I think that N2 seem to be the closest ones to stock, i have no idea how PD goes about it, but i can say that in GT4 (and it also seems to be the case here.) N2 tyres provided the closest laptimes to the reallife counterparts of some of the cars in Tsukuba and Nurburgring.
But, the grip was still kinda all over the place really, you could brake considerably late than you should, but it still seemed like the closest to me.
GT4 tyre grip levels are closest to realistic about halfway between N2's and N3's, both for lateral grip, acceleration and braking. I've carried out what can only be described as a rather silly amount of testing in this regard, the results of which can be found here....
BMW M3 - An analysis of tyre choice - Lateral and Longitudinal tests across the GT4 tyre range.
Ford GT - 0-100-0 test GT4 vs reality - Acceleration and braking tests from the
GT4 & Brakes thread
In straight line braking the grip levels provided by N2/N3s is actually very close to reality, the issue GT4 had (along with the vast majority of other sims/games) was when you throw in a combination of lateral and longitudinal tyre loading with braking.
GT4's principal issue with this is that the front tyres would reach the limit of grip too soon, resulting in an early and strong onset of understeer, most other sims/games have the balance the other way around. Neither is actually 100% correct. While GT4 was far from perfect, this is one area that I still feel they are over-criticised on, simply put cars (particularly road cars) will enter heavy understeer if you enter a corner too quickly and should you exceed the grip limit by too large a margin then it is difficult to recover from. GT4 did make this too punitive, but its an area often ignored or massively dumbed down in sims.
The main problem lies in this change screwed the oversteer in GT4, as the front tyres let go to soon it was very difficult to induce power oversteer, it also was the reason why do-nuts and handbrake turns were almost impossible in GT4. From the short few hours I have spent with the GT5
demo this has been addressed to a very large degree, both do-nuts and handbrake turns can be achieved on a range of tyres.
I've also seen a couple of posts (in other threads) commenting on the degree of understeer on corner entry in the demo, to be honest anyone complaining about that being unrealistic has not tried to get a road car around a fast corner on a track in the real world.
All road cars are set-up with a strong understeer bias (regardless of tyre type) and on corner entry the fronts are going to wash out first, oversteer on a road car is normally achieveable in three ways. Either power-oversteer out of a corner, lift-off throttle mid-corner or use of the e/hand brake.
Contrary to common myth understeer on corner entry can't be resolved with the throttle in a RWD car, applying the throttle would simply shift load off the front tyres at a time when they need it and if the throttle is applied with enough vigour you will over load the rears. All you would have in a situation like this is a car with no grip at either end, the starting balance was understeer so this is almost certainly going to remain the balance. The correct way to resolve understeer in corner entry is to reduce one (or both) of the causes, braking or steering. However in GT4 reducing the steering input and/or easing off the brakes did not always have a realistic level of effect. While it is a bit early to say how well this has been implemented in GT5
it does certainly seem to be better (this could however be down to the improvement in front end grip).
Regards
Scaff
