The pics are really nice. The poly count is insane, the detail spot on, textures look very good, lighting and shadowing excellent, etc...

The *only* things I can spot off are the fense has the alpha to mask disabled (i.e. alpha AA... the Xbox 360 can do it, why it is off I do not know), the palm trees have fairly flat lighting (but look great in motion!), and sometimes the shadowing can be pixelated.

This game just absolutely ROCKS. It is going to be tough for Bizarre to do a sequal that out does this. Unless they go a different art direction I am not sure how they could make it better. They can clean up some little things (and hit 60fps if they have not yet) but graphically I would be happy if this was the baseline of Next Gen graphics.

Bizarre also has shown they are not a one trick pony. Other PGR games drove well and this looks to be no exception.

But the BIGGEST feature (besides great online) is the cabin view. Racers, regardless of how great their graphics are, look VERY plain in 3rd person. You lose out not only on detail but also the great sense of immersion and speed. Bizarre has really done a great job of solving this problem.

If you like competitive racing, love fast cars, or want to play online this is a must have. Great job Bizarre.

Bizarre says ALL of the screens released are made using the photo mode alone. The photo mode does have some extra effects you can use, but it's all rendered in realtime.

They're all in game but in photo mode. Photo mode adds effects in REALTIME, not misused-word realtime, and then you snap a shot. At any time, with effects on, you can move the camera around all you want, which means it's realtime.

Ah yeah, I see what you mean regarding the AA.

I still don't get how they're supposed to take a screeshot using the ingame photo mode and make that better looking than the game itself using Photoshop, though.

In the past, companies have used shoddy techniques of capturing images from games in sizes far greater than the game's resolution. I would guess something like that is at work here.

This is one of those annoying "rumors" that got started a couple months back and really misconstrues the limitations of the system vs. the issues first gen developers are facing. Motion blur, DOF, and so forth are shader effects. You will see games that use those effects and 4x MSAA on the 360. The problem with current games is the crunch and not having early hardware--the result being that not every engine is obtimized for the Xenos pipeline. e.g. Some games do not do an early Z-pass whereas the 360 GPU is best utlized when you do. THIS creates issue with the eDRAM.You are kidding, right? Photoshop to clean up aliasing?

If anything *if* they were PR shots they would do what they do this gen on the PS2 and Xbox--do a high AA sampled PR shot on a devkit.

BUT looking at the first pick there is obvious aliasing. On the tail fin of the blue car. Not the high contrast area between the underside and the illuminated top. Aliasing is clear. Ditto on the door, toward the bottom where the door meets the car frame; same with where the hood meets the front of the car and the bottom grill and the car frame. Lamp post has aliasing as do the palm trees. Ditto looking down the road in the shadows.

On the third shot notice the aliasing around the wheels and the front bumper/ground effects. Subtle yet noticable. Follow the seems of the car, especially the interior onces, and you can notice aliasing; ditto the background and the side rail.

So there is aliasing in the pictures. With cars with 100,000 polygons in a very close up view with DOF and motion blur + AA it wont be quite as noticable as, say, a current gen game. But it is there. The trick is focusing on the high constrast areas. Aliasing is almost impossible to spot if you are looking at areas with low contrast. In a low contrast area the background acts as a form of dithering.

I have seen the game in 720p and the aliasing in that is no worse than what I am seeing in these pictures. I am not sure how people want to define "ingame". Does that have to be a playable game angle or does actual game footage with a cinematic angle count. Does pausing the game and getting a nice angle for a photo count if it is the same footage as ingame, just paused with a camera adjustment?

Whatever ones own thoughts on it it seems pretty clear to me this is "realtime" and the same quality that the ingame POV outputs. i.e. BC did not just splash a ton more detail into the photomode that you are not seeing in the actual game itself.