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une interview :
ce qui est bon signe, c'est que les developpeurs ont testé et apprécié Live For Speed, et qu'ils veulent que le moteur de Race Driver 2 soit aussi poussé !!
si c'est le cas, chapeau bas !!!
Citation:
Codemasters speaks out for the first time on its next, and highly promising, Race Driver game that's heading to Xbox and PC
14:23 Race Driver 2: The Ultimate Racing Simulator is the grandiose and boastful title for Codemasters' follow-up to TOCA Race Driver. Well, we say boastful, but after speaking with Codemasters, if impressive descriptions are to be believed then we're looking at, not only one of the most comprehensive racing titles ever but also, thanks to a combination of storyline, realistic AI and car handling and graphical wizardry, one of the most immersive.
Intrigued? You should be. Become enlightened by absorbing the words of Gavin Raeburn, head of Codemasters' internal development studio that's looking after Race Driver 2, who we recently caught up with for a chat about the game.
Race Driver 2 is being called the "The Ultimate Racing Simulator" - how is it ultimate?
Raeburn: We want to do for motorsports what Gran Turismo has done for cars, i.e., instead of basing our game around one particular motorsport we want to feature as many real motorsports as we can in one game.
This gives a huge variety of racing styles for the player to learn and master. The game features a wide variety of cars, each with their own handling nuances, challenging the player to learn all the different car types.
Talking nuts and bolts, what racing modes are there going to be, how many tracks are there (and in what countries will we be racing), how many cars are you going to include, what types of motorsports are covered, etc.?
Raeburn: There are 31 championships which cover motorsports such as Open Wheel Grand Prix, Truck Racing, Open Wheel Oval Racing, Rally, Rallycross, Ice-Racing, Formula Ford, Classic Racing, Convertible Racing, Street Racing, GT Racing, Hot Rod Racing and Performance Cars. In total there are 57 licensed and fictional tracks spanning the globe.
With such a large variety of motorsports, there are 35 aspirational cars, including the Ford GT, Aston Martin Vanquish, Jaguar XKR, Nissan Skyline and AMG-Mercedes CLK.
What are some of the more unusual cars and tracks featuring?
Raeburn: The game features truck racing where the player races the large Ford 9000 truck, and there's the Formula Ford single-seater open wheel car through to the four-wheel drive Land Rover Bowler Wildcat for extreme off-road racing, the Aston Martin V12 Vanquish for Ice Racing and the 1934 Ford Coupe in the Hot Rod racing!
The previous game was innovative in its use of integral storyline. You obviously feel it worked well because you're keeping the "cinematic plot" idea for Race Driver 2. What can you tell us about the new storyline?
Raeburn: The new story in Race Driver 2 features an entirely new cast of characters, the most significant inclusion being that of the player, who now takes on the role of the central character. In the previous game, the player watched someone else's story unfold before them in a third-person perspective.
In this game, the story scenes are played out in first-person perspective, creating a far more immersive and personal experience as a result.
The narrative is now based upon both the player's performance and the attitudes and agendas of the supporting cast, the result being more palatable for the player than the previous game.
The main story arc follows the player's career from a hard-up independent racing team to becoming a top Grand Prix driver, a journey that is supported by a rather rigorous selection process spanning many forms of motorsport.
Visually we have raised the bar significantly. By using FMV instead of the real-time playback system employed previously, we have been able to use far more realistic characters and environments, which greatly enhances the experience.
It sounds as though you're extremely happy with the visuals in Race Driver 2, and shots we've seen are impressive - how do the graphical/visual and engine features impact gameplay?
Raeburn: We have replaced the middleware rendering solution used in RD1 with our own proprietary engine which allows us to draw three times as many polys this time round, as well as giving us the freedom to create some interesting special effects such as bloom, focal blur, motion blur and procedural grass.
Why is this important? Well, good visuals will make the gameworld more believable, the theory being that if it looks real, it is real.
For example, for realistic damage we need to have an engine that can support enough polys to generate realistic body crumpling. To remove that 'shot on digital film' look that most racing games have, we need true motion blur.
To give the correct impression of different driving surfaces in the game, the surface types need to respond physically and visually as you would expect.
That means tyres will sink through snow, flattening it as they go, and each of millions of blades of individually drawn grass will bend and flatten as expected when driven over. These are all small touches, but when combined together they help deliver a much more convincing driving experience.
You've reworked car handling and driver AI for the game. Could you tell us about this, and again about how this impacts gameplay?
Raeburn: The AI has been made much less aggressive than in RD1 and we now allow the cars more freedom to move around the track. The car physics have been rewritten from the ground up for RD2.
We wanted to start with a 100 percent pure simulation, built around a realistic test bed. This test bed included a high quality force feedback steering wheel with analogue gas, brake and clutch pedals and a six-shift gear stick.
The idea was that we should be able to accurately model any car within this test bed and we could then apply any driving assists needed to tame the cars down for use on a basic pad controller.
The surprising thing was that, in the end, we didn't actually need to add any driving assists as the physics model felt very natural, even through a regular analogue pad. We've had a lot of fun playing the PC sim 'Live for Speed', and our goal was to get better physics and improved pad and wheel handling than that game.
We've achieved this by some considerable margin, especially for the rear wheel drive cars, and this has meant that we have been able to lock down the handling very early on in development so we can spend the time tuning all of the many different vehicle types we have in the game.
Race Driver 2 will be Xbox Live-enabled, so presumably the PC version will have online functionality as well? What exactly can we expect from both in terms of online play/features?
Raeburn: We want RD2 to set a new benchmark for integrated online features in a PC driving game. While planning the Xbox Live version we thought to ourselves: "Why not do the full monty on the PC as well?" So we did. Therefore, both platforms will be almost identical in terms of online features.
Integrated tightly within the game we will support unique player logins, matchmaking, in-game friend lists, real-time voice and player statistics. The PC version also has the added advantage of supporting GameSpy Arcade, giving players more choice.
As for actual playability, we have concentrated mainly on improving the car movement prediction under lag, which we didn't do so well in the first Race Driver Game. This in turn improves the car collisions providing a better online racing experience.
What are the significant differences between the Xbox and PC versions of Race driver 2?
Raeburn: The Xbox version will be locked to 60fps, whilst the PC version will be allowed to fluctuate more depending on the graphics options you have chosen and the hardware you have. Content wise, the two versions will be the same.
Finally, what's your favourite thing about Race Driver 2 at the moment, and why?
Raeburn: This changes from week to week as different elements fall into place. The new car physics were the first thing I was really happy with, but since then the new rendering engine and effects unit has been dropped into place, which looks stunning, and most recently the terminal damage module has just been checked in from our test bed.
A head-on crash at 70mph will now create terminal damage, destroying the front of the car completely. Imagine one metre of bonnet crumpling to around one centimetre of twisted metal, sending shockwaves through the rest of the bodywork, shattering the glass along the way. All very pleasing stuff!
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[PREVIEW/PC] Race Driver 2 - Codemasters
21-09-2003 19:15
il me semblais pourtant avoir lu je ne sais plus trop ou que ce serait une exclu Xbox pour cette fois si ...
Pareil pour Colin MR3, vraiment tragi-comiques comme tu dis ...
avec un vrai background comme dans le 1 et tout et tout ..... pfffiou faut que j'arrete d'y penser ..... 
: Concernant "Richard Burns Rally" 
) mais apparement ce n'est pas celui la.
