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Ivory Tower and Ubisoft Reflections are “aiming for 30 frames per second locked” with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of next year’s open-world racer The Crew, creative director Julian Gerighty has told VideoGamer.com, stating that a higher frame rate would be unrealistic given the size of the world.
“We’ve never been at 60 frames per second,” Gerighty told us during a gameplay presentation this morning. “We’ve always been aiming for 30 frames per second locked. Today, unfortunately certain PCs have been overheating, so we’re having frame rate drops. It’s a hardware issue, not a software issue.
“60 frames per second is, of course, what we would all like to obtain,” he continued, “but it’s such a big world, and with all the online features running, it’s just not realistic to obtain that. 30 [frames] locked is really, really good and exactly what we’ve been focussed on.”
Despite being co-developed by Driver: San Francisco studio Ubisoft Reflections, development on The Crew is being led by French studio Ivory Tower, comprised of ex-Eden Games developers, which has created a proprietary engine for the next-gen racer.
“In fact, no,” Gerighty replied, when asked whether The Crew was running on a modified version of Driver: San Francisco’s engine. “It has the DNA of both Test Drive Unlimited, which was the world of Hawaii [and] seamless online, because it was conceived by Ivory Tower in France who are ex-Eden Games [developers]. But… this is a multi-studio project, so when Ubisoft asked Ivory Tower who [they wanted to] work with within Ubisoft, there is no better team – maybe in the world – for an action driving game, than working with Ubisoft Reflections. So Ubisoft Reflections are working hand-in-hand with Ivory Tower.
“The tech behind it is proprietary to Ivory Tower. This is something that is completely brilliant in terms of tools that allows us to build a very varied, very spectacular, beautiful world very easily… So it’s really more, in terms of technical side of things, Ivory Tower.”
The Crew’s open world is set across a map of North America, with Ivory Tower aiming to include “around 15” cities. But don’t expect a 1:1 recreation of the US, Gerighty warns.
“It’s obviously not 1:1. If you’ve ever had a road trip even from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, it’s four or five hours away. We’re still in the business of entertainment, so what we’ve done is we’ve done a condensed version of everything. Running from San Francisco to New York will last about an hour.”
Yesterday, Dead Rising 3 developer Capcom Vancouver told VideoGamer.com that it was “targeting 30 frames a second” and working with Microsoft to help improve the game’s performance.
PS4 racer DriveClub, meanwhile, still runs at 30FPS despite development team Evolution targeting a 60FPS frame rate in time for launch.
The Crew launches on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC early next year.
