Volume 33 — February 9, 2007
By: Che Chou
It's been a very Forza Motorsport 2 week...
...And boy, what a week it's been. First of all, congratulations for making it to Friday in one piece, and welcome back to another Turn 10 Pitpass Report, our weekly update on the development of Forza Motorsport 2. If you're just joining us on this journey into the heart of darkness, feel free to jump over to our Pitpass archives to get caught up on the last 33 (give or take a few) weeks of life in Forza land.
Screenshots Ahoy!
I might as well kick off the update this week with something most of you have already seen, drooled over, picked apart, and commented on. We released new screens yesterday over to Xbox 360 IGN and now have them hosted here at Forzamotorsport.net sans watermarks. You can find them in our Media Gallery section, along with all the other delicious eyecandy. Or if you're lazy like me, you can grab them right here in this Pitpass Report.
A quick note about screenshots in general. If you look at our screenshots gallery page, you'll notice that Forza Motorsport 2's overall lighting, and look of the car shaders varies wildly from one batch to the next. Why is that? It's because each environment in Forza Motorsport 2 features its own unique ambience, tuned to a vision established by Turn 10's art director John Wendl and executed on by his art team. So for instance, Tsukuba has a searing high dynamic range mid-afternoon sun-baked exposure, while Mugello looks lush and green, almost cool to the touch. As we release more screens in the weeks to come, also keep in mind that car shaders and visual lighting are also some of the last settings to get tweaked (just like framerates). So even though we're creeping ever closer to release, consider these pics captured from a work-in-progress.
Force Feedback in Das Haus
The update this week was originally going to focus on more Forza Motorsport 2 game details — and I had it written down on the back of a lunch napkin that a good topic would have been car upgrades and some of the new stuff we're doing in that realm. But you know what? We'll push that off and revisit the topic on a rainy day (luckily for you, we live in Seattle where it rains all the time). Instead, I got together with Turn 10's game director Dan Greenawalt and convinced him to put his crazy ramblings and ideas on Force Feedback in racing sims into article form for the world to enjoy.
In case you haven't already read the full length feature, or would just prefer the Reader's Digest version, here's the summary in Dan's own words:
"For the last couple weeks here at Turn 10, we’ve been fine-tuning the force feedback implementation in Forza Motorsport 2 using the Microsoft Wireless Force Feedback Wheel. Below are a few abstracts..."
- Visual and audio cues are simply not enough to convey reality. Forza Motorsport 2 uses haptic interfaces to reproduce a realistic sensation of driving. Whether you play our game with a rumble-enabled controller or a full racing cockpit with force feedback wheel setup, Forza Motorsport 2 gives you tactile cues to improve your game.
- Force feedback is the primary language between car, road, and driver. Force feedback is an extremely useful haptic interface. It provides real-time info on several key aspects of Forza Motorsport 2’s physics model. Obviously, force feedback simulates the steering wheel torque created by having the front tires on different terrain types, such as asphalt, rumble strips, or grass. It also simulates load balance between tires as well as slippage.
- Without simulating “aligning torque,” your force feedback is useless. When driving a car in real-life, aligning torque is what your hands “feel” in the steering wheel. Aligning torque wants to point the steering wheel in the direction of travel. Aligning torque auto-corrects the steering wheel when you are over-steering or drifting. Aligning torque helps you find peak friction when you are understeering. Basically, aligning torque is the primary language that your front tires use to talk to you.
- Visual and audio cues are simply not enough to convey reality. Forza Motorsport 2 uses haptic interfaces to reproduce a realistic sensation of driving. Whether you play our game with a rumble-enabled controller or a full racing cockpit with force feedback wheel setup, Forza Motorsport 2 gives you tactile cues to improve your game.
- Your hardware is only as good as your software. Most of what you feel, as you play a racing game with wheel-in-hand, comes down to game design and software. When force feedback is poorly implemented in a game, even the best force feedback wheel is often a less effective controller than a rubber-band wheel with a good deadzone.
Again, go check out the article and find out what Forza Motorsport 2 is doing with Force Feedback to really make a difference in the racing sim space.
The Toyota Supra Turbo Audio Challenge Answers
A ton of good responses this week from many knowledgeable members of our community for our latest Dyno Spotlight Audio Challenge. Still with all the educated guesses out there, only a handful of hardcore Supra-freaks really nailed the true answer. And once they had figured that out, it was easy enough to just plug in the gaps from the cars in the audio challenge that I revealed in last week's Pitpass Report as a hint. Anyway, here are the answers:
Miscellaneous Items...
Not sure if many of you saw this article on Gamespy this week, but the folks over there interviewed our buddy, pro race driver, and Forza Motorsport 2 design consultant Gunnar Jeannette on life in the fast lane. Word around the track is that he's no longer racing with Panoz but will join another American LeMans team in the '07 season to possibly battle his former teammates. Also, we're flying him out to Turn 10 later this month to do a comprehensive scrub on the fit and finish of our racing cars, giving us feedback that will allow us to hand-tune these R-class monstrosities for maximum realism. It'll also be his first time on our triple-screen racing cockpit setup. Coinciding with Gunnar's visit this month will be studio tours with select members of the gaming and automotive press to get a first-hand look and test drive of Forza Motorsport 2.
I also want to mention that we've launched (rather unceremoniously) the Turn 10 Studios Blog. As we move close to Forza 2's release date, I want to use Forzamotorsport.net more as a destination for folks to get new info on the game itself — consider it more of an official site with official info and official art assets, etc. The blog, will be where everything else goes — anything from car links and stories we're currently discussing here, to office shenanigans, and plenty of little tidbits on Forza Motorsport 2, to be sure. So do check back often — I'll keep it updated as often as possible (hopefully daily), and as it gathers momentum, expect other Turn 10 developers to join me in writing and updating the blog.
Really, that's about it from me. Lots of good stuff coming next week. We'll finally be rolling out the first part of our car list, along with some good news for our friends across the pond. And if you're good... more screenshots!
Have a fine weekend!
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