It was a great game and to find this old save (and to see it "back in action" as if I had saved it a day before) brought back a lot of great memories.
I'd really like to highlight a few features shown in this video, all of them I think PD should consider:
1 - Pit crew
animation - I'm not sure about the current rules at Le Mans (or ALMS, ELMS and WEC series), but I remember that the pit crew we see acting in the video above replicated exactly the rules of the real race back then. Refueling first, only after that was done could the tyres be changed. And only two guys could do it (I think two more could place the new tyres next to the car, not sure).
2 - Pit crew
apparatus - Evidently, in this old game the fuel was loaded into the car with the rigs we're so used to see for so many years already. It is almost painful to the eyes to watch GT5's crew pouring the fuel into the car using a sort of giant bottle of fuel. Poor guy holding it over the shoulder, that thing must be heavy before it gets emptied ... it took me a while to figure out where did the PD guys get the inspiration for this odd way of refueling. And it's from NASCAR, as can be seen here:
I guess the fact that Gran Turismo is a "catch all" game has to make us understand these inaccuracies. There's a compromise to be reached, when you get NASCAR cars, LMP cars, WRC cars, Formula cars, GT cars, Touring cars ... road cars. So, ok, I can live with those big bottles of fuel being used into a Le Mans car at Le Mans (I can also live with the wheel guns trying to fasten 5 bolts (screws? I never know) in cars with only a central one.
But ... I really hope someone from PD reads this and takes some notes.
It's no big deal, but indeed the "realism" in these litle things really helps with the "Immersion feeling".
***
Also, and now totally unrelated with the pit crew animation, I'd like to elaborate a bit on the pit options and on-screen info we got in that old game. I took a screen capture of the video posted above, it'll help me explain what I want to say. Here:
A few things worthy of mention:
1 - Besides the options we also get in GT5 (Tyre type, Amount of Fuel, Save Option) we have in this game the following pit options:
a) Downforce setting can be tweaked in the pits, between 3 presets, Low, Medium, High (this can be seen in the pit menu in the picture and movie above posted). Very useful in changing weather.
b) Unlike what happens in GT5, we can opt to NOT change tyres. This can't be seen in the video or picture, but in the tyre menu besides the Hard, Medium, Soft, Intermediate and Wet options there is also a NO option. This allowed last minute "splash'n go", very useful in this game because changing tyres was made AFTER fuel and was very time consuming (in GT5 it is the oposite, fuel is time consuming and tyres have long been changed when fuel ends being loaded)
2 - On screen info in this game has a few interesting things we miss in GT5. Like:
a)
gap to car in front of you - I entered the pits and crossed the S/F line in 4th, behind the 3 Audis. My gap to 3rd place was shown at that moment (litle red message in top center of screen, below laptime in white);
b)
position of leader on the track map - In this game, the leader's position in the track map is highlighted by a blue ball with a arrow inside, larger than all others except the one representing your own car's position (green, with 1P written)
c)
Info on lapped cars -Unfortunately the poor quality of the picture/video doesn't allow this to be seen, but in this old game the cars in the same lap as the leader are represented by red dots, while the lapped ones are represented by blue dots. Within a 24-car field, even if you know the gap to the car before you, and exactly where the leader is, it is also useful to understand who is in the leader's lap (beside you, hopefully
) and is, therefore, a threat to be considered.
- This isn't exactly something one game has over the other, it's more a design option really. Unlike GT5, where the race clock starts at 00H:00M:00SEC, in the Le Mans old game we had the clock set to the real start time of the race. So, the clock would start at 16:00:00 (start hour of the race back then, I think a couple of years ago the ACO moved it to 15 hours, one hour earlier).
I really prefer such a design option, and find it very easy to implement in GT5 (even as a option, like we have about track map and HUD). The clip and picture above are good examples. According to this old game, I pitted at 21:53:14, meaning close to 10 PM saturday). If this was GT5, the race clock would show 5:53:14, and it would be up to you to do the math and try to figure out how many hours of night driving you had still to do.
4 - 24 cars - Well ... GT4 had 6, GT5 has 12 ... maybe we get also 24, in GT graphics quality, in the next installment of the series. We can hope
