Live Action.(Product Development)

EA RACES TO ADD BROADCAST-QUALITY REALISM TO ITS PS2-BASED FORMULA ONE GAME

The "next-generation" game consoles such as Sony's PlayStations 2 are delivering 3D graphics that are tantalizing close to realistic. These graphics are not photorealistic yet, but the promise of film-quality imagery, which would be the ultimate in real-time eye candy, tempts may game developers to focus on creating "cinematic games." Not Evan Hirsch, head of visual development at Electronic Arts Europe. "I think game developers should be looking at broadcast television as a model, not at film," he says. "Film is scripted, but games are live events, regardless of their genre. It's television, not film that covers live events. Plus, while we're a ways away from film-quality imagery [in games], we're getting very close to broadcast-level images."

Thus, when Hirsch began thinking about the production of EA Sport's F1 Championship Season 2000 for the PS2, he decided to follow his own advice. In this game, players drive cars modeled exactly after last season's 22 Formula One cars, right down to the logos, driven on tracks modeled after all the courses on the circuit. EA even hired Andy Blackmore, a former industrial designer on the West Maclaren Mercedes Formula 1 team to model the cars. F1 Championship Season 2000, which is a mix between an arcade-style game and a simulation, uses a physics engine in the core of the game's engine to help create a realistic driving experience. To give the player a more realistic visual experience, texture maps driven by artificial intelligence (AI) in the game engine simulate wear and tear on cars and track. In addition, Simon Britnell, lead texture artist, led a team that created texture maps for the environment around the tracks with trees, gravel, and grass appropriate for each location.

To further heighten the realism, two innovative elements help the game seem even more like a Formula One race: broadcast-style camera coverage for track previews and 30-second replays, and 22-man pit crews that were created with 3D graphics and animated with the help of motion-capture data.

Lights, Cameras

Each track in the game has between 25 and 35 cameras unique to that track. A player can see the race via an onboard, first person camera; the rest of the cameras, which are external, can give players a preview of the course via a "parade" lap and replay a previous 30 seconds of their race. "The cameras are always recording the race," Hirsch says. "We keep 30 seconds in a buffer so you can see your race in replay." Because he wanted these replays to mimic the televised coverage of Formula One races, Hirsch hire Keith McKenzie, the award-winning director of Formula One racing for the British television network iTV, as an advisor.

"Half of photorealism is presenting information in the right way," Hirsch says. "Finally the game machines and PC hardware are allowing us to do these things, but they are new to game developers. We needed to bring in someone from the broadcast world who knows how to make the lighting and camera for live coverage work."