Gaming

CSR2: Putting a supercar garage in your pocket

We take a first look at the sequel to one of the most popular racing games in App Store history.

Written by Jon Partridge

8 min readPublished on 28.07.2016 · 10:06 UTC

The McLaren P1. LaFerrari. Lamborghini Aventador. Bugatti Veyron. All insane supercars that really are the stuff of dreams (or bottomless wallets), and unless you win the lottery, you’ll seldom ever have the chance to experience the satisfaction of taking delivery of one of these exotic beasts. Until now.

After a three year wait, Natural Motion’s CSR2 is on the way, the sequel to one of the most popular racing games to ever grace Google Play and the Apple App Store (over 130 million downloads can’t be wrong). Unlike mobile rivals such as Real Racing, which focuses on er, real racing, CSR is all about experiencing that feeling of owning your very own fleet of over-the-top supercars, from speccing out each individual part (from the leather trim to brake caliper colour, just like you’re at the dealership) to taking a virtual delivery that then lets you poke at your newly minted car through the touchscreen.

We got a first look at the upcoming Android and iOS game and chatted with Natural Motion CEO Torsten Reil about how accuracy is paramount, how the cars are brought into the game and how CSR2 will give even next-gen consoles a run for their money.

CSR has never been just about the racing. It’s all about the cars – you gotta catch ’em all. While the core gameplay mechanics of CSR haven’t changed too much since the original (you take the reigns of your motor during a drag race, and it’s up to you to shift gears at the right time to take victory), the level of detail and attention paid to each individual motor has been taken to the next level: it almost seems like the graphical fidelity can rival racing sims on today’s home consoles. CSR2 looks fantastic, in other words, and Natural Motion is pulling out all the stops (some of the graphics have been created by an animator who worked on Avengers: Age of Ultron – “he's doing all of our motion graphics”, Reil tells us).

Having a studio with global reach certainly helps when it comes to hiring talent. Natural Motion has offices in Oxford, London and Brighton, as well as San Francisco, and Reil has brought in former designers who have worked on the likes of Forza and Burnout. That CSR2 looks as good as either title is testament to their work – and this on a device that’s primarily meant for making calls.

“It's awesome that you can run this on a phone – the kind of device you just use to check your emails – but it's sporting what looks like next-generation graphics. All in your pocket,” Reil tells Red Bull. “In some cases it runs at a higher resolution than next-gen consoles – the iPad Air 2 version actually runs at a 50 percent higher resolution than the PlayStation 4.”

The attention to detail isn’t just with how each car looks: it’s what you can do too. Each movable part of the car can be prodded at on your touchscreen, and your chosen car on screen will respond. Take the McLaren P1, for example: touch the rear wing, and it’ll move up and down, just like in real life when the wing adjusts for aerodynamics. Engine bonnets open up to show you what’s under the hood, while you can pull open doors to check out each lovingly rendered interior.

“If the car has movable parts, chances are, we've modelled them too. Everything's now interactive too, and that's a huge step up for us,” Reil tells us. “The aerodynamic elements can all be interacted with, showing you how they work. We're aiming that if the real car can do it, you can do it in CSR2.”

How Reil and co bring each car model to life starts with a relationship with the car manufacturer, continues with a 3D CAD file, which is then fine-tuned along the way and then leads on to a sound recording session to get everything right. “That CAD file, it's a 3D blueprint – all in 3D. We import that and then that's pretty much the car model. We don't always need all the detail, but we keep all of the structure, so it's based on that original structure.”

“Take the Pagani Huayra, you can see the intricate carbon weave detailed, and the rear view mirror is also carbon,” he says. “We worked closely with Pagani and we came to see them a few times. They said we didn't quite get the flag detailing exactly right on the wing, so they sent us a few clarifications, and since then, we've had a close relationship. Our guys, they're really pedantic about the cars too, and want to get all the details right.”

Even the paint jobs on each car have been given special attention, as Natural Motion has a dedicated staffer who focuses solely on paint swatches so they match up with each manufacturer’s cars. The game’s shader tech also lets each paint job really shimmer: the P1’s bright orange hue feels like a mesmerising trick on the eye.

When it comes to creating each engine sound for each car, it’s not just as simple as putting a microphone behind each motor, however. “We pretty much send out sound engineers and record the engine sounds, but it's a little bit more complex, as it's really hard to get engine sounds to sound good when you rev them. When you hear the revving sound of each car, it sounds rather straightforward on the face of things, but what we can't do is just record that rev once and play it back.”

“The way you feather your engine revs in the game is completely dynamic, so we had to procedurally recreate that. So we take lots of samples of the original car engine, and then we procedurally modify it depending if it's unload or offload, as they sound completely different if the engine strain is going up or down, so we spent a lot of time making sure it sounds just right.“

Reil is also proud of the customisability on offer, with each car offering plenty of different elements for you to tweak and adjust. “It's all about getting across the feeling of owning these beautiful cars, and having them in your garage,” he says. “We also wanted you to feel what it's like to spec out, buy and have delivered a supercar – we let you do that as well. We've authored what we think is the best car configurator in the industry – not just in the games industry, but in the car industry too.”

“You can also specify different trim settings with the car, all based on the manufacturer's spec, from caliper colours, official paint jobs, interior materials, and pretty much everything – right down to the stitching,” Reil says.

Once you’ve picked everything to your liking, and hit that ‘buy’ button, the eye candy then kicks in. “What would happen in the original CSR, when you buy a car, it'd just show up. In CSR2, when you buy a car, you actually see the car being delivered to you. We think it's going to be a magical moment for players who love their cars, and there’s no shortage of eye candy.”

Reil tells us that most of the custom options are for now restricted to the dictats of each manufacturer, but he’s not ruling out a whole batch of third party aftermarket parts for you to play with. “We're not doing the aftermarket stuff just yet, as we want to keep the game as authentic as possible for now. We're not ruling that out in the long term though, as we can support it thanks to the pipeline, but at the moment, it's all about keeping the cars as true as possible.”

Of course, while CSR2 has a firm focus on collecting and ogling cars, it’s also about racing too: only this is the kind of game you can simply pick up and play for a quick burst instead of requiring to spend a lengthy amount of time doing laps after lap. While the game isn’t quite on the same level as Real Racing 3 or Project CARS, behind the seemingly simplistic gear shifting mechanic there’s a deeper meta game buried away.

“You can upgrade your car, and further upgrades with different parts that are yet to be announced, but we think that there's a deep meta game hidden underneath that you can play with other people. But at the core, it's all about these beautiful cars that you can collect, that are super authentic and real.”

Why now for a sequel though? Firemonkeys have been happy to update Real Racing 3 for two years rather than put out a fourth edition, after all. Reil tells us, “You always want to do it when the original is still strong and working well as a live game.” And with over 125 million players of the original title, you can expect that fans will want to take their progress over to the new game – something that may be on the cards, you’ll be relieved to hear. “We're looking at that right now, and what is the right balance with doing that – stay tuned.”

Given the game playing public’s addiction to collecting better and better things (FIFA Ultimate Team, we’re looking at you), combined with the opportunity to practically fulfil childhood dreams of ‘owning’ a fleet of supercars, and building on top of the success of the original CSR, the sequel looks like it’s going to be one of the top mobile titles to watch. With next-gen rivalling graphics in your pocket, why not.

CSR2 will hit iOS and Android mobiles around the world towards the end of the year.