...Realism on a console was already done - See Ferrari 355 on the Dreamcast
That is ONE hard car to drive quickly, period...
...GT is just fine, some tweaks are welcomed but an overhaul is not needed!
No offense, but I have a very hard time believing the opinion of anyone who thinks F355 Challenge was "realistic" when it comes to the realism of a racing sim, be it for console or PC.
Sure, F355 sorta kinda behaved like a car as long as you maintained grip...it sounded like a car, and accelerated, braked, and turned in a way that vaguely resembled a car, despite having a rock-solid suspension that would move very little, if at all...but as soon as you broke traction, whether it was understeer or oversteer, all hell broke loose, and you suddenly found yourself in the realm of a caliber of physics programming that dated from at least 5 years prior to F355's release -- the concepts of inertia and traction seem to have been lost on the SEGA development team.
I'm sorry, but no, F355 wasn't and will never be the console realism champ. Gran Turismo 2 was the champ back when F355 was released (until GT3 came out a year later), and Enthusia Professional Racing is the champ today.
...for the record, though, I enjoy playing F355 Challenge. It's a fun arcade game, what with the 6-speed shifter and clutch.
The home versions were far less enjoyable, but still neat. "Realistic," however, is not a word I would use to describe any of the versions of the game.
As for the Gran Turismo series, GT3 was pretty damned good, despite having mushy steering, too much grip in most situations, questionable straight-line wheelspin modelling, and a steering-correction system (to make the game playable with the DS2) that sometimes overcompensated (making some difficult maneuvers easy), and other times didn't compensate enough (making it a bit too easy to spin out in a full-countersteer slide).
With GT4, however, Polyphony decided to take a step backwards. They fixed the mushy steering by making it hypersensitive. They fixed the "too much grip" problem by expanding the tire selection and making the game understeer more in general. They
didn't fix the questionable straight-line wheelspin modelling, but no one seems to notice, instead opting for the "hey I can't do donuts anymore" complaint.
Finally, the fixed the steering-correction system, solving the "not compensating enough" problem by giving the front tires 10x more grip than they should in countersteer situations, and fixed the "overcompensating" problem by giving the front tires 1/10th as much grip as they should in corner entry, forcing you to buy a Driving Force Pro (great marketing, huh?) in either case, which still doesn't fix the game's
other problems.
Given the fact that GT4 was quite obviously limited by its hardware (and it really shouldn't have been -- I blame PD for biting off more than they could chew), GT5 may not actually need an "overhaul" of its engine, but rather an optimized, tweaked, and elaborated version of GT4's...on the other hand, it's hard to expect greatness out of something that was programmed for a previous-generation console, especially when GT4 itself was a tweaked version of the even-older GT3.
If I can tell that Polyphony Digital have started over from scratch for GTHD
/GT5, I'll give them credit for trying, even if the physics still suck like they did in GT4. I just hope I'll have a
more valid reason to give them credit.
I like Live For Speed and I agree its realistic and its actually pretty easy to drive once you get the braking and shifting down. I'm not sure I wanna see those "issues" with GT. I like the current game as-is and as for control I don't see them changing it much its just about perfect.
If you like Gran Turismo for its blend of realism and accessibility (read: non-realism), I can respect that opinion. However, referring to learning to brake and shift in Live for Speed as "issues" that you'd rather not see in GT is
not the sort of thing that you should say if you really want GT5 to be worthy of the title, "the Real Driving Simulator."
PD can learn nothing from ToCA in my opinion...
I wouldn't go that far (although PD already allayed my one caveat with that statement by showing us lots of cars on a track in GTHD), but there is certainly nothing that PD can learn from TRD3 as far as physics go. I completely agree with you on the "crazy steering" -- the "professional" mode they gave us is just the same floaty, vague engine they've been using since TRD1 (and on the Colin McRae games), but with extra wheelspin and brake-locking.
) in LFS right puts a smile on my face and the whole race in other games doesn't, that sais a lot don't u think?
