Gran Turismo 5 news: Frame rates, music and motorcycles

Gran Turismo 5 may have been delayed, but that hasn’t stopped a lot of news coming thick and fast about the game…

Gran Turismo 5 frame rates drop below 60fps:

The head of Polyphony Digital, Kaz Yamauchi has apologised in an interview for the fact that the game will occasionally drop below 60 frames per second at 1080p resolution. It was apparently a major factor in development, and only occurs when a lot of things are happening at once. For example starting a race with 15 other cars on screen when it’s raining and the other cars are all kicking up sprays of water at the same time means the frame rate may drop for a few moments.

Gran Turismo 5’s intro track:

Music has always been important to the Gran Turismo series, since the 1997 original opened with the Chemical Brothers remix of ‘Everything Must Go’ by the Manic Street Preachers (The Japanese edition overs with ‘Moon Over The Castle’, composed by Masahiro Andoh, which features in every Japanese version of the game)

Gran Turismo 2 went with “My Favourite Game” by The Cardigans, Gran Turismo 3 with Just A Day by Feeder, Gran Turismo 4 featured Reason is Treason by Kasabian, and Gran Turismo 5:Prologue featured Weezer “Automatic Remix”

And the news is that Gran Turismo 5 will feature the new song “Planetary (Go!) by My Chemical Romance as the lead song in the opening cinematic. You can’t hear the track yet as it’s featured on the new album by the band, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys’, which isn’t released until November 22nd.

Motorcycles in Gran Turismo?

Apparently Gran Turismo 5 was created with motorcycles in mind, and although they won’t be included for the release date, Polyphony Digital are keen on the idea of introducing them as a download.

Although it’s been rare for games to feature cars and bikes on the same track (Project Gotham Racing is one of the few examples), don’t forget that Polyphony Digital released motorcycle game Tourist Trophy: The Real Riding Simulator for the PS2 back in 2006. The lead on that title was real life bike fan Takamasa Shichisawa (who is immortalised on the cover art, riding a Honda CBR600).

In an interview at the time of Tourist Trophy’s release, Yamauchi revealed that not did the game feature art assets from the GT series, but that they had bikes and cars running side-by-side on test machines, and only the technical limitations of the PS2 prevented it from happening!

Four years later, and the rumour is alive again – but this time it seems like it’s a real possibility.