DriveClub PS4 1

Judging by the frankly phenomenal progress that DriveClub has made over the past year or so, we reckon that more games would benefit from a meaty delay. In the slipstream of today’s hardware bundle announcement, developer Evolution Studios has released the first footage of its PlayStation 4 exclusive racer’s rain effects – and the results are nothing short of spectacular.

We could spend the next two or three paragraphs talking about just how stunning this looks, but a picture paints a thousand words, so we’ll let the 15 second snippets do the talking. It’s a shame that the studio’s resorted once again to such short clips to promote its upcoming game, but given the exceptional contents, we’ll let it off.

It goes without saying that there’s a little more going on here than wet tarmac. Much like the game’s dynamic lighting model, everything that you see is rendered in real-time, meaning that the density of cloud cover will affect how much rain falls. Moreover, the height of the sun will dictate how quickly this water evaporates once the storm has dispersed, allowing you to watch the road dry as you race around it.

While the studio’s only showing a torrential downpour at the minute, snow will also feature in the game, and this will be affected by wind speeds as well as your altitude – you’ll have to deal with heavier blizzards when you’re at the top of a mountain in locations such as, say, Norway. And, naturally, there’ll be thunder storms, too.

Unfortunately, the weather’s not going to be quite ready until after the game’s release, but the organisation's promising that it will be finished by the end of the year at least. The reason that it’s taking a little longer on the feature is because it wants the various environmental effects to affect vehicle handling too, meaning that your wheels will slip a little more on soggy surfaces.

It sounds fantastic, and seriously looks the part to boot; we reckon that these video clips rival photorealism in places. But don’t just take our word for it – check out the videos, and let us read your impressed impressions in the comments section below.

[source blog.eu.playstation.com]