GT5’s Damage, Endurance Races Discussed at Room299 Press Event

Sony hosted a small group of media at their Benelux headquarters in Amsterdam, yesterday, and our own Blitz187 was on hand to catch any and all new tidbits of information that might emerge (this event took place before the delay was officially confirmed). As usual, Sony was extremely tight-lipped about the game’s details and did not use the event to reveal any major new features.

That said, Blitz asked a lot of good questions during his one-on-one time with the Sony reps, and I recommend jumping over to his complete report here in our forums. Most noteworthy:

  • Partial confirmation that you’ll be able to save your progress during endurance races (a much-wanted feature in Gran Turismo 4).
  • Damage severity is linked to the game’s difficulty settings: “easy, medium, hard or standard and professional”.
  • You will be able to manage B-Spec races from both your PC’s web browser and mobile device.
  • Re-confirmation that “all” of your cars in Gran Turismo PSP can be transferred to GT5 and will be playable in Arcade Mode.
  • New and improved Gran Turismo TV will return from GT5: Prologue.

Blitz also got to see the “head tracking” or “face tracking” setup and calibration screens. He managed to capture this brief video before he being asked to stop, but he described an adjustable level of sensitivity. He also mentions that face tracking only works when playing the game from “cockpit view”.

Once again, head on over to his complete write-up for lots more pictures and videos. Thanks once again, Blitz, for sharing all of this information!

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Comments (69)

  1. kaos

    The language they spoke was dutch and they said :

    “You will have to put the crosshair on your head for calibration? ”

    “yes”

    and at the end he told the dude to stop filming.

    Nothing really big, but i just wanted to let you guys know

  2. Donkey Dentist

    “New and improved Gran Turismo TV will return from GT5: Prologue”

    It’s because of stupid gimmicks like this that the game is taking so long to be released. We want cars on a track! If we wanna have GT TV we can do it on our laptops/PCs! And the silly photo mode! Taking pics of cars that aren’t even real! How sad is that? The challenge of GT is to beat your competitors, just like any game. In this game we go against the clock. It’s in the human spirit to improve, to beat the target. People that wanna take photos of virtual cars just need help! Kaz! Are you gonna make a ‘cooker’ function that cooks people’s dinner for them too? Or a Gran Turismo library, so we can study (instead of playing the game)?? And how about an online ironing board to do our clothes? Yeah just as useful as your dumb GT TV option. Get real, boy! Wakey wakey Kaz, it’s a racing game! You might be a nice guy but now you have zero credibility. Well done. I hope your game makes up for it!

    1. fade

      Why don’t you make your own game? Put in your own ideas, and I’ll even register on your website and critique it for you.

      We’ll see how far you get. Kaz made it to the top of the pile over the years with his vision. We’ll see how far your “bright ideas” get genius.

      “Zero credibility” …. coming from a anonymous non-contributing zero on a comment board.

    2. J-KiLLA24

      woah angry kid… go climb a tree or something to relieve all that stress cause your talking pure FOOLISHNESS!!:)

  3. Maxiboy

    Oh man that mobile feature is going to get me fired …. so they are telling me that I can literally plat GT5 24hrs a day?!? Sweet.

  4. gunma36

    Saving in 24H, uh? That is pretty handy. Eventually they put that feature in. I remember the game LeMans 24H had it, and maybe Toca 3 as well, am I wrong?

  5. GT_Prologue5

    Phone B-Spec. Wow. Awesome. I cannot wait for that actually, I really hope it won’t be limited to iPhone/Android phones.

    1. IronMaiden

      If the saving feature is true, there will probably be checkpoints at every hour of play time. If one is an hour and 15 minutes in, he will probably be able to press start and pick “save from last checkpoint”, or something like that.

    2. James

      Exactly what i was thinking Mango.What is the point of an endurance race if you can quit and come back later?What about the other drivers in the race can they quit as well?How will it decide who to match you up to when you decide to restart?

    3. James

      Ahh i see Keyz.Say for instance there is a trophy for completing a 24hour race you can do a little at a time instead of having to do the entire 24hours at once.Is that what you are saying?

    4. Mickeyd

      There’s no real difference in being able to just pause it or being able to save it, one just saves power etc, so no biggy. I think it’s a good feature, saves me money on power from having it paused and means my ps3 has less chance to overheat or something

    1. viejaloca

      I would like that too, but for people playing on 720p (or 1080), it’s hard to see the numbers on the guages so I would like a zoom in feature like in MC:LA.

    2. Wuestenmaus

      In a real driving simulator you should be able to disable the hud at all. The gear indicator in the lower right corner is ridiculous. That should not be part of a “simulation”.

    3. HugoStiglitz_420

      @wuestenmaus then go play your PC sims instead of badmouthing GT5 all the time because you’re jealous that is has better driving physics then all of your rink a dink supposed “simulation” games, troll. you said you won’t buy GT5 if it doesn’t have an online penalty system to your liking so why would we want to hear your opinion? we don’t so bugger off

    4. Geo_212

      I actually agree with Wuestenmaus… I’m honestly really surprised Kaz didn’t put an “adjust HUD” option in the game. I mean, he’s participated in real races! You don’t get anything more than what’s in the car in real races… And I’d rather no HUD than one that almost takes up the whole screen.

    1. Obli

      You only need the Playstation Eye. Might be worth trying to grab one on offer (or second hand). If you want to invest in Move later, then you’d just need to get the Move Motion Controller seperately.

  6. Woggster

    That’s great that we can now save endurance races! I just really hope GT5 is an awesome as i want it to be =D
    I hope i get the same feeling as when i played GT3 & GT4 for the first time (I still love GT4 to pieces and will be playing that forever!)

  7. Watevaman

    I think your statement “Severity of car damage is adjustable between ‘easy, medium, hard or standard and professional'” is a little misleading, Jordan. It makes it sound like you can adjust the damage level independent of other factors, whereas Blitz seemed to mean it was linked to the difficulty level you choose for all gameplay.

    1. Spaghettimonster

      i think lots of people demand damage to be adjustable independent of the difficulty settings. its quite probable that beginners get a lot of fun out of crashing the cars and vice versa.

    2. GT'ireland

      so it would be similar to F1 2010 in that way,easy being no damage and hard being full damage..i had a sneaky suspicion it would be that way,.nice

  8. CeeJay

    Remember the days when this kind of news was exciting? When you would think “it’s only a few weeks away!!”.. now they’re showing off a game w/ no release date! I just can’t get excited about this now. Give us a new release date so I can enjoy this news again!!

  9. Red_9

    How can they still be having these things when the release date got pushed back?

    It’s no wonder they have such poor time management; they’re more worried about plugging their product into every convention than actually getting the game into production…

  10. Enciah

    “•Re-confirmation that “all” of your cars in Gran Turismo PSP can be transferred to GT5 and will be playable in Arcade Mode.”

    Ok, so finaly, we will have the 850 well known old pre 2004 cars and 200 new premium super dream cars, the same as in all other racing games…borring

    I really hope for some current hot hatch and little sports car…(did they read magazines or watch european motor show since the beginning of developpement??)

    1. david

      I don’t know Enciah but I would of been happy if GT3 had all 700 cars from GT2 only upscaled + the new cars they introduced. Every generation does the same thing, but this time we’re more fortunate we didn’t only get the 200 new cars.

    2. Kaaosherra

      All other racing games have 1,000 cars, too?

      What, exactly, are these other games you are referring to? Actually name one game outside of the GT franchise that has these same boring 1,000+ cars.

  11. RobGroove

    It would be great if we could have team endurance races, being able to swap the car over to an online friend during an endurance race would be straight up AWESOME!

  12. FlareKR

    Thank God I can save endurance races. Now I can actually do them, instead of B-Spec or the overnight pause for the all nighter in GT3, never again do I want to do that. Head tracking is gonna look fun, now that I’m getting the Eye along with the Move.

    1. Dr.Boss.

      I hope you can complete races in the single player campaign using your B-Spec drivers. It would be pretty awesome to hone your drivers to an appropriate skill level and then let them loose on an endurance race while you sleep… then wake up the following day to collect the prize money (assuming your B-Spec AI drivers won, or got a podium finish).

    2. vicr34

      true that about endurance races, i tried the 24hour race,,, i only lasted 12hours none stop,, i just couldn’t handle it
      but it was a lot of fun,, gt4 is awesome,, cant wait to play gt5

    1. infamousDee

      Why would anyone hate the ability to save progress during endurance races. Sure, there’ll be hardcore GT fans that may feel this would take the accomplishment of completing an endurance race in B-Spec away from them, but doesn’t everyone have the right to enjoy the game in their own way? You can still complete the race without saving. What would be really fun is if you had the ability to be part of a team of AI B-Spec drivers, racing only when your turn comes round.

    2. Bob

      How is this a major plus? It’s supposed to be a simulation game. Now you got kids following a line around the track, rewinding the game every other corner, and finishing endurance races in 20 sittings.

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