SPOnG:What about the circuits in this game? Looking at the new build here today, they look pretty realistic? You guys must have taken plenty of photos!
Bruno Senna: Yeah, they look very, very good. In this sense they are very realistic. One thing that you have to remember is that you are never going to get all of the bumps right with a racing game. You need a very expensive system to be able to actually go to a place and get the bumps.
So, in that sense you can go to Monza in
Ferrari Challenge, for example, and lap quicker than you actually can on the real circuit, because there are almost no bumps on this circuit. So you can do certain things in the game that you simply cannot do with a real car. You can sometimes cut the chicanes a little more, or put the power down in places where, on the real circuit, there are bumps… Or you might brake just a few milliseconds later.
It’s a trade-off. It’s too expensive to go to a place and actually find every single bump and every single detail.
SPOnG:Maybe we’ll have that level of realism in games in 2020?
Bruno Senna: No, no, actually the
Red Bull Formula One simulator – which is basically built from a car equipped with hundreds of lasers and receivers, so the lasers point out and the receivers catch the signal back. And every single ripple on the tarmac and on the surface of the circuit is registered. But this is a multi-million pound simulator. It’s not a game, but it’s a tool, which is a lot different.
SPOnG: Even though, and taking that into consideration, do you think that using Ferrari Challenge and racing around the various tracks in the game helps you to familiarise yourself and practice on the various circuits in the game?
Bruno Senna: Yeah, for sure, that’s the least that I advised them to do – to make the corners as realistic as possible for a
game. For you to know that, if you have played
Ferrari Challenge and then were to drive a real car on one of the circuits from the game, you would know where you are. The profiles of the corners are superb, as are the slopes and cambers of the circuits. We’ve made sure that they are as close to reality as possible.
SPOnG: The game's producer told me that if you are not used to racing Ferraris, then you soon develop a new-found respect for braking points very soon after you start playing Ferrari Challenge. This is quite challenging initially.
Bruno Senna: For sure, the tool that we had in this game, from Eutechnyx’s physics engine, was the ‘G-meter’ so you can actually know how many Gs the car is pulling. We also had all the telemetry data, from the 430, for example, and I know very well how many Gs I can pull with the 430.
Of course, it would be much easier if the car would stop much better in the game, but then again, what’s the point in making a car that pulls 1.7Gs on the brakes pull 2.5Gs in the game? We don’t find that particularly attractive, because then the game becomes completely unrealistic. So we’ve made the tyre models achieve a top G, sometimes it’s maybe 0.01% of a G more than the real car, but it’s usually very close to real life, which is why the lap-times are so close to real life on the in-game circuits.
If people complain about the brakes not seeming to be so good, then they are missing the point. They have to understand that they cannot approach a corner at 250 kph at 100m, because they are not going to stop! You have to break at almost 200m. This is the closest that most people will ever get to the real-life experience of racing a Ferrari.
So, one day, when a player gets in a real Ferrari and races around one of these circuits then they will be thanking me for it!
SPOnG: When we raced around Mugello, with Ferrari’s trained instructors teaching us how to drive, it became far easier to play the game immediately afterwards!
Bruno Senna: Yeah, for sure. As soon as you have some references, you go to a circuit and you know where it goes. Then you look at the boards and you know roughly where to accelerate, where to brake. Then you play the game and it’s much more natural, because you know what’s going on.
And vice versa, if you master the game and you drive the car you are going to feel much more at home as well.
SPOnG: And what of the future? Will you continue to work with System 3?
Bruno Senna: For sure. I’ll finish this game with them, helping them with all the cars they want to do and all of the circuits I can. Unfortunately I don’t know every circuit in the world, personally, yet!
We have already developed eighteen cars for the game, most of which I drove. In every case we got all the relevant information from Ferrari and I called people that I know, so we had the best feedback information possible.
Some cars you’ll love, some cars you’ll hate. Some cars are just brilliant, they drift so nicely… The key thing, for the game, is that each car really does have it’s own essential characteristic. And in every case, if you look at the stats and look at reviews of the cars, you will see that the game is very true to real life.
SPOnG: And what of your own racing career? What’s the latest there?
Bruno Senna: Well, at the moment, this year’s GP2 championship is over. I finished eighth overall and had victory and two podiums in the championships. But I had a few problems with developing the car and the team, so right now I’m changing teams. I had a test with the new team and I broke the circuit record with a GP2 car, so I’m currently negotiating a contract with them. So, next year will be my second year racing GP2, my fourth year of motor racing and I hope to be champion. Then, after that, F1, I hope.
SPOnG: So we’ll see you racing Formula 1 in the 2009 championships?
Bruno Senna: It depends on the results, but I certainly hope so!
SPOnG: Thanks for your time, Bruno.
System 3’s
Ferrari Challenge: Trofeo Pirelli is out in February 2008 on PS3, Wii and DS. A PS2 version is also currently in the works.
