F1® 25 Q&A - Gavin Cooper (Creative Director)

Streameeze0 wrote:

Hello Gavin 👋

Regarding the Laser Scan technology on F1 25, five circuits have benefited from this technology this year. Can we expect further updates for the other circuits throughout the year ? 

Thanks

Hey there,

Gavin is currently having issues with his forum account, so I'll be posting his answers on his behalf, so we don't keep you waiting 😄

In a normal year we'd look to add about 1-3 new circuits, based what additions there were to the official calendar. This year - given there are no new circuits in the official calendar this time around - we've used LIDAR data to update 5x tracks (as well as the 3x reverse tracks). 

That's a lot of content. The LIDAR updates are big jobs - the data informs the work, but it doesn't do it for us, any more than the aerial imagery/reference photography/CAD data/height data/photogrammetry did in previous games. It still requires our environment team to process it and turn it into the visuals you see in-game. And the reverse tracks are, from a technical design point of view (i.e. all the data setup, balancing, AI training etc. beyond just the visuals), essentially new tracks. So there's a lot of work that goes into offering this content.

As such, further LIDAR updates aren't just small jobs we can throw into our post launch plans - they'll come as part of the overall strategy to deliver meaningful track content over the next few years. Obviously LIDAR is a big priority, but we're already hearing players saying they want more reverse tracks. We've got at least one entriely new track coming in Madrid for the '26 season, and who knows what else the real sport might throw at us? And we obviously hear the players saying they want other historical tracks, that's something we'd love to be able to deliver on if the opportunity presented itself. How do we balance our resource against those different priorities? We can't really say at this point. But it's nice to have options :)