Tuesday 9 May 2006
One of the highlights of Sony's E3 conference this year was, without a doubt, getting the opportunity to play Gran Turismo on PS3. And while it might only have been flagged by Sony as a playable prototype created especially for the show, it gives us an early sample of what we can expect from developer Polyphony Digital's next-gen racer when it finally pulls up as Vision GT.

The demo is made up of current-gen content and features 10 vehicles - including racing and commercial cars and scooters - and four tracks (Tokyo R246, Nurburgring Nordschleife, Circuit de la Sarthe I, Grand Canyon) taken from GT4 and Tourist Trophy. Of course, these borrowed raw materials look much more impressive on PS3.

In fact, according to Polyphony the visual quality of the PS3 GT demo is 12 times that of GT4 on PS2. And while we can't say for sure whether it's exactly 12 times more impressive, we can certainly testify that everything looks gorgeous and that the Grand Canyon landscape in particular is absolutely stunning.

In terms of how the game handles, it's very much business as usual (although having no DualShock vibrations does feel a bit strange), which is understandable given that Polyphony put the demo together in only 2-3 weeks prior to the show, so the only real improvements were aesthetic.

It's worth mentioning that the maximum number of vehicles displayed simultaneously on screen in the demo increased considerably, with a maximum of six cars on the Grand Canyon course (compared with two on PS2) and up to 12 on the others.