Let's Play Test Drive LE MANS Sega Dreamcast HD

The visuals in this game are truly stunning and show the amazing potential of the Dreamcast. It would be easy to mistake this game for an XBox driving game, such is the degree of detail. It has the look of an XBox game, with its lighting and detail.

The transition between day and night is truly incredible, and amazingly subtle, its full of little details.
It plays superbly too, whether playing a championship or enjoying a 10 minute race through 24 hours Le Mans is a superb racer, ranking alongside Ferrari F355

There are 5 million polygons on screen; 2 million more than the Dreamcast's supposed limit. The DC was discontinued just as developers were beginning to push it.
There's a tendency to judge the Dreamcast by its early games, but games like Le Mans, Shenmue 2, Sonic Adventure 2, and Skies of Arcadia boasted new levels of polygon and especially texture detail (the PS2's weakness; IMHO the PS2 never surpassed the texture detail of the DC's final games).

Imagine what might have been on the horizon for the Dreamcast had it continued; 5 million poly games (and don't forget the DC has a neat trick in differed rendering; only rendering what you see), highly detailed textures (the PS2 would struggle to compete with the latter).

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Test
• Drive
• LE
• MANS
• Sega
• Dreamcast

[TheFred128]

Really this game the graphics are very good to be a game for dreamcast. Dreamcast but never had used all his power, the game that has the best graphics of the Dreamcast, the game is shenmue, shenmue but only using 60% of the power of the console. imagine a game, using the full potential of Dc, as would be beautiful

[Thereal50inchDLP]

@TheFred128 Yes I agree 100%, I still think the DC would have left the PS2 in the dust if it went as long as the PS2 did.

[guily6669]

Also I think it's this game that had the most impressive lighting effects on the glowing disc brakes till nowadays...

MSR also had awesome lighting effect on the brake lights!!

[guily6669]

This was the only 2h hour le mans game that was actually good.

The PS2 and any other version were really a freakin crap.

This and MSR were really amazing back then, and even nowadays in a CRT TV they still look pretty HD (just don't look good in a LCD of course because there's way too much resolution in LCD's...).

[Tinhh]

It's not wasting time really working for a complicated console that requires complex software coding. Sony wasn't the first to do that btw; Sega with their 32x and saturn were hard to program too. The benefit is that you can make the hardware last longer with new programming techniques. Making a console dependent on software also makes it more in theory, flexible and efficient. You should watch this: /watch?v=4TBct24_ZNQ

It explains how only 50% of the ps2 power was used

[InstinctualJealousy]

@Tinhh One problem with using this as an example- the PowerVR2 in the Dreamcast supports bump mapping in hardware. No games really used it for anything special. One game is known to use it- Shenmue II. On a couple coins in the item view- some bump mapping is visible, if I remember right. That's about it. What irks me, is that developers wasted their time doing shit in software for the PS2 right after the DC died- when the DC could do it in hardware!

[bacardipr05]

@Terramax Some games the diffence isnt huge, however i just went back to composite with this game and swithced to VGA their is a difference

[bacardipr05]

@Terramax I dont know Terra its a world of difference to me between composite connection and VGA. Colors are more vibrant, sharper, better details more crisp and of course better resolution.

[Terramax]

@bacardipr05

No, not playing it with VGA anymore. Personally I don't think VGA increases the graphics the way people always says it does. But as stated before, it still plays great.

[bacardipr05]

@aubba Common problem back in the day. The draw in isnt really to bad though.

[bacardipr05]

@Despellanion Play it on a LCD with a VGA input using a VGA box. The video doesnt do it justice...

[bacardipr05]

@Terramax Do you have a VGA box ? Im playing it on a 26" Toshiba LCD with VGA output and the video doesnt do the game justice at all.