Racing Evoluzione, avalancha

The concept behind RE is generally recognized as being one of the more intriguing concepts seen in a racing simulation. Rather than racing in order to purchase and upgrade licensed vehicles like every other game on the market, the objective in RE is to create your own successful brand of new cars and pit them against the world’s automotive leaders.

The way it works is thus: you begin the game with a relatively modest garage and a mechanic to build your cars. As you prove the calibre of your cars in competition your company will grow in stature and include a research and development team, automotive technicians, a production manager and a sexy secretary. This staff will provide new concepts for sports cars relative to your direction and specifications. These new models can then be taken into more competitions, hopefully winning and gaining even more acclaim for your brand within the industry.

Once people become aware of your brand, the orders will start rolling in, first by individual consumers looking for their next hot car, then by larger parties with larger orders. At one point you may even be contacted to give a demonstration to the police, who are considering using your car for their new highway patrol vehicles. Soon, if you play well, you will have a full roster of clients, sponsors, and more business than you can handle. Your brand will blossom into a full line of cars, you’ll add new lines to your range, and you can expand your factory.

You will ultimately become the leader of the automotive industry, joining the sports car legends.

However, your success will depend on more than just your competitive driving skills. You must also keep in close contact with your team of experts. Your R&D manager will propose new concepts with different designs and driving characteristics. Some concepts will be more suitable for certain tracks than others, so the choice of car to develop will influence your ability to perform well in the championships. The production manager will give you feedback on how your driving is influencing sales and the expansion of your factory. This is part of the original and innovative reward system that has been designed for RE. Finally your secretary will inform you of in-coming opportunities that, if successful, will get your brand into the headlines of the press.

Throughout the game you are in direct competition with automotive giants from around the world. Infogrames has licensed the real brands of 40 of today’s cars for you to race against. In some cases you will even get an exclusive look at future cars, such as the Dodge Viper RT10, which will not be on the market until 2003. The prototype designs for your dream cars were created by students at leading automotive design schools around the world, giving the player the possibility to build a total of 45 cars that are both unique and gorgeous.

Each car is rendered with around 10,000 polygons and will take visible damage. Essentially, the automobile and racing physics have been inspired by the best racing products on the market and the experience of Infogrames and Milestone in this field is a guarantee of a solid racing experience. The AI will also push the limits and create opponents who make snap judgments based on the race at hand as well as mistakes.

The sounds for the cars have also been handled with the same attention to detail and, as with real world sports cars, just the engine sound will be an experience on its own.

The different championships will take you all over the world. There are several variations in track style, with some taking place in cities, some in the mountains, some on racetracks and others in stadiums.

There are over fifty courses in all, each with its own feel, while the type of track you are on will greatly affect the handling of your car. These tracks have been created with special attention to the architectural feel of each location and an astounding feel of realism.

Up to half a million polygon sceneries have breathtaking depth, with moving billboards, trees with individually rendered branches and trunks, moving traffic on secondary roads, huge mountains to drive up, etc. The game engine, specially designed for the Xbox, will be the first to fully exploit the console’s technology in a racing game.

The main mode will deliver over 30 hours of gameplay with arcade and multiplayer modes added for replay value.
Racing Evoluzione is THE next generation racing game

3D User Interface :

* +60000 polygon building with high definition textures, Mental Ray generated light maps; rendering, lighting and special effects based on vertex and pixel shaders, obtaining a realism yet to be seen on any platform.
* 4 main characters the player will be working with at the factory, will have about 8000 polygons each, character skinning based on a very complex skeleton, motion captured movement, facial animations and lypsinc.
* About 4 or 5 other characters will also be working in the factory
* In total there will over 250 motion-captured animations
* More than 12 cars each with up to 10000 polygons, 1Mb of compressed textures and cube environment mapping will present simultaneously in the factory

Tracks (each):

* Up to 500000 static polygons
* Up to 50000 polygons based on bezier patches
* Up to 15 Mb of compressed textures
* Up to 2 Mb of procedural textures
* 3D volumetric textures for light effects and particle effects
* Texture animations
* Mental Ray generated light maps using up to 5 Mb of compressed textures to obtain realistic static shadows and light effects
* Rendering, lighting and special effects based on vertex shaders and pixel shaders
* An impressive 3 Km line of sight
* High polygon count 3D trees and bushes
* Extremely detailed buildings and other tracks objects; buildings made up mainly of just cubes at last are a thing of the past
* Static cube environment mapping on buildings
* A texture detail method, so that you can see the blades of grass, the stones in the asphalt and the grains of sand
* Persistent skid marks left by the cars
* Physics moveable objects such as bales of straw, tires, traffic cones, etc.
* Very realistic water effects, using pixel shaders and particle vapour effects
* Variable environmental sounds


Cars (each) & Handling:

* Up to 30000 tristripped polygons and 2 pop-free LODs
* Open and closed cars with a high level of detail.
* Up to 1Mb of compressed textures
* User choose-able car colours
* Dynamic shadows using shadow buffers
* Realistic procedural car deformations based on physics
* Procedural tires with deformation based on the car physics and blur effect
* Breakable parts such as glass and plastic
* Custom illumination model using pixel and vertex shaders
* Driver with +1000 polygons, well defined textures and over 20 motion captured animations
* Dynamic car engine sound effects


Playability - Game experience:

* Extremely realistic rigid body simulation implementing realistic suspensions (real spring and damper behaviour)
* Accurate collision detection
* Gaming experience greatly improved by a tire/ground contact force determination
* Slipstream physics, will make the battling on high-speed tracks a breathtaking experience
* Road surface information; oil slicks, manholes, broken road, etc
* Human-like, learning AI; the more they drive the better they get, so they will always be an exciting challenge for the player
* Advanced AI behaviour
* Soft driving learning curve
* Various types of driving aids; gear-changing, steering, counter-steering, acceleration, brakes, etc.


AUDIO:

The capabilities of the Xbox audio chip let us to implement very realistic engines sounds, with real crowds and life environment.
In the 3D user interface, each room will have its own ambiance ( music, activity of people machines… ) , and using lipsync, will deliver a very immersive experience when interacting with the player's team.
Support of the Dolby Digital 5.1-channel of the Xbox; the driving experience will be greatly enhanced through the use of it.

General Points :

* FSAA ( antialiasing )to get rid of those annoying "jaggies"
* Quick access times and possibility to save tons of replays, thanks to the hard disk availability
* The game at a smooth 60 fps