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Develop GameDev
docgpuwatch 1 0 & 1 5 userguide introduction gpuwatch is a tool for observing gpu activity in your application gpuwatch is made for developers who use samsung devices to get gpu related information with the least effort detailed information is overlaid onto the screen in real-time and it is very simple to enable - no pc required in the mobile world, the key to a great user experience is performance with efficiency efficient applications have low power requirements which both improves battery life and keeps the device temperature in a comfortable range developers aim to achieve not only higher performance but also better efficiency through optimization to reach these goals it is necessary to measure the current status which is the job of a profiling tool, like gpuwatch gpuwatch gives information about gpu work, resource allocation, processor status and more so that developers can get clues about bottlenecks and the best ways to fix them then they can finally get the desired performance also, they can evaluate the application in many different environments you can utilize gpuwatch in lots of different ways it’s up to you what you will do using this easily accessible and informative tool supported devices device android pgpuwatch v1 0 android qgpuwatch v1 5 galaxy s9 series △* ✓ galaxy s10 series ✓ ✓ galaxy s20 series ✓ galaxy note9 series △* ✓ galaxy note10 series ✓ ✓ galaxy note20 series ✓ galaxy fold ✓ ✓ galaxy z flip ✓ galaxy z fold2 ✓ △only devices launched in europe and korea how to use you can easily turn on the gpuwatch overlay for your application setting → developer options → gpuwatch on select the app to profile select rendering api launch the app if nothing is shown, check whether both application name and rendering api are set correctly functionality each metric is calculated from values measured over 120ms the icon ★ marks funtionality that is supported from v1 5 onwards fps metric description cur average fps during recent 120ms med★ median value among all measured fps since launch when we put fpss in line in a ascending order, the value at the center is median median fps is calculated as a value rounded to one decimal place how to calculate30 31 38 32 29 35 → 29 30 31 32 35 38 sort → the median is 31 5 average 31,32 stb★ totalfps to stablefps ratio as a percentagestablefps medianfps +- medianfps x 0 2 gpu,cpu usage metric description cpu total usage cpu working time against total time working time + idle time considering load over all cpu cores cpu★ current usage cpu time of this process including both user time and kernel time this is the default instead of 'cpu total usage' since v1 5 gpu proportion of working cycles against total cycles of gpu gpu activity frames are captured at a regular time interval if you want to capture manually, press the volume down key metric description thumbnail thumbnail of rendered image scene info frame number since launching and draw time for the frame renderpass timeline proportion of working cycles against total cycles of gpu this graph draws a box for each renderpass with a size proportional to the draw time for the renderpass in the current frame each renderpass is separated with a transparent border for short renderpasses the index is hidden and the area is shown as a lighter color without border if many renderpasses exist, graphs are animated with marquee effect about index x,y,z of graph,x means renderpass index this may not be exactly matched with fbo id y means the count of gldrawcall gldrawarrays, gldrawelements, glclear for gles, vkcmddrawxxx for vulkan z means count of vertices vertex/fragmentactivity this graph draws the vertex and fragment workload of each renderpass the y-axis shows the proportion of the vertex or fragment cycles used compared to the total cycles available the x-axis matches the “renderpass timeline” graph above, which means that the corresponding area of the activity graph with each renderpass of the timeline graph represents the workload of that renderpass configure layout you can configure layout details including colors and visibility for each widget through the "widget settings" submenu of "gpuwatch" revision history revision date description 1 0 may 2020 initial release
Develop GameDev
docgpuwatch 2 0 userguide what's new on gpuwatch 2 0? we focused on making gpuwatch more user-friendly in 2 0 we improved in 3 aspects better readability better conveniency more information now you can use a more useful gpuwatch at any galaxy device with androidl r os appearance of overlay widgets is more readable through thick graph line and text, noticeable legend area of course, you can manipulate these details of widgets also, metrics on different categories are able to be combined into one widget as custom widget, so that you can get hints of relation between two metrics gpuwatch v2 0 measures for the context of application on the top automatically you don't need to choose a specific application to measure or rendering api for it anymore gpuwatch v2 0 makes manipulation easier through supplying a shortcut on the notification panel supported devices device android pgpuwatch v1 0 android qgpuwatch v1 5 android rgpuwatch v2 0 galaxy s9 series △* ✓ ✓ galaxy s10 series ✓ ✓ ✓ galaxy s20 series ✓ ✓ galaxy note9 series △* ✓ ✓ galaxy note10 series ✓ ✓ ✓ galaxy note20 series ✓ ✓ galaxy fold ✓ ✓ ✓ galaxy z flip ✓ ✓ galaxy z fold2 ✓ ✓ other samsung mobile phones ✓ ※ only devices launched in europe and korea how to use you can easily turn on the gpuwatch overlay for profiling your application settings ⇒ developer options ⇒ gpuwatch on launch the app to measure general settings you can change the common settings of gpuwatch with the general settings menu item description update interval each metric of widgets is calculated from values measured over a time period which are set in update interval setting background color choose a background color for widgets background transparency set up the desired transparency level for widgets graph grid show / hide grid in graph widgets margins enable / disable margins between widgets notification manipulations for quick user interaction with gpuwatch and for additional configuration of widgets, gpuwatch offers several buttons in the notification panel item description off disable gpuwatch equivalent to disabling gpuwatch from developer options of settings hide / show widgets hide/show all widgets without disabling the gpuwatch lock / unlock widgets unlock for the user to move widgets around the screen by drag action and move them to the required positions lock the position of widgets select context select egl_context or vkdevice for profiling if application has several settings open gpuwatch settings widget manipulations widgets are the key component of gpuwatch gpuwatch shows measured values through widgets when you add preset widgets that have metrics you want to measure, gpuwatch starts to measure the metrics for an application at the top also you can add/move/delete widgets freely where you want you can also use a special type widget ‘custom widget’ it’s a combination of preset widget items with this, you can have insight of relation between several metrics preset widget category gpuwatch has categorized preset widgets each category is shown in a maximum 2 types of widget graph, text but some categories such as contextinfo are shown only 1 type of widget category graph widget text widget details fps surface fps drawn by surfaceflinger a service used to composite surfaces to the display -curr avg averaged fps between two measurements during update interval load load of processor 0% means idle, 100% means fully loaded -cpu cpu load of all cores -gpu gpu load contextinformation none some useful context information -api rendering api the application is using the value formed by " graphics_api #context_number" pid process id, graphics_api can be opengl,vulkan,glov_gl or glov_vk -res surface resolution -drivertype graphic driver loaded for the application the value can be system driver or game driver how to add widgets when you add widgets, measure starts you can add widgets from presets or mix preset items to one widget using customwidget how to add preset widgets push add widgets button select 'widgets from presets' button choose widgets from the 'graph' or 'text' widget type push 'ok' how to add custom widgets push add widgets button select 'custom widget' choose metrics to combine into a custom widget from 'graph' or 'text' widget type note only metrics could be selected of the same type the maximal number of the metrics in custom graph widget can't exceed 3 this is taken into account when configuring only custom graph widget not custom text widget how to change widget position by unlocking widgets using the notification panel button, you can move widgets around the screen and finally set the best possible position when you move widgets, gpuwatch lets you know whether widgets can be set on the position the red area means the space where moving widget is impossible green area is where possible after positioning all widgets to desired, you have to lock widgets not to disturb game play how to change widget settings you can change configuration for each widget including size, color, values to observe and others there are 2 ways to access this settings menu gpuwatch main menu > widget list > touch a widget double touch a widget in unlock mode working with gpuwatch after setting all the parameters and configuring the necessary widgets, just launch an application to measure gpuwatch will start working automatically
Develop GameDev
docadaptive performance 1 0 mobile devices have more physical limitations compared to pc’s and consoles, this means it’s more constrained when rendering complex games by comparison the adaptive performance project was started to improve the performance of these games under these stricter constraints on mobile devices in the version 1 0 we focused on how to reduce unnecessary power consumption on the device without impacting the games performance, because the battery consumption and the performance management are big parts of the device performance limitations to manage these constraints we implemented 3 features power manager bottleneck detection & auto performance control custom scaler using device thermal feedback details of each implementation are as follows power manager power manager pm was implemented to avoid thermal throttling which is suddenly dropping the performance when the device temperature is high and to extend battery time to achieve these goals, the pm predicts the optimal cpu/gpu levels for the games needs and sets the hardware to those levels the graph above shows the structure of the power manager system and its workflows the operation order of the pm is as follows compare and calculate previous frame information and real time performance status information like device temperature which is retrieved from gamesdk on the device check the current status of the device through the calculated frame information and the performance status information of the device in this process, it checks based on the information from gamesdk, if the device is achieving target framerate and if the game has a cpu or gpu bottleneck find proper power levels that can reduce power consumption without lowering performance auto performance controller transmit the appropriate cpu and gpu levels that are found through the auto performance controller to device while the game is playing on the device, power manager in adaptive performance repeats the above order and provides appropriate behavior for changing device situations bottleneck detection & auto performance control bottleneck detection is the process that identifies which component is delaying the overall rendering pipeline of a game in adaptive performance, it finds bottleneck points using frame time and cpu/gpu time information with this information we can narrow down whether it’s the cpu or the gpu that is stopping the game from reaching the target framerate this is identified by calculating and comparing the cpu and gpu frame time with the overall frame time in case of gpu time, more accurate information can be obtained through gamesdk and it makes it easier to find bottleneck points this way, once you know whether the cpu or gpu is causing the bottleneck, you can take appropriate action for each situation for example if the gpu is a bottleneck then we can reduce the cpu level which will in turn lower temperature and vice versa if the cpu is the bottleneck you can lower the gpu level reduce the temperature for that component if the device already has a low temperature, pm can also adjust the device to use the gpu as much as the game needs in addition if the cpu and gpu are surpassing the target framerate then we can reduce the cpu and gpu level to lower the power consumption, thereby increasing battery usage time adaptive performance provides an auto power management system like above it is called auto performance control with the auto performance control system, the developer can automatically communicate with the device and optimize the performance of the game according to the device’s status by just turning on the auto performance control system without any additional work configuring cpu/gpu levels in adaptive performance, when turning on auto performance mode, it will automatically activate bottleneck detection and set the proper cpu/gpu setting through the auto performance control system, which is recommended the example code below explains how to decrease heat and power consumption using auto performance control when the developer turns on auto performance control mode true and sets the targetframerate that they want, the auto performance control system helps to achieve appropriate performance by controlling the power level public void entermenu { if !ap active return; application targetframerate = 30; // enable automatic regulation of cpu and gpu level by adaptive performance var ctrl = ap deviceperformancecontrol; ctrl automaticperformancecontrol = true; } public void enterbenchmark { var ctrl = ap deviceperformancecontrol; // set higher cpu and gpu level when benchmarking a level ctrl cpulevel = ctrl maxcpuperformancelevel; ctrl gpulevel = ctrl maxgpuperformancelevel; } it is possible that developers can set the cpu/gpu levels by themselves using adaptive performance apis, but it is not recommended what they can adjust directly is the abstract level value, not the actual operating frequency number as this may cause unintended battery consumption and performance degradation problems depending on the performance difference each device has for example, a certain level value set for device a may be adversely affected in device b for different reasons therefore, rather than setting the level directly by the developers, it is recommended to use the auto performance control provided by the experienced developers of unity and samsung for achieving the best performance in any devices nevertheless, if developers want to manually set cpu, gpu levels, set instance deviceperformancecontrol automaticperformancecontrol to false, and they can change cpu/gpu level value through instance deviceperformancecontrol cpulevel and instance deviceperformancecontrol gpulevel again, this is not the recommended method note that even if the user sets the cpu/gpu level, the level value is not guaranteed to be applied or maintained due to device status or policy control custom scaler with device thermal feedback if game developers want to get not only auto performance control with the power management service but also an additional performance improvement then they can use the custom scaler the adaptive performance api notifies the temperature information of the current terminal through the warning level and provides more detailed temperature level through this, the developer can see the temperature change and throttling control time of the device with the warning level signal provided by adaptive performance if the developer controls the quality scaling of the desired part by utilizing this timing information, it can preemptively manage the heat generation before the point of heat generation control of the terminal and allow the battery to be used for a long time the below example is an implementation sample that controls global lod bias as a custom scale factor using temperature information using unityengine; using unityengine adaptiveperformance; public class adaptivelod monobehaviour { private iadaptiveperformance ap = null; void start { ap = holder instance; if !ap active return; qualitysettings lodbias = 1 0f; ap thermalstatus thermalevent += onthermalevent; } void onthermalevent thermalmetrics ev { switch ev warninglevel { case warninglevel nowarning qualitysettings lodbias = 1; break; case warninglevel throttlingimminent if ev temperaturelevel > 0 8f qualitysettings lodbias = 0 75f; else qualitysettings lodbias = 1 0f; break; case warninglevel throttling qualitysettings lodbias = 0 5f; break; } } } adaptive performance 1 0 performance result until now, we’ve looked into the key functions of adaptive performance 1 0 below is the adpative performance effect result that we got from unity’s megacity demo the above blue graph is the case of using adaptive performance and its auto performance control system, and the red one is the case of not using adaptive performance the target fps in both cases are 30, but you can see the results of maintaining 30 fps for a longer period of time adaptive performance is much more stable ※ you can find supported version of adaptive performance 1 0 , more detailed user guide and faqs as follows unity editor version adaptive performance package version unity 2018 lts+ 1 1 9 unity 2020 1+ unity 2019 lts 1 2 0 detailed user guide from unity click unity adaptive performance faqs click
Develop GameDev
docadaptive performance 2 0 in the 2 0 version released in august 2020 - 12months after adaptive performance 1 0 first released-, we focused on what we missed in 1 0 we improved 3 aspects of content control and enhanced the usability for developers indexer and quality scaler unity editor ux/ui simulator in the 1 0 version, developers had to implement a real-time content control module by themselves, but in 2 0 we implemented a quality manager system it provides various built-in scalers for developers we improved the ux/ui of unity editor to make it easier for developers to use adaptive performance there is also a simulator to help developers test adaptive performance easily without connecting devices details of each implementation are as follows unity editor ux/ui when you install the adaptive performance package and the adaptive performance samsung android package , you can find out that [adaptive performance] is added on project settings to use this properly you have to select providers first if you use it on your device, select the samsung android provides as follows in the case of the simulator, you have to select device simulator provider on pc mac & linux standalone settings if you are finished selecting providers, you can use adaptive performance simply through the adaptive performance in project settings auto performance mode is a part of the power manager which is provided from 1 0 it controls performance automatically to achieve best performance and reduces battery consumption by changing the cpu/gpu levels if you check auto performance mode in settings and activate indexer settings, you can set the scalers you want to use with simple checkboxes and scaling bars in this case, a scaler setting is applied for the entire project if you want to set it manually for each scene, you can do a more detailed setting by attaching adaptive performance setting to an object in the scene simulator the simulator has been added in ap 2 0 so we can test operations in different thermal settings as well as the scaler values all without a device to use the simulator, you have to download “device simulator package” from the package manager then, as same as unity editor ux / ui above, you can set each scaler at project settings > adaptive performance > simulator when you are done editing the scaler settings, open the simulator with window > general > device simulator through this simulator, you can check adaptive performance operation controlled by the temperature and the bottleneck situation indexer and quality scaler the indexer is a quality management system for adaptive performance, it controls the game quality depending on the temperature and the performance status of the device the scaler is a tool that controls the quality of a scene based on the values below target current bottleneck lowest level lowest visual impact the scaler can only operate when the indexer is activated and you can make this setting in the project setting built-in scalers here are built-in scalers that adaptive performance 2 0 provides general render adaptive framerate automatically control the application’s framerate within the defined min/max ranges adaptive lod change the lod bias based on the thermal and performance load adaptive resolution automatically control the screen resolution of the application by the defined scale universal render pipeline scalers the scalers below require the universal render pipeline urp and directly changes the settings in the urp so they will not have any effect when using any other render pipelines adaptive batching toggle dynamic batching based on thermal and performance load adaptive lut change lut bias of the urp adaptive msaa change the anti aliasing quality bias of urp this scaler only affects the camera’s post processing subpixel morphological anti-aliasing smaa quality level adaptive shadow cascades change the main light shadow cascades count bias of the urp adaptive shadow distance change the max shadow distance multiplier of urp adaptive shadow quality change the shadow quality bias of the urp adaptive shadow map resolution change the main light shadowmap resolution multiplier of the urp adaptive sorting skip the front-to back sorting of urp we provide built in scalers to make it easier for developers to control the quality of the content developers can use built-in scaler easy and safely because they can choose which quality and how much they would control in basic ui custom scaler developers can make their own custom scaler, too you can create a new class which inherits adaptiveperformancescaler below is an example of texturequalityscaler public class texturequalityscaler adaptiveperformancescaler { public override scalervisualimpact visualimpact => scalervisualimpact high; public override scalertarget target => scalertarget gpu; public override int maxlevel => 2; int m_defaulttexturequality; protected override void ondisabled { qualitysettings mastertexturelimit = m_defaulttexturequality; } protected override void onenabled { m_defaulttexturequality = qualitysettings mastertexturelimit; } protected override void onlevel { switch currentlevel { case 0 qualitysettings mastertexturelimit = 0; break; case 1 qualitysettings mastertexturelimit = 1; break; case 2 qualitysettings mastertexturelimit = 2; break; } } } samsung provider scaler when you select samsung provider scaler in the project settings, you can use adaptive vrr scaler which is samsung specific feature related with vrr variable refresh rate currently, the galaxy s20 supports vrr among the galaxy devices basically you can use automatic vrr with vrr supported devices it can be enabled in the project settings and you can save battery consumption with this by setting refresh rate automatically in samsung provider, when you enable both automatic vrr and adaptive framerate at the same time, it operates as the refresh rate closest to the achievable framerate, meaning the framerate between the min/max value in automatic vrr and adaptive framerate settings through this, you can set target frame per scenes and control framerate within the ranges you want so game users can play without feeling uncomfortable due to vrr adjustment you can also check adaptive vrr’s operation through adaptive framerate samples what will change with quality scaler game developers don’t like quality control of content because it might cause deteriorated game service quality but quality manager 2 0 provides additional options to minimize visual impact through scaler control each scaler has visual impact options that are used to retain the quality of a scene when the performance is controlled the images below are unity's boat attack demo, and you can compare how much you see visual impact by lod levels if you see enlarged parts, you can find out that there are some missing trees when lod level 3 as you can see above, some scalers have immediately recognizable visual impact, but some scalers barely have any below is an example of texture quality level differences you might not see any differences with your eyes, but if you see renderdoc capture, you can find that real texture size are diminished as you can see above two examples, visual impacts may vary depending on the type of scaler, but different visual impacts may occur depending on how the range is set in the same scaler therefore, it is recommended that developers properly balance performance and quality by themselves ※ you can find supported version of adaptive performance 2 0 , more detailed user guide and faqs as follows unity editor version adaptive performance package version unity 2020 2 0a7+ unity 2020 1 0b5+unity 1019 3 11f1 2 0 0 detailed user guide from unity click unity adaptive performance faqs click
Learn Developers Podcast
docseason 1, episode 8 previous episode | episode index | next episode this is a transcript of one episode of the samsung developers podcast, hosted by and produced by tony morelan a listing of all podcast transcripts can be found here host tony morelan senior developer evangelist, samsung developers instagram - twitter - linkedin guest andy beaudoin microsoft/turn 10 studios in this episode of pow, i interview andy beaudoin, principal design director at turn 10 studios, the microsoft team behind the mega successful racing game, forza andy and i sat down to chat about their latest addition to the forza franchise, forza street, and how they specifically designed this game for play on mobile devices listen download this episode topics covered turn 10 studios samsung partnership forza motorsport forza street soundtrack galaxy s10 optimizations galaxy gamedev more about forza street forza street is an all-new forza experience where players collect and assemble a lineup of cars to compete in quick, cinematic races it’s a fun experience for new forza fans and experienced drivers alike and is the first forza game designed specifically with mobile devices in mind transcript note transcripts are provided by an automated service and reviewed by the samsung developers web team inaccuracies from the transcription process do occur, so please refer to the audio if you are in doubt about the transcript tony morelan 0 02 hey, i'm tony morelan this is pow! podcast of wisdom from the samsung developer program, where we talk about the latest tech trends and get insight into all the opportunities available for developers looking to create for samsung on today's show, i interview andy beaudoin principal design director at turn 10 studios, the microsoft team behind the mega successful racing game forza andy and i sat down to chat about their latest addition to the forza franchise, forza street, and how they specifically designed this game for play on mobile devices and all of the music in this episode? it's the official soundtrack from forza street enjoy tony morelan 0 40 andy, thanks for coming on the podcast the first question i'm going to ask you is who is andy beaudoin? andy beaudoin 0 47 hi tony andy beaudoin is me i'm a principal design director at turn 10 studios i've been making games for about two and a half years decades, around 2324 years i grew up in the bay area, which i believe is near and dear to you as well and yeah, so i'm a father of two lovely and very ambitious little kids and i live up here in seattle, and i like to explore the outdoors when i'm not making games tony morelan 1 19 excellent i'm sure it's absolutely beautiful up there so getting outside must be a ton of fun what is your job title at turn 10? andy beaudoin 1 27 i am a principal design director so i work in the part of the company and the part of turn 10 that isn't motorsport so we have a big motorsport team that's responsible for that title and we work with another term development team over in the uk playground studios who are the ones who make the horizon series and then my group works on forza street, which is the new mobile title we released and also, i'm responsible for some of the other parts of the franchise from a design perspective so we're kind of the floating design team out on the third floor of our studio tony morelan 2 04 so what was your journey to the to the team at turn 10? how did you actually land that position? andy beaudoin 2 11 so we can go way back to the beginning andy beaudoin 2 15 i started at turn 10 about five years ago i came to microsoft, right out of sony had been working on a game with sony called mag was part of the socom franchise it was part of the studio in this area that worked on the socom franchise for sony and so from there, i came to microsoft and i worked in xp la, which was the xbox live arcade about 10 years ago and that was some of the first digital distributed games on the xbox and i was really excited to come here and really kind of work on what i saw was the future of games where it was not all about buying a box product at the store and bringing it home but these light quick, easy to download and easily accessible games were really compelling to me at the time so it was fun to come in and work on that aspect of the business and then soon after that, i got back into the larger scale games worked on a game called quantum break with a really fun team main gravity there out of finland and so i work with that team for a few years and then after that, i want to travel a little bit less with young kids and so i had an opportunity to come join, turn 10 studios, which is great, given i started my career off electronic arts working on the need for speed series 20 some odd years ago wow so it's been really fun to come and come back and come full circle to the racing the racing genre it's been a great time tony morelan 3 42 that's great so turn 10 studios, it's part of microsoft, correct? andy beaudoin 3 46 absolutely yeah it's a studio that was created within microsoft, specifically to give really a top tier racing title to be a showcase for the graphics technology of our xbox devices so just turn 10 studios working pretty much independently from microsoft or is it all part of the big masterplan team, we're part of the xbox organization so we're definitely well integrated into xbox, which is, you know, part of microsoft as a whole, the way that we're treated within the larger organization, we do operate relatively independently of course, we have our business goals that we have to try to achieve and we do a whole lot to try to promote our hardware, like i mentioned and of course, we're integrated into kind of the grand more strategic plans of microsoft all up, but they're pretty hands off and let us really do what we need to do creatively to make fantastic experiences for the people that play our games tony morelan 4 45 so i'm a huge fan of the forza franchise have actually spent a ton of hours playing forza motorsport so awesome absolutely blast of a game tons of fun so tell me the history of forces streets andy beaudoin 4 57 and forza the streets have very different products for us so the team that i'm most connected to at the studio is a small team that started off actually with a product called forza motorsport six apex and so this was our attempts to one of the things i love about turn 10 is it's a very future focused studio i'm very pragmatic so we're not afraid to take risks, but we also really take one step at a time, walk, crawl, fly so with forza motorsport six apex, our team, it was a small team, i was the only designer on the team we got together and we had a mission which was take forza motorsport six, and see if you can create a smaller bit more bite sized experience using all the assets from that game and then release it on windows for free it wasn't truly a free to play game there was, i think, one or two little things you could spend some money on the game, but it largely was something we built and released for free and the reason we did that was so that we could learn how to ship forts in our forza engine on pc i mentioned before that our studio really has been at the forefront of trying to showcase the xbox device so our technology in our forza engine was really optimized down to every little bit of metal to be just as performant as it could be on xbox so it was a it was a decent amount of work to get it to work on the pc not that i mean, there's a lot of shared hardware between the two so it's not that it didn't work but there are things that we wanted to do to really make it a true pc experience, support for keyboard support for mouse support for different graphics settings, since there's such a wide array of pc devices so anyway, long story short, this was an investment the studio made, so we can ship something on pc for free, and then lay the groundwork for the next motorsport and the next horizon all of which have also shipped on pc so how long ago was that when the force apex when you guys were working on that about three and a half four years ago, if i recall correctly so following up on that the team moved on to the next adventure, which was okay now that we've got four to showing up on two platforms, xbox and pc, obviously the next big opportunity for us to take the franchise that we love the cars, we love, the racing we love and reach a much larger audience was to live to mobile devices and so with forza street, we set out to design an experience that was mobile first, which is kind of funny because we actually released it on pc first i'll get to that in a minute but the core experience itself was designed to be really, really mobile friendly, because we knew that this is a game we wanted to get onto mobile devices so we could reach the millions and millions of people out there that love cars, and primarily game on mobile devices tony morelan 7 49 so you said the team was small starting off his team started to grow a bit what's the what's the size of your team right now working on forza street andy beaudoin 7 56 we have grown a bit so the core leadership team is here handful of people and we work with a developer out of the uk, a team that we've worked with now for a handful of years, and they do the heavy lifting on development we also have our services team internally, which does all of our back-end technology and that's all handled on the turn 10 sides so it's a partnership between the software developer in the uk as well as our internal teams my team is primarily a leadership team where we have a handful of individuals that spend most of their time looking at street but also have some other shared responsibilities in the studio tony morelan 8 36 so let's talk about forza street on the galaxy store andy beaudoin 8 38 one of the coolest things if you have a galaxy device and download the game on the galaxy stores, then you get a freebie you get a unique car that's delivered to you after you've downloaded the game and after you fire it up and that's the 2015 ford mustang gt so that's cool right out of the gate we give you a little bit of nod for pulling the game down the store other than that the game is compatible with all devices what's really fun about street is that you can download it on your galaxy store, you can play for a while, if you register and connect with xbox live, you can then go to a tablet and play with all the same progress there if you've got a windows pc, you can pull up the game on your windows pc and play it there a lot of the folks in the studio myself included tend to do different activities on the different devices so if i really want to get into the race, oftentimes i'll sit in my big gaming pc and i'll see it and it's full you know, i think i'm running it to k or something like that really, really high def play but then from outside of my kids and they're doing stuff i can also sneak in a bunch of races on my i've got an s 10 personal device i can play in plays great and looks great there it's a very continuous experience tony morelan 9 45 so you know, recently we released the s20 so can you tell me what was done to optimize for the street for the 21st off andy beaudoin 9 52 i have to say i'm super jealous because i literally bought my ass 10 right before we started working with you guys and he found out about the device oh, they just waited an extra month but the s 10 scream and it's already doing great for me so the s 20 i'm not an engineer, so i won't be able to get into all the nuts and bolts of it but my understanding what they did is they worked with the samsung team to really optimize the experience to run and refresh rates higher than 60 hertz, which is kind of, on, you know, xbox and console gaming 60 hertz is, is the target and a lot of games don't even achieve that so on the s20, i believe we're running at about 96 hertz, if i'm if i'm not mistaken so really fast refresh another bit of work that was done to work with the s20 has taken advantage of the game sdk that your team provides this has been a new learning opportunity for us coming from console and pc to mobile is that you really have to think about things like battery life and heat management and all of those elements, which was kind of a new set of challenges for us to think about and using some of these optimizations, working with your team you working with the game sdk, we were able to find ways to kick it up to 96 hertz when we need to when we're in the race, we want that really, really crisp response rate but then when you're in some of the menus, we can also vary our resolution or vary our refresh rate so that you're getting the best of both worlds both long battery life really well managed heat profile on the device, but also something that looks incredible when you're racing and need all that really fast response or in the main menus, where we can go to a higher resolution, we can actually show a lot of nuance in the car and all the different effects on the car and you don't necessarily need to be pushing the same refresh rate and it still is a great experience and you're also doing a better job of managing your resources so that's been a really good partnership for us and out of that came, you know, optimizations to the game even beyond just the device that we're really able to take advantage of thanks to the support from, from the tech team from samsung tony morelan 11 57 that's great you know, having played the game on the s20 i can tell you it is absolutely beautiful andy beaudoin 12 03 so you're telling me i should upgrade? tony morelan 12 04 yeah, definitely need to upgrade your, your device yeah, it's a ton of fun and it is i mean it is just a beautiful game so well done so for those people out there that own an s 20 are there any special perks for them when they download the game? andy beaudoin 12 22 absolutely so not only do you get the 2015 ford mustang gt from downloading through the store, but you also get the 2015 chevy corvette 06 with a custom paint job, you'll get some in game credits and you'll get some gold and it's a really good start to the game the corvette is a is a really high-end sports car in the game and it's one that's going to be really set up to be upgraded in a really compelling fashion so with that extra golden extra credits you're getting a good jumpstart on building out your awesome collection of cars and of course the street tony morelan 12 55 you know, one thing that really stood out for me when i played the game, it was the art behind if it wasn't just straight cars and a beautiful road, there was a lot of intel put into the artistic approach to this game we talked a little bit about the art that was used to enforce the street andy beaudoin 13 10 yeah, absolutely so at turn 10, we've got this creative concept called the emotional core and so whenever we do a new product line, we spend time thinking about emotionally what do we want players to take away from the experience so if you look at motor sport, it's got a very different aesthetic from horizon, for example, and which is different from sports history and so we started that off and some of the terms that we looked at and for our emotional core was street were evocative and stylish from the beginning, we wanted it to kind of feel like a high gloss you know, red carpet, hip hop, music video where, you know, the streets are all wet, not for any reason other than cars just look great on wet streets so really trying to push that feel of this being a high production as opposed to motorsport, which is all about photorealistic down the track heat coming off, this needed to look like, you know, you had a film producer that was there trying to put everything just in the right place so we're trying to capture that bond so from there we started to think about, you know, what kind of aesthetic would look good, what kinds of environments would look good the game takes place evening and tonight just because it looks great with the neon and feels different from other titles as well and all that led us down the path of trying to think of what are the best locations that can try to encapsulate this, this type of look and feel and that's where we landed with miami tony morelan 14 37 so did you guys do any in person the photo research? andy beaudoin 14 40 i did not but yeah, the development team and our art director took a trip down to miami and really spent some time both looking at the amazing car culture down there there's some really high-end automotive shops down there and you know, it's a great place to drive it's a great place it's nice weather there's a great beach scene is a really cool edm kind of dance nightclub scene with a lot of that kind of cuban vibe mixed in so it's just a really cool it hits that emotional core of really being stylish and so i know that the team took away a lot of that a lot of the music that's in the game is kind of inspired by that trap, kind of edm meets hip hop type of vibe, which is just pulsing through the streets of miami, so i'm bummed i missed it but here's a pretty cool, pretty cool research trip tony morelan 15 28 yeah and i will say that i actually helped teach a course in design for samsung, in miami oh, cool this past year so having played the game after i was in miami, i totally recognize some of the streets that i was racing down as the streets that i was on when i was helping teach this course in miami, so ods did a great job with that cool will the game be adding any additional locations for racing or is it primarily right now just focused on the miami scene? andy beaudoin 15 56 right now we're focused on miami the game if the game is built to be a live operations game, and that means that we're intending to continue to invest in the game both from our resources standpoint as well as time standpoint to continue to change the game over time, every three to six weeks, we bring a new event into the game, so that players who play the game over a long period of time, we'll always have something new to do, there's, of course, a good story that you can play through that's got a significant amount of content there's a rivals mode, which has, you know, the ability to pit your car collection up against those of other players and in the world and then every month or so, we're going to release a new event with new cars, new content, new ways to play new ways to win so with that ethos of this is something that, you know, launching the game is just the start of the life of a mobile game and so, the future is pretty wide open, we're going to see what our players do, what they like to play and where they want to take the game and try to manage what we do with the game in the future accordingly tony morelan 16 58 got it getting back a little bit to the graphics are you able to leverage from any of your existing forza titles or with all the graphics or the created fresh new for forza street? it's a mix andy beaudoin 17 07 we have an amazing library of cars at turn 10 as part of the forza franchise, we're knocking on 1000 and so when we started with fort st, and one of the things we want to do is try to find a way to take advantage of all that hard work that went into making those cars amazing so the team created a new pipeline by which we could take cars that were ready for forza motorsport, and put them through a process to get them game ready into st so all the cars started off in motorsport they've gone through this process, there's some hand touching that has to go into make them as efficient as we want them to be on the mobile platforms but yeah, they've got the same cars you know, all the shaders are carried over and there's a lot of similarities there the environments themselves were all custom built for street and to take advantage of again of how mobile devices work the footprint wanted to keep on the mobile devices and things like that so it's a really cool blend of both existing assets and art and new stuff tony morelan 18 07 you know, another aspect of the game that really stands out is music so is this music written specifically for forza street? or did you just license existing songs? andy beaudoin 18 14 now it was all written like i mentioned, we had really good inspiration from the music scene that is kind of alive and well in miami and we had a soundtrack that was created specifically for the game five of the tracks came from a team called heavy duty projects and their music production company based in la, and new york, and they've got some award-winning composers and music producers and so it was great to work with that team and then there was a sixth track, which was from pete international airport, which is a solo project of peter holmstrom and he's best known for his work with the dandy warhols so that's, that's great it's kind of this fun, different mix tony morelan 18 52 yeah, i'm a big fan of dandy warhols do you know anything about that relationship? and how did that come about? andy beaudoin 18 58 yeah, so our audio director for this studios a guy named mixer as well and he's phenomenally talented he's a great guitar player and he's also really gotten me into the rabbit hole of guitar pedals so i have him to thank for the board i have on my floor that i'm nowhere near talented enough to use, but i believe he's good friends with peter and they've known each other for years and work together and nick was in the music scene over in the uk a couple of decades ago, too so there's, i think a long-term relationship that is has led to that partnership tony morelan 19 27 that's great so let's talk a little bit more about how the team created the audio and the sound for the game were these effects that were pulled from other forza games or did you create any of these audio clips specifically for street andy beaudoin 19 39 definitely both new and harvested from existing forts of stuff so we've got probably 15 or more years of sound recording that's gone into the forza franchise, all the different cars, the different squeak, squeals turbos, you know, one of the cool things about forza street is that even though it's a mobile game, and it's a timing based game, rather than a full on, you know, track based steering game, it's still running for it's a physics and one of the cool elements of that is that we get to use all that physics data that's coming out of our physics simulation to drive the audio so all the audio for the cars, how they move how they sound comes from the original games, obviously, with some modifications to optimize them for mobile devices but you know, if you've got a turbo on the car, there's actually a part simulation running out of the hood that's saying there's a turbo that kicks off the turbo sounds and there's a lot of this nuance that that we get to pull out of our cars audibly because we're built on the back of that really rich and robust for it's a physics system andy beaudoin 20 43 so is the audio for the most part computer generated or these literally like you know, sound tech guy with a mic out in front of a, you know, chevy corvette recording the exhaust andy beaudoin 20 54 it sound tech guy out there, and with the chevy corvette, in fact, one of the funny stories i think that the audio team, too took a little bit of flak from our studio head, alan hartman because back in the day, i think it was his rs four he had it was really souped up and i think they put it on the dyno and ran it a little bit too hard to try to capture the sounds and might have done a bit of damage to it so we're all in as a studio and trying to make sure that the audio scape is the best it can be tony morelan 21 19 that's awesome so do you feel that you know, the realistic graphics that you have in the game that realistic sounds, you know, does that help users become more engaged? or do you think they want more of that sort of arcade style? andy beaudoin 21 32 yeah, i think there's a good overlap between the racing players that wants simulation and the racing players that want arcade obviously, there are little niches that just you know, some players that just want one or another but as you know, i've played in i've worked on racing games for over 20 years now and you know, need for speeds got a style that i think is really compelling and cool it provides one experience for us has got its own style there's the asphalt games on mobile that are great and provide a different experience we've tried to with street stay true to forza and to the fort's of brand, and that to us means, you know, we want to be a best in class experience with high quality, high quality graphics, high quality experience so that there's this immersive sensation to us we also want to be authentic so we want our cars to look and feel like the real things, they want to have weight, they want to have mass so those are those two things keep us from going too far down the over the top, because then we start to stray from what we think 40 is and what customers expect so even though we've created a racing experience with street, where you interact very differently, you're not steering the car down the track, you're really just focused it's a timing game, which we think is a really great match for how people play on mobile but it's still the cars have mass like i mentioned, they're still running forward to physics, they're still throwing up smoke when they lose grip and all that kind of stuff and if you hit your boost too late going into a corner, your car's going to go sideways and hit the wall all those things carry through that immersive sense of weight and that one would expect from a forex title tony morelan 23 04 yeah and i can i can attest to that as far as going into a turn too late and with my boost and ending up in the in the wall there and seeing myself crash so yeah, it's nice and realistic so obviously a huge collection of cars that you've licensed so tell me is it difficult to license these cars? i mean, obviously forges a big brand but is that something that's a challenge when you're trying to bring in new cars to the game? andy beaudoin 23 26 i don't know that's a challenge i think the biggest challenge we have is that we have an incredible list of partners in the forza franchise and these are partners brands that we've worked with for years and we have amazing support mclaren’s an example where we, right now we're running an event that's really celebrating the mclaren brand and that was a team that was really eager to work with us, and to get their name and get their brand in our game and also to co-promoter so it's been a really good partnership so i wouldn't say it's difficult i think the complexity comes in that we've got these long-standing relationships with partners and now we're bringing in a mobile game so we've got business structures and deals that are built upon console and built upon that type of business model and so a lot of the discussions or licensing team has been having with partners has been trying to give an understanding of how the mobile space is a bit different than what we've got in our existing agreements and it's not that the manufacturers are pretty used to working with mobile titles and you know, mclaren’s, and other in other mobile titles as well but to think about how we take existing franchise level agreements and make them work with now a mobile game as well has meant some just reeducation, i guess, in realignment of how we work with existing deals so it really the only complexity is that we have a whole franchise that we're licensing for, rather than a particular game, which just means we have a few more considerations, then, you know, some of the smaller teams working on a mobile game line tony morelan 24 53 i'm sure that you've got some updates that you can't quite share publicly yet but are there any anything that you can share? that we get for the straight users excited about andy beaudoin 25 03 i think the biggest thing is that, like i mentioned earlier, we're going to be releasing new stuff every month, every month and change so the game and how it looks today is not what it's going to look like in a couple of weeks it's not what it's going to look like in six months so you know, hop in now so you got a chance to win i think we had a few days left on the mclaren event so you can get some of those awesome mclaren's there's never a better time to win them and then following that, there'll be something else to win and the game is continuously growing we've been out on mobile for, you know, worldwide for just a little bit over a month, just shy of two months now so we've been learning a ton from how people are playing our game and we're going to take that information and continue to make the game better our goal is to make people that play the game feel like this is a place that they can have as a home for their mobile racing fix for months, years to come so that's our top priority is making it a place that people want to stay and enjoy staying and feeling your time is really well spent so that's a north star where you keep driving for andy beaudoin 26 05 yeah, i'd love to hear that, you know, it's kind of nice to because if it's a game that that you can set down for a moment, and then know that next time you pick it up is something new and fresh that just gives you a good reason to grab your device and get back into playing absolutely tony morelan 26 18 any other games coming from xbox studios that are coming to mobile that you can talk about andy beaudoin 26 22 nothing that i'm able to speak about, i can just kind of focus on what we're doing with forza i mean, you've seen gears has released a mobile game recently, which is great and, you know, we've got a couple of other titles mine crafts out there as well i think we're just speaking to the fact that a whole bunch of people play games on mobile and so with our goal of trying to entertain customers everywhere and meet people where they are and entertain them with xbox titles, i think that's kind of an indication of where we're at now and i would expect more things from us on the mobile space in the future tony morelan 26 56 so what advice would you give developers looking to bring their games to the galaxy store? andy beaudoin 27 01 biggest thing i would say is don't hesitate to reach out to the team for advice and support we were really impressed with the level of support we got from the tech support team over there in the in the uk when we're they were working with our partners that the guys came on site for a period of time helped us optimize helped us point out some ways that we can make the game better so i would reach out to the team earlier and see if there are any ways that they can kind of partner earlier on we had a great experience working with samsung on pre-registrations and a lot of people that pre-registered the game, which meant that as soon as we launched worldwide, we had a really big cohort of folks coming in, which is really valuable for us, you know, to climb the charts and make sure that we're in a good position to drive organic acquisition so yeah, i think reach out early try to engage the team as much as possible early on, and don't discount the amount of pre-registrations you can get from a really good partnership with samsung tony morelan 27 59 it's great to hear why would you say that it's important that developers do offer their game on the galaxy store? andy beaudoin 28 04 again, it's another surface area that, you know, again, i'm biased because the galaxy device, but it's yeah, it's a hugely popular device, hugely popular suite of devices the galaxy store sits on every one of those devices you know, it's also if i remember correctly, we had really good product placement as well, when the game went live i think the team did a really good job of promoting forza street, which not only gave us the strong registrations that we had when we went live, but we also got some really good organics installs when the game went live as well so i think that the format of the store is really good to promoting the visuals of the game it's really focused, and we had a great experience with it so tony morelan 28 45 excellent all right so tell me in forza street, what is your favorite car to drive? andy beaudoin 28 51 my highest rated cars the boss 302 that is my highest pi car okay it's a tough question i've got the 99 spider which is my epic supercar that it's taking me a little bit longer to upgrade because it's hard to get those epics and you need to duplicate cars in order to upgrade them but andy beaudoin 29 11 yeah, it's passion versus functionality that's a challenging one tony morelan 29 15 all right so in real life, what would be your favorite car to drive? andy beaudoin 29 18 so i've got an s for now it's 2013 so it's a little bit longer in the tooth i've been pining after an rs five sport back for many, many years, but i've not yet gotten to the spot where i can i can make that transition but my wife and i have a plan and someday in the future, i hope to have an rs five sport back i'm a father of two i like we've discussed mountain biking, i like to ride mountain bikes my bike in the back of my house for having that sport back would make it even easier to throw my bike in the back of the car and go out for a ride afterwards so that's my current, my current object of my desire tony morelan 29 54 yeah so as you'd mentioned, we both are big fans of mountain biking you obviously being up there in the northwest you've got some beautiful trails to ride me being in california we've got a lot of great trails out here so i'm going to ask you, when you're not doing your day to day job with turn 10 studios, what do you like to do for fun? andy beaudoin 30 12 for fun, i got to kind of primary hobbies and that's music and mountain biking and probably equally skilled at both, which means i'm not particularly skilled at either now i love i play with some guys at work i play some really poor guitar and sing it mediocre lee for them but that's a lot of fun we just do a bunch of covers and get together every week or two and get together and jam but yeah, mountain biking is kind of the biggest passion right now and i started that a couple years ago, just looking at what's in my backyard up here in the northwest and how many amazing trails are to ride and i grew up in the bay area and so i grew up kind of in the bmx and skateboarding era in the 80s and so you know, in my now mid 40s, to discover that there's this awesome thing where you can take bikes and go off jumps and, and you don't look completely silly at my age doing that was pretty captivating tony morelan 31 01 now i will say andy is currently wearing an arm brace so it sounds like you're having a little too much fun maybe out there on the trails andy beaudoin 31 09 yeah, i need to learn to slow down i've had a couple of crashes over the past six months i'm nursing a broken collarbone right now, which doesn't hurt that much, but keeps me off the bike for a couple of months so looking forward to getting healed and maybe going slightly slower off jumps next time tony morelan 31 24 nice nice that sounds fine why are you going to take that passion and then bring it into the video world forza street? andy beaudoin 31 30 that's cool yeah, i know it's a little bit less dangerous to racing horses straight than it is on a bike so but yeah, they both they both hit the same endorphins for sure tony morelan 31 38 that's wonderful okay, andy, want to absolutely thank you and appreciate you taking the time to join me today on this podcast, tons of fun love what the guys are doing over there turn 10 studios and forza street super fun game to play so go download it have a blast, and we'll talk to you soon awesome thanks so much tony's a pleasure outro 31 55 looking to start creating for samsung download the latest tools to code your next app or get software for designing apps without coding at all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan
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