UHH....sorry dude but it does'nt!! GTHD does'nt even display reverse lighting, and thats what I'm talking about. They leave out things like virtual engine sounds, reverse lighting,vehicle damage, skid marks, the abilility for some cars to do donuts, and ad a bogus gas meter in which you never run out of gas but can only drive at a certain speed and fire shoots from nearly all the exaust pipes(wtf is that about anyway, the last time I checked luxury cars don't spit fire from their exaust pipes) But they're the REAL driving simulator, and while reverse lights may seem insignificant, you must admit that it would ad 10-15% to the realism of the game. But heh....what do I know? GT5 could drop and be the sweetest racing game ever......wait a minute thats what I thought about GT3 when the PS2 came out!! Keep ya fingers crossed homey!!
If you are looking to do donuts and reverse, then I think that you have the wrong game. I mean, these manouvers are unlikely to help you get to the finish line first.
However your other points, and even these (to a degree) are perfectly valid. I might spend so little time reversing that I can never remember which botton to press, and this leads to me fumbling the pad to back away from the barrier. However, as most of the vehicles in the game are pedestrian in nature, and would require reversing lights to be used on the public roads, these lights should be included. 10-15% is an exageration, maybe 30 seconds per 1000 races, but still they have a use.
Fire spitting from the exhaust is perfectly reasonable for performance tuned cars driven hard as others have noted, but have you seen it happen with lesser powered (untuned) vehicles driven smoothly? No? Perfectly realistic.
Better engine sounds, tyre marks and rolling to a stop when you run out of fuel would all help the game, but it is still perfectly good without them.
Damage is a biggie. It would add
lots to the game, but would take a lot to code. Imagine writing the code to visibly deform the car, and whatever it hit, spread debris accross the road for others to avoid, and then calculate the performance degredation due to the damage. Loads of work, but boy would it be nice.
Finally, in normal driving you should never find yourself doing donuts, but with the new drift mode in GTHD and GT5 you never know. It's all down to physics. I know I'd never notice if it was included, but there are other things I would notice - cars pitching and rolling when going into a corner too fast, and wheelstanding from the line when drag racing a 1000hp monster. Taking this further, flipping and rolling. You can do crazy 300mph wheelstands, but the car never actually flips over. you can clip the banking and put the car onto two wheels, but not roll. I'd say these need fixing long before they add the ability to **** around irresponsibly in a carpark.
