All Eyes on Forza Motorsport 2…
Welcome back to the Turn 10 Weekly Pitpass Report, your regular glimpse and update on Xbox 360’s forthcoming racing simulation, Forza Motorsport 2. In case this is your first visit to Forzamotorsport.net or the Pitpass, you can go check out what we’ve been doing for the past 37 weeks or so in our archive section. Yes, there is a method to this madness. Sometimes.
It’s been a downright electrifying week here at Turn 10 as we stretched our staff thin crunching to finish Forza 2 and sent folks to the annual Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. A few days ago, we opened the doors for the press to come and test drive Forza 2 at GDC. Just a taste of our quadruple-screen racing cockpit setup to get ‘em hooked for more. As a result, the question we heard most often from the games press down at GDC was “when are we going to get review builds?” (We’ll let our PR folks answer that one.)
Forza 2 also got some terrific coverage from our demo event, from just about every major media outlet out there. In case it’s been too overwhelming to follow (or you’re just lazy), the diligent moderators over at our #1 fan site Forza Central have gathered all the stories in one convenient location. Still, even with all the handicam videos and new Forza 2 screenshots this week, many in our community are wondering when they’re going to see some hi-def direct feed footage of the game in motion. We can’t give you an exact date other than to say that it should be soon — and it’ll probably make its debut on one of the major gaming sites out there. Just know that stuff is in the works.
In the short term, you should tune in to next week’s Forza Motorsport Showdown finale. Why? Well, besides all the on-track drama, you’ll see video pitpass #4 with more direct feed footage of Forza 2 — this time on Road Atlanta, where Showdown takes place. I also must say, Dan Greenawalt looks uncharacteristically excited in the latest segment. I think he’s finally warming up to Hollywood.
The Audio of Forza Motorsport 2 at GDC
Besides showing off the game to press this week, Turn 10 also held GDC sessions for attendees who are interested in the art of game design and development. Turn 10 game director Dan Greenawalt discussed something regular readers are already familiar with in regards to Forza 2 — the importance of force feedback and advanced physics in a racing simulation. For a good summary of his thesis on this topic, read a recent article he penned on force feedback in Forza Motorsport 2.
Meanwhile, Turn 10’s audio lead Greg Shaw held an extensive session on the monumental task of creating the authentic car audio in Forza 2. For a game with more than 300 cars, thousands of upgrade possibilities, track ambience, and 3 hours of original and licensed music, Greg and his team pulled off an audio miracle in Forza 2.
Those of you who couldn’t make it over to GDC (what, you mean you’re not a game developer??) here’s an idea of the topics Greg covers in his presentation. Starting from ground zero, Greg laid out the challenge his team faced of creating and capturing sounds for Forza 2. Their strategy was to modularize car sounds into engine and exhaust notes, bolt-on sounds, tire audio, and collision sounds.
In fact, every car in Forza 2 has approximately 19 unique sounds (divided into exhaust, engine intake, cams/valves, transmission, turbo, and supercharger) that come together to form thousands of different combinations, depending on the upgrades and mods of a particular car. The philosophy of the audio team was to think of a car’s engine as a complicated wind instrument with the following events:
Greg also revealed some trade secrets by demonstrating how we captured authentic sounds for superchargers and turbo kits. In case you don’t recognize what the contraption above actually is, it’s a supercharger pulley device built by the team (with the help from a machine shop). The idea, of course, is to capture both the intense sound of air being compressed and the noise of a supercharger’s internal gearing. Likewise, with turbo kits, the team traveled down to a turbo factory in Southern California and force fed a ton of different turbo kits a whole lot of air and caught it all on tape.
The session was rounded off with discussion on how our audio team captured the tire and collision sounds you’ll hear in the game. Yours truly went on many of these audio excursions and the tire/skid recordings were definitely some of my most memorable times here at Turn 10. We essentially rented a Crown Victoria and drifted the snot out of it at an airstrip to capture sound for a variety of scenarios (skidding, braking, accelerating, burnouts, etc.) Ah the sweet sweet smell of rubber.
Next Week:
Before we TGIF and peace out, here’s a peek at the next 7-9 days here at Turn 10. As Forza Motorsport 2 continues to round corners (yes, by the time we release the “latest” screenshots, we probably already have a better build), the primary focus is still to continue polishing the game by bringing the bug count to zero. Tournaments has recently come online and testers are swarming upon this new Xbox Live-enabled feature to make sure it works as intended. Graphics tuning and bug fixing is another important area and folks are staying late nights all day every day to polish the game visually.
Recently tuning on rumble for the Xbox 360 controller was finalized and it feels so awesome and satisfying in your hands. Lots of subtle additions have been made to rumble, including actually feeling gear shifts, drivetrain vibration, engine idle, and contact (like punting cones off the track). Of course, this is on top of the already extensive list of haptic info rumble already gives you (peak friction, suspension travel, etc.) The overall result is total intuition when you play with a controller as your hands are constantly being fed information.
And finally, we look forward to the return of the 2007 season of the American Le Mans Series when they hold their inaugural race at Sebring in Florida next week. As you may know, we’ve been working with the folks over at our sponsored team Risi Competizione. To give their drivers an edge for the 12 Hours of Sebring, we’re bringing our triple-screen VRX racing cockpit out to the track for them to get some extra time on Sebring in Forza 2. And of course, racers Mika Salo and Jaime Melo will be driving their fiery signature #62 F430GT in the game. We’ll be on-hand to witness the race as well as take notes from their hands-on time with Forza Motorsport 2 for our own tuning purposes in the final weeks of development.
So look for updates next week as we head out to Sebring!
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