14 DAY TRIAL // Madison Square Garden is one of the most impressive concert and sports venues in the world, and the version included in NBA Live 15 reflects all the changes that it underwent in the past three years, with the team at EA Sports saying that it wants to give gamers a unique feeling of immersion that would have disappeared if the old version of the arena were featured.
In a new interview on the official site of Electronic Arts, Eric Sherwood, the senior environment artist working on the basketball sim, says that complex tech was necessary to capture all the changes and then re-create them virtually.
He explains that “We started with several hours of exclusive access to The Garden where we captured the arena using laser scanners and photography reference. Then it took one month of work for completion of The Garden asset based on that data.”
More than 400 photos were used to get all the details right and special attention was paid to the ceiling of the arena, which is represented more accurately than ever before, and the entire process was completed by a three-man team.
Sherwood adds that the most surprising aspect of the entire process was that the Madison Square Garden was emptied for a period in order for the laser scanning to capture its unique elements.
NBA Live 15 aims to revitalize the series
The fact that Electronic Arts spent time and resources to carefully recreate the Madison Square Garden means that it has faith in the long-term future of the NBA Live series, where the arena plays host to the New York Knicks.
Recently, a new update was launched for the basketball simulation, introducing a number of improvements and dealing with problems that the community has flagged since launch.
NBA Live 15 is not at the moment able to compete directly with NBA 2K15, but the two titles will probably be much closer in terms of quality next year, and small details, like the way they simulate the Madison Square Garden, might be what gives one of them a lead in terms of sales.
For FIFA 15, which launched in September, EA Sports has managed to faithfully recreate all the 20 stadiums in the Premier League, with some impressive attention to their unique features, going so far as to record crowd chants in order to make fans feel at home when they play their favorite teams.
