How do you know? Just genuinely interested.
It seems the physics model of Shift is quite deep and complex, but the settings and parameters are obviously not set for realism. Doesn't mean they cannot be...
E.g. I can tweak things like tyre pressure in Shift. I can not do that in GT5. And things like tyre deformation are taken into account. Shift's model may not necessarily be shallower or simpler than GT5's.
I know because of how the tyres appear to work, because of the way the handling model reacts to certain situations. I've played almost every racing sim or semi sim out there and i have some racing experience of my own (albiet karting).
The game needs to patch the following things.
1. Tyres need to act more independantly, despite having data showing which tyres are getting hot and are under load, you still see things happenning that almost points to that being a visual display not connected to how the tyres actually work... Sometimes it feels like you're driving on one big fat tyre. Take the situation of going onto the throttle, not enough weight is transfered from the front wheels to the back, it feels like the car is always planted in that centre of gravity.
2. Points of rotation, there appears to be a smaller range in maximum motion to which the wheels can move along, giving the feeling that the car lacks pinpoint accuracy, many other semi-sim and arcade type games feel like this. Compare it to the feeling that you're steering the car rather than the tyres, a good tyre model will feel like you're actually manipulating the tyres to turn the corner rather than just turning the wheel to steer the car.
3. Grip - The effects of throttle and tyre load under lateral G-force seems to be very minimal with some oversteer effects appearing to feel slightly triggered (hello Grid) rather than transitional/real time. Being able to go full throttle before halfway through a corner in a Shelby Cobra without crapping yourself or driving into a wall is not realistic.
4. Setup - I've played with the setups and it makes such a small difference to how a car feels, there just doesn't seem to be enough depth to the game that many of the cars feel massively similar and setup changes do not give the desired results. I put massive rear toe on a car (Mclaren F1) and had absolutely no understeer under throttle on corner exit... the car should have been nearly stuck in a straight line under throttle with that ammount of toe, a heavy understeer setup and the car still drove mostly the same.
5. Auto-Countersteer - An invisible driving aid that strangely doesn't aid the driving at all, takes away the need for countersteering or drastically reduces the ammount that is needed, causing proper driving to give undesired results. If this can be turned off somehow then the game would become much more realistic.
6. Input lag - This attributes a lot to the floaty and laggy feels of the cars, this being fixed would help massively
7. Drift mode - A seperate physics model points to the fact that the original physics and tyre models are not capable of coping with setups that would allow drifting. In GT5/iRacing/Rfactor/LFS there is only 1 physics model and with setup/skillful driving drifting just as in real life is perfectly doable.
In regards to the sounds in Shift 2. Buy a Mazda Mx5 or an RX7, but be careful your ears might bleed. In regards to damage in Shift 2 - sure it is fantastic, one of the best damage systems i have seen in a game and totally beats GT5, my point is that i don't crash often and i don't care for damage systems for that reason, driving/physics model for me is everything. As for the AI - yeah I wasn't impressed at all, they are slow and slightly rubberbanded, they are stupid and dangerous. If you read my post i actually said GT5 Ai are slow as ****, which is true but since being patched they are not so stupid anymore.
Edit : Might be that i have sensitive ears, i have been recording sound and music for over 10 years and studied Music technology and sound engineering at university. Sound engines, samples and recordings are things that i have had to analyse, create and study. If you read my post i said that the sounds are inconsistant. Some of the cars in Shift 2 sound fantastic, but some of the cars also sound much worse than anything in GT5. Consistancy is king, GT5 sounds are average, though the sound engine powering it is amazing, they just haven't used it to its full potencial. Shift 2 sound engine is much simpler and similar to what is used in many other games, it is good enough and they have done a great job with a lot of cars, i love the sound of some of the retro muscle cars.
But damn... some cars sound absolutely shockingly bad, lowest quality crap i've heard in a long time.
