I’m not sure what the animal cruelty laws are in Norway, but I guess they don’t include covering a horse in ping pong balls.
A few weeks ago, I saw a demo of “Age of Conan,” the new MMORPG from Funcom.
With the game due out next month, we’ve heard lots of things about it already: how difficult it is to adapt the controls for the Xbox 360 controller, and whether or not the game features nipples.
But there was one fact during the demo that caught my attention: in order to capture realistic movement for the in-game horse mounts, they motion-captured real horses.
I had to see it to believe it.
So I asked for proof, and Funcom gladly sent it to me. From Product Director Jorgen Tharaldsen:
“In order to make [the horse movement] believable, we looked for someone who could help us to make it look as you would expect in a real-life situation, and we found this in a team of crazy British guys who lined up an entire stable and even a stadium for motion capture. As a thank you to the Brits, we naturally had to put the jolly old lance in the game when fighting mounted! I’m not sure if we are the first or only ones to do this, and it really doesn’t matter. What I do know is that riding a horse in ‘Conan’ looks mighty cool, and even realistic, so as far as we are concerned we reached our goals.”
Click onward to see more photos of the horse and rider in action, as well as the screenshots of the final results.
[Click the images to enlarge them.]
April 29th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
That’s some relatively nice horse animation there - still not as nice as Agro in Shadow of the Colossus though..
April 29th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
so much work and reasearch for such little results, wow the horse model looks like crap, at least get more polys on that model and get a modeller who can model a horse correctly, all that effort and money spend on motion for poor results, what a loss….
April 29th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
You realize the game isn’t even in beta yet?
April 29th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Actually those look quite good.
To the person below complaining that they look like *$*~, you have to keep in mind that this is an MMO, they can’t have absolutely insane models and textures (horses/people/land/etc.) if they did the game would crash when too many people were all on screen moving around.
I’d like to see more devs with this sort of passion.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Most mmo’s give a very low polygone limits to the artists. It can be tough getting a nice looking model with the limits given. Age of Conan does a pretty good job. horse conoisseur, you might be interested to know that low polygons can sometimes show of the skill of the artiest more then lots of polygons can. If you think you can do better, I encourage you to send these guys your reel. Perhaps you can make a better horse with the limitations provided. If so That would be awesome, and the game will be better for it.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:42 am
Whether or not this is an MMO, has no bearing on the level of detail on the texture or models. The graphics are always rendered client side, the server just deals with abstract objects. The low poly count probably has something to do with the median system requirements they’re targetting.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:29 am
Thats not correct. Thats right that the Grafik is rendered at client side, but wich client can show the “crappy polygons” incl. the animations of hundred horses? Do you know what lag is? You can make prettier horses in a single player game, but I don’t saw better till now. Especially in an MMO. Do you saw the animations in the mount video (look at the official page)? I saw never better grafix in an mmo!!!
The Picture was Pre-Beta and the actual beta is still only with DX9 grafiks, so wait for the final grafix before you talk.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Omg, I’m like sort of a gamer and looked around to get some information about AoC. This motion capturing thing they are working with is insane, believe me. Most mmorpg’s aren’t getting this kind of attention. Take an example out of WoW, the mounts used there can’t meassure to these. This is like totaly new and I don’t know why peeps would say this isn’t any good and they should spent more time into designing. This is like w00t wtf roflmao, this way they are an outstanding game and I hope many many peeps will understand that this is a game that has to be played.
wall of text crits you! Soz about that, but I wanted to say much much more. I just hope people with complains will think again before posting. This is really the start of a new MMO era.
Nice post, gief more!
Cheers
April 30th, 2008 at 7:02 am
“That’s some relatively nice horse animation there - still not as nice as Agro in Shadow of the Colossus though..”
Wow those games got motion capture too??! If not it shows how little you may know about a horse’s motion in real life.
Bloody good job chaps! Can we perform Dressage in game now?
April 30th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Isn’t ‘lag’ cause by network latency? Delay from press on action button until the action is carried out?
Wouldn’t it be a drop in frame rate on your client PC? If there are too many Polygons on screen for your graphics card to handle, hence lower frames per second (fps) until a point where the user is impacted and experiances the loss of frames…
???
April 30th, 2008 at 7:38 am
LAG can be caused by server, connection and client problems. If you got a fast connection but your PC fails to load and display other player models fast enough, you got the latter problem.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:43 am
You’re right of course, it’s about FPS drop, not network “lag”, but people often confuse the two. Anyway, I don’t think they should make the game even more detailed because it already requires a really powerful PC to run. Anything higher and they will lose players.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:07 am
@horse conoisseur
MMOs are usually limited to a certain amount of operations at the same time. And I could flame you, but my “reasearch” shows that you are not worth the time.
PS, Getting a “Modeller” might prove extremely difficult.
In any case, bloody awesome MC on the horse
April 30th, 2008 at 8:23 am
This is one of the things that make me proud to be norwegian (I live less than an hour away from the studio :p). This is almost xbox 360 and ps3 graphics with motion capture and it’s an MMO! World of Warcraft should go hide under it’s bed. Whimpy little purple elves won’t stand against the brutality of Cimmerians. I am a beta tested adn the fighting system is really incredible. And the movements is incredible too. The open beta starts tomorrow though (1st may).
April 30th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Well they weren’t exactly saying the horse’s graphical animations were great. They were talking about how they captured extremely realistic movements in their mounts in game and from what i’ve seen they’ve succeeded in my opinion. Now i’m sure they won’t go all out because the horse controls in Shadow of the Colossus were crap if beautiful. So all in all I think we have a great game to look forward to for mmo standards at least.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:18 am
This looks so good, especially for closed beta, and even more especially for an MMO. I cant even imagine how great it will look in game after release.
-I think i’m going to need more RAM-
April 30th, 2008 at 9:22 am
I wish that the horses when they are called up in the game and dismissed in the game didn’t just vanish, i kind of wish it either just stayed there for a bit and then if you walked away it would disappear or it would run off, away from the person who’s mount it is and then run up to you from a distance when summoned. That to me would be cool. the animation look flawless though I love it mounted everything in ACHA is going to rock.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:31 am
http://aoc.warcry.com/images/view/47989 - another shot of a horse.
MMO or single player, it’s a damn fine looking game.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Too (Wong :)) Foo
Remove head from sphincter, then speak. You have no idea what kind of programming is required for an MMO. Graphics ARE limited for many of the reasons stated above. I’m in the business so I’m in a position to know.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Honestly… I’m pretty impressed. The horses in any game I play always drive me insane because they look so unrealistic. The ones in Conan take leaps and bounds over other games. The tails look a lot better than in previous games (though they still have a long way to go), and the body movements are pretty dead on. The only issues I really have are their necks, which just don’t look right, and the excessive shine on their coats.
Overall though, I think they did a great job, and I’m impressed that they went to such lengths to try to make them look accurate.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:47 am
I don’t know why the author of this article was surprised, like this is the first time ever that someone motion cap a horse. This has been done on numerous films and games; for example, a most recent film like Beowulf has done this on their horses. I don’t think this is animal cruelty since it’s only little balls that indicate pivot points in the body. So a change in words are in order. Bad enough having to see misinformed people about games in general, thinking that games are the problems to their child misbehavior.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:50 am
The mounted combat looks great (hopefully it comes out as being even more realistic/fun then Mount&Blade, functionality wise), the horse models look great. But I did notice something kind of funny. I grew up on a ranch and my parents have approximately 50 horses still to this day, so I have been around horses literally my entire life. In the end of the video when the character dismounts from the horse he dismounts from the wrong the side of the horse. I know its wierd, but you should always mount and dismount on the left side of the horse.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Hey Rem. It’s Aro not Agro
April 30th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Nice i love the motion capture in this game looks really good on the players when they run aswell there arms dont bend you can see the bones under the skin moving! its AWSOME i can wait to have my noble steed
April 30th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I think they did a wonderful job with the horse and everything else.It is going to be a good game.And to all the complainers out there,(dry your eyes).Your going to be very happy with the end results.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
At Horse Conoisseur, this game is in beta and has been for a long time.
The horses look great, I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of this game!
April 30th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Honestly, who the frack thinks this isent good? This is freaking beautiful! I honestly do’t think it can get much better, I mean have you seen the video??? We are honestly talking 360 quality here. The devs can’t win with some of you guys… Whats more funny is the guys bitching are the ones waiting for warhammer… now thats funny..
April 30th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
this game is gonna rock! it’s great that they put this much effort in to the game.
but something that would be really cool would have been if they MC’ed rinos, elephants and camels too
April 30th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Not in Beta yet? The game comes out May 20. The Open Beta starts tom looks like you a little behind.
For the guy who said shitty polygram, you musy be a WOW Player or EQ2. I smelt a carebare in the room.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
and they don’t show the work made for rhino
April 30th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
This is an old video but the work and thought going into it is actually nice. I mean they could have done it without all the capture and people would not have said a thing.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
I feel sorry for the guys that had to ride the Elephants and the rhino’s.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
i have horses and its pretty close nice job! see you sooon
April 30th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Quote From Marius “The open beta starts tomorrow though (1st may).”
Acutally the open beta I think starts on May 2nd that is when the registration opens for the beta.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Game is AWESOME. NUFF SAID. If you don’t like it or want to ~?@@% - GO FIND MARIO BROS ON YOUR OLD GAMECUBE, Loser.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
pretty impressive, they have put a lot of hard work into making a great MMORPG lets hope we can all appreciate the end product.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Open beta is offered through fileplanet and starts Thursday at 9am EST.
The May 2nd signup for for early registration if you pre-ordered the game, and thats the actual game.
Also closed beta has been going on for months.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Heh, I’m glad the Brits stepped in to do this simulation work.
I’d much prefer to see an English riding style in AoC than an American Western one.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
“so much work and reasearch for such little results, wow the horse model looks like crap, at least get more polys on that model and get a modeller who can matel a horse correctly, all that effort and money spend on motion for poor results, what a loss….”
You must be drunk. That’s an excellent model. I was even watching Beowulf yesterday and I’d say the models in AoC look 10x as good as those.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
This game rocks. me and the wife allready preordered it, Ive seen every bit of fotage on it and cant wait.. makes me sick to turn on WOW since I got turned on to Conan.
May 1st, 2008 at 5:46 am
I agree endo. my husband and i and a bunch of us are goint o play this.
we have been on beta and so far i love it!
the word wow makes me sick.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
WOOOOO GO BRITS!!!
Amazing model, absolutely fantastic! Im not one to know anything about games, especially MMO’s, but all I can say is: its a LOT better than WoW! Age of Conan is going to be sweet!
May 10th, 2008 at 7:27 am
excellent job Funcom! keep going and the US noobs Blizz will be defeated finally on mmorpg field! love ya!