That’s the kind of busy that traditionally comes with performance problems - but the studio have their own solutions.Įach bike is an assembly of bars, handles, and custom stickers, all drawn in high-resolution. Given the cozy scope of MXGP3’s tracks, It’s not unusual to see upwards of ten bikes on-screen at once. There’s another aspect of real-life motocross that presents Milestone with a technological difficulty: the sheer number of racers. We had to find the right compromise between good gameplay and a reliable simulation.”īut as Lebertre adds, despite the challenges involved in implementing their system for Unreal, Milestone “also managed to improve it.” “Because if you have the terrain create too many spikes, it’s harder to ride on it. “Things needed to be configured in a way that was also enjoyable,” notes Barbera. It almost resembles a hyper-realistic remix of the iOS hit Tiny Wings, in which riding the curvy contours of hilly race tracks was essential to retain momentum. Once the track begins to take on a new shape, the best players use it to their advantage - exploiting new dips and ramps to gain speed. Step on it in a straight line and you’ll leave a clear line in the dirt, but a messy slide will leave a wide tear in the terrain. The mud is reshaped in different ways, depending on the speed of your bike and the way you ride it. Milestone’s own bike simulation systems talk to the Nvidia PhysX that underpins Unreal Engine 4, and that maths is tangible on the track.
“When the bikes go over the landscape, they apply forces to deform the terrain in accordance with the simulation.” “The physics in Unreal know what the terrain is made of, and what form it’s in, moment by moment,” explains senior R&D developer Alexandre Lebertre. That groundwork means they haven’t had to rely on an array of custom tools to handle physics and terrain modification, but can instead calculate everything in-engine.
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With one eye on their previous code and the two decades of knowledge contained therein, the devs built a new pipeline within Unreal’s editor. “But that meant starting from what Unreal Engine 4 already has, so it’s a good starting point.” “We actually started from scratch,” says lead programmer Gianluca Barbera. Let’s take a moment, then, to dig into and appreciate the expertise that goes into the brand new MXGP3 that aims to replicate the real-life sport with its constantly shifting tracks.Īfter 20 years of tweaking and perfecting their own technology, the Italian engineers at Milestone have switched to a new engine for MXGP3. Within a couple of laps, the trails left by bike tyres are ploughed into deep furrows - and in the worst weather, entire trenches that riders half-disappear into.Īll that mess is a true representation of the sport, but also - well, it’s terraforming, isn’t it? The dynamic transformation of a level before our very eyes. They relish the rain that stirs their race courses into a cake mix of clotted mud and dirt. “Every day is a good day for racing,” say Milestone of their next-gen motocross sim MXGP3, though most of us would probably plump for a sunny summer weekend given the choice.
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