I would like soundscapes to be improved, PD needs to realize that race cars are loud, absurdly so there should be roaring engines abound at the starting line and a raucous chorus of mean machinery ready to howl. It sounds rather empty in the videos also there was like no echo or reverb at the Nurburgring, I think I was hearing crowd sounds at the new Northern Point(sp?) track. They added animations and a filled in infield so it doesn't look like racing at a ghost town but why on tracks with lots of foliage there is no movement in the trees, that's creepy. Shift on PS3 had this effect going and it was very good to see foliage moving as well as shadows dancing across the road surface, gives life to the organic looking environments.
Sounds are still weird as some cars sound believable and others sound like they were created using a synth, wasn' that Forza guy hired, I'm guessing they won't let him touch the sound board huh? I think it's time they go full on AES and leave that piles of files recording playback stuff in the past.
How about aerodynamics? Have they gotten fluid dynamics to work correctly this time around? In GT6 that only worked correctly when you added the underbody channeling and you got more realistic top ends, without it cars like the Stingray were doing impossible top end speeds. Also this needs to be done right especially if they intend to have NASCAR in the game and that is mainly about aero setups and drafting, including the using shifts in it to gain the upper hand, bump drafting, or closing the gap in a turn abruptly which will in turn cause the car ahead to get loose in the read due to changes in the composition, Bernoulli affect stuff here. Those things affect Stock cars due to their use of spoilers instead of wings. Hopefully they deepened the simulation some more, mechanical damage that is reflected due to how you drive, so curb jumping will be to your detriment, drafting too long at high throttle will send your temps up as you're not getting enough clean air into the intakes, hope they added in brake in and tire warming, tire punctures(a bit much but why not).
Physics this needs to be done well, and no more magical hands that prevent roll overs so the game should be calculating what is happening when you lose control and the surface you're on, angle, velocity and imperfections in the surface that could become a pivot that changes a sideways slide into a full blown roll, this would also play into aerodynamics and wind travel around under and over the vehicle.
Seems like they have upped the grid to 20 cars, that's very nice but short of the massive grids in Project Cars so my dream of having multi spec Le Mans races isn't quite there yet, hopefully there are options to have multiple specs in one race, LMP1, GT, GT3 and so on in one race.
It's great that they have new cars and FIA, but for the love of all that is good...PD please get at least have half the grid from one year, due to constant regulation and spec changes from year to year, it's pretty weird to see cars from different years running slight spec differences competing together for sanctioned races. Let's have at least half a grid of cars from one year of GT3, GT, LMP1 and the rest, get some uniformity in this fresh start.
Now the atmosphere, GT needs more of it, race days are loud and raucous, no more driving in quiet cars, at quiet venues sound staging is important, ambiance is important visually and aurally. Still waiting on correct transmission sounds for cars older stick shifters should have the veritable thunk sound from the gear change, engine intake sounds are still missing, I saw no backfire coming out of highly tuned machinery nor audible pops during rapid deceleration.
@OP, I am upset about the what seems to be complete purge of assets from what we saw as highly detailed cars from GT6/5 but there were imperfections in the GT5 cars as GT6 cars were modeled to an even higher level(the newer additions), GT Sport it seems like they found an even better way to recreate them and looking at your photo post you can see the imperfections in most of the photos(some lack depth even for 3 dimensional constructs). Remember attention to detail is part of the equation and I guess having materials look spot on is part of it, how they got 137 cars built from the ground up and when they decided to even do that is another question.
The most realistic driving AI I've dealt with seems to be the Drive Club guys. Most things that affect you affects them, turning off driving aids in the game the AI does the same and they commit a wealth of mistakes and they are running on what seems to be a very good approximation of the physics that the player cars runs on. They also suffer from impacts as well, so they aren't invincible road hogs like GT AI. Evolution Studios built a boss AI and smart physics setup for their AI, that's one thing that makes AI realistic to deal with, they suffer from penalties too. I only play DC with the aids off, if you have the game try it you'll only notice stupid rubber banding when you get left way in the back but if you pack race with them, watch the chaos as some cars over commit and go careening into a wall, not uncommon to pass lie 4-5 cars in one go after a high speed to low speed section due to AI mistakes. The AI drifts a lot with driving aids off too, fun fun game.
I can't comment on weather since I saw none, but if it includes Le Mans and other multihour courses, pretty much guaranteed that dynamic time and weather will be part of it, perhaps locked for certain races for different times of day like how PD did at RBR, in game you had a span of time but PD was able to set up seasonal races at times you couldn't set. Weather and time of day are part of racing, no one races in a vacuum or in perfect conditions for long.
My complaint list is long but I will still grab this game as I'm sure that no one goes into a game going I hope all the things I don't want are not in there. It's more of a I hope there is fun to be had and then some, the online alone for me sold me, it looks absolutely smashing.
