Well, might as well sit here for a while and type up all my thoughts.
First off, I wish the damn thing was in English. I spent a year in Okinawa and only picked up a few symbols of kanji. None of which I remember anymore, that was a long time ago.. hehe. I know, I know.. it's a Japanese demo.
I was expecting it to be a PITA, and it is. I don't think I'll be purchasing GT5P itself unless it's released here (although I could probably import a European copy?)
The language barrier isn't too much of a problem, since most of the menus are straightforward and just like GTHD. But the big pain for me was that I remap some of the controls, to match up with the same GT controls I've been using for ten years now. For example, in the early days, I used Automatic transmission, so I moved the shifting buttons from 2 to 1. And they stayed there, even after I switched to manual control about five years ago. Needless to say, it took me significantly longer to remap the controller this time around. And I didn't even do it completely.. I think there are still one or two lesser-used buttons that are in the wrong place. But at least I got the main controls set up.
Anyhoo... I'll start with gameplay and touch on graphics at the end. Mix things up a bit.
I wasn't sure when I started up whether I'd use the cockpit view or not, but I find myself using it on every car. Except the GT-R, of course. So that's going to take some getting used to, because now the guages aren't the same as they've been forever.. hehe.
Overall, the gameplay is pretty much the same as it's always been, so I won't prattle on about stuff that everyone already knows.
I'm not sure what to make of this new "Professional" physics style. I've only noticed two things about it so far, the largest of which is that the cars feel much more slippery than before. Higher chance of the back end breaking loose, especially since I drive without aids. The only other thing I noticed was an odd "snap-back" (for lack of a better word, although I think I'm talking about something different than Ske did up above). I was in a pickle, with the ass-end of the car flying every which way, including off the track. At one point, the front tires came back onto the track and the car literally
leapt off in the direction that the front wheels were pointing (I forget which car I was driving.. probably the BMW). Since I've had this happen on my own car in real life, that sort of snap-pop thing when straightening out the car from a nasty turn, I'd call that a realistic addition. As unexpected as it was to me at the time, it was exactly what my own real-life car would have done.
All in all, I think I prefer the Classic control style, but that's probably because it's what I'm used to, through GT4 (which I still play regularly) and GTHD. I have only one win to my name so far in GT5PD (I drive "skittish" with the new physics, take far fewer chances), and I'm pretty sure that win was using the new engine, so I guess I can't complain too loudly. I have it set there now, so it's probably what I'll use from now on and see if I get the hang of it.
Now, the AI... ah, yes, the AI. Bane of GT. Number One with a Thrown Controller. I'll keep it simple. The AI has been vastly improved. VASTLY. As mentioned above, I've been driving more careful than usual, getting used to the new physics engine. Paying more attention to the racing line and car control than trying to pass every car in front of me. There have been a few collisions, yes. On average, I'd say one out of every five collisions is caused by the computer, the other four are caused by me doing something stupid. Now, alongside those five collisions are maybe fifteen to twenty incidents where the computer has
left it's racing line to avoid hitting me. It's actually going to take some getting used to, because I know I'm still driving in a "stay out of the AI's way" mode of thinking from previous GTs.
A couple of examples. I went off-track twice today in the middle of a pack of cars. There were several cars coming up behind me when I got back onto the track, doing maybe 20mph (they're doing a hundred). Guess how many times I got hit coming back onto the track? Zero. I counted
six cars that moved around me on those two occasions, and
none of them so much as scratched my paint. That's what I call a real-world example of the "stop in the middle of the track" scenario, and in my case, the computer passed the test with flying colors on both occasions.
There have been multiple occasions where I've passed a car on the inside of a corner, and the AI car has remained on the outside. Once I even took a corner too sharp, cutting onto the grass (playing the "don't hit the AI" game from GT4, because the AI car was on the inside rumble strip). I was going too fast, and moved back onto the track halfway through the corner, and
I hit nothing... the AI moved slightly to the left until he was past me (I got slowed down in the grass).
Oh, and the AI not being aggressive enough? I was driving Pro mode on N2 tires today, after reading the "Which tire?" thread (I'm going back to my S3s and to hell with "real" tires.. hehe). Anyway, I was driving very poorly as a result of the slippery car, and causing a bit of a backup of the cars behind me. If I didn't know better, I'd say the car immediately behind me was getting pissed. He kept darting to the left and right, trying desparately to get around me. Probably would have, too, if we had been driving different cars. As it was, our acceleration was identical and he just didn't have the muscle to get around me. But he looked like he definitely wanted to, and in a bad way. If he were a human driver, I would have said he was about two seconds away from ramming me just to get me the hell out of his way.
So to all of you who insist that the AI still sucks or that it hasn't changed at all... PD has made a believer out of me, and I'll continue to believe my own eyes over yours.
Now, I'm not saying the AI is perfect. I watch replays from other cars' POV, and it still drives kinda funky in the corners.. brake-gas-brake-brake-gas, etc. They occasionally bump into each other (and me, with my sometimes overzealous braking into a sharp corner). Overall, their behavior isn't as smooth as a human driver's would be. As far as their general driving skill, I would say it's unchanged from GT4. The only major change is that, as I mentioned above, the AI is now aware of the presence of other cars around it, especially the player car.
Now, onto the graph- HAHA FOOL YOU!!! I'm going to talk about the sound first.
Overall, I think the sound has improved. The raw sound samples appear to be coming through much stronger than in the past, and they're largely avoiding the "electric razor" sound of high RPMs. This is more prevelant with the new cars, and not so much with the recycled cars from past GTs, where they appear to be using the old samples. As such, I expect the others to be improved over time as well. The sound seems more dynamic now, a good example being the BMW. There's a clear difference between the engine sound (front speakers) and the exhaust sound (rear speakers). This is probably due partly to the new sound engine, and partly due to the fully discrete audio channels they're using now. GT4's Pro Logic decoding was good, but it's no match for full 5.1 surround.
The main flaw in the engine sounds this time around isn't so much the way it's processed, but rather what it simply doesn't have. The Ferrari appears to be the best example of this. The sound itself appears to be very accurate, but it's missing the "oomph" that the real car has under heavy acceleration. It's like listening to your surround system with the subwoofer turned off. The sound is the same, but feels incomplete. I think this is because of the way the sound samples were gathered, simply by revving the engine at a standstill as opposed to capturing the car under load. My own car does this, has a very different sound when driving than when simply revving the engine at a red light. The result is "accurate", but incomplete.. it's missing that throaty roar that the real cars have. Hopefully this is something they can fix (maybe with new samples, or some way to fudge the sound by adding some bass to it).
The overall sound balance could use some work, but that's been a gripe for a long time now. I've hit the limiter in my own car, and at speed, I can't hear the engine at all, despite the fact that it's screaming at 5000rpm. It's completely drowned out by the wind and tire noise. In GT (past and present), you don't get that. It's one thing for a racing car, where the engine is foreward the entire time, but in a standard road car, the engine just isn't that loud.
There's no crowd noise in the demo, but since the crowd itself is plainly unfinished, I'm sure this will come along later.
The tire sounds are the same as they've always been, but definitely more dynamic than they were in GT4. Individual tires make individual noises now, depending on what they're doing. This is the 5.1 surround at work, where it almost seems as though the tires are sent to individual speakers (front-left, rear-right, etc), which is an excellent way of doing it and helps immensely with the immersion aspect. That said, I think the "same old tire noise" is in desparate need of an update, but I think we all agree on that.
The wind noise has been changed, but I can't accurately describe the difference except that it now feels more organic, more "real". It's not the generic "whoosh" that it was in GT4.
The rest of my gripes is simply my own wish-list for sounds. Ambient track noise for replays. More sounds from the car itself (creaky suspension, clutch/shifter sounds, etc). Dynamic echoes during replays.
Now, the graphics.
The main problem here lies with Polyphony. And not in the way that you're thinking. It's in their marketing. All of the official videos that they've released have been "perfect" replays with full anti-aliasing, full 1920x1080, full motion-blur, full-resolution shadow maps, etc. It appears that they simply crank everything up to maximum and then capture the output frame-by-frame. But the fact is, the game engine, while capable of doing all these things, doesn't have a hope in hell of doing it at 60fps (or 30 for replays). As a result, what we get isn't what they showed us we were going to get. Frankly, I'm used to it by now.
First off, the game isn't running at "full" 1080p. I'm not sure if the news made it over here yet, but the pixel-counters on Beyond3D have confirmed the game is running at only 1280x1080 and is stretched horizontally to fill the screen, like an anamorphic DVD. In fact, this is a slightly lower resolution than GTHD was running at (1440x1080). Personally, I don't really care, I only bring it up to demonstrate a possible cause for the jaggies that some people are complaining so loudly about.
But, despite the lower resolution, I think it looks better than GTHD because of the inclusion of 2x multi-sample anti-aliasing. The result is a smoother overall look despite the lower resolution.
Now, MSAA does have a fault, and it's one that's also plagued me in the past in my CG work, so I can sympathize with PD's plight. MSAA effectively renders each pixel several times, sometimes with a slight offset, and then blends the resulting pixels together to create an average, which helps to eliminate aliased edges (jaggies). The problem comes when you use MSAA with high-dynamic-range (HDR) scene lighting. The harsh contrast between a HDR-bright hotspot and a darker "normal" area is large enough so that MSAA literally cannot make an average between them, and the aliased edge remains no matter how many samples you take of the pixels. If you look carefully at many of the "jaggy" spots in the replays and such, you'll notice that they most likely appear on something very bright.. reflective silver paint, a reflection on chrome, etc. And that bright spot is right next to something that's shaded much darker.. a dark background, black tire, dark paint, etc. That's the line that the MSAA can't work with, and so the aliasing remains. This, combined with the 1280 horizontal resolution is resulting in some jaggies that stand out among the otherwise smooth image.
As a point of interest, the menu screen, garage, and showroom are rendered at full 1920x1080, but with no AA. The result is sharper, but jaggier. Again, especially noticable on highly contrasted areas of the screen, but this is simply the result of the eye seeing a bright jaggy on a dark background instead of a dark jaggy on a dark background. The dark jaggies are still there, just not as noticable.
Another thing I noticed is that the shadow-mapping seems incomplete. This is especially noticable on the Daihatsu. Look at the shadow of the steering wheel on the dashboard.. it's fugly. Seeing as how the other cars have much better shadows, I'm assuming this is a sign of "work in progress".
Another element of the shadow mapping is the very low resolution of the shadow maps used on the other cars during a race. This appears as an odd "crawling" effect, especially noticable on the rear of cars that are 20-30 yards in front of you as you're driving. These aren't "jaggies", and some people might be confusing them as such. They're simply the shadow of the car's spoiler, rendered in a very low resolution. Far TOO low, in fact, and I desperately hope this is something that's remedied as the game progresses.
The car models... I can't say anything bad about them. Stellar in every respect. Interior, exterior, flawless. I went back and played some TDU this afternoon, and it's cars are ugly!
The track. I don't like the track, I'm afraid. It looks like exactly what it is.. a slightly revamped version of the GT4 track. Few more polygons here and there, some better textures here and there, but otherwise unchanged. I really think they should have gone back to square one and completely remodeled the track from scratch. And maybe they intend to do just that.. this is the very first build of GT5 we've really seen, after all. Early reports that I read indicated the first track to receive a total overhaul for PS3 was the Nürburgring. Maybe all they had time for on Suzuka was a quick update instead of a total overhaul.
Daytona looks good, but then again, it's a very simple track. White walls on one side, grass on the other. But it looks more "polished" than Suzuka, and I think that goes back to my last statement.. Daytona is a new track built specifically for GT5, and not a recylcled track from a previous game.
Speaking of grass, Suzuka does have real grass now, scattered about here and there. And yes, it does react to the cars whooshing by, which a nice touch. Attention to detail, something PD is known for.
Overall, though, I think the game looks fantastic. Even in it's early state, I think I can say with some confidence that it's the best-looking racing game on the market right now. The things that it has problems with (AA, shadow mapping), are countered by the things that it does better than the others (smoothness, 60fps, and it's
exceptional HDR lighting).
I'm confident that PD will be able to work out most of the problems as the game progresses. Remember, GTHD was just an upgraded GT4... this is the very
first public build of the GT5 engine, which is very much a work in progress. As such, remember that as it works it's way through production,
the graphics will only get better. And they've already set themselves one hell of a jumping-off point in this early build.
All in all, I'm very glad I downloaded this demo, and I won't be getting rid of it any time soon. Unless they release an English demo that's exactly the same.. hehe. But, given that this Japanese demo is a limited release (only available for about three weeks, last I heard), I went ahead and downloaded it just in case they don't release an American demo. I'd rather have this than nothing. Now all they need to do is release Prologue itself here in the States, and I'll be a happy camper.
Cheers.
demo...
while I agree with you for the most part IMO things like the driver shifting and reverse lights coming on are simple details that make the game more immersing and I hope that by the time GT5 does role around they have realized this
(Future raise possible 
