Render or real game?

As you all probably can easily tell if you have working eyeballs, many pics that developers release these days are renders and are not truly representive of the actual game. A great example is Gran Turismo 4. Here is a game screen that is a typical rendered shot (this is NOT the PS2):

This image has way more anti-aliasing than the PS2 is capable of when moving graphics in real time. Many of the GT4 pics are also of a much higher resolution than the PS2 is capable of.

Here is an ACTUAL in-game shot of Gran Turismo 4:

Notice the black borders all around (which fall into the overscan area of the TV) and the overall PS2-quality to it. Now I' m not trying to prove that Gran Turismo 4 is a bad game, I' m just saying that it won' t look as good on your TV as the pictures you' ve been seeing. Many, many game developers do things like this, so Sony is not alone. I mean heck, check out the differences in Dead or Alive Xtremely Lame Volleyball:


Fake (render)


Actual game screen.


Kikizo is known for their direct-feed movie files, and I think it' s great. However I have stumbled upon the following Quicktime and was wondering if I could get clued in on whether it is a provided-by-Sony clip or if Kikizo recorded this while actually playing the game themselves:

http://www.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_granturismo4_kikizo_paris1.aspx

A couple of things make me a little suspicious that it might not be " actual footage" . First of all there is no HUD or onscreen information of any kind. Second of all there is no black border around the image like we know the game has. Thirdly the file is Quicktime format, and in my experience Kikizo usualy uses WMV (not that it really matters). The footage looks pretty good, and it' s hard to tell if it' s real or a render (which moving footage can actually be... it uses the game engine but it is processed with more anti-aliasing via the developer' s worstations and not an actual PS2).

Any guesses?

Something that rears its head once in a while are the differences in image quality between games running on Developer kits and the final game running on the actual console. The PS2 developer kits for example contain slightly higher specs than what the PS2 console is capable of so image captures from the dev kits tend to look ' cleaner' and slightly better at times.

The top pic looks like a rendered shot or is it possible that it' s a replay shot running on a dev kit?

I' m pretty sure I don' t care.

DoA: XBV is the nicest-looking console game available with the exception of Chronicles of Riddick, and GT 4 will look fantastic as well. I care about early screenshots and previews...very little.

Kikizo Staff Writer

Yeah, that' s why I think that video probably came from a developer kit. I don' t blame people like Kikizo, IGN, Magic Box, EGM or whoever for those shots. But I do like to see the real game when I can. For example I had never ever seen a real gameplay shot of Metal Gear Solid 3 from the in-game overhead camera until the game actually came out. Tha is kind of pathetic in my opinion that Konami felt that every shot has to be looking AT Solid Snake from a perpective you' ll never see while playing the game.

I don' t think that it is a huge deal but it is somewhat disappointing when you think like oh this game has awesome graphics - look at those screens - but then when you play it it isn' t nearly as crisp or nice.

I still think one of the funniest things I ever read was how a few gamers in Europe bought Gradius III & IV thinking that the Full Motion Video sequence was actually the gameplay footage. Most of them returned the game immediately after booting it up and getting hit by the 2D graphics.

The other funny thing I read was that the game only sold 18 copies the first week of its release in the UK lol.

18 copies?? Ouch. I had Gradius 3 for the snes when it first came out, and loved it. 18 copies though, I don' t think that' d pay for the gas to ship the games to the store. Good thing to point out about the dev shots though. It' s been happening for a long time, but only recently have developers been able to sneak them by as in game shots because the systems are so powerful.