Play: The Next Level of Gaming

On Thursday, February 23rd, Michelle and I had an opportunity to preview Play: The Art of Xbox 360 show. The exhibit showcases art pieces based from three Xbox 360 launch titles, Kameo: Elements of Power, Perfect Dark Zero and Project Gotham Racing 3.

As a photojunkie, I was impressed with the pieces from the Project Gotham Racing 3 series. One wall featured images of New York City as captured through the game. From afar, one might think that the images were taken by one of the talented NYC photobloggers, but they would be mistaken. The images were captured from inside the game’s environment. It was outstanding to see the amount of detail that was poured into each track to make it true to life.

On another wall they provided captures and concept drawings from actual tracks in the game. The pieces definitely show how far video games have come in the last 20 years. As a Xbox owner myself, I really enjoy playing other racing games, such as thoses from the Burnout series, but the 360 definitely takes things to a new level and PGR3 is a great example of this.

Above is a side by side comparison that they had on display of an actual photo in New York City along side the PGR3 capture of New York City. The developers went a long way to grab every detail from each of the cities in the game to make it true to life. The realism is outstanding.

The most exciting part of course was actually being able to get hands on and play the various games while in the gallery so you could truly experience the amazing artistry. This is where we discovered that Project Gotham Racing 3 has a Photo Mode built into the game. At anytime during single player mode, you can pause your race and explore your environment through a viewfinder.

As seen above, you are given an incredible amount of control in what images you can capture. It’s the perfect feature for the photojunkie within every gamer.

Just imagine creating a photoblog from your game images. That’s just nuts.

Experience Play: The Art of Xbox 360 for yourself at the Blue Dot Gallery in Toronto’s Distillery District. It’s showing this weekend only, admission is free.

Friday, February 24, 2006: 11am-7pm

Saturday, February 25, 2006: 11am-7pm

Sunday, February 26, 2006: 12pm-5pm