Completely disagree. The amount of fidelity is amazing and the added immersion really puts laser scanned tracks over the top. Laser scanning is part of the quality of production, so I have no idea what you're talking about there. Check out iRacing's Bathurst production video and try and argue GT6's version comes even close in production quality.
Firstly GT6's version is laser scanned as far as we know, as is Forza 5's. But this is my point, I believe GT6 version is every bit as good as iRacings, the laser scanning is adding a level of accuracy that you cannot see and without having driven the real track extensively you would not be able to tell them apart. If one of them was laser scanned and the other was not, with both being visually identical and accurate then you only have the non visual driving surface to go on (since what you see and what you drive on are not the same thing).
How then do you know which is the laser scanned version without either first hand knowledge of the fact or sufficient experience with the real track? The answer is that you simply don't and cannot know, because both are produced to such a quality. Now for the purpose of racing and driving enjoyment there is no difference, but for the purpose of pure simulation (for example, setup development in a professional situation for a race weekend at Bathurst) the laser scanned has more value.
I find too many people put too much value on laser scanning for the actual enjoyment of driving. "Oh it's laser scanned, best thing ever!". As I said using the Simraceway Silverstone example, people thought it was too smooth and that it wasn't all that good. But as it turns out Simraceway had the first laser scanned version of the modern Silverstone, both the GT6 and Assetto Corsa versions are identical.
Is the GT6 version laser scanned? I don't know but it's identical, I've driven hundreds of laps at Silverstone Simraceway. There may be differences in the physical(virtual) driven surface that one could pick out, but those would be smaller than the differences in feel between the sims themselves. That's the issue, the tracks are so accurate and the differences between the feel of the sims themselves are so large that you can't really genuinely make a comparison and find differences, again if one of them is not laser scanned the only likely difference is in pure simulation where it is used for development of car setup in high end racing.
Lets take a look at Pleclairs Rfactor 2 Nordschleife. We all know that it is not 100% accurate but yet as a driving experience it provides a great deal of pleasure (in my opinion more so than the more accurate GT5/GT6 versions, simply because of the differences between the general physics and feel of the sims), the driving surface is dynamic and quite bumpy and the track is beautifully created, now the point is that regardless of the fact that there may be small differences on every single corner it is still from a driving and racing point of view an equally enjoyable experience to driving an exact replica, for the single reason that the level of production is very high.
From a racing and driving enjoyment point of view the laser scan means not a lot, it is simply a piece of mind of accuracy (assuming the laser scan data has been used well in the creation of the track). If PD were to shout about the use of laser scanning then nobody would question it, it would be the best thing ever. Just like with SimRaceway, to the laser scanning enthusiast the tracks only suddenly became good when they learned of that fact that laser scanning was used.
It's not like the old days of sim racing when we had these highly inaccurate super flat smooth tracks, when iRacing came along with the laser scans then suddenly the difference is massive. The difference is that the level of production on those old tracks just wasn't great, not even a spec on what is being created today. Fact is that even non laser scanned tracks are so accurate now that one cannot tell them apart from the real thing, only by driving them both extensively could you pick up differences, and when the quality is that high the racing and driving experience is not going to be affected either way.
Tracks or parts of tracks are regularly resurfaced and the tracks don't suddenly become bad racing tracks because the surface is slightly different. But the difference in a resurfaced track can be more significant than the difference between a pure laser scan and a highly accurate non scan. In terms of accuracy the laser scanning is not telling you the relative grip levels of the surface, if one corner is resurfaced then it could have different grip levels to the other tarmac, a laser scan cannot tell you this, this has to be put in with the production of the track.
Silverstone rebuilt for 2010 had already had resurfaces done in early 2011, copse corner was resurfaced and became more grippy as a result, and I'm fairly certain Silverstone had more resurfacing done this year. I'm fairly certain that the difference between Bathurst GT6 and Bathurst iRacing is the difference between the fidelity and quality of the driving simulations, especially given that it is thought that GT6 Bathurst (like Forza 5) is infact a laser scan.
, I think it says something about the current generation of simulators that we are privileged to be able to drive with. I find the same to be true with rF2 and especially in iRacing using the MX-5, which can easily become unsettled at high speeds. Smoother and slower = faster. In fact I was watching a guy's replays who I found to be almost a second faster than the 'fast' guys I've found on the series, and the difference in his approach was that he was on the throttle through his apexes and braking a tiny bit earlier than most, rather than getting on the throttle hard later on the apex. Love that video with Jackie. 👍
