MotoGP 20 Interview – Career Mode, AI, Physics, and More

The folk at Milestone s.l.r. have made a reputation for themselves as connoisseurs of all things motorcycles, and their racing sims have only gotten better as time has gone on. Their latest, MotoGP 20, shows the passion and dedication they have for their craft, and hardcore fans of the sport have surely appreciated the many improvements they’ve made to their formula. We recently sent across some of our questions about these improvements and more to do with the game to the developers- you can read our interview with producer Michele Caletti below.

"We added some things that were missing: fuel consumption and power mapping, so you can decide how much fuel take in the tank, and how to use it during the race. It’s a very strategical approach to the grand prix."

MotoGP 20 promises improvements made to damage on bikes- is that more of a visual thing, or does it have an effect in terms of driving the bikes as well?

Yes, the MotoGP bikes can break their winglets affecting the performance, but also other bikes get some physical damage (if turned on in the options): it’s a much-requested step.

MotoGP 19’s neural AI was a pretty big advancement that many fans and players took notice of- does MotoGP 20 take that a step further?

We refined and detailed the physics with some new aspects like 3-sections tires and fuel consumption, so they need to know how to avoid running out of fuel or rubber. And this is only the beginning because they had to manage the much more challenging brakes, and all the rest, improving their lap speed significantly.

What should fans expect from MotoGP 20 in terms of new historical content?

We added some bikes like the Cagiva C594, or the first NSR500 that Doohan led to victory in the championship, but we also refined the physics and introduced a new game mode based on randomly-generated races to make points and unlock new bikes.

Can you talk about the improved physics and the areas where they materialize the most?

We added some things that were missing: fuel consumption and power mapping, so you can decide how much fuel take in the tank, and how to use it during the race. It’s a very strategical approach to the grand prix. Then we improved the tire model: in ’19 it was a single entity, but now the two sides and the middle evolve differently, so track by track the tire choice and management becomes more involving and challenging, like in reality. Then we made the braking part more realistic, while in ’19 you could apply 100% brake force for much of the slowdown process, now you’re at risk of over-doing and flipping over, so at maximum realism setting it’s a very different package this year.

"We made a career mode that we define “managerial”: you can hire a personal manager to get contracts and get involved with team in negotiations, then you can get some personal engineers to acquire technical data to develop the bike."

How much of an impact does the introduction of new technical aspects for improving performances of bikes have on gameplay?

There are several levels of complexity: single lap, practicing for the race, and then the race itself that has to be managed and cannot be done 100% pushing all the time. Like real riders do, setups, rhythm, and race evolution now have to be understood properly to win.

Can you talk about the biggest improvements MotoGP 20 makes to the career mode?

We made a career mode that we define “managerial”: you can hire a personal manager to get contracts and get involved with team in negotiations, then you can get some personal engineers to acquire technical data to develop the bike. You have an R&D department that can be managed to produce new parts, so you have a lot of new tasks, even if firmly rooted into the rider’s perspective. We also added the possibility to race in real teams, but also “fictional” teams with real bikes and sponsors, but that don’t exist as a real team. Here you can have much more freedom in terms of visual customization and add a breath of fresh air to championships. All of this holds for the Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP classes, it’s a long way to the top.

Have there been any pieces of feedback for the previous games that you’ve looked at in particular for the purposes of MotoGP 20’s development?

Yes, basically all the things I’ve covered involved some degree of community feedback and request, but it was quite easy to agree- we’re as passionate as our players so we like the same things, we have the same obsessions.

Something that’s considered very important in sports games is presentation- what can we expect from MotoGP 20 in that area?

Many touches: better graphics, better visual damages, but also better rider animations, 3D scanned faces for riders, and MotoGP team managers as well. New cutscenes that introduce the team at the beginning of the season. we’ve paid attention to all of this.

"Basically all the things I’ve covered involved some degree of community feedback and request, but it was quite easy to agree- we’re as passionate as our players so we like the same things, we have the same obsessions."

Will the game will feature Xbox One X and PS4 Pro-specific enhancements? Is 4K/60 FPS on the cards?

On these consoles there’s a quality/performance setting: in “quality” you can expect increased resolution (while not native 4K) and stable 30fps, while in “performance” we have full HD and unlocked frame rate targeted to 60fps.

How is the game running on the original Xbox One and PS4, in terms of frame rate and resolution?

It’s 30fps, with dynamic resolution, most of the times stable at 1080, the game due to physics, AI and number of bikes is more CPU demanding then GPU.

What are the docked and undocked resolution and frame rate of the Switch version?

720p with dynamic resolution, again we’re much CPU bound, and we give priority to the frame rate.

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