Rumors of PGR 4 being limited by DVD are false

by Dustin Burg { Aug 1st 2007 at 4:30PM }

Rumors have been circulating the internet lately telling of Bizarre Creations being constrained by the DVD format's storage capacity and therefor not being able to implement day/night textures into Project Gotham Racing 4. But today Bizarre put such evil rumors to rest telling everyone that no, they have not been limited by DVD for PGR 4 in the slightest.

Commenting on the issue, they said that the facts got spun out of control when certain fanboys commented on the day/night feature stating that there was no room on the DVD to hold all the textures for both day and night in the game. Instead, Bizarre says that not only are they NOT constrained by the DVD format, but they actually opted for transitioning day/night textures in the game instead of two sets of "fixed" textures.

So, PGR 4 was not nor ever has been limited by DVD's storage capacity, it was never an issue and PGR fans will be treated to transitioning day/night textures as proof. Case closed.

[Thanks, IncredibleBulk92]

Tags: bizarrecreations, pgr4, projectgothamracing4

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

DUG E. FRESH @ Aug 1st 2007 4:35PM

OWNED!!!
LOL Just had to say that!!

YoRone22 @ Aug 1st 2007 4:40PM

Wonder what the Sony fanboys are gonna say about this...On Kotaku it was a Blue Ray party last night...

Benjamin09 @ Aug 1st 2007 4:47PM

Sony fanboys will ignore this. They already got to spin the lies so when the truth comes out it will be ignored.

gonzo @ Aug 1st 2007 4:59PM

*mweh mweh* > Sony Fanboys...

I own both systems and I don't necessarily see the advantage of BluRay in the reals of video games. It truly is for movies right now and I'm fine with that.

If games were 300 hours or so long where it's an RPG that spans generations of your character's lineage, then I can see the innate advantage of large storage mediums. Not right now though as proven by Bizzare and Geometry Wars....wait, I mean PGR4, arguably on of the prettiest games to come out for next gen systems

Tony @ Aug 1st 2007 5:24PM

Well, honestly, they DID phrase it pretty poorly in their last update. It's an easy thing to think.

Tony @ Aug 1st 2007 5:33PM

You know, I'm honestly very confused.

Here they show that going with their method will clearly provided good results. But I don't understand how this undoes the comment that if they were to approach it in terms of making all sorts of new textures they'd not have enough room. It still seems that if they went that route, which perhaps would have had its own benefits, that they'd not fit it all on one disc at all.

I'm confused by the way all of this is being worded.

Phour ZwanZig @ Aug 1st 2007 5:41PM

Well, I feel the real way of doin Night/Day is with lighting to begin with.. Not the Textures.. So basicly what Im gathering is that doing a night and day texture is just taking the easy way out, instead of playin with scripting and coding in the night/day effect..

Then again, its just me.. But if that is true, it would help prove that having blueray for the games is letting developers take short cuts and make sloppy games CUZ they have more space..

Marasai @ Aug 1st 2007 5:44PM

They posted this on Kotaku....and Crecente spent the entire post spinning it. And they call Kotaku anti sony.

Tony @ Aug 1st 2007 5:54PM

I think he makes a pretty good point honestly. It's tough for me to say this because usually I think Crecente makes some weird conclusions.

The difference is that this is a front page post on their site while the latter was a forum post. If I had to believe one, I'd believe what's on their news page lol.

I think the original forum post just must not have been worded well. It just makes more sense to adjust lighting instead of redoing every texture to begin with. That sounds like something they'd do before lighting was possible on consoles to me.

T Ghost @ Aug 1st 2007 5:57PM

I firmly believe that Kotaku is funded by Sony.

No need to spend time with Kotaku with so many serious options to serve as info source on game news.

Funny how Bizzare just OWNED KOTASonyKU:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/after-pgr4-didn.t-fit-on-dvd-sony-says/blu+ray-was-totally-worth-it-284618.php

BrianM @ Aug 1st 2007 6:07PM

The internet is a dodgy dodgy place to get information.. thats for sure.

BrianM @ Aug 1st 2007 6:11PM

Oh my, Kotaku are bad.. first time i've read them. The tone of their contributers is heavily biased.

Triforceowner @ Aug 1st 2007 6:15PM

Bizarre gets -1 lazy points. Yay for Bizarre!

gonzo @ Aug 1st 2007 6:28PM

I for one welcome out spin overlords

GL @ Aug 1st 2007 6:55PM

T Ghosts,

You might want to hold off on the "PWNAGE" until you read this.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/spin-control/bizzare-talks-disc-space-and-pgr4-284936.php

Work-arounds are great. Dynamic lighting is one of them. But Blu-ray games can do that as well. Best of both worlds.

And you might want to read the http://www.bizarrecreations.com/article.php?article_id=5257 forum. It's only 7 pages and has some good info about what really happened. Space is still at the heart of this debate. And this is only 2007. What about in 2008,09, 10 and B3YOND?! ;)

incrediblebulk92 @ Aug 1st 2007 7:06PM

YAY! my tip got posted! I'm soo happy lol... really I am

Clayj @ Aug 1st 2007 7:09PM

All you Sony fanboys are cordially invited to SUCK IT.

Strike Man @ Aug 1st 2007 7:18PM

"They posted this on Kotaku....and Crecente spent the entire post spinning it. And they call Kotaku anti sony."
It seems most sites or mags get that label at one point or another.

ZOMG EGM IZ FUNDID BI MICRO$$$OFT THEIR"E BIAST AGENST TEH PS3 BCUZ THEY CAENT AFFROD THE POWAR OF TRUE HD!

Sadly, if you say anyting critical (whether it's warranted or not), you're labeled as a "biased fanboy". I'm not defending any of Crecente's posts or opinions, I'm just laughing at how often silly stuff like the above "KOTASonyKU" is thrown around.

k0llateral @ Aug 1st 2007 8:10PM

"Then again, its just me.. But if that is true, it would help prove that having blueray for the games is letting developers take short cuts and make sloppy games CUZ they have more space.."

--Zwanzig

That is the most retarded logic I've heard. Please stop posting.

ericdrum @ Aug 1st 2007 7:30PM

It comes down to this. There are two ways that they can implement day/night. One is disc space intensive and requires more textures. The other requires more coding, but no extra textures. There are pluses and minuses to each approach. Since disc capacity could be an issue with a bunch of extra textures, they went the lighting route. Is this really a big deal?

T Ghost @ Aug 1st 2007 7:31PM

"T Ghosts,

You might want to hold off on the "PWNAGE" until you read this.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/spin-control/bizzare-talks-disc-space-and-pgr4-284936.php

Work-arounds are great. Dynamic lighting is one of them. But Blu-ray games can do that as well. Best of both worlds.

And you might want to read the http://www.bizarrecreations.com/article.php?article_id=5257 forum. It's only 7 pages and has some good info about what really happened. Space is still at the heart of this debate. And this is only 2007. What about in 2008,09, 10 and B3YOND?! ;)"

WOW GL, thanks man!

With that new info I'm now absolutely CERTAIN that Kotaku is funded by Sony!

Whatta Spin Factory right there! LOL

Kotaku beat themselves now on how to be biased and spin fact in a way that makes you look more biased and stupid than your prior biased and stupid comments.

The original Bizzare's comment makes it very clear that time constraint was the main factor on their decision to persue climactic changes on the PGR 4's environments instead of day and night. Like somebody already said here, day and night can (and should) be done by lightning changes and not with textures what makes the assumption that PGR 4 will not feature environments at night due to media constraints either a noobie in game programming assumption os a very lazy and cheap game programming assumption. Seeing Sony/polyphony "solutions" to make GT5 look "realistic" (BMP/JPG textures for objects on the scenario?) is easy to understand why Kotaku's can't see that media space cannot be a reason to do not include races at night on PGR 4.

Thanks GL for clearing any doubts I had on how much Kotaku belongs to Sony! ;)

And Trenton wants me to believe that sony doesn't pay money for exclusivities? Kotaku's opinion is a gaming exclusivity clearly sold to Mr. Trenton's Sony...

Sircolby45 @ Aug 1st 2007 8:20PM

"But if that is true, it would help prove that having blueray for the games is letting developers take short cuts and make sloppy games CUZ they have more space.."

Couldn't agree more.

All you Sony fanboys are cordially invited to SUCK IT.

I think the posts above which I have quoted pretty much covers my thoughts on this lol.

Sircolby45 @ Aug 1st 2007 8:20PM

"But if that is true, it would help prove that having blueray for the games is letting developers take short cuts and make sloppy games CUZ they have more space.."

Couldn't agree more.

"All you Sony fanboys are cordially invited to SUCK IT."

I think the posts above which I have quoted pretty much covers my thoughts on this lol.

GL @ Aug 1st 2007 8:27PM

LOL! @ T Ghost!

Did you read my post? I said that "work around" are great. But Blu-ray has the options. Thus, time is running out on DVD9. Sorry to say so. But this dynamic lighting is only one aspect of gaming. Other factors is the choice to make unique textures and models. Extra audio languages, uncompressed audio, and future 1080p rez objects. I know you can't see this now. But it's a fact. Oh well.

And we still will never know what differences the dynamic lighting environments could look vs the unique day/night environments. We'll never know. Well, unless Sony proves it. At least they have the space to do a test case.

As far as Kotaku being "funded" by Sony? Not any more than Microsoft or Nintendo. I do think that Kotaku is a gossip site that blows things out of proportion to gain web hits. They go out of their way to find "dirt" on Sony, Microsoft and soon Nintendo (it will happen). I just think you got you panties in a wad because what used to be a Sony bashing site has now turned into Microsoft bashing site.

Pro-Microsofties used to love dishing it out. But now the shoe is on the other foot. Not so fun, huh?

Kotaku = king of gossip, rumors and innuendoes. But even when a story like the DVD vs Blu-ray is mired in confusion. Once you clear away the exaggerations, you'll find you wont win the "less space is better" argument. Time is against you.

FM @ Aug 1st 2007 9:36PM

You know,Im not an Xbox fanboy but I love the PGR series ever since it was called Metropolis Street Racer.

I'm confused about this though,why didnt Bizarre use the HD-DVD as an option? Im puzzled about this MS introduced the drive,but could it work for games?

Clayj @ Aug 1st 2007 10:01PM

FM, Microsoft have already said that HD-DVD will NOT be allowed as an option for games, because they don't want to have any problems relating to game discs that won't work on all 360s.

Marasai @ Aug 1st 2007 10:15PM

I think I opened pandora's box here.

MYPS3KilledMy360 @ Aug 1st 2007 10:21PM

how long are these races are telling me all these races are gonna be set when its about to turn dark that seems to be weird. maybe it changes when the rain or snow sets in? i dont know until this game comes out i wouldnt pass my judgement yet. what will happen when PG5 comes out? o yeah its coming out on PSX720 my bad.

MYPS3KilledMy360 @ Aug 1st 2007 10:23PM

@27 its gonna be a problem when games are gonna need hard drive.2 tears in a bucket fuck it!

Bennyishere @ Aug 1st 2007 10:24PM

Cool. The DVD being too small makes no sense... Most 360 games are like 5 GB. GTA San Andreas wasn't any bigger than other games. Fact is that quality does not require size. Oblivion wasn't 8.99 GB...

The only thing I dislike is that the original statement (made by Ben and that other guy) made it very clear that the DVD was too small. So either he didn't really know what he was talking about, or he really formulated it wrong.

monkeyjehova @ Aug 1st 2007 10:49PM

But the original comment was made by a developer of PGR4, wasn't it? Does this mean PGR4's development team are "certain fanboys" of Sony? I guess any website with "fanboy" in the URL must know what they're talking about. Still, you may be right, who needs +50GB, in fact, why aren't we still using cartridges for games? 640kb, that should be enough for anybody, right?

MYPS3KilledMy360 @ Aug 1st 2007 11:08PM

@24 first off its blu ray and wtf? more room to make sloppy games, name one game thats built by sony thats sloppy and had a lot of jaggies( N.GAIDEN and also Oblivion looked great). wtf most of the people who made games for the ps3 were EA and Ubi wtf madden 08 running at 30fps while every other up coming game on the ps3 is running at 60fps every body got the optimized dev kits at the same time(even Unreal T. III) EA is lazy and Ubi sucks at porting, i meen even PC owners have problems with ports (cough splinter cell)! nobody notices the trend with all EA ports and Ubi ports, same developers will most likely make the same mistakes time and time again when there lazy!!!

LJKelley @ Aug 1st 2007 11:29PM

I think a variety of Lighting is obviously better. You don't have just night and then just day, you have a huge variety of lighting that occurs between Sunny, Cloudy, Sunset, Rainy etc..

The news on the other sites was just a ploy to praise the unneeded Blu-ray.

John @ Aug 3rd 2007 3:29AM

Bizarre Creations said this:
"You won't see different times of day per city because this involves recreating all the textures again (one for day and one for night). Whilst this wasn't a problem for our dev team, it was a problem fitting all this data onto a single DVD. So we've worked around the problem by providing different lighting models per city."

And then issued a "rebuttal" saying this:
"DVD size is absolutely not a factor that we consider when designing our games... and PGR4 is no exception. DVD9 gives us more than we need to create a fabulous experience for you guys."

Those do not contradict each other. They never denied that DVD9 was too small. They sidestepped the issue with tricky wording saying that when they DESIGN the game, they don't worry about DVD size limitation. When you initially design a game you don't have to worry about how big it is, that doesn't happen until you start trying to fit all the content onto the DVD and realize there is not enough room.

They then say the DVD9 is big enough to create fun game, which is true. But they don't say it is big enough to fit everything they wanted to do which is what the first quote says ("Whilst this wasn't a problem for our dev team, it was a problem fitting all this data onto a single DVD").

Sounds like they got in trouble and had to do some spin control...

philmoon80 @ Aug 2nd 2007 6:45AM

For all the folks stating that it was just Sony fanboys blowing this all out of proportion, please see the offending post by "Ben" of Bizarre Creations that started this whole debate:

http://www.bizarrecreations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=14802&p=#p255611

It is very clear what was stated in that post. And I quote:

"You won't see different times of day per city because this involves recreating all the textures again (one for day and one for night). Whilst this wasn't a problem for our dev team, it was a problem fitting all this data onto a single DVD..."

So there you go. Blame Bizarre Creations if you don't like that quote and leave the fanboyisms out of it.

GL @ Aug 2nd 2007 12:56AM

@John

Bravo!

You got it! It's the "DESIGN" phase that will be effected. It wouldn't be a problem if there wasn't anything to compare it to. But there will be.

"If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

"What you don't know can't hurt you."

GregA @ Aug 2nd 2007 2:40AM

GL,

So really what you are saying is, just as the DVD9 format will impact the design of XBOX 360 games, the inferior graphics and framerates will influence the PS3 games?

Hmm, I think I would rather have the former limitation, which can be overcome with DL content and extra DVD's that the latter which can not...

Justin @ Aug 2nd 2007 2:51AM

Its not being 'limited' by DVD storage capacity - but they defiantly have to work around it. Sure they can do real time transformations - but at the cost of framerates/graphic quality.

Mass effect already had problems fitting on 1 disc and Blue dragon is 3 DVDs. Obviously DVD storage limit problems are creeping up on all the developers.

Boff @ Aug 2nd 2007 6:58AM

All fanboyism aside, I have to agree with John (#35).

When this story broke, Ben form Bizarre Creations probably had a right ticking off, then the PR department was put in to action to turn things around.

Boff @ Aug 2nd 2007 6:58AM

All fanboyism aside, I have to agree with John (#35).

When this story broke, Ben from Bizarre Creations probably had a right ticking off, then the PR department was put in to action to turn things around.

Boff @ Aug 2nd 2007 6:58AM

Sorry double post.

Josh @ Aug 2nd 2007 9:35AM

In the end, PGR4 is going to be an amazing game with mind blowing graphics that is only going to be on the XBox 360, and not the PS3.

Giddieon @ Aug 2nd 2007 12:24PM

Looks like MS sicked the doggys on Blizzard to make them spin some bull shit now...

Funny eh yesterday it was no we had to change shit because the DVD 9 is to small to

blah blah blah BULL SHIT....

I love my 360 but when I hear and see bull shit... there is only one thing to say about it...

Call it for what it is... nothing but Blizzard spinning some Bull Shit...

MS should have gone with some kind of Optical HD disk simple as that...

Anthony33 @ Aug 2nd 2007 12:38PM

Its Bizzare not Blizzard.

Giddieon @ Aug 2nd 2007 12:47PM

Opppsss shit happens.... slap my ass and call me sally....

DJ @ Aug 4th 2007 12:00PM

The Sony fanboys might reference id's new game or Lair, both of which don't fit on a single DVD. I'm not fanboy for either but to claim Blu-ray has no advantages is just dumb. It's 50GB vs. 9GB. Why not argue that Blu-ray is slow or something if you feel the need to pretend it's not better?

Besides, so far the 360 has better games, isn't that what it's about?