DriveClub Dev: “I’d Rather Have More Stuff Going On And A Lower Frame Rate”

Are you happy with the PS4’s initial first party racing game running at thirty frames per second, half that of the competition’s Forza 5? It seems Evolution are battling internally over the best solution, but hearing that they’re having to have this debate is disheartening, even disregarding the Xbox One’s launch title.

Sony’s free-to-play community-based racer might look pretty on launch, but the E3 demo didn’t do the game a huge amount of favours, and hopes are high that the demo to be shown next month is of a different course with better visual fidelity.

“I’d rather have more stuff going on at a prettier level and a lower frame rate,” says Driveclub‘s art director Alex Perkins [via], “but that’s where the arguments start.”

“The coders would rather have a higher frame rate, and put less stuff in. So it comes down to Col Rodger‘s decision in the long run. Personally I’m quite happy with a 30 frames a second game, as long as it’s rock solid at thirty, and being an art director I want it to look beautiful.”

“There is a hell of a lot going on,” Perkins adds. “Increased visual fidelity does cost, there’s no argument about it. The PlayStation 4 is very capable of doing both but we’ve gone for a fully dynamic environment, so you can go any time of day, anywhere on the planet, and it’ll calculate the atmospheric density, whether you’re up the top of a mountain or at sea level.”

Cute. But we were told the developers are aiming at 60 frames a second, and – to be honest – it really needs to achieve that level. If that means sacrificing atmospheric density, let’s do that.