How realistic is Gran Turismo really?

[GTP_Rodney]

I played GT3 and GT4 obsessively... then I bought a cheap sports car and went to a track day.

The skills I developed in GT4 immediately translated to real laps... within fifteen minutes of real track driving I was controlling oversteer with the throttle, hitting late apexes where it mattered, and driving circles around people in much faster cars.

Several vets even commented that I had "great lines for a beginner" and that they didn't believe it was "really my first time on a track".

I give all the credit to GT4

Yeah same here. I was only 16 and it was my first time on a Go-Kart track at my local race course. These karts go about 65mph and people were telling me i couldn't handle it. Within the first two laps i was passing people who have been racing there for years. And i attribute any skills i had to GT. It may not exactly emulate the feel of racing or the feel of the speed. But it teaches you throttle control and racing lines. It teaches you to take apexes and what-not. You learn so much about racing in general just from GT. I would say its between 85-90% real. (As real as it can get in my living room).

 

[T5-R]

I've recently bought a PS3 and bought GT5 as I was starting to get a bit bored waiting for Forza 3 (Plus my PS2s video port seems to be knackered and I wanted to play GT2 ).

After playing Forza 2 so much and then playing GT4 it reminded me how much the handling in GT4 sucked. Especially when I tried it with my driving force wheel. However when I tried GT5 I was pleasantly suprised, it felt alot better although still a bit sterile compared to Forza 2. The cars understeered in a similar fashion to what my Volvo 850 does when pushed/in the wet and the RWD handling seemed closer to Forza 2 than GT4 (i.e. better ). However as mentioned the cars in GT5 still don't feel 'raw' enough. An easy way to notice this is to pick a high powered RWD car in Forza 2 or GT5 and slam the throttle down. In Forza 2 the car twitches all over the place as where as in GT5 you get the a lot of smoke but your car stays straight. Also GT5 still doesn't appear to lock wheels under hard braking like Forza does.

The in car view in GT5 is great though GT5 needs car damage, car customisation comparable to Forza or a truely awesome weather system to be a true success in my opinion. Being more fun to play wouldn't go amiss either! GT1 & GT2 are more fun to play.

 

[Antti-san]

In my opinion, the driving model in Prologue/GT5 is a massive improvement over GT4. It feels very realistic and you can actually tell the difference between different drivetrains. 👍 Unlike in GT4, where almost every car understeers like hell.

 

[Christhedude]

I think Kaz has a fair amount of experience himself....and is it so easy to forget that video where they teach all of the development team about handling the real cars?
I don't think real track experience is a problem, they are probably better placed than almost all other driving game developers.

Oh, and I remember plenty videos of pro race drivers trying GT out, Kaz has raced against some with it in fact.

you are right about that, but what i was getting at, was that FC has a few points, like the loss of grip feel in the steering wheel, that would be nice to feature in GT5.

Im sure PD have tried FC and they felt that too.

I never said GT5 physics werent real, all i said was that in FC i could tell that bruno's input has made a differents, cause on the hand, when all the LM drivers had given the same input, we'd have the same sudden loss of grip in gt5P.
BUT never say never, most likely they will add that feature, if not i still think that GT5 so far has a very real like handling physics and i will keep using it as a practice for upcoming races.

Chris 👍

 

[TofuStoreDrift]

I'd say GT5P realism is at 110%, realler than reality. Yes, I said it. Do you want to fight about it.

I couldn't have said that any better myself. +1.

And damage would be, at least, very hard to simulate judging by how PD is far from the biggest company in video gaming known to date, never mind the world. So damage realism won't be happening anytime soon here either - I'm not saying it won't appear, just that it stands a stupidly small chance of actually having realistic damage.

You just had to do it, didn't you? 86 post in a thread, not one said that dreadful word... DAMAGE. Nah, just joking with you.

I was kidding about the 110%, aswell. I have never driven a car at 10/10ths, but GT5 just feels right. I just get lost in reality playing GT5P, I don't see my living room wall or ceiling, I just see me, my car and an empty track for my pleasure. Not very often does that happen in a video game.

 

[Zer0]

Also GT5 still doesn't appear to lock wheels under hard braking like Forza does.

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=103957

 

[T5-R]

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=103957

I stand corrected

Although why they hid it in quick tuning (which I'm yet to unlock) seems a bit odd. Still I remember having to turn off the aids in every single car I bought in GT3/4.

 

[speedyK]

GT3A with Driving Force
GT3A was my favourite PS2 game with the Driving Force wheel. I learned about track driving (cornering lines, braking points, etc. and even late braking and fighting for position) from that game. Years of road driving can only get you so far. GT3A helped me a lot before I went on a track for real. No, it wasn't totally realistic, but it simulated reality well enough to be useful. I'd say it was about 20% realistic.

GT4 with the Driving Force Pro was even better. I did hundreds of laps of the Nurbürgring with that, learning my real track car's reactions. Of course, GT4 has to have all aids off and be in full sim mode to be useful – and then oversteer is certainly possible

Gave me the confidence to push quite hard on a real track (Hockenheim) :
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-980304974860446087&q=source%3A007237021980558059214&hl=en

The feel with the DFP was good.

I also have a Peugeot 106 GTI and, before I took the real car to a "Snow and Ice" event, I practised with the same car in GT4 in the Ice arena. It was really helpful mastering using the handbrake to get the tail round in the tight turns.

Another of my cars is a 300ZX Twin Turbo 2+2. Naturally, I also used GT4's similar ZX before taking this on track:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-545235663700196479&q=source%3A007237021980558059214&hl=en

The characters of these three quite different cars do come across enough in GT4 to help.

I would give GT4 30%.

GT5 Prologue with the G25 – mine's modded with a larger (Lotus) wheel – is a little more accurate in the physics, but the force feedback is far too weak compared to the real thing at the limit stuff (seems a lot weaker than the DFP), but otherwise the feel is not bad.

My track car is now a supercharged Lotus Exige – the tuned 111R in GT5P is very similar. I recently test drove the Nissan GT-R and the solid feel of that comes over quite well too in GT5P.

A big plus is the almost real life view in GT5 – fantastic!

I would give GT5 Prologue 45% (so a 50% improvement on GT4). With more FF and rumble through the wheel, it could reach 55%. But, without a moving cockpit to generate G-forces at least to some degree, there is still a lot missing from the total experience of pushing a car on track. I can't see any sim nearing 100%.

But it's still great fun* – and a lot cheaper and safer and often more fun than the real thing (at track days, where generally you can't be too wild – and who can afford to go racing for real???).


* Doesn't have to be realistic to be fun – even MarioKart on the Nintendo64 was good!

 

[Jay]

The larger and heavier the wheel the more weak the force feedback is going to feel.

 

[blaktek]

I'll be a little off-topic here.

I read somewhere (Livescience or a cousin) of a research project to control motion sickness. The apparel uses modulated magnetic fields to stimulate the internal ear.

They could influence the posistion of the liquid in there (to an extent) to dimnish the sense of movement, thus "controling" motion sickness.

Now, in a few years, they could come with a more powerful version (and safe, too) that could force said liquid in place, or move it around. With that, integrated to a sim-racer, you could finally feel G forces.

Just a sweet fantasy for GT7.

 

[Jay]

With that, integrated to a sim-racer, you could finally feel G forces.

Your brain would 'sense' movement but your body and muscles wont.

 

[niky]

What would hurt the system is you physically positioning your head to counter this. If the headgear didn't come with motion sensitivity, it'd just make you dizzy (as the sloshing fluid in your inner ear does if you stop after spinning in place for a long time).

It would have to be combined with goggles, too.

 

[WolfRacer543]

I'll be a little off-topic here.

I read somewhere (Livescience or a cousin) of a research project to control motion sickness. The apparel uses modulated magnetic fields to stimulate the internal ear.

They could influence the posistion of the liquid in there (to an extent) to dimnish the sense of movement, thus "controling" motion sickness.

Now, in a few years, they could come with a more powerful version (and safe, too) that could force said liquid in place, or move it around. With that, integrated to a sim-racer, you could finally feel G forces.

Just a sweet fantasy for GT7.

I dont think that'd work for sim racers, because what they would be trying to do with the inner ear is to do with balance. What you feel when in a car is an inertial force (similar sort of force to gravity).

The forces are what screw up the inner ear, but that doesn't mean the inner ear is what feels the forces through your body, its just that it gets screwed up by them

 

[Wolfe]

Yeah, a machine that sloshed your inner ear around arbitrarily would just be a "I've had a bit too much to drink" simulator.

 

[blaktek]

Actually, the internal ear also tells your brain how the body (or at least head) is oriented on the three axes. Acceleration is only a part of the data it processes.

As FFB is merely an interpretation of your vehicle's movements, this gizmo could be an interpretation of the forces applied to the vehicle. Accelerate, and the inner ear liquid would go towards the back, to the front if you ever break, and side to side.

Past the apex, you would feel a pressure to the right (if you turned left). If you understeer, the pressure would be on the front right, and to the back right in case of oversteer.

The thing would be a tool to tell you "this is the direction the car wants to go".

This is very off-topic, sorry.

 

[Jay]

We know what the inner ear does, It would give you the orientation of taking the apex but you still wont feel gforces, no pressures on the body except your inner ear telling your brain, problem is the brain might get confised (here comes the motion sickness) as other feel sensors of the body wont match what the inner ear is telling it, may work a little better with googles combined as Niky mentioned.

 

[kikie]

According to Ian Bell, CEO of Slightly mad Studios -former Blimey!games- and before that, part of Simbin, Gran Turismo is not realistic at all.
He says that real cars don't handle like they do in GT.

This is a part of the interview of Ian Bell with AutoSimSport. Read the part of the interview that is outlined in red.

The part that is outlined in yellow is also interesting to read, because he is talking about GTR2 being too hard to play. He's criticising his own work.

 

[dzidza]

it depends which GT or Forza did he mean, there is no word about GT5p, and he is talking about race cars, and in GT5p we have street cars, sport cars, supercars, which are still not like race cars on slick

 

[G.T.Ace]

That interview is old, after that one they started talking about the game not being a hardcore sim. Lets wait and see.

 

[Jay]

Yeah he crapped on pretty much every other 'sim' out there so far, big words, not how I thought a CEO would promote their game. We'll see how it goes.

 

[WolfRacer543]

It does depend highly on the car. I've raced with some open wheelers in LFS and RACE07 and also driven an open wheeler race car in real life. The real open wheeler was more of a bitch to drive than the one in LFS But that said, I'm not a brilliant driver.

But its funny to see person after person hop in the race car and spin it out. The track we race the car at is about a 1 minute lap and most people are lucky to string together 2 clean laps. The car is twitchy as hell, and it'll spin really fast if you dont correct when the rear wheels start to lose grip.

This is a small open wheeler, locked diff, running race slicks and heaps of caster which makes the steering really heavy (its designed for short races of less than 20 minutes). Its designed for extremely tight small tracks. Tracks so tight you'd barely fit a street car through it (basically go-kart sized tracks, but with more chicanes).

I can't speak for other cars in other games, because I've never driven any other cars which has actually been set up for racing.

 

[Tenacious D]

Ian Bell can talk up a storm all he wants, but I have yet to see a video of Shift which doesn't look like GRID. Which of course, GRID is like NFS Underground: speed hyped all out of reason, solidly arcade physics, but with spectacular crashes. They have a LONG way to go before they can use the word "sim," and you can draw a red rectangle around this sentence.

And I have to reiterate something. Despite tooling around in GTR Evo, GTR2, rFactor and Live For Speed, some of the most vaunted racing sims around, I still come back to Prologue. With all its faults, it's still the most involving racer I've ever experienced.

 

[paskowitz]

Yeah me too. Those games are great sims but they are simply not as fun and engaging as GT5p. GTR Evo is great for challenging your reflexes by lapping the Nurburgring in say a DBR9 but is frustrating beyond belief when you get in the CCX, rFactor has some good mods but is really really behind on the visual department and gets dull, LFS is very realistic but again, gets dull after a while. GT5p has that special feeling of... "you know what, I really feel like powersliding a Ford GT around Susuka. Or, man, the BMW M3 is such an awesome car, I want to go drive it." This feeling also does not go away. Those other games don't have that feeling. When you drive the M3 in GTR2 it just not the same as GT5p. Honestly great cars/tracks + physics + graphics + sound = all I need.

 

[Tenacious D]

My sentiments exactly, Pas. 👍

Well, I finally saw a couple of videos that make Shift look roughly on par with Forza 2, which isn't bad. FM2 is reasonably simmish. But there had better be a demo out when this gets ready to launch because I have plenty of racers, and the only one which has my attention, and by that I mean it has me by the throat, is Gran Turismo 5.

Thank GOD next week will go relatively fast...

 

[Raitziger]

PD should play some Life for speed or enthusia professional racing to figure out the drifting dynamics. Those games ar not perfect but currently most think that drifting in GT is unrealisticly hard comapared to LFS. Other than that game is nearly unrealisticly good in proper driving feel. And this game has some racing glamour as forza has some "street cred"

 

[kikie]

GT5p is, besides Historic GT (GTlegends mod for rFactor), my favourite driving game. I will never abandon the GT series for as long as I'm able to buy and play this driving game. Not even when PD drops all the goodies he promised.

We all know that the tire physics in the GT series has it's faults, which makes GT not entirley realistic.

Well, Slightly mad Studios has Eero on the payroll and he is working on the tire physics of SHIFT. Eero did wonders with the physics engine of Richard Burns Rally, the most realistic rally game today.

SHIFT does look like GRiD with all the crashes, the special effects and IMO exaggerate feeling of speed. But still SHIFT is a race game to look out for. It is a Slightly mad Studios game with the name Need for speed.

PD should hire Eero for the physics engine and tire engine of the future GT series.

GT5 is the game I'm waiting for and SHIFT is the game I'm hoping for! (hoping to be good enough to live up my standards of what I expect of a racing game).

 

[Tenacious D]

I know people keep bringing up the SMS team and Eero, which is why I was so shocked to see early videos of Shift looking like Underground with car handling. Add to that some of the interviews where the team talked about wanting a good balance of the NFS sandbox racing and realism, and I thought they were making another GRID. Maybe this is what GTR and Richard Burns Rally was like in the early days or something. There is going to have to be a demo though, because Codies raved about DiRT and GRID too, and they were both rather sad. I have to wonder if we'll ever see a TOCA with proper wheel implementation, or a Need For Speed which isn't a joke. I can be convinced with a demo, so I'll be waiting.

 

[kikie]

I read somewhere, can't remember were but if I find it again I'll post it, the there will be a demo one month before SHIFT is released.


EDIT: http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewstory&threadid=97838


http://darkzero.co.uk/game-news/need-for-speed-shift-demo-set-for-this-summer-says-producer/

 

[Cocomoto]

This feeling of driving a car in GT series, no other game have.