PGR360: Fresh Essential Stats and Images From Tokyo Conference

SPOnG wasn’t in Tokyo yesterday. We were in the UK where several things happened. It rained, that was the main thing, and we didn’t attend the Xbox 360 conference. We do usually like to get on the floor of such events, but alas this time our budget was spent on the 15” CRT monitor upgrades the boss just treated us all to.

So it’s with deep regret that we are a day late bringing you some riveting information regarding the in-development Project Gotham 3 Racing. Though we’re faster than everyone else, but you guessed that, right?

Bizarre Creations was eager to explain just how detailed its new offering is. According to the firm, the Brooklyn Bridge alone in PGR3 comprises as many polygons as a whole city from its immediate predecessor. And the cars are formed out of 80,000 polys, 40,000 on the outside and 40,000 on the inside. That’s a lot of little rhombi and other such shapes we’ve forgotten the name of.

Sound is also important, with Bizarre showing off two samples, one from a Ferrari F355 and one recording of a Nissan Skyline GT-R. They both sounded fantastic, with the 355’s quirky and highly distinctive engine note contrasting perfectly with the Darth Vader orgasm that is the Skyline’s two turbo chargers spinning up and exhaling explosively. Bizarre also promises an enhanced level of general sound engineering, offering distance and reflective audio mapping from the engines of cars from 80 manufacturers, all of which were sampled on location. Project Gotham Racing 3 will feature three times more sample files than PGR2, for the record.

Race tracks will all be customisable with players able to plot specific routes through the city courses. The bespoke courses will be shareable across Xbox Live - a nice touch. The cars will also be customisable, though specific details were not offered. Anyway, how does one modify an Enzo?

Project Gotham’s community mechanic was also explained. Gotham TV will offer a multi-function TV channel via Live offering an impressive amount of time-whittling content. You’ll have access to a ‘Heroes’ channel, showing the best races from around the world. A ‘Friends’ channel monitoring your buddies and replay channel to enjoy watching yourself, should that be your kind of thing. There will also be a tickertape thingy scrolling across the bottom of the screen telling you who won what, important news, lap records and the like.

We love Project Gotham 3. The game still has a few questions to answer, such as how the modification and car damage will work, and perhaps most importantly for Xbox fans: will 60Hz optimisation be included in the emerging ‘HD Era’?

Updates in the coming months. Stay tuned.