Half-Life isn't the only game celebrating its tenth birthday this year. Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo series is now a decade old, leading the developer of the PlayStation driving sim to hold an anniversary event called Downshift Session 2008 in New York City last month. Yes, yes, mazal tov, Kazunori Yamauchi and crew. There was booze, picture-taking and C-level celebrities in attendance, but the two tech demos shown at Downshift Session 2008 were much more interesting. The team at Polyphony Digital had a special installation of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, one that required four PlayStation 3s to run.Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, which normally runs at 1920 x 1080 resolution, got a boost from four times the processing power of the PS3, enabling it to run at 3840 x 2160. Each PS3 handled the rendering of a quarter of the total display area. This image was projected on a 220-inch screen via Sony's SRX-S110 projector, which is capable of handling a 4096 x 2160 image... and is too expensive to quote.
The Polyphony dudes also put together a separate demo that ran GT5P at 240 frames per second, four times that of the standard 60. According to the hyperbole laden official report, every man, woman and child in attendance had their brains melted by the refresh rate. From Gran-Turismo.com: "It is as though you are following a real world event happening right in front of your face with your own eyes. Any and all flickering in the movement of the vehicle, in the smoke from the tires, etc. are completely gone, and you are almost tricked into believing you are watching something in real life." More details on the event can be seen at the official Gran Turismo site. Downshift Session 2008 [Gran-Turismo.com via NeoGAF]