@Earth. Hats off to you sir. That is by far and away the most epic post I've seen in my life.
I think that Gran Turismo 6 needs to be a refreshed game. There is no question with the physics but they really need to change things up and make a more user friendly GUI. Used car dealership must be dropped and the game should be more relaxed in terms of money.
Beyond that, there is a more important issue I'd like to thow out there. It is the excessive content reducing the value of the game. The physics is awesome. Cars behave as cars should. But having played PC sims I can tell that making a good car takes time. There is a lot of tuning involved. Just adding the data is not always enough. For example, how can a stock McLaren F1 on a short track like top gear test track have a lap time of 1m 10 sec while in the real world an Aston Martin DBR9 has a lap time of 1 min 10 sec. McLaren F1s time should be around 1 min 20 sec based on the performance of similar cars.
Look at Forza 4. they have a shorter car list and I think lap times are more realistic but I couldn't take the games actual physics similarly. I always found it more fun to play with assists on and thought they should make an arcade game. Guess what Forza Horizon is coming out. I'd but that happily. I like both sim and racade racers.
What I'm saying is that the games content needs to be more focused. Tuning is not less important that physics. With a shorter car list, they will be able to invest more time in each car and make the car performance more realistic besides what the games physics system initially provides. I don't care about all those skylines or the existence of Dihatsu. From my knowledge, I'd say 250 to 300 cars should be enough for a commercial sim like GT.
Another important thing is performance upgrade. Now I'm no expert here either but I'd just like to share one thing about customization. How many cars and aftermarket parts are out there. Does installing a part always makes the desired effect. What about how one part affects some of the other parts. Is it really mathematically possible to calculate these accurately. How many permutations and combinations are possible with cars and parts. Does a sim racer really remain a sim racer with performace customization?
I'd rather have incredibly accurate stock cars. Another thing that I'd like with that is car specific real world upgrade packages. For example, there are upgrade packages for BMW M3s that slightly improve a cars performance. I rather have these in the game. And if a car does not have any factory tested upgrade packages available in existence, I don't want 'em. It bothers me so much that a supposedly car simulator game gives the opportunity to upgrade a Jaguar XJ 13 to to as fast or maybe even faster than a Ferrari FXX.
In terms of car setup, I don't like GTs car tuning and setup system. It is not proper car setup. It is more like tweaking a car's performance like a modder does. How can all cars have the same tuning parameters? For road cars, I'd like to see only presets. These presets should be setups that are available on the real world car. So if on a certain car, traction control can't be turned off, that I don't want to be able to turn it off. If a car has a tc value of 3 at setting 1 and tc value of 6 at setting 2, I never want to be able to drive the car at tc value of 4,5,or 6. For race cars, I want tuning system like rFactor. I want individual tuning settings and options for each cars.
I also like to point out that while GT5's physics is great, they need a complete overhaul for it is becoming dated compared to new PC sims which are the standard for me. Yes GT is a game. But they should be more sim imo.
I rarely write on GT community because of one factor. It is like beating your head on the wall. Kazunori Yamauchi never listens to us. Sometimes I wonder if bioware should make Gran Turismo. I wish Polyphoni can become a publisher and not be controlled by Sony and not include so many useless japanese cars.