The developers of the PS5 motorcycle racing that became a viral sensation for being freaky realistic are happy for the recognition – but they aren't done yet.
The Ride 4 footage shows the first-person perspective of a rider racing through a quiet suburb on a rainy day, and it can be genuinely tough to tell apart from real life. It was uploaded to the Joy Of Gaming YouTube channel on September 19 and has been viewed nearly 3.5 million times as of this writing, with even more comments and reactions across social media sites.
Italian developer Milestone created Ride 4 (as well as all the previous games in the Ride series, which started back in 2015) and executive producer Michele Caletti tells 12DOVE that it was "immensely" gratifying to see the studio's creation popping up in all corners of the internet.
"Because it's the game we've been doing, and now playing for many months, so we knew it was of great quality, but it's always fascinating to see when someone unaware discovers it," Caletti says. "It happened years ago with the first Ride, people were arguing if it was real. Now it's happening again with even some famous people from the industry commenting, praising it, and it's just beautiful."
Caletti explained that this video demonstrates the special phenomenon that can occur when a game "passes a 'reality detection' threshold." Caletti says a lot of the work is being done by the particular camera mode being used in the replay recording: it replicates the view you'd get from a camera mounted on the rider's helmet, and while it's too shaky and unstable to be used while actively playing, it makes it feel much more like a real video.
"Add the lighting, with that beautifully rainy weather, add the realistic environment, and that's it," Caletti says. "Remove one ingredient from the recipe and it wouldn't work."
Beyond the morale boost of half the internet giving your game the biggest praise that photorealistic visuals can hope for, Caletti confirmed that Ride 4 has seen a "significant increase in sales" since the video took off. Milestone's next visual goal is to soar across that reality detection threshold more regularly across its full lineup of racing games, which also includes the MotoGP, Supercross, and MXGP series.
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