Happy Thursday. For a bit of fun, we thought we’d share something from renowned automotive photographer Easton Chang, who has taken some snaps of real cars and ones via Gran Turismo 7’s ‘Scapes’ mode to see if you can guess which ones are which.
Firstly, if you’re not familiar, Gran Turismo 7 is a super detailed racing simulator developed by highly decorated, Sony-owned, Japanese studio called Polyphony Digital, who’ve been making the series since the PS1 era. The TL;DR: race sick cars and do rad stuff.
Scapes mode, meanwhile, is basically ‘photo’ mode. I asked Kotaku editor, and GT7 expert, David Smith, for an explainer on this.
“You can pose your cars in particular locations and add various effects to make them look all sexy … it’s for those of us that dream of staring lovingly at our own private vintage car collection,” he said.
Basically, it allows players to capture images of their custom car masterpieces, against 2,500 different environments.
Now the cool stuff.
Chang has created a set of Scapes, drawing inspiration from Sydney’s urban surroundings (and an archive of international images) and we reckon determining if they’re real or virtual is a little tricky, so we thought we’d make a game out of it.
Car 1: Lamborghini Huracan
Option A:
Option B:
Car 2: Mazda RX-7
Option A:
Option B:
Car 3: Mercedes-Benz SLS
Option A:
Option B:
Car 4: Ferrari 458
Option A:
Option B:
The answers are at the bottom of this article, but first…
Chang was also kind enough to provide some tips for you to create your own Gran Turismo 7 Scapes. The following is word-for-word from Chang:
- There are endless amounts of fun and creativity to be had when using Panning-Mode in Scapes. You have to imagine what the car (or cars) would look like in motion, so carefully consider where it’s coming from, where it’s going, and what direction it’s wheels should be turning (this is what determines the direction of the motion blur!).
- When you’re trying to recreate a sharp classic rolling shot, adjust your camera rate to 100 per cent and use Panning Mode 3.
- Low angles with wet floors create reflections which look amazing in the game!
- Turn Light Intensity down, and reduce Glare, to finesse the intensity of headlights on cars. For instance, turn Light Intensity down for low angle shots headlights, or up for enhancing cool taillight designs.
- Scapes supports up to three cars in any one spot, so use them to make more interesting scenes.
- Once you got a good grip with Scapes, try your hand in Race Photo mode, where you can unleash incredible angles on the track. Get low, get close, and get cars chasing bumper to bumper for the most dynamic shots!
Answers:
Car 1: Lamborghini Huracan, option A is from Scapes, B is real. Car 2: Mazda RX-7, option A is from Scapes, B is real. Car 3: Mercedes-Benz SLS, option A is real, B is from Scapes. Car 4: Ferrari 458, option A is from Scapes, B is real. And for your bonus pic, the one used as the ‘hero’ image on this article, we have: fake, it’s 100 per cent a shot from GT7.
Thanks for playing!