in truth, the decision is less about graphics than feel. We prioritize 60fps as an important feature because it gives the games a feel you just cant achieve at 30; for instance, the responsiveness and feedback of the controls, or physics calculations and visual manifestation of that on how we model our tire flex and body roll. While those calculations are decoupled from the graphics and run as high as 360 frames per second, we found that graphical framerate impacts the feel of those systems as well. Simply put, we couldnt have achieved the experience we wanted if the game only ran at 30fps. Im sure you would get a similar response from Infinity Ward regarding Call of Duty.
Can you give us any figures on how many items are being traded in the game at the moment? Have all the online community features panned out as you expected, or have you had to cope with some sticking issues?
Sure. We already knew from Forza 2 that the online Auction House was going to come back strong for the community. What we were curious to see was how the new Storefront feature would play into the community ecosystem. We pulled these numbers a few weeks ago so theyre not the most recent server stats, but it gives you an idea the kind of momentum weve had nearly 90 days post-release. Weve had over 8 million auction bids placed online, with over 3.3 million auctions created. Our community has purchased or downloaded nearly 10 million Storefront items. Overall, our community has driven well over 126 million races on Xbox LIVE, totaling over 13 million man-hours of time spent playing the game online. They drove over 1.1 billion miles in online races, which is more than five return trips from the earth to the sun. So yeah, we have a community thats deeply engaged with the game.
As for sticking issues, theres been surprisingly little fire drills this time around. We had to update the leaderboards a couple times due to glitches but nothing really out of the ordinary.
How closely are you watching GT5s development? Are you looking forward to playing it? What does GT5 do that F3 doesnt, and vice versa?
I think all good game developers look at what their competitors are doing. Its important to understand the landscape; not only to see whats being done, but to see whats not being done. As Game Director for Forza Motorsport, what Im really interested in seeing and defining is the next big shift in how gamers (and even non-gamers) will play and interact with each other and express their passion for cars. For us, player generated content and social media are the modern ways to connect people and their passion for cars. That is why weve stressed those features for so many years. As a racing gamer, Ive been a long-time fan of the GT series. At this point, after so many missed releases, its nearly impossible to say what GT5 will be or when it will ship. Based on the all the preview versions over the last several years, it looks like it will be a good racing game.
Full Interview here
http://www.vg247.com/2010/02/03/interview-forza-motorsports-dan-greenawalt/
