GRID's 40-Car Mode Apparently Not Possible on PS4, But Launching on Google Stadia

@get2sammyb

Seems like so much obfuscation (I'm being generous there I know) to make Stadia look appealing.

With a dozen or so cars it already is like demolition derby at the start of most races plus most races only have 3 laps so starting at the back can be tricky. Starting behind 39 other cars on a 3 lap race is practically impossible to win especially as the Ai in this is dirty as hell.

It's a good sign for Stadia that it can handle the processing for 40 cars on a track but, as others have commented, the game really doesn't need it.

This might actually show Stadia’s real strengths. I never even thought about this being an advantage so kudos to them for making Stadia seem genuinely exciting.

Maybe not on PS4 (though let's be honest, with reduced graphics it is definitely possible), but what about PS5? Of course it's better than a 6-year-old console.

I think the big selling point of Stadia is really the ability to play games at much more demanding settings because your hardware isn't running them. I wonder if there's a market for people who can't run Cyberpunk 2077 very well, for example, on their PC, but with Stadia, they can play it at max settings because they have a good internet connection.

It is quite interesting.

Stadia is really really not going to stop ps4 shine.ps4 is like queens new york .we reign supreme.word up son

Sounds like a CPU bottleneck, understandable since the cores in the consoles aren't exactly powerful.

Sorry google. 40 car mode in an already forgotten racer doesnt change my original prognosis...DOA

It has long been known that PS4 has a relatively weak CPU. The same would not apply to the PS5 or a modern gaming PC.

We always start to see things appearing on PC that aren’t possible on the old consoles at the tail end of the console generation it isn’t particularly surprising.

@ShogunRok
That's the best case for it I think. It's the sort of thing that they should be pushing without putting the pricey controller/bundle to the forefront as trying to convince people that latency won't be a problem.

They should establish the service first. Impress people then add accessories and 'wow' folk with how low the latency for fighting and rhythm games can (maybe) be.

40 cars - if 39 of them are not user controlled - is a lot more difficult due to AI calculations - often one of the main uses of the CPU in gaming. Its calculating all the positions, speeds, directions, reactions, collisions, physics etc etc which is why Car games tend to be limited to 18-24. I can't think of any racing games on the current consoles that exceed these - let alone 40.

Where ever the cars are on track, regardless of whether you can see them or not, still need to be calculated - even if you don't get a cinematic re-run showing you the race with all the cars on track.

I don't know whether this is a fully AI race or with up to 40 other racers but you would think a MP would be OK. It maybe easier with Google Stadia as they can link more than 1 box together to run it off site and stream to the users where as games tend to run locally with some communication between devices and/or servers. I don't know how Google Stadia 'works' but if they have 'units' (a device that runs the game like a console does) and can link more units together - kind of like LAN play - to cope with extra players without causing slow down, that could be why its possible.

Chances are though that the CPU is the biggest hurdle for current gen hardware. Not only is the CPU technology more than 5yrs old, its also not exactly the fastest or most capable CPU of that era.

@ShogunRok latency and input lag are still big ?? Even though google says they have it covered we still havent seen it live. But that specific example does have merit. But if i was in that boat a used ps4/box1 and cyberpunk wouldnt cost much more that buying into the Stadia concept

@Nyne11Tyme Yeah, it's still got a heck of a lot to prove before most people even think about buying into it.

Of course it’s possible. Thing is Grid and stadia both need some hype building and this sounds like exactly that...

@ShogunRok any google is like a synonym for distrust or shady lol. With the reports that google has recently compiled all our medical records without our permission doesnt help either.

Yeah, whatever Google 😒

more like "Google paid us a load of money to make it exclusive to Stadia to make it look more appealing"

[Insert joke about fewer than 40 people buying Stadia at launch]

Congrats you beat a 6 year old console. 😉

I personally blame lazy programming and optimisation on the part of the developer!! The rear view mirror by default is turned off!!! When I turned it on because I thought it would be useful the performance was sluggish at best.

The player counts in Fortnite maybe higher but when you get a lot of players together performance really suffers thats why certain modes were reduced from 100 player count to 20 vs 20. Also the detail and size of a player is very different from a car

@BAMozzy even if all players were online the CPU would still have to perform physics run networking code for 40 cars, on topping of numerous other things. I doubt the CPU could handle that and the GPU might struggle too. Some people seem to be surprised that a way more powerful computer streaming the game is more capable than a half decade console that had a arguably lacking CPU when it launched.

@jamison1993 Online MP though takes away the AI component and calculating what each AI driver does to react to other AI drivers - whether to steer, accelerate, brake etc. With MP, all that is taken out so you only have to calculate the physics. With 'simple' AI, the cars wouldn't necessarily race, they would end up going round in a line, sticking to the 'racing' line, breaking at the same point. Human racers will decide to break late, steer off the racing line to overtake or dive up the inside of an early breaker - they 'race' and the more individual behaviours, the more of a Race it turns into.

In a shooting game, the CPU still has to track players and their bullet trajectory so if you have 100 players, that's a LOT of potential bullets, their physics and hit detection - even if its bullets into a wall, door etc as players 'could' be hit on the other side if there is some bullet penetration. Games like Battlefield also add vehicles and destruction as well so its not as if racing games are potentially much more difficult to calculate the Physics.

I do think it comes down to AI and why Consoles tend to be limited to 18-24 race cars on track at a time. Maybe these games could do more cars in a Multi-player but because they are often single-player as well, they are limited by the AI.

Personally, I don't know that I would want to race with 40 human controlled cars on track. Someone who starts neat the back, for whatever reason as there isn't often a qualifier, will be annoyed at starting near the back and try and ruin the race for as many as they can...

Shocker. A service with unlimited computating resources outperforms a home console. In other news, water is still wet.

.. I think the future of gaming lies in SCALE.. for sure graphics are going to get better.. but it'll be the 100 car pile-ups and battle royale games / war games with 100s of people (in factions, etc. perhaps) and that kind of thing that will really make gaming exciting... imagine dogfighting in space with 100s of tie-fighter style-ships all in squadrons, etc. - surely this (and of course VR!) is the future of gaming... not flashier graphics and SSDs..

A strange claim, since the 2-year-old Project Cars 2 has up to 44 cars on track, fully dynamic weather, and a full simulation engine, targetting 60fps even on a base PS4.