Extensive History
Okay, full disclosure here: I actually worked for Microsoft Game Studios, the parent company of Turn 10 Motorsports, designers of Forza Motorsports. I worked primarily as a content expert but also as a test driver due to my experience with a variety of cars, and the fact I had experience with real simulators (in my case, full motion, six-axis flight simulators custom built by the likes of Raytheon and Rediffusion). I will gleefully admit my biases up front: When it comes to game consoles, Forza Motorsports is the driving sim to get, everything else is a hacked up arcade game.
Coming To Fruition
But what makes Hyundai’s Veloster Turbo and Veloster N worthy of being “First in Forza?” I bet it was money more than anything else. I bet Hyundai and Microsoft sat down, and Hyundai said, “please put the Veloster Turbo and Veloster N in your upcoming version of Forza. Oh and we’ll give you a bajillion dollars.”
Not that the Veloster Turbo and Veloster N aren’t worth discussing, it’s just best not to confuse them with rides like La Ferraris and the Porsche 911 GT2 RS. Curiously, the Veloster Turbo and Veloster N will not arrive in showrooms until later this year, but they are already available as free downloadable content for players to virtually thrash around.
Photo: Hyundai Motor America.
Up Close & Personal
Forza players will be able to realize the unique design of the 2019 Veloster Turbo and Veloster N thanks to the Forzavista feature. This, I’m assuming, is 7’s version of the old AutoVista feature, where you could get up close and personal with a given car, open the hood, the doors, and virtually sit down in the driver’s seat – stuff like that. Hyundai says each car is rendered in exacting detail, and users can explore those details, from the odd asymmetric body style, to the cockpit layout and engine bay. And I know this is not marketing department hyperbole.
Sweating The Small Stuff
The Forza team goes into excruciating levels of production specificity with this stuff. For run of the mill cars such as the Veloster Turbo and Veloster N, we would routinely shoot hundreds of pictures of everything; door handles, doors closed, doors one-third open, doors two-thirds open, doors all the way open, door hinges, door seals, door strike plates, and that was just the doors. That same thing happened for stuff like hoods, engine details, and buttons on the dash in various positions. We’d even put newer cars up on racks to get shots of the underside: the exhaust system, suspension bits, and braking components. That way the cars would look very accurate when you barrel roll them into a sand trap. For instance.
And even though that amount of detail work was most likely put into the digital versions of the Veloster Turbo and Veloster N, they weren’t even in the same ball park as the amount of detail we’d have to go into when photographing and documenting stuff like ’57 Ferrari Testa Rosas and ’59 Aston Martin DBR1s.
Photo: Hyundai Motor America.
Fun Times
And of course, since the Veloster twins are in the digital world, you can have fun by deeply personalizing them; you can even play with options to make your 2019 Velosters fire-breathing beasts. New wheels, heavy powertrain and suspension upgrades, unique paint schemes and racing liveries; all there for your digital driving pleasure. This will be fun to play around with . . . once I get a new Xbox One X and driving sim set up.
That should be happening as soon as I convince management here to give me some time off.
Tony Borroz has spent his entire life racing antique and sports cars. He is the author of Bricks & Bones: The Endearing Legacy and Nitty-Gritty Phenomenon of The Indy 500, available in paperback or Kindle format.
Photo: Hyundai Motor America.
Photos & Source: Hyundai Motor America.
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