4. Light Scattering

Light scattering is an algorithmic technique that models atmospheric phenomena. It simulates the way that light from the sun interacts with particles in the atmosphere to recreate the deep red of sunset or the grey of dawn. With the adjusting of a few sliders the artists could recreate the atmosphere from Dubai to Donington. The shader fragment is appended to every shader in the scene giving a very consistent lighting effect.

Veggies
In real life many racetracks around the world are in large fields with lots and lots of grass. In the past the only way we’ve been able to represent this grass is by plonking a grass photo over lots of flat polygons.

This time around we invested a lot of time in our veggie renderer that could draw up to a million blades of grass giving a really good volumetric effect. It also gives a great sense of speed when you see the grass whooshing by.

The Team

Even with our fairly mature tool-chain generating the assets for the first game of a new generation is always a difficult affair. The programmers are often so busy trying to get the game working that the artists are left with buggy tools, feature requests get forgotten and work has to be re-done because plans have changed.

It’s easy at times like this for resentment to build amongst the team.

Thankfully this didn’t happen on MotoGP’06. Our artists and designers are extremely experienced and were patient and tolerant when things went wrong.