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OK, Dringo says I can’t write anything good about Sony *cough*, so this is a little something about an idea which I think sounds really cool. Now, Nintys probably won’t be interested in this, and Sonyphiles will know all about it anyway, so I expect zero replies to this :-D
I first read about this game in an OPS2 feature, I think in issue 4. The game is called G-Surfers, and this title excites me even more than GT3, Devil May Cry, Jak and Daxter and possibly MGS2. Interestingly, it’s developed by Blade, not Sony.
Basically, it’s a futuristic racer using hovercars, and bears more than a passing resemblance to WipEout. In fact, it virtually is WipEout. It has hovering crafts, speed boosts, weapons, ludicrous speed and vertigo-inducing tracks. I’m surprised Sony Studios Liverpool haven’t caused a stir about this already. However, it has one quite amazing feature, and when I say amazing, I REALLY mean amazing. You see, the environment you race in is not just a fantasy future-world, no, it’s the entire Earth. Yes, the entire Earth: All of it, right down to every hill, mountain and canyon.
OK, techie paragraph: G-Surfers uses a very advanced procedural rendering engine. Instead of having a model of the earth on the DVD, it uses topographic data from the US military, and generates the landscape as you approach it, using the procedural engine. This means that not only are there zero loading times, but it’s is 100% accurate with no need to change discs. Of course, this places a greater load on the processor, but it has the advantage of not needing to store it all and waste memory.
So, besides the ludicrous size of the playing world, and the 30+ tracks available to race on, perhaps G-Surfers most promising feature is its very own track editor, named Trackman. OPS2 have used a beta version of this, and they report it’s comprehensive, easy to use and very intuitive. You start off by choosing a spot on the globe you want to start off at. You could choose the Grand Canyon, Mount Etna or Tokyo City, it’s up to you. Then, you place a starting point and begin laying your track. Use left and right to steer, up and down to create hills and drops, and use the shoulder buttons to create bank turns. After that, you can put in trackside decorations, textures, loops etc. The Trackman has huge potential, because every object and texture used by the game designers is available to you, so you can create tracks of the game’s quality. Imagine, being able to create a spiral up the Eiffel Tower, a life-threatening plunge into the Grand Canyon or a stomach churning roller coaster around New York. The possibilities are endless.
Naturally, the graphics won’t be as refined as WipEout or Extreme-G 3’s, because of the mind-bogglingly complicated maths going on with generating terrain and the real opponent AI. With a game as ambitious as this, naturally there has to be trade-offs, but I think it will be well worth it.
Now, doesn’t that just sound so ultimately cool? I really can’t wait until October when this is released. I’ll be putting in my pre-order soon. No kidding, if it was a choice between MGS2 and this, I’d choose this baby.
I first read about this game in an OPS2 feature, I think in issue 4. The game is called G-Surfers, and this title excites me even more than GT3, Devil May Cry, Jak and Daxter and possibly MGS2. Interestingly, it’s developed by Blade, not Sony.
Basically, it’s a futuristic racer using hovercars, and bears more than a passing resemblance to WipEout. In fact, it virtually is WipEout. It has hovering crafts, speed boosts, weapons, ludicrous speed and vertigo-inducing tracks. I’m surprised Sony Studios Liverpool haven’t caused a stir about this already. However, it has one quite amazing feature, and when I say amazing, I REALLY mean amazing. You see, the environment you race in is not just a fantasy future-world, no, it’s the entire Earth. Yes, the entire Earth: All of it, right down to every hill, mountain and canyon.
OK, techie paragraph: G-Surfers uses a very advanced procedural rendering engine. Instead of having a model of the earth on the DVD, it uses topographic data from the US military, and generates the landscape as you approach it, using the procedural engine. This means that not only are there zero loading times, but it’s is 100% accurate with no need to change discs. Of course, this places a greater load on the processor, but it has the advantage of not needing to store it all and waste memory.
So, besides the ludicrous size of the playing world, and the 30+ tracks available to race on, perhaps G-Surfers most promising feature is its very own track editor, named Trackman. OPS2 have used a beta version of this, and they report it’s comprehensive, easy to use and very intuitive. You start off by choosing a spot on the globe you want to start off at. You could choose the Grand Canyon, Mount Etna or Tokyo City, it’s up to you. Then, you place a starting point and begin laying your track. Use left and right to steer, up and down to create hills and drops, and use the shoulder buttons to create bank turns. After that, you can put in trackside decorations, textures, loops etc. The Trackman has huge potential, because every object and texture used by the game designers is available to you, so you can create tracks of the game’s quality. Imagine, being able to create a spiral up the Eiffel Tower, a life-threatening plunge into the Grand Canyon or a stomach churning roller coaster around New York. The possibilities are endless.
Naturally, the graphics won’t be as refined as WipEout or Extreme-G 3’s, because of the mind-bogglingly complicated maths going on with generating terrain and the real opponent AI. With a game as ambitious as this, naturally there has to be trade-offs, but I think it will be well worth it.
Now, doesn’t that just sound so ultimately cool? I really can’t wait until October when this is released. I’ll be putting in my pre-order soon. No kidding, if it was a choice between MGS2 and this, I’d choose this baby.
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Sounds to me like just another racer with a novelty featureto sit on the shelves with the many, many other PS2 racers.
I'm not a fan of racers, especially realistic ones, so this doesn't appeal to me. But hey, whatever floats your boat, or gets you throught the night, that's alright.
I'm not a fan of racers, especially realistic ones, so this doesn't appeal to me. But hey, whatever floats your boat, or gets you throught the night, that's alright.
Does this mean I'll be able to race past my own house?
As long as wipeout and extreme g 3 are any good.
slik ~_~
slik ~_~
actually i don't see whats so cool about a surfing game on the ps2.
slik ?_?
slik ?_?
Wipeout Fusion Looks no better than StarWars racer on Dreamcast or PC.
never heard of that one,thanks I'll check it out.
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