If there's anything that bugs me about these discussions, Scaff, it's having to drag out GT4 and do a bit of driving before making a post
-- trust me, I'm not just shooting from the hip, here.
Scaff
I do know eqactly what you are refering to, and again have to ask if you have been driving a car that has lost control at these kind of speeds? I've already said that a car can and will do this in the right circumstances, and that I had experienced them for myself.
Scaff, Scaff, Scaff. Read this next part carefully:
I am not stating that snap-oversteer from too much countersteer does not or cannot happen. I am stating that GT4 is too eager to make it happen. In other words, it's too easy to overcorrect in GT4, because countersteer is "hypersensitive." C'mon, I've been trying to explain this for several posts, now.
I know that it happens, I've done it numerous times in both Live for Speed and Enthusia, and have experienced it first-hand, in real life.
Since you have stated that you believe Live for Speed is better than GT4, allow me to put it this way -- GT4 is
much more prone to causing overcorrection than LFS is.
It probably has something to do with GT4's inaccurate rear-end traction-loss physics, you know, the ones that make true burnouts and donuts impossible, and the Cobra (among other high-power-to-weight-ratio cars) easy to deal with. I believe the same flaw applies at all speeds, not just slow speeds.
Additionally the piece I included to illustrate the point seems to have missed its mark, so I will quote the main part I wanted to refer to on its own.
This also goes back to the level of understeer that GT4 exibits, which you states as being too extreme and too prevelant. Yet two people with experience of track driving (Niky and myself) relate how GT4's understeer is as severe as that which cane be experienced on the track, and we simply get dismissed.
The member who started this thread asked for people to make a direct comparison between GT4 and track (and dirt) based experience, which is exactly what Niky and myself have done. I do have to ask, why are our experences (mine from over a decade of track and proving ground driving) dismissed out of hand?
I've never claimed that GT4 is a perfect sim, as I strongly believe that the limits of the PS2 hardware limit what is possiable at present.. Yes other sims on the platform are better in some areas, but also have there own limits in other areas.
Did it seem like I dismissed your and Niky's on-track experiences? If so, then I apologize, but I do not recall directly doing so. There's a difference between understeer being "as severe as can be experienced on the track," as you say, and understeer
exhibiting all of the same characteristics as experienced on the track. I have no doubt that roadcars tend to understeer on a racetrack -- Enthusia's cars do it, Live for Speed's cars do it, and I'm sure my car will do it if I ever get a chance to run Road America. However, my statement that GT4's understeer is "too extreme" is
not meant as a comment on its intensity, or raw probability -- what I mean is that GT4 exhibits
the wrong characteristics of understeer. In Enthusia and LFS, the cars feel "alive." You can actually
feel the weight that they possess. They move about on their suspensions convincingly, and if you botch a corner entry, yes, it's possible that you could understeer, but you could also
oversteer, depending on how you screw up. Botch a corner entry on GT4, and almost no matter what, your car "seizes up" as if it had a stroke, and plummets towards the wall in über-understeer mode. If you want to initiate a drift mid-corner in LFS or Enthusia, it's just a matter of using the brakes, wheel, and/or throttle to get the weight transfer going and the power flowing. If you want to initiate a drift mid-corner in GT4, you're pretty much S.O.L. If you want to toss a light, underpowered car around and have some fun doing some slides, LFS and Enthusia will deliver. Try to do the same thing in GT4, and it's understeer-, overcorrection-, and frustration-city.
Also, my laptime may have been rather dismal, but don't go forgetting that I have had track experience, myself. Unless
you'd like to dismiss
that.
Again, I just seemed as if a direct comparison was being odne between EPR and GT4, but using two cars that in truth only share a name and heritage.
Would it help if I used the E46 M3 GTR in both games? If so, my statements and opinions about their handling characteristics go unchanged -- I've already compared those two before. The E30 M3 came up as a closer comparison to my real car, and simply because that was the car I chose to do donuts and drifting in while writing that post.
Only last night I was reading a number of posts about how people do use the Gymkhana as an area to practice drifting in GT4. Guess this one can have a lot to do with the individual involved.
It does have to do with the individual -- while I'm thinking to myself, "jeez, this drifting is so fake-looking, and awkward to control...it's just 'wannabe' drifting." Someone else might think, "wow, this drifting stuff is harder than I thought -- I better keep practicing." A third person might think, "darn, I just can't do this at all. If only I knew how to tune my cars to drift..." Deciding which viewpoint is more qualified and/or accurate is up to you.
Ok you have me now, I can't take seriously a statement that claims Midnight Club 3 allows you to read suspension movment better that GT4. You may find this to be true (for yourself), but I do strongly think that the majority of people here would disagree.
There's a
large gap between stating "Midnight Club 3 features a more visually dynamic suspension than GT4" and "Midnight Club 3 is more realistic than GT4."
Well darn, I was rather hoping you'd notice the same thing.
Rockstar has always done a good job of making their cars feel "alive," and modelling a rather dynamic suspension design.
For crying out loud, in Grand Theft Auto you can get cars up on two wheels under cornering and even roll them over! In GT4 and EPR, you can't! Doesn't that count for anything in your eyes?
The two photo you used, while interesting, do not unfortunatly 100% prove anything. Either of the cars in question could have been modified and/or tuned before the pictures were taken, which would have an effect on the way camber is visualy shown.
Even then, it still depends on how the camber is used. Forza clearly has visiable camber movement, yet to use your own words:"Forza is just a big joke".
Forza has visible camber movement? Wow...Anyway, perhaps I should PM the author of those photos. In any case, the absence of visual camber
does demonstrate one thing -- that it's
possible that PD had overlooked it. I didn't really mean for it to prove any more than that, anyway. Read that portion of my post again -- I
do mention the possibility that it is simply absent in the visual model, and still represented behind-the-scenes.
Now please do not take this as a cliam that GT4 does or does not model x, y or z. The points I am trying to make are.
1. I would rather have a physics engine that uses basic information well, than one that uses complex information badly. Even if GT4 falls into the former, I would rather have that. To preempt a possiable answer, I do not accept that GT4 uses basic information badly.
2. I don't think that without seeing the actual physics model at work you can make cliams about how it is operating. Its rather a large leap to take.
1. I agree, I would rather have a game perform realistically from basic data than unrealistically from complex data. However, although I'm sure it's possible to create a fairly realistic model without camber, it's one of those things that is a
common "ingredient" in realistic sims. Just look at how much better LFS S2 drives compared to S1 -- S2 incorporated full suspension modelling, more accurate suspension movement (for example, a change of camber upon compression on MacPherson struts), and more accurate tire deformation. Those details are too minute for "basic information," but they helped LFS's realism greatly.
2. Well, GT4's physics model
looks, moves, and behaves in a way that I deem unrealistic, artificially smooth, and awkward. Does it really seem like
that big of a jump to then assume that the physics system is programmed in a way that I deem unrealistic and too simple?
I've seen the Mr Deep video before, and while it is interesting, to be 100% impartial you could say that all it proves is that Mr Deap is comfortable drifting in EPR and not in GT4. Or are all the people who post videos in the GT4 drifting threads making it all up?
My intentions in posting the Mr. Deap video were 100% emotional, 0% factual.
My M3 figures were never intended as proof of anything (although it is a little strange that my data is not proof of anything but Mr Deaps video is relevent).
See above.
The data was originally put togther for myself, in an attempt to see if any of the GT4 tyres was close to real figures. Also to see the differences between the tyres themselves, as an aid to car modification and tuning.
You have however made exactly the same point as I have done with regard to different sims, just because one person says it has the 'feel' of a real car, and another disagrees does not automatically make one right and the other wrong.
Given the comments made by a lot of racing drivers, motoring writers, etc about both GT4 and EPR, are all the ones who rate GT4 wrong. Is Tiff Needell an idiot because he rates GT4? What about the author of a piece in Car magazine that compares the 'ring in GT4 to the real thing after driving both, he says, and I quote "Karussell. Here, the game is uncannily real: if you are flat out on screen, you're flat out in the real car". Written by someone with the ability to test the same car in both GT4 and real life, who was able to compare GPS data logging data between boty. Someone who evaluates, tests and writes about car performance for a living. Is he also totally wrong, because its starting to seem as if a lot of people who are paid to evaluate cars must be wrong, or are they.
BTW - entire piece on GT4 and the 'ring, no mention of how bad and unrealistic the understeer is, damn you'd think someone like this would know what they were talking about.
I could say the same thing -- are you saying that a proffesional racecar driver like
Gan-San, or any of the other people there, are unqualified in evaluating Enthusia?
In the end, pretty much all of those testimonies, on either side, are bogus anyway, for a few reasons. Of course, there's always the possibility of compensation, or simply indifference. There's also the fact that a story deriding one of the absolute most-popular racing games ever made wouldn't go over so well with the public.
However, the most important one in my eyes, is that people like Tiff, who are brought on to test GT4, are likely to have never played any other driving games/sims.
Of course he's going to be impressed, and say things like "wow, this is pretty good -- of course, it isn't perfect, but it's good." He has nothing to compare it to, and has simply been shoved in front of a game that attempts to replicate reality, as opposed to Burnout, Need for Speed, and any other over-the-top racing games that Tiff may have noticed before at his local shopping mall.
The only interview I trust is that of Gan-San, who has obviously played GT4, among other games, and found EPR to be the best/most-realistic on the console market.
I'd be more than happy to acknowledge a similar review from an equally-qualified driver who has played both games, stating the opposite, but as of yet, I do not know of such an interview.
And before you say, "what about the GPS data logging" and whatnot, the staff of Enthusia have done the same thing,
here and
here . As you and I have discussed just now, I don't think numbers truly
prove a sim's competence, but I thought you might be interested in those pages nonetheless.
I do disagree, but perhaps not in the way yo umay imagine. LFS is better than either GT4 or EPR, that I would not argue with at all. It has the advantage of running on a PC, rather than being limited by the technical restraints of a PS2. Its still not perfect and the lack of (apart from two) real cars a big minus to me.
I agree with that downside to LFS -- the car selection is the reason why I tend to play EPR more.
Enthusia in terms of purely the engine I would rate slightly higher than GT4, but it still has a number of weak areas in the physics model, particularly at very high speed and with race spec cars. As an overall package I still prefer GT4, the car range in EPR is very good, but its still limited (anyone who says it does not have any duff cars is talking out of their a**e - 2CV Charleston anyone).
However the interface is shockingly bad, the AI (while better that GT - which is not hard) is still not great, only a few of the tracks standout, with some of the early city tracks (Rev City very Ridge Racer) and rally tracks being a joke (lets all rally in a cave, very Mario), the nasty car upgrade system (far to RPG - I've got a Lvl 10 2CV) and the basic and simplistic nature of tuning cars.
It is however still a very good sign to see a strong competitor to GT4 (which Forza is not), because this is needed, and I keep my fingers crossed for a second EPR.
R-Class cars are unrealistic, and drift recovery is easy, especially at higher speeds. Yes. But do those flaws
really drag EPR as far down as GT4, with its ineffective handbrake, nonexistent donuts, terrible low-speed traction physics and drifting, lack of proper limited-slip-diff simulation, alarmingly artificial, "lifeless" suspension/car movement, slow gear-shifting, etc....I could go on, but I assume I've run out of things that you would possibly agree with.
My point is, you have to look at what's
more important, and what flaws are
more damaging to each respective physics system. As far as I'm concerned, the R-class cars are easy to avoid and constitute the minority of the car selection, and the easy drifting does nothing but make things
more enjoyable. Nothing on that list of flaws makes GT4 more enjoyable for me. Only more frustrating.
Its a damn good game, the sense of speed thing is not a major issue to me. Its all a case of perception anyway. Do 140mph in a car on a runway and it hardly seems to be moving. Do 70mph in the same car with a hedge 3 feet from you and it seems like a 140mph.
All the more reason for RBR to be faster-looking, since rally often involves hedges and other plants/obstacles close to the track. Also, sense of speed
is affected by how a programmer sets it. Haven't you ever played with LFS's field-of-view adjuster? The smaller your field of view is, the slower everything will seem. It's the same reason why, when a video camera is looking out through the windshield, zooming in will make everything seem slower.
Racing drivers also often talk about when they are in the zone, how everything seems to move slower and they have more time to react. A sense of speed is relative to the individual, and the lack of peripheral vision caused by a full face helmet does also reduce the sense of speed.
You're right about the helmet, but as I said above, sense-of-speed in videogames is hardly a person-to-person thing (at least, not by itself). It doesn't even
have to involve field-of-view -- if the game's speedometer is off, or the sense of scale is off (common problem in NFS games), it can have negative effects on the sense of speed.
As for the "zone" thing, I know what you mean, and I'd rather do it myself than have the game do it for me.
BTW - Please be aware that I was under the influence of certain alcoholic beverages when writing this.
I understand.
Merry Christmas!
