The new office of Polyphony Digital, the developer of Gran Turismo, was revealed in its entirety!　Report on the 25th Anniversary Studio Tour of the Gran Turismo series, which included a presentation by the creator, Mr. Yamauchi!

The Polyphony Digital Tokyo Studio, which was the subject of the tour, had been located in Tokyo for a long time, but because the relocation took place before the COVID-19 epidemic, the studio had long been closed to the media. Therefore, this will be the first time in the world that the current Tokyo Studio will be open to the media.

Polyphony Digital Tokyo Studio, the subject of the tour, has been located in Tokyo for a long time, but since the timing of the relocation was before the COVID-19 epidemic, it had been closed to the media for a long time. Therefore, this will be the first studio tour in the world to introduce the current Tokyo Studio.

The vast development studio occupies an entire floor. It is equipped with a training room, a Japanese-style room, and variously designed communication spaces.

Upon entering the building, the first thing one sees is a stage for presentations and a play space with as many as 12 cockpits for "GT7" test drives. There was also a bar where one could have a drink, and locker rooms for visitors and competitors to store their belongings when they come here for a competition. Perhaps it was for this event, but the overall lighting was dim and the atmosphere was quite chic.

Locker rooms. Each of the locker rooms depicts a circuit course that has been included in the Gran Turismo software series.

The bar in the lobby. It was modeled after Devil's Diner, a bar-restaurant that actually exists on the famous Nürburgring course in Germany.

Mr. Yamauchi standing at the counter.

Helmet placed at the entrance of the studio. It was a gift from the Ayrton Senna Foundation, which was established for underprivileged children in Brazil, in accordance with the late legendary F1 driver Ayrton Senna's wish.

Gran Turismo 6" (for PS3) includes a game mode as a tribute to Ayrton Senna that allows players to relive his racing career.

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As the tour begins, we first walk right through the space for the presentation to the back room. This is a break room with tables, sofas, and instruments with whiteboards, where Yamauchi and other employees sometimes play instruments in-house or have online sessions with the company's Fukuoka studio. The whiteboard had what appeared to be a scene from somewhere on it, but it was apparently a doodle by Mr. Yamauchi.

Break room for employees (smoking room)

Mr. Yamauchi improvising and drawing a car on the whiteboard in response to a reporter's request.

In the "sound room," we were able to see the development staff at work up close. This is where they check the acoustics and create the sound, and is lined with numerous pieces of equipment, including PCs. On a monitor in the back of the room, a car in motion and the direction of the sound it emits were displayed as yellow cones, and it appeared that the sound conditions during the race were being closely monitored.

Sound Room

Returning to the first venue, we passed through a large door that is usually closed, leading to the development area where the creators are working. The room had a monotone atmosphere with black and white as the base color, and each staff member's work desk was neatly lined up. The development studio is mostly a partitioned staff development space in the center of the building, surrounded by various facilities.

The "training room. The equipment in the back of the center was introduced by Mr. Yamauchi when he participated in the GT3 race held at the Nürburgring circuit in Germany, in order to develop the muscle strength to step on the brakes of the car.

Mr. Yamauchi demonstrating training.

Next, we were taken to the library. The shelves in front of the library are filled with car catalogs and other materials showing scenes from around the world, and the shelf to the left is filled with plastic models of sports cars, making it a perfect space for car enthusiasts. In addition, it also housed old and new game titles that appeared on PlayStation-type hardware.
Nowadays, car manufacturers have digital archives of various data, but there was a time when such data only existed on paper or in physical form, such as color swatch samples.
Here, the materials and samples from each era are carefully archived, as they have been used in the development of the "Gran Turismo" series.

The front fender of the car that Mr. Yamauchi actually drove when he participated in the 24-hour race at the Nurburgring in 2010.

Next, we went to the seminar room. Here he holds meetings with the Fukuoka studio while showing footage of actual machines, and also invites students to attend workshops such as "Try Making a Game in a Day. Usually, the desks are not arranged in a circle, but rather like a school classroom.

Seminar Room

Next is the video room. At the back of the room is a green background used for video synthesis. This room is literally used for video recording, and its uses seem to be wide-ranging, including recording promotional videos and live commentary for the official world championship "Gran Turismo World Series.

A Japanese-style room was also prepared in one corner of the studio. The room is furnished with tatami mats, zabuton (Japanese cushions), and a horigotatsu (sunken kotatsu), with a white board on the other side of the fusuma (sliding door). The room is also used for meetings, and at the year-end party, the staff, who can make matcha (powdered green tea), will be dressed in kimono to welcome the guests.

As Mr. Yamauchi led us further into the room, we found equipment dedicated for playing Gran Turismo.

On the right is the "GT Furniture," as it is commonly called. On the left is a seven-axis cylinder-controlled driving simulator made by Access.

The furniture on the right, according to Mr. Yamauchi, was "designed for people who want to set up a steering wheel controller in their living room to play Gran Turismo, but their family might be upset. When you want to play a game, just pull them out and you can play "Gran Turismo 7" in no time. We produced a few units to try out, but the furniture is not for sale, as it seems to be difficult to secure a sales channel. Too bad!

The system on the left, which resembles a driver's seat, is a movable cylinder-controlled driving simulator developed by Access, a company involved in circuit-related products, and the seat moves in conjunction with the game. Some of you may be familiar with this system, as you may have had the opportunity to try it out at the Tokyo Game Show and other events in the past.

That was the end of the tour of the studio. After returning to the lobby, Mr. Yamauchi gave a presentation on the 25th anniversary of the Gran Turismo series.

Mr. Yamauchi's presentation on the 25th anniversary of the Gran Turismo series

When the presentation began, Mr. Yamauchi first explained about the development studio he leads, Polyphony Digital Inc. This studio was established in 1998, the year after the first "Gran Turismo" was released, and was started under the satellite company system of the former Sony Computer Entertainment (now Sony Interactive Entertainment). He also talked about PDI's founding philosophy of "quantizing the world and making it computable" and "being open to society," using slides projected on the screen. He also talked about the company's corporate culture and employee ratio, among other topics.

After discussing topics such as corporate culture and employee ratios, the next topic was the creation of courses for the "Gran Turismo" series. In a comparison of resolution and frame rate, the first "Gran Turismo" (for PS) had a resolution of 320 x 240 and a frame rate of 30 per second, while the latest "GT7" (for PS5/PS4) has a resolution of 3840 x 2160 (4K quality) and a frame rate of 60. is now 60. The higher resolution is especially important because racing games are about players seeing farther, he said.

Next, he talked about the criteria for incorporating real courses into the game. He mentioned several points, such as whether the structure of the course, including the elevation differences, is fun to drive on, whether the course is well-known or historical, and whether the scenery is beautiful. He said that when creating a fictional course, he used landscapes from around the world as references.

Mr. Yamauchi also revealed the arrangements used to cover the course. He showed a slide of the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain, and said that the division of roles, such as which team will be in charge of which part of the course, and which equipment will be used where, was decided in advance. Incidentally, he said that on average, more than 30,000 photos were taken on a single course by camera on foot.

He also used various methods such as panoramic video shooting with a car equipped with an 8K camera, laser scanning, and photogrammetry to generate 3DCG from multiple photos, which showed his commitment to recreating a real course in a game.

Next, let's talk about car modeling. Similar to the introduction of course creation, Mr. Yamauchi also discussed the changes from the first "Gran Turismo" to the latest "GT7". The vertices (the elements that make up polygons. The number of vertices (an element that makes up a polygon; three or more vertices are combined to form a polygon, a surface that can be drawn in a variety of ways) has increased from 250 in the first game to 2,000 in the second game, and to 1 million in "GT7". A Toyota Supra headride was shown as a sample on the slide, and while the polygons in the first film were noticeably coarse, those in "GT7" were reproduced so well that they could have been placed directly in a car catalog.

In the slides that followed, the number of models produced for each car, the number of vertices, and the number of days it took to complete the project were presented in a table. In the original "Gran Turismo" and "Gran Turismo 2" released on PlayStation, it took 3 days to complete the modeling of one car. For "Gran Turismo 5" and "Gran Turismo 6" on the PlayStation 3, it takes 180 days, or about 6 months. In the case of the previous "Gran Turismo SPORT" and the latest "GT7", the modeling time was 270 days, which means that more than two thirds of a year is spent on car modeling.

The table on the slide shows that the number of cars recorded has been decreasing since the peak of 1,200 for "Gran Turismo 6". This may be due to the fact that modeling technology and hardware performance have improved, resulting in an increase in overall production days and the need to recreate the data from scratch in the first place. Even so, "GT7" contains 450 cars, and every detail of every car, down to the interior, has been faithfully reproduced to the highest degree possible. In addition, more cars are being added to the collection every month, so the number of cars in the "GT7" collection is a good balance between quality and quantity.

In addition to talking about modeling, Mr. Yamauchi also explained the criteria for selecting cars. It became clear that he emphasizes various aspects, such as how much influence the car has had on people, its place in history, how it is designed, and how popular it is.

And now to the topic of sound. In addition to Japan, recording bases are located in North America and Europe, and each of these locations brings in actual cars to record the engine sounds. The basic method is to use a chassis dynamometer to check horsepower and fuel consumption.

A variety of methods are used to reproduce the engine sound. In addition to the "impulse response reverb," which expresses the changes and differences that occur as the initial sound is repeatedly reflected and refracted before finally reaching the human ear, the "engine sound synthesizer," which uses a physics simulation to express the sound up to the point where the sound comes out based on the explosion that occurs in the cylinder, is also used. In addition, AI technology is used to generate engine speeds that exceed the upper limit of the target car.

Next, the discussion moved on to a look back at the 25 years that the Gran Turismo series has been around. Mr. Yamauchi talked about the starting point of "Gran Turismo", and how he had a yearning for the automobile culture, but also a desire to be able to create games using the innovative features that PlayStation had at the time, such as the ability to depict 3D in real time and physical simulations. The name "Gran Turismo" was derived from the term used in Europe to refer to the various experiences that the children of aristocrats would have when they traveled across the continent to learn about the culture of Europe.

Eventually, Mr. Yamauchi decided to create the first "Gran Turismo" game, which would include realistic cars from various car companies, something that had never been done in the video game industry before. He introduced an episode in which he had a very difficult time getting permission to use the game from the car manufacturers. He said that the first obstacle for him was how to persuade the automakers without being able to show them any specifics such as the shape of the game or the company.

Therefore, Mr. Yamauchi created three proposals, one for each of the following: the company Sony Computer Entertainment, the game hardware PlayStation, and the title Gran Turismo.

The presentation was a steady process of visiting car manufacturers one by one and negotiating with them. At first, they were constantly being turned down, but one day, he called a representative of Toyota Motor Corporation, met with the person who answered the phone, and explained the proposals to him. After Toyota's permission was granted, other manufacturers began to cooperate, and he said that he still feels grateful to Toyota.

On the slides, Mr. Yamauchi also introduced the first "Gran Turismo" project proposal that he created in the beginning of 1995. There was a page that appeared to be the cover of the proposal with the title "Gran Turismo" and illustrations of cars and people, as well as a page explaining the system with terrain data, all of which could be considered valuable materials.

Later, through various collaborations, he met Nike, a company that values athletes, and was impressed by Nike's attitude toward people and its philosophy that "it is people that inspire people," which led to the development of the "GT Academy," which trains game users to become real professional racers, and the "Gran Turismo" official world championships. This led to the launch of the "Gran Turismo World Series," an official world championship for Gran Turismo, and the "GT Academy," which trains real professional racers from game users. There is also an anecdote about the "Vision Gran Turismo," a project to have car manufacturers design cars in the game, thinking that "if we could just create an opportunity, car manufacturers would design the ideal sports car.

While listening to such a valuable presentation and trying out "Gran Turismo 7" at the play corner, time flew by and the studio tour came to an end.

The studio tour and presentation, which showed us the development area and the company, lasted about three hours in total. From the studio, we could feel their sincere attitude towards the development of the series, and during Mr. Yamauchi's presentation, we were able to learn a lot about his thoughts and vision for Gran Turismo. The "Gran Turismo" series is expanding its activities not only in games, but also in real life racing, and we wonder what kind of excitement the series will bring in the future.

The latest "GT7" game will start receiving updates on December 15, 2022, including new cars and Scapes features, and on December 23, the "Ferrari Vision Gran Turismo," the first concept car created by Ferrari for virtual motorsports, will be available for purchase in the game. The game continues to evolve on a daily basis.

The "Gran Turismo" series will continue to evolve and we will not be able to take our eyes off of it in the future.

（The "Gran Turismo" series is sure to continue to grow and evolve.)

Title Information
Gran Turismo 7
Release date: On sale (March 4, 2022)
Compatibility: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Pro
Genre: Realistic driving simulator
CERO: A (for all ages)

<For PS5
Package Edition
Standard Edition 8,690 yen (tax included)
Download version
Standard Edition 8,690 yen (tax included)

＜For PS4
Package version
Standard Edition 7,590 yen (including tax)
Downloadable version
Standard Edition 7,590 yen (including tax)

<For PS5 and PS4
Download Edition
25th Anniversary Digital Deluxe Edition 10,890 yen (tax included)

Developed by Polyphony Digital Inc. Manufacturers, cars, names, brands and associated imagery featured in this game in some cases include trademarks and/or copyrights. Any depiction or recreation of real-world locations, entities, businesses, or organizations. Any depiction or recreation of real-world locations, entities, businesses, or organizations is not intended to be or imply any sponsorship or endorsement of this game by such party or parties. Gran Turismo" logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.