First: Hello, all. I've been reading here for a long while, signed up more recently (last year), and then decided to lurk rather than join the discussions most of the time anyhow.
To date there has been much arguing over semantics of wording on a particular phrase. I don't wish to address that at all, but rather to speculate on whether or not it would be possible to see a cockpit view in standard cars based on other things we know.
Having said that, I think in spite of what truly is a convincing level of clues showing up against the likelihood of seeing cockpit view, it is still possible. I don't mean to say probable, but possible. My belief stems from some pieces of fact and a bit of gut-feeling about what each piece could mean, but here's why I think it may be at least somewhat justified:
- If we are to believe what we have seen, then we know at one point that Polyphony did model at least the dashboard view of a Fiat 500. This picture has been flashed all over this site in various threads, but is yet to be seen in-game. We have no proof as to whether that car is premium or standard, but we know the view is modeled. See
Here for the picture
What does this tell me? Well, that there is at least 1 car modeled and not revealed to us. This picture is not new. It has been around for over a year. There could be other cars modeled in this way but not yet revealed. So, what makes it special? It's not in Prologue, but it is in GT4. The possibility exists that other GT4 cars have this level of modeling done.
- As others have pointed out, the Lamborghini in GT PSP is a 'Standard' car. This is in a picture on the gran-turismo.com site, so that's pretty reliable (assuming we can trust things to be as they seem).
My point on this one (though a bit obscure) is this: If you look at the GT PSP blacked-out dashboard (cockpit) views, you can notice that while they are blacked out, their shapes are different from car to car. The overall shape of the frame does change, and not simply the outline. In some cars, there is the shaded area that goes behind the rear-view mirror. In other cars this is lacking. So, the Lamborghin's interior shape could be modeled from this perspective. It seems to me, then, that the blackout is a space/processing power savings on these cars so that they can be used on a PSP. It was said in an interview that they were restricted to a 1GB download from PSN for the game, similar to the size of the UMD media. If that's the case, it's no wonder they don't have cockpit details. The fact that they are all different could indicate a dumbed-down form of the model, which could be seen as an indicator that the modeled cockpit does exist. Even the premium Corvette ZR1 doesn't show a full cockpit on this hardware... but we know the model has it.
- The recently posted Tourist Trophy video in this thread shows an 'on-bike' view. It's no stretch to say that this view would be the Tourist Trophy Equivalent of our hotly-debated cockpit view.
What does this mean? Well, the video shows that PD is fond of this kind of view. It shows that they wanted it in their game. This is in a game that was released over 4 years ago. Not only this view, but note that the driver's hands move with gear shifts and braking. They had the technology to make this happen for a game released that long ago, and all in just a little more than a year following the Gran Turismo 4 release. From what I can gather there are around 130 bikes in the game, so that's pretty fast work for the modeling team. Unless, of course, they had a lot of these done before GT4 was released. Of course, if they did that, perhaps they were modeling the first bikes at the same time as the last of the cars for GT4. Wouldn't it be logical to have them model the same kind of view when making the cars as what they clearly did with the bikes at this time? Some GT4 models, then, may have been modeled with the ability to support this driving view, even though Gt4 never made use of it (and it may not have fit on the disc, anyhow).
- Mr. Yamauchi is angry after the release of a Gran Turismo game. So states this
article :
Why, and how is this important? From what I understand, he is mad because he always wants to provide more than he was able. In short, this shows he cares about his work. Time, technological, or system constraints may be at odds with his plans for the game. If he is upset for being unable to provide the product he had hoped to make, then as others point out even in this thread, perhaps he would have an issue with the quality of the game if the cockpit view was not present. This is even more logical considering he spends much more time these days behind the wheel of a real car doing some real racing.
I think this would be important to him in the way it is important to the community generally. As such, I would expect this to be a high-priority item during development.
- Numbers can imply that they may have had time all along to make cockpit views even with their hectic schedule
PD has stated that it takes about 6 months (of man-hours) to model a single vehicle for GT5. They have stated that it takes a month of man hours to do a car for GT4.
A bit of math here, but assuming they have done 200 premium cars (approximate), and assuming that this has been in development constantly since the release of Gran Turismo 4, then we have about 66 months so far, which amounts to 3 cars per month. To make that work, they would need 18 people working on modeling to equate to 6 months of man-hours per car. If we believe that there are 150 employees at PD, then this is means their staff numbers 12% for modeling jobs. If we add just one more person to the equation, however, they could model another 66 GT4 cars in all of their glory. This may leave enough wiggle room, if one doesn't need to model the exterior (since it was done for GT4) for that theoretical 19th modeler to make dashboard views for some GT4 cars. Since a dashboard view may contain around the same level of detail as the entire exterior of the car (since standard cars are not modeled to the same level as premium), let's just say that one person could have upgraded 66 GT4 cars to include that view during the same amount of time. Now, if we are to believe this is possible, let's imagine that they wanted to upgrade all GT4 cars using a similar timetable. To upgrade another 730 cars would take about an additional 11 people. Even at those numbers, the modelers in the company would still be less than 20% (19.3% if we're calculating) of the entire company. I would say that's not unreasonable. Keep in mind that even GT PSP used Premium models in some cases (toned down/ dumbed down for PSP) such as the Corvette ZR1. By this, I mean to say that the development of the GT PSP title probably does not figure positively or negatively on the schedule of the modeling team.
I realize that most of this particularly large post is based on opinion, guesswork, and theory.
To be honest I still have every reason to believe at this point that we are not going to see cockpit views for standard cars (though I admit I would love to have proof to the contrary). I merely wanted to say by this post that in spite of a mountain of evidence against them,
I can still see why some people are holding out hope that they will come.
Thanks to any who actually took the time to read through this. And yes, I did read the entire 46 pages of this thread before posting this.
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