In October in New York, New York, Polyphony Digital held a anniversary event commemorating the 10th year since the release of the “Gran Turismo” Series. The stage for this event dubbed the “DOWNSHIFT SESSION 2008” was at the “Classic Car Club Manhattan”, an automotive membership club in the SOHO district of lower Manhattan. Polyphony Digital also presented two technological trials for the next generation at this event. Both of the presentations were founded on the philosophy of “achieving the highest possible quality” held over the years by Gran Turismo.
One of these was a time trial competition using Sony’s newest (better than HD) digital cinema projector, the “SRX-S110”. Gran Turismo 5 prologue is already in Full HD resolution at 1920 x 1080 pixels, providing the highest resolution possible in today’s consumer TV content. However in this time trial, the Full HD image was increased to twice the resolution both vertically and horizontally (4x the surface area), enabling game play at an ultra high resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. This was performed by connecting and synchronizing four Playstation 3’s outputting a quarter of the image each at 1920×1080 pixels.
What supported this time trial on the display side, was the newest digital cinema projector from Sony, the SRX-110. This “4K”SXRD”(*1) projector is the next generation in projector technology, enabling a resolution of 4096 x 2160 pixels, equivalent to the high resolution image of 35mm film. The high 4000:1 device contrast ratio and a response time of 5 milliseconds, also adds to the level of breathtaking image expression introduced here.
The crowd was simply amazed by the clarity of the image displayed on the massive 220 inch screen, and the players who participated in the time trial expressed their excitement of how perfectly in focus the screen is even close up, and at the quality of Gran Turismo.
