To those still frustrated at the Course Creator's delay...

Imari
Hmm, good point. Straights is fine, but corners I'd imagine would want a fairly high point density.[/SIZE]

That could be tough, and I guess to make it look nice you'd need some sort of smoothing algorithm so that the road didn't look like an angular PS1 construct.

I wonder how often a normal GPS can take points? Really it's just two numbers needed for lat and long (and height if they want to be anal about it I suppose), so as quick as the GPS can calculate numbers they can just dump them into a text file. It could be hundreds of points a second for all I know.

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Yeah I mean, at 40 mph your covering almost 60 feet a second. You could miss an entire crest or bend in 60 feet. I would hope for a minimum of 4 points gathered per second.

I think it will measure altitude as well so they can gets hills and such. I'd also really like to be able to make final adjustments and such in the normal course creator to fix any issues that pop up.
 
TeamCZRRacing
You go play your Forzas and Assetto Corsas, then. I'll be here waiting on the next generation of GT players... and the next, and the next, and the next, until either the series ends or I die.
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I find it odd that people seem to treat it as though you can only play one game at a time. You know that you can play Gran Turismo AND Forza AND Assetto Corsa? It's not like a marriage where you're expected to pick one and stick with it for the rest of your life.

In fact, if you're actually serious about simulation racing your doing yourself a big disservice by not playing more than one game. Learning and adapting to different games will make you a much, much better driver. It's not about which is best, it's about learning new skills.
 
Imari
I find it odd that people seem to treat it as though you can only play one game at a time. You know that you can play Gran Turismo AND Forza AND Assetto Corsa? It's not like a marriage where you're expected to pick one and stick with it for the rest of your life.

In fact, if you're actually serious about simulation racing your doing yourself a big disservice by not playing more than one game. Learning and adapting to different games will make you a much, much better driver. It's not about which is best, it's about learning new skills.
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Not many people have that much money. Yes you can rent or play in friends house, but its only temporary and no way to enjoy them fully. Whats next? Piracy?

PD has been promised it in their website since launch. Now? After 10 months? Thank god I have other games.
 
FrzGT
Not many people have that much money. Yes you can rent or play in friends house, but its only temporary and no way to enjoy them fully. Whats next? Piracy?
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No, not piracy, because the real meat of the cost is the consoles/PC. If you can afford the hardware, you can afford the games quite easily.

I think it's a fair assumption that anyone that has a console has a PC already, because a console is a luxury item with a single purpose and a PC is a multipurpose tool that can be used for both entertainment and work.

It's not hard or terribly expensive to make a PC capable of playing games at a reasonable level, and Steam makes the games pretty affordable if you're smart about it. The only sim game that's actually expensive is iRacing, and that's only if you somehow feel like you need all the content. At the basic level it's about $10 for a year of racing if you take advantage of all the deals each year.

PS3s and X360s are cheap at the moment. If you take the gamble on getting one used they're even cheaper. If you're paying more than $20 for any of the games on them you're getting ripped off. I think I got Forza 2, 3 and 4 for $30 total, and that was a year and a bit ago.

The new consoles are expensive, so I can see the point there. But that's one game you're missing out on (two if you count Horizon). Not worth the money.

PC/PS3/360 have games that are worth playing. Even if you're stuck on PS3 somehow, there's still games other than GT that are worth the time and effort, and like I mentioned before used games are not expensive.

PD has been promised it in their website since launch. Now? After 10 months? Thank god I have other games.
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The irony of pointing out that people don't have money for other games and then thanking god that you have other games...

You may have noticed that I'm as vocal as anyone about PD and their bollocks. If you haven't, then look at my recent posts. However, I still don't agree with the attitude that GT should be great because it's the only game that people will ever need. It's always going to be interesting, useful and fun to see how other development teams approach the same problems. Yes, there are costs associated with playing more games, but they're much more reasonable than you think if you're smart about it.

If you're serious about sim racing, you've probably invested in a wheel. If you're able to sink that much money into gaming, then you're able to at least make a start on exploring what else is available in the sim racing market. If you want to start free, then I think there are demos for Live for Speed and rFactor 1 still, and most of the Simbin games can be had for next to nothing on Steam.
 
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Imari
No, there is expected to be two parts to the course creator. Allow me to quote from the gran-turismo.com site:



As you can see, there is expected to be one update which will add the ability to create your own custom tracks. Then there is expected to be a second update that will add the GPS import functionality.

It's possible that they're trying to push out the two of them at once, but that would seem slightly silly. If they're both ready bar approvals, they might as well give us the first part while they wait for approvals for the second.
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By the sounds of the interview featured here https://www.gtplanet.net/gran-turismo-6-track-maker-currently-in-beta-testing/ it sounds like it is made but"When we can deliver it to users is still up in the air" probably due to app store vetting
 
fghwe3
By the sounds of the interview featured here https://www.gtplanet.net/gran-turismo-6-track-maker-currently-in-beta-testing/ it sounds like it is made but"When we can deliver it to users is still up in the air" probably due to app store vetting
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I have already explained to you directly in this very thread why that is probably not the case. Please read my previous response to you.
Imari
fghwe3
Didn't Kaz do an interview a while back saying that the course creator is ready? I am guessing the delay has something to do with iTunes approving the app. I know Apple spend alot of time vetting and checking any app before it hits the app store, and it takes ages before they approve it. So it might be an apple problem.
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No, there is expected to be two parts to the course creator. Allow me to quote from the gran-turismo.com site:

This feature, available at a later stage through an update, will allow you to create your own custom tracks that can be driven in the game. Additionally, in another update we will add the possibility to generate a track by capturing the GPS coordinate data of a mobile app while you are driving that course. This GPS-generated tracks will be available in the game as playable content.
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As you can see, there is expected to be one update which will add the ability to create your own custom tracks. Then there is expected to be a second update that will add the GPS import functionality.

It's possible that they're trying to push out the two of them at once, but that would seem slightly silly. If they're both ready bar approvals, they might as well give us the first part while they wait for approvals for the second.
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Kaz said before release that the course maker was nearly ready and might make it into the release version or might just miss. That would imply that it's been "nearly" ready since December last year.

I don't think him announcing that it's in Beta now means a thing. It's more marketing speak.
 
ironman44321

Yeah I mean, at 40 mph your covering almost 60 feet a second. You could miss an entire crest or bend in 60 feet. I would hope for a minimum of 4 points gathered per second.

I think it will measure altitude as well so they can gets hills and such. I'd also really like to be able to make final adjustments and such in the normal course creator to fix any issues that pop up.
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Ideally, it should measure altitude, absolutely. Most GPS units in mobile devices operate at 1hz (one update per second); our phones use estimations to smooth this out based on the last data point. Like just about every other piece of tech though, this is improving; there are 50hz GPS units available for civilian use. But you touch on a good point: one update per second could miss a whole mess of data without relying on the same estimations our phones do.

I wonder if there's a way around it, but it'd require a bit more input from the user than simply turning it on and off after completing your lap / string: make the user manually lay down waypoints. From my understanding, GPS in most modern phones is fairly accurate, so if we had a button that recorded our location, we could hit that as often as we felt necessary, and the app would record all of these spots when spitting out our created track, sequentially. I do wonder how the system will deal with features similar to TGTT though; can we loop over existing track?
 
Mr Grumpy
I cant see this GPS thing being that accurate tbh, it might pick up you left & right turns but I doubt it will pick up all the the dips, bumps, ups & downs, blind corners that make your particular favourite piece of road so fun to drive in real life.
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If you have an inbuilt satellite navigation system in your car (we call it satnav, USians call it GPS), drive into a long tunnel. Now get creative. Speed up, slow down, change direction. Notice how it keeps track of you despite there clearly being no line of sight to any satellites? Know why?

GPS is one of a whole host of sensors tied together by an in-car communication system called CANbus, a global standard since 2001. Everything you do and everything car does gets shunted through CANbus - when the satnav has no satellites, it continues to predict your speed and course by measuring the wheel speed, steering position and throttle position sensors (amongst other things) and when you pop out of the tunnel and find a satellite, it catches up. It's largely seamless these days. Usually.

NISMO has been testing the technology and has used the system to map 178 of the world's circuits, including 17 tracks currently found in GT6. They did this by driving a "NissanConnect NISMO Plus" equipped NISMO GT-R around them. Quite slowly. However the tech now works and the system can be found in the new NISMO GT-R. One of NISMO's UK consultants told me that they didn't plan to limit it to the GT-R - it should filter down to the 370Z, Juke RS and, if they make it, Pulsar NISMO variants. Maybe as an optional extra on regular Nissans too - at least with that branding. It's not unique to Nissan, it's just a CANbus plugin.


The NISMO system is proof of concept that a route can be mapped in a datalogger from CANbus. There's no longer an ideological step between GPS Data Logger and GPS Course Creator - just a matter of implementation. I wrote a news piece on this on Saturday and, oddly, 90% of responses didn't seem to care. Go figure.
 
@Famine Regarding your article (which i did find interesting), towards the end were you hinting towards via the use of the CANbus system we could see the GPS data logger on other vehicles? As its a standardized system could i use this on my 6 year old car, if someone could produce a OBD to USB connector (or other hardware)?
 
In June I have developed an Android app in University. I manage to take the X, Y e Z coordinates from the accelerometer 100 times per second. I think that if I could do it, PD can absolutely do it better, I'm also pretty sure the gps works almost like the accelerometer.

So the altitude shouldn't be a problem but certainly it will have some restriction for example for the mountain roads.
 
fghwe3
@Famine Regarding your article (which i did find interesting), towards the end were you hinting towards via the use of the CANbus system we could see the GPS data logger on other vehicles? As its a standardized system could i use this on my 6 year old car, if someone could produce a OBD to USB connector (or other hardware)?
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Yes and no (oh, isn't that always the case?).

I don't know exactly how the Nissan and Toyota systems work, but my guess is it's a literal box that plugs into CANbus somehow - maybe even directly into the diagnostics port (CANbus is one of the standards in OBDII). The box would scavenge the data it needs and save it into the format that GT6 is set up to receive. I'd have to guess again on how you'd interface with the box, but USB seems sensible given that you can plug USB drives into the PS3.

So in theory, all someone would need to do to put it into any car made since 2001 (and post 1997 BMWs) is create the box. In practice... I have no idea :lol:
 
TeamCZRRacing
They're still human at the end of the day. They go there, work their fingers to the bone for us, try their damnedest to make the Course Creator work with technology from 2005 that wasn't meant for it, and then some of them come home and log on to GTPlanet to see all these scathing comments from people like myself who have no idea what it takes. Business or not, continuing to bash them for circumstances most likely beyond their control is just wrong.
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If the hardware isn't capable of running GT6's Course Maker as inteded, why bother with what might end up being sub-par and unsatisfactory? Most importantly though, what was wrong with GT5's Course Maker and improving it; allowing far more freedom in creation and having more variety in locations? Why reinvent the wheel?

Either way, I can understand that they're having difficulties but they put themselves in the position they're in today and have only themselves to blame. None of it is beyond their control and never has been. It's a choice they've made.
 
@Famine just found this on Youtube.

0:15 shows a person plugging a USB device from a ps3 into a USB port on the Nissan GTR. (I'm deliberately shying away from calling it a memory stick). Potentially if someone could make a box to go between the OBD socket, to translate info to the USB device it looks do-able.
One problem i have just realized, OBDII (and EOBD for everyone outside America) is a standard that relates to the engine control system. Other systems (ABS and traction control are the main ones of interest) are not subject to standardization and can differ from manufacturer to manufacturer, and even model to model. Also not every vehicle is fitted with yaw sensors as an example, which would be useful info to have.
 
MXHyland
If the hardware isn't capable of running GT6's Course Maker as inteded, why bother with what might end up being sub-par and unsatisfactory? Most importantly though, what was wrong with GT5's Course Maker and improving it; allowing far more freedom in creation and having more variety in locations? Why reinvent the wheel?

Either way, I can understand that they're having difficulties but they put themselves in the position they're in today and have only themselves to blame. None of it is beyond their control and never has been. It's a choice they've made.
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Because the work needs doing anyway, so they should start as soon as possible. Software development is complex, projects are forked constantly to prototype things and then folded back in, and it's likely the previous course creator was broken by a change in another module, e.g. graphics or the physics / geometry interaction etc.

The game is expecting several features to be added in a future update, which screams "fork" - i.e. Spec II.
 
MXHyland
If the hardware isn't capable of running GT6's Course Maker as inteded, why bother with what might end up being sub-par and unsatisfactory? Most importantly though, what was wrong with GT5's Course Maker and improving it; allowing far more freedom in creation and having more variety in locations? Why reinvent the wheel?

Either way, I can understand that they're having difficulties but they put themselves in the position they're in today and have only themselves to blame. None of it is beyond their control and never has been. It's a choice they've made.
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It's easy to see in hindsight that a tweaked version of the Course Maker would have been preferable to the nothing we actually got. Some new locations, a little better algorithm for track generation, more control over the length of the course and the ability to move around individual portions of the track. We can see now that would have been a better use of resources and then a long slow tease for the new CM features in GT7, IMO of course.
 
Everything's easy to see in hindsight. What you suggest would have been more work moving forwards from the time that decision would have been made. It seems some people adopt a subjective definition of efficiency...
 
Griffith500
Everything's easy to see in hindsight. What you suggest would have been more work moving forwards from the time that decision would have been made. It seems some people adopt a subjective definition of efficiency...
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Can we say definitely say that tweaking and updating the old Course Maker vs. trying to squeeze something that is many times more complex and revolutionary in car sim gameplay into old, unique, outdated and extremely limited hardware would be a more efficient use of resources?
 
Imari
I find it odd that people seem to treat it as though you can only play one game at a time. You know that you can play Gran Turismo AND Forza AND Assetto Corsa? It's not like a marriage where you're expected to pick one and stick with it for the rest of your life.

In fact, if you're actually serious about simulation racing your doing yourself a big disservice by not playing more than one game. Learning and adapting to different games will make you a much, much better driver. It's not about which is best, it's about learning new skills.
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Unfortunately I'm in a situation where I can't. I don't have enough money to afford an Xbox, and for AC I'd have to not only change out my graphics cards, I'd also have to unplug my main PC monitor (which uses VGA) and run a 15+ foot HDMI cord all the way across the room to my cockpit screen every time I felt like a bit of Assetto Corsa since my graphics cards don't support two monitors with two different signals, and on top of that I'm tethered to the series in a way that the others would have to be pushed to the side, since I'm also this guy. So had I been able to play them, they would definitely have been on my short list of sims to try out, but unfortunately I can't.

If you'd like to continue this discussion in a convo, I'd be happy to oblige you.
 
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Famine
The NISMO system is proof of concept that a route can be mapped in a datalogger from CANbus. There's no longer an ideological step between GPS Data Logger and GPS Course Creator - just a matter of implementation. I wrote a news piece on this on Saturday and, oddly, 90% of responses didn't seem to care. Go figure.
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I'm definitely not going to defend the slew of negativity that those comments can descend into but while the news story was very intriguing, I just cannot see this as a simple implementation for PD. People may have just lost faith in PD when it comes to adding anything of significance beyond the VGT cars at this point. GT7 is years down the road so for now I only see things in relation to GT6 and I just can't see a feature as complex as a GPS data converter-into-course-maker being added to GT6 in any form. Let me qualify that, I do hope I'm wrong and if by any chance they pulled it off I'd probably go nuts, but judging from the past I cannot see it happening.

Right now I'll take a tweaked version of the GT5 course generator. Something. Anything. :indiff:
 
Griffith500
Because the work needs doing anyway, so they should start as soon as possible. Software development is complex, projects are forked constantly to prototype things and then folded back in, and it's likely the previous course creator was broken by a change in another module, e.g. graphics or the physics / geometry interaction etc.

The game is expecting several features to be added in a future update, which screams "fork" - i.e. Spec II.
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I'm not following you on that first sentence.

(I seriously need some coffee :P)​

Johnnypenso
It's easy to see in hindsight that a tweaked version of the Course Maker would have been preferable to the nothing we actually got. [...]
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In hindsight as well prior to the new Course Maker's confirmation. What they revealed, to me at least, was unexpected. Furthermore, it seemed and still do seem way too ambitious for the PS3. Didn't make sense in my head.
 
@Famine, I was very interested in your report about the CAN-bus. I only have experience with it through the haulage and logistics industry but it's being used all the time. And CAN-Bus devices are not that expensive, even when it's linked to a full fleet management system. The amount of data that can be captured is amazing.
I know that CANbus is not directly related to the Course Creator but if PD are mapping full CANbus data then simple GPS data should be easy.
 
SlipZtrEm
Ideally, it should measure altitude, absolutely. Most GPS units in mobile devices operate at 1hz (one update per second); our phones use estimations to smooth this out based on the last data point. Like just about every other piece of tech though, this is improving; there are 50hz GPS units available for civilian use. But you touch on a good point: one update per second could miss a whole mess of data without relying on the same estimations our phones do.

I wonder if there's a way around it, but it'd require a bit more input from the user than simply turning it on and off after completing your lap / string: make the user manually lay down waypoints. From my understanding, GPS in most modern phones is fairly accurate, so if we had a button that recorded our location, we could hit that as often as we felt necessary, and the app would record all of these spots when spitting out our created track, sequentially. I do wonder how the system will deal with features similar to TGTT though; can we loop over existing track?
Click to expand...

1hz is certainly not enough but I would imagine it would be more data points than that. One way I was thinking about possibly making it more effective would be to allow more than one run over the same road. If you could go over the same bit more than once and use those points to make one more detailed map it would be much more effective.

I have a feeling that won't be possible though.
 
Something must be happening behind closed doors, it's been a very quiet month, no hints or speculations. As Hicks says "nothing, not a god dam thing".
 
ironman44321
1hz is certainly not enough but I would imagine it would be more data points than that. One way I was thinking about possibly making it more effective would be to allow more than one run over the same road. If you could go over the same bit more than once and use those points to make one more detailed map it would be much more effective.

I have a feeling that won't be possible though.
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As @Famine detailed, GPS can be augmented in cars through canBUS (all my sources were focusing on mobile phones, since I was more curious about the long-rumoured mobile app usage), which I assume is why the Nismo and 86 can more accurately plot their courses, to the point of providing replays. So what I'm curious about is if they plan on getting a product out, for car us, for the GT series to provide course maker details. I would think that'd be a hard sell originally, but when I consider that GT is a game that has people spending hundreds, if not solid four-digit amounts, on accessories like wheels, seats, and others - not to mention the fact a plug-in course maker would definitely qualify as properly "revolutionary" - I think it'd do pretty well on the market.
 
Johnnypenso
Can we say definitely say that tweaking and updating the old Course Maker vs. trying to squeeze something that is many times more complex and revolutionary in car sim gameplay into old, unique, outdated and extremely limited hardware would be a more efficient use of resources?
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Not if the new game has become incompatible with the old method in any way - most likely the graphics.

If they anticipated problems, they may not have attempted to overhaul it at all for PS3 - but would still have worked on it in the background for the next version, because it still needs doing, and that means working on two versions of the module at once. You'd put some junior programmer on the task of hacking the old method to work, somehow, and let the one coursemaker dude continue doing what he has to do. Assuming you made that decision from the outset.

Anticipating problems is very much still a black art in software engineering. Well, actually they anticipate they will have problems, they just don't necessarily know what they will be. The way to avoid it is "not to do anything new", but stuff still tends to break anyway, e.g. by pushing the limits of the code through variations in the content it handles (latent bugs).

In hindsight, everything looks clear, but PD didn't have the benefit of that hindsight when deciding what to put in the game - they perhaps didn't know they would struggle quite so much with balancing all the new features (physics, AI - that is B-Spec... , sound, open areas, progressive meshes etc.).

They could have chosen to wimp out and "not do anything new", but that would have been more disappointing to me. It needed doing anyway. Would I rather have had the old method and waited for the new one in GT7 (assuming I buy it)? We'll have to wait and see.
 
SlipZtrEm
As @Famine detailed, GPS can be augmented in cars through canBUS (all my sources were focusing on mobile phones, since I was more curious about the long-rumoured mobile app usage), which I assume is why the Nismo and 86 can more accurately plot their courses, to the point of providing replays. So what I'm curious about is if they plan on getting a product out, for car us, for the GT series to provide course maker details. I would think that'd be a hard sell originally, but when I consider that GT is a game that has people spending hundreds, if not solid four-digit amounts, on accessories like wheels, seats, and others - not to mention the fact a plug-in course maker would definitely qualify as properly "revolutionary" - I think it'd do pretty well on the market.
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I don't know how much something like that would be but I could see it being a success. The quality of the courses would have to be really good for it to be worth asking people to spend extra money on it though.

If they could figure those things out to offer an affordable canBUS course maker system it would be a game changer for racing games.
 

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