Codies’ F1 unlikely to go 60FPS until next-gen

Codies’ F1 unlikely to go 60FPS until next-gen
James Orry Updated on by

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F1 2011 will run at a steady 30 frames per second, not the 60 fps holy grail, but this is just half the story, F1 2011 chief game designer Stephen Hood has told VideoGamer.com.

“It’s almost a determined decision for the whole team. It’s not as if one team can go, ‘We’re going to run at 60FPS, but DiRT is going to run at 30.’ That’s determined for us,” said Hood.

He continued: “But the thing that people often forget is… there’s two things: one, it’s important to be consistent in your framerate, because spikes in the framerate really put you off your corners – and we’ve improved that massively this year. And the other thing is the rate at which your simulation engine is running, which can be independent of the framerate. So when you’re driving around, it’s about how often your physics engine is updating, and ours updates particularly quickly.

“The framerate is half the story, but that’s the big PR headline. It’s about how quickly the physics engine is working out stuff underneath.”

Hood concluded: “30 [fps] means we can have the cars, we can have the weather system, the racing line, the rubber build-up, the marbles. So, it’s kind of, ‘Do we go with this, or go with that?’ If we build things from scratch, maybe on the next gen, we’ll see what happens. But for now I think there’s a borderline between the two.”

We are big fans of F1 2010, awarding it 9/10 in our F1 2010 review from last year. This year’s game, aptly titled F1 2011, is due for release on September 23.