What kind of impact will Forza 2 have in Japan?

[rocketpig]

omgwtfbbq said:

Physics engines are generally locked at a particular "frame rate". I've done some programming with Open Dynamics Engine, and I've found nasty things happen when you don't lock the physics engine at a particular rate. The basic idea is that a physics engine will work out the forces on a particular object, and then work out their accelleration, from that work out their velocity (based on their previous accelleration and the timestep) and then work out their position based on the velocity and their previous position. The accelleration is only applied at one point and the velocity is the same for the entire timestep.

Therefore a large timestep will mean that a large accelleration applied over a short time (such as being hit with a baseball bat) will be stretched over the entire time period, causing a disproportionate amount of accelleration. So not only does fixing the timestep make sense (otherwise the physics behaves differently when there are more items on the screen, definitely not something that we want), but also a small timestep will see a benifit even when the graphics are locked into a much lower framerate. Basically, smaller timesteps will mean much smoother curves for velocity, accelleration, and displacement, and much more realistic movement.

As for the 360 steps per second number, I have no idea where that comes from

@larry: thank you for saying that Forza won't even make 10k in Japan. This means it will be the first of your completely ridiculous predictions that will be proven false. Can't wait for the numbers!

 

Thanks for the explanation. I wasn't sure about it but I remembered reading it was locked at 360fps.

BTW, it's been repeated several times by Turn 10 that the physics engine is running at 360fps. They felt it was necessary since the speeds will be so high at tracks like Nurburgring, anything less would mean that your car was travelling too far in between physics cycles.

Here's one example where they state the 360fps claim:

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/766/766507p1.html