IGN

Good news for those who like to keep their food in their stomachs: Forza Motorsport 4's developer, Turn 10, has no intention of making anyone lose their lunch. In a recent interview with IGN, Game Director Dan Greenwalt commented on Shift 2's new helmet cam. The helmet cam for EA's upcoming racing game pans the camera to simulate the real head movements of a driver. Is this type of immersion something Turn 10 has considered? 

"We did prototype a camera [for Forza 2] that looked into your corner based on a blend between the AI spline and where your car was going," Greenwalt told us. "It didn't hit the bar of what we wanted, as we were tuning [Forza 2] for a broader and broader audience, and I don't mean kids, what I just mean is normal racers, not the hardest of the hardcore racers. We had to water it down quite a bit, because some people were getting ill." 

Greenwalt noted that very few people even use the cockpit view when playing a racing game, a viewpoint that was basically in the head of a racer. Mimicking all movements was too much, he felt. "How much do you jump in with both feet, and who do you alienate when you do? Who do you make ill? Because we were finding some people were getting violently ill from it." 

The problems were more than just motion sickness. It is a bit of a brain disconnect from where your eyes are looking at the screen and where the camera is guiding you. "People were losing track of where the car was really going, because the car was going one way and the view was slightly off-kilter," Greenwalt said. "And they had no control over it. They weren't doing it with their own head." 

Forza 4 does include head tracking with Kinect. If you turn your head, your field of vision changes to match. So you can easily look a little to the left or right. The experience is user controlled and, in theory, natural since the camera is panning where you intend to look. The difference between this and what Shift 2 is attempting is that EA's game removes the control from the player, and makes the camera more of a presentation element. 

Greenwalt says he has nothing against Shift 2 or the fact that there's an attempt at trying something which didn't work out for Turn 10 in the past. "More power to them," he said. "There's lots of ideas, there's lots of things to go experiment within this space. I don't think this genre is stagnant by any means. It's kinda Turn 10's goal to make sure it never does get stagnant. We want to keep pushing and pushing. I hope we always have good competition that's pushing us further." 

http://ie.xbox360.ign.com/articles/115/1157128p1.html

I actually really like Shift 2's helmet cam...nothing wrong with including things in games if some people like it.

The slight delay in head tracking can still cause motion sickness. It happens when visual information doesn't match your sensory information. Any delay in moving your head and the picture catching up could even be worse then just some camera shaking while you keep your head still.

Then again my wife can't look at the screen while I'm racing whatever view I use. Racing games and her don't match.

I don't use the in car view simply because it blocks half the screen. The shaky camera in bonnet view doesn't bother me. But looking into the corner doesn't work in that view since you loose track of how the car is situated on the road. (whether you control it yourself or the game does it for you) The only times I use it is on a straight to look around.

Give me a good bonnet cam view with a decent fov so I don't need to look into the corner. I'll drift through the corner if I want to see the inside :)

why won't anyone induge me in my bulimia?

I presume Fortza 4's head tracking via kinect has a better chance to work than GT5's via PS eye. I'm curious how they will implement it though.

*sigh*

It doesn't matter though. I mapped it to the right analog stick in GT5, no lag, precise control of the viewpoint and it was still disorienting and made me loose my line through the corner.

It is a bit better with in car view but still harder then normal to keep a steady line through corners. It feels like you're sitting on a swivel chair inside the car.

I don't get the whole in car view obsession anyway, when playing from the couch it makes me feel like I'm driving from the trunk. The tv is already much smaller then the windshield of the car at that distance.

I'm guessing you accelerate with R2 then? Well, the whole poing of implementing this via headtracking is to make it more natural I guess... No?

@Dr.Grass: is that directed at my post of GT5?

Yep R2 to accelerate. Whether it is more natural through headtracking is debatable. If you do it the natural way, ie rotating your head, you will be looking out the corner of your eye to watch the screen. If you map the rotation to moving your head side to side then it's still easy to see the screen but doesn't feel natural.

The natural way to do it is to only use 3D positioning in the car with headtracking, not rotation. So you can lean forward or back, sit up to peek over a hill and lean left and right to check your side mirrors. Ofcourse that negates the whole looking into the corner promise.

And there's still the slight lag with head tracking that gives me motion sickness but that might go away with more practice.

Yep, that would be cool, even without a propper "look around the corner" thing, it would compensate a bit with the lean into the curve mechanism. I really hope they do it like that, or better.