Interestingly, none of the polygonal 3D follow-ups seem to do this. They all peg the horizon line to the middle of the screen.
(Virtua Racer, Scud Race, Daytona, OutRun 2, OutRun 2006)
@grapefrukt Definitely aesthetic, which is amazing given it compresses the gameplay into a smaller area.
There are hills where way more of the screen fills, and I didn't notice any slowdown on the vids, the hardware was probably fine.
Also, Adam (Atomic) pointed out the likely influence of a Hiroshi Nagai who did a whole bunch of album covers around that time, often with big blue skies and low horizons (image cropped very low to show the car, expand for proportions)
@grapefrukt "So is this part of a cultural trend?"
Well, I'm glad you asked! :P
It turns out Japanese art tends to have consistently _higher_ horizon lines than North American or European art. However, this particular movement was producing idealized depictions of Western concepts, so perhaps extrapolating towards it and overshooting is how they ended up with such stark imagery and big big skies.
Farbs
grapefrukt
Dan Cassidy 🦌