During a panel at PlayStation Experience in Anaheim, presented by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Gran Turismo Sport Producer Kazunori Yamauchi talked about the upcoming game, and new technologies, including PS4 Pro, HDR support and 4K.
We learn that HDR support has been in the works at Polyphony Digital since three years ago. Conventional TVs are not able to convey the light around you when you're driving in the real world. Now with HDR, the dynamic lightning of the game really allows to reproduce the light that you can see in the real world. The cars are bathed in the closest possible light to what you can see in the real world.
Yamauchi-san thinks that in the next year, with HDR TVs becoming more widespread, people will start understanding the undertaking made in order to achieve full HDR.
Yamauchi-san started dabbling with photography when he was 15 years old, and since then for him it has always been a matter of capturing that natural light, or even artificial light, and showing it on the screen. Gran Turismo is really an extension of that. It always been not only about cars, but also about the light around them. With HDR technology, Yamauchi-san is finally able to see and express all the light that he always wanted to capture. Cars, in a way, are like mirrors of the light.
There were four main goals for Polyphony Digital: 4K, 60 FPS, HDR and wide color, but the PS4 Pro architecture is so well designed that, after they first designed the game in 1080p, 60 FPS, HDR and wide color for standard PS4, scaling them up for PS4 Pro was not as hard as Yamauchi-san thought.
After that, he talked about PlayStation VR, mentioning that all the experiences Yamauchi-san had driving many different cars on various tracks around the world had an influence on how virtual reality is set up for the game.
The Gran Turismo Sport demo playable at PlayStation VR includes lighting conditions and weather that can be set before the race, and this really changes the look of the game completely when you choose different conditions. This is something to look forward for the final games.
At the time of E3, the team was discovering various teach advancements for the first time, but they weren't quite refined yet. Now at the time of PlayStation Experience, developers have a deeper understanding of how HDR really works, how to control the light and more.
Accoriding to Yamauchi-san, when you look at the game on a big 4K TV with HDR, you notice that it's beautiful, but it's not overly expressive, the conditions that you see on the screen are very natural to the eyes. There is no question as to how high fidelity is, and there is no need of an explanation if you can see it with your own eyes.
If you want to see more about the impressive visuals of the latest build of Gran Turismo Sport, you can check out the new trailer from the PlayStation Experience keynote presentation, and a ton of new and screenshots.