[ARCADE RACING HISTORY]

Virtua Racing by Sega

This game is of the highest importance. It marks the beggining of true 3D driving games and
the final days of the "Pole Position" era. This is not the first polygon-based driving game,
that honour belongs to Atari's "Hard Driving'", but the "Hard Driving/Race Drivin'" series
were an exception and not an example to be followed, this was perhaps bacause in 1989,
the hardware arquitecture necessary for a polygon-based driving game was too complicated
to become an industry standard.
"Model 1 hardware was an experiment, an experiment that told Sega they needed help.
The company had to run to GE to help them make a CG platform architecture that worked
well and had texture, but more importantly was reliable and cheap. The Model 1 is famous
for its polygon fall-out and other technical problems. A game that should have been a
financial success, but the build price was too high."

I think information about the hardware is in order, "Virtua Racing" runs on the
Sega Model 1 system, I'm sure everyone has heard of this system. There were only four
Sega Model 1 games made, this system was used as a bridge between the
System32 (around 20 games made) and the Model 2 system (around 30 games made).
So it's likely that the Model 1 was used as an experiment to test this new concept of
polygon based games. The Model 1 is based on the system32, it uses the same main RISC CPU,
but adds an FPU (Floating Point Unit, Stem Rotate, 3D Matrix) with 3D capabilities and
an enhanced video chip (Flat Shading, Diffuse Reflection Mode, Speculer Reflection Mode).
Note that this hardware did not allow textured polygons, this was only achieved in 1994
with the Model 2 system wich shared the same FPU, but used a faster RISC CPU and an
enhanced video chip wich added Perspective Texture, Micro Texture and Multi Window.

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