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- icefox1983
The essense of GT, some would argue, is the physics engine. It is indeed very good. However, there are more accurate and sophisticated physics engines out there -- LFS, GTR, iRacing, etc. So this alone won't make GT5 King of Racing Games (any objections to the title?).
The way I see it, GT is the King because of one thing -- the accurate recreation of driving characteristics of 1000 cars (P or S). As many (say Jeremy Clarkson) have testified, this car doesn't loose grip gradually but suddenly it's mad, in that car it's not easy to shift weight to front tire, and in GT they feel exactly this way!
Engine torque curve etc. are easy enough to recreate. However, I'm curious how handling characteristics are recreated. I figure there are two ways: Fundamental, where as weight distribution and suspension geometry are recreated and they are so accurate as to make the car drive just like the real one, or Superficial, where there are parameters such as "graduation of grip loss" and cars are tuned to simulate what they are in real life.
I certainly wish and almost believe GT goes the fundamental way, but have a doubt because it seems to be so hard to do... I mean the physics engine must be almost Matrix-like to recreate every nuance. For example, in GT-R the powertrain is attached to chasis in a way that it sort of moves around and refines weight distribution. To recreate that, GT's engine must support dynamic weight distribution. Also, Lancer Evo has torque vectoring, and it's a pretty sophisticated system to accurately recreate (I think it's possible only by looking at Mitsubishi's source code). These sound too much for a video game.
It is possible that a mixture is used. For most cars fundamental simulation is enough. For Kaz's favorite such as GT-R, Evo or NSX-R, "additives" further highlights their characteristics. Yeah, some would argue it's cheating, but the outcome is pretty darn good.
The way I see it, GT is the King because of one thing -- the accurate recreation of driving characteristics of 1000 cars (P or S). As many (say Jeremy Clarkson) have testified, this car doesn't loose grip gradually but suddenly it's mad, in that car it's not easy to shift weight to front tire, and in GT they feel exactly this way!
Engine torque curve etc. are easy enough to recreate. However, I'm curious how handling characteristics are recreated. I figure there are two ways: Fundamental, where as weight distribution and suspension geometry are recreated and they are so accurate as to make the car drive just like the real one, or Superficial, where there are parameters such as "graduation of grip loss" and cars are tuned to simulate what they are in real life.
I certainly wish and almost believe GT goes the fundamental way, but have a doubt because it seems to be so hard to do... I mean the physics engine must be almost Matrix-like to recreate every nuance. For example, in GT-R the powertrain is attached to chasis in a way that it sort of moves around and refines weight distribution. To recreate that, GT's engine must support dynamic weight distribution. Also, Lancer Evo has torque vectoring, and it's a pretty sophisticated system to accurately recreate (I think it's possible only by looking at Mitsubishi's source code). These sound too much for a video game.
It is possible that a mixture is used. For most cars fundamental simulation is enough. For Kaz's favorite such as GT-R, Evo or NSX-R, "additives" further highlights their characteristics. Yeah, some would argue it's cheating, but the outcome is pretty darn good.
