EA’s Rod Chong has released the second part of the Need for Speed Shift 2 Unleashed Q&A session over at Speedhunters.com.
The extensive article is enriched with 46 tasty-looking previews showing mainly Nissans and a bunch of other cars. Players will be able to take impressive shots like these ??themselves as the Q&A reveals that Shift 2 comes with a much-improved photo mode that includes free-roaming around cars and (for the PC version) photos in the game’s native resolution enriched by up to 4x Anti-Aliasing.
Furthermore, the Q&A touches on the subjects of realism and physics several times:
Great job on the game! It looks awesome! I have one quick question though: How realistic is crashing. I remember in Forza 1, if you crashed into a wall, the steering would be off and the car would have less power. What would happen if I crashed into a wall in S2U?
Crashing in SHIFT 2 is all about trying to recreate that feeling of dread that you’d feel in real life. In most driving games you can happily bounce off the walls without any fear but we tried to recreate the true disorientating and frightening experience that is crashing, with visual and audio effects. On top of that, in SHIFT 2, you can now choose to have the damage model fully enabled, with damage being taken by your car to any number of critical parts, including bodywork, suspension, drivetrain, engine and ripping your wheels off.
Also this year we’ve improved the in-air physics and damage models of the cars to ensure that not only do crashes/barrel rolls look visceral and heart-stopping but are authentic to how they then affect performance and handling. So yes, you might find your car pulling to the left, or??if it’s a really big crash,??missing a tire with the drivetrain busted!
Just wondering: -I’ve seen in the realism video that the weight is calculated with the physics model, but do the physics include the weight distribution of the car ? And of the engine swaps? Not just preset that the car goes oversteer more or something like that, but really a different weight distribution.
Yes weight is calculated like the real thing. Engine swaps do change the weight and weight distribution.
So how is it gonna be with the adjustments regarding the handling of the cars? Brakes/ springs etc
All tuning affects the car’s handling as it does in real life and this time round we’re going into far more detail than there was in Shift 1… installing new parts on your car will unlock new tuning options and you can test out changes on the track using our new Live Tuning option. Once you’re happy with the setup you can then save it to either a specific track or a group of tracks that are similar (eg.. all Oval tracks or all Drift tracks).
We’ve also included a live telemetry readout that details friction, g-forces, and tire temperature/suspension data so you can see your handling and performance in real time.
For the full Q&A, make sure to check out the original article here.
Need for Speed Shift 2 Unleashed will include the 2010 FIA GT1 World Championship & GT3 European Championship among lots of other racing content, new features include a new helmet camera, night racing and more realistic physics. The second Shift title will be available for the PC, Microsoft???s Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 in late March.
