A Peek into the Pit
By Angel Leigh McCoy
It’s a race—a race to be the best, the fastest, and the coolest. Am I talking about drivers and their cars? Only partially. I’m also talking about game designers and their racing games. For them, it’s personal.
These developers create what they want to play, what they want to worship, and what they want to be when they step out of the real world and into the skin of a world-class mechanic or driver. With every race, these game designers are creating their own dream come true.
For now, the developers of Forza Motorsport™ still have their new racing game in the garage, tuning and testing it. They fully intend that once this “vehicle” hits the public track,Forza Motorsport will have what it takes to fulfill their—and your—every virtual racing fantasy.
Ahead of the Pack
Dan Greenawalt, lead designer on Forza Motorsport, knows the benefits of having the backing of Microsoft® Game Studios on a title. As he points out, “It takes a significant investment to create hundreds of damageable cars with upgrades, tuning, car customization, learning A.I., environment damage, jaw-dropping visuals, and incredible Xbox Live™ services.”
Microsoft has put some healthy support behind Forza Motorsport, creating a design team that consists of both racing aficionados and experts, on both videogame and real-life tracks. To top it off, they’ve had the resources necessary to acquire the aid of commercial engineers from both Ferrari and Toyo Tires.
Realism rides shotgun.
Experts at the Wheel
Microsoft Game Studios enlisted the engineering expertise of an F1 engineer from Ferrari to simulate realistic aerodynamics. They also consulted with an expert from Toyo tires, who provided invaluable input into the game’s tire modeling. As a result, tire performance in Forza Motorsport is sensitive to pressure, wear, heat, load, and friction, based on varying conditions.
Physics take a quantum leap in this simulation. Only the best, most experienced designers could achieve a goal as difficult as simulating physical reality on a virtual platform. Most consoles would fall short in the power category when it came to computing all the variables used in Forza Motorsport, but Xbox can handle it—and the game takes full advantage of its platform capabilities.
For example, when using a double “A” arm suspension, compression produces negative camber, the camber and weight affect tire heat, and this in turn affects pressure. Forza Motorsport takes all these variables into consideration … and more.
Forza Motorsport upholds the laws of physics.
A.I. I.Q.
Microsoft even lent one of its own experts to this project. Main headquarters allowed one of its primo A.I. developers to come over from the research division to take the lead on A.I. development for Forza Motorsport. They sent him to Cambridge, England, to work with the rest of the A.I. team on birthing a new generation A.I.
Difficulty levels in the game are based on a learning A.I. designed by the team in Cambridge. In the earlier portion of the game, when difficulties are lower, the A.I. will make mistakes just as a human being would. As the difficulty increases, so will the skill and cunning of the A.I.
As Greenawalt put it, “It’s sort of hypnotic to watch the A.I. learn. I’ll tune a new car and give it over to the developer to train the A.I. driver. The A.I. driver [gets] better and better as the A.I. tests out the new car’s limits. After a couple of laps, the A.I. is putting together really fast times in the exact same car physics the player drives.”
What’s more, the A.I. takes what it learned about the car on one track and applies it to all other tracks. Only this kind of cutting-edge A.I. could provide the single-player challenge that racing gamers so richly deserve.
It’s just you and the A.I.
Start Your Engines
What happens when you gather together a bunch of lug nuts that eat, drink, and sleep racing? You get a motorsport simulation with all the elements of the real thing. This is fantasy at its finest, so close to reality that you might almost forget you’re playing an Xbox game. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but the fact is, this racing game sets a whole new pace for any others that attempt to follow in its tracks.
Greenawalt said it best, “We’re pushing the Xbox hardware as far as it can go.”
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