Earth, I'm not really sure where you got this stuff. For one thing, that would make it hearsay, which is as good as what?
Secondly, ALL the tracks look fantastic, but while still lacking a zillion little details that you see in videos of the actual tracks. Not Youtube videos, by the way. And this applies to all the tracks, not just the old courses; Fuji, Suzuka and High Speed Ring.
See, I admire PD's work so much that I took the time to cruise around the tracks and scope out the scenery. They all look superb, they all have the same level of detail, but there is one thing. They remind me a lot of how GT3 looked when I first saw it in a nice big TV. The tracks were expansive. They were detailed. They had an air of realism about them. But they were also missing a lot of the little clutter and nitty details that real life always brings with it. When GT4 finally arrived, wow, what a difference. Okay, it still wasn't like reality, but it was much closer.
These Prologue tracks are in such resolution that you can see how close they are to real life, and how much they aren't, much like GT3 was for me. But the jump from GT2 to 3 was such a terrific quantum leap that I sincerely doubt anyone made a thread about it. And Prologue's environments, all of them, are SO good that people who don't know it's a video game think they're watching real life racing film.
In my judgment, Kazunori had his team create car models that would be useful for any sort of damage modeling, and at least one more generation of Gran Turismo, perhaps far more. Because each car is made of 200,000 plus polygons, making upwards of 20 - 30 MILLION polygons in a 16 car field just for the cars, the environment could only be so detailed without requiring both LOD scavenging and lots of pop up. And still, the tracks look amazingly real. If not to you, they sure do to me.
The race courses in GT5 should make even the pickiest gamer happy. If not, go play a PC sim to see glorious actual PS2 quality tracks in HD.
By the way, the spectators are 3D now. And if you still want more, GT6 will probably be the definitive PS3 Gran Turismo, just like GT4 was on the PS2. Unless GT6 ends up on the PS4, in which case, look out for some realistic tracks!
I tend to think it highly unlikely that PD would consider releasing GT5 with some high polygon count tracks and some low. I can't think of a single game where that's ever been done, invariably whatever target level of detail is set as a goal is uniformly implemented across the game.
Forza 2 may be the sole exception. A few tracks look obviously unfinished, like Nissasn Speedway.
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