Did more testing with a variety of cars, seems like different cars are affected differently. As we know, the main physics changes are 1) more lift off oversteer and 2) more grip to the rear under acceleration. The thing is, some cars previously feel terrible to drive. The new physics HAS actually made these cars better. But I feel like that's 2 wrongs trying to make a right because 1) it breaks cars that were previously ok and 2) the actual driving feel itself is much less detailed now and simplifies the driving techniques needed to be fast.
Combos I've tried:
911 RSR at Brands - coming out of T2, you just put foot to the floor. Same as T4. Previously you need a lot more throttle control.
GR Supra at RBR - this is one of the car that actually feels better. You can get good rotation under braking now, and you don't get snap oversteer everytime you breathe on the throttle.
FT1 at Dragon Trail Gardens - lift off oversteer caught me out a few times into the hairpin. Previously this car is rock solid under braking. On power, it feels like LSD Accel is fully open. Lazily drifts out with minimal throttle control needed. I'm definitely faster with the new physics, but as I've said many times driving feel is not as good.
NSX Gr.2 '16 at Fuji - similar to the 458 Gr.3, car feels a lot less nervous and urgent now. Just more understeer everywhere. Coming out of the hairpin, previously I can feel the weight slowly shifting to the back under acceleration and fighting against the rear tyres trying to break traction. It's a wonderful sensation. Now you just pin it.
NSX Gr.2 '10 at Fuji - the old car on the other hand, was nigh undrivable before. Now with the added stability it's actually pretty ok.
Gr.1 at Maggiore - tried various cars I'm familiar with (Alpine, Mazda LM55, the trio of modern hybrids). Mazda has much better turn in now. On throttle it feels roughly the same but this was already a stable car to begin with. Alpine, no question, a lot more stable and less demanding to drive, but also loses a lot of agility. The hybrid trios, previously they all have distinct characters: Toyota is the most neutral and supple, R18 most darty and you need to be careful with the throttle otherwise the back will step out, 919 is most stable but has power understeer because of the OP hybrid on the front axles. Now, all 3 feels the same-ish and converged on the Toyota's handling. If you mute the sound I'd struggle to tell the difference.
So what's the conclusion? Well for me, I've gone from not noticing any difference, to hating it, to now about 50:50. It does make some cars a lot better to drive (low powered road cars <N400, old Gr.2, the GR Supra). But at the expense of liveliness and character in a lot of other cars that were already good pre update, and just needed a bit of BOP balancing and suspension/LSD tweaks. Driving feel I still find very muted, and there is less need for finesse during throttle application. The off throttle oversteer is interesting because I couldn't find it in cars that were already unstable pre update, but it definitely caught me out for cars that struggled to turn in before. Could just be a quirk of my driving style. I feel that this update brings "outlier" cars closer together and helps lesser skilled drivers. So yay for competitive equality, I guess?
After about a week I reckon things will settle down and we'll all get used to the new physics, but the original sentiment remains. This is not a thing that needed changing. It's one step forward, one step back, like with a lot of previous physics changes dating back from GT5P/GT5/GT6 and the various demos and GT Academy builds in between. I think in a sim, if you want to introduce physics updates, there needs to be clear goal and plan in mind. With AC I remember going from tyre model V5 to V10, there was a clear sense of progression and things getting more realistic with better feel. With GT, you just never know what you're gonna get next
Unfortunately that probably wouldn’t work very well, even if you could get a private audience with Kaz.
The problem lies with the asian culture of losing face. Many years ago I worked for a company sourcing technical, shall we say, thingymibobs from Japan mostly, but some stuff from South Korea, and on the whole things well exceptionally well - until they didn’t and then it was an absolute bloody nightmare.
Now, fair play to the Japanese and Koreans as the products we received were delivered well within specification, often way ahead of schedule, and were of top notch quality, but as you would expect from time to time something wouldn’t work as expected. When that happened we did a full analysis and worked out how to solve the issues. We then went back to the supplier with a report of the issue and also our proposed solution.
This is where the problems really began as there was no way in hell they’d implement our solution. They would throw everything including the the kitchen sink at the issue to solve the problem except implement the solution we’d proposed, despite our solution being pretty much the only obvious way to correct the problem.
Naturally this left us totally and utterly frustrated as we couldn’t use the products, and nor could we get the suppliers to successfully resolve the issues.
The answer to our problems came about when one of our team was in Japan with an interpreter, and the interpreter, seeing what we were doing, explained to him the reason why our proposals were not being implemented, and it’s basically about losing face - I’ll explain.
It’s no problem for a product to have an issue, that’s fine as it’s expected from time to time. What is a problem, however, is providing the supplier/manufacturer with the solution. If a Japanese manufacturer were to implement our proposals then it would be an admission that they could not solve the problems themselves, and therefore face would be lost, hence why they tried everything else to solve the issues.
What we had to do was provide them with only a problem description, but in such a way that our already worked out solution was the only obvious choice.
It’s getting better these days, but it’s still an issue.
I know. Despite living down under I was born in an Asian country and raised in an Asian culture. That's why I can totally symphatise with PD's quirks and idiosyncratic ways of working. But Kaz' close mindedness is a double edged sword. Without it he probably wouldn't have pushed through 5 years of GT1 development and revolutionise the sim racing genre. But now, over 20 years later I fear it's holding him and the franchise back. It's a real shame because we have a lot of smaller developers who are brilliant at crafting proper sims (e.g. Kunos, Reiza, the LFS team) but don't have the resources to make it big. Whereas PD with all their power, resource and influence literally has the world's automakers and motorsports governing body at their feet. But just because the man at the helm refuses to look outside the box, we keep going in circles with a lot of things. Things are slowly getting better, but not fast enough I fear. If they want this FIA partnership to succeed long term, Kaz has to evolve and move with the times. Look at as many different games as possible for inspiration. Most importantly, listen to the core playerbase because they are what keeps the competition alive.