Can you feel the road talking to you?

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craste

craste

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Here in the UK the British motorist has to pay more for their cars/fuel etc than almost anywhere else in the world.

And what do we get for this - fantastics smooth as silk roads - I wish!!

The roads in the UK are terrible thats why car manufacturers often fine tune their new yet to be released vehicles in the UK as well as the Nurburgring.

They say that if a car rides and handles good on UK roads it'll work anywhere else in the world.

So what I'm trying to say here is I'd love to see some "crap" roads in new tracks in GT5 so that we have nasty expansion joints, pot holes, raised man-hole covers and cambers etc to throw your car off its chosen course as you negoiate corners etc.

As you race around the current London track there are lots of repaired pieces of tarmac and man hole covers but as you drive over them you don't feel anything through the force feedback. It would add to the realism if the wheel jolted as you flew over a badly scarred peice of tarmac or manhole cover.

Also if you whizz round in an executive car like the new Jaguar XF the road would be ironed out and appear smoother but then when you tackle the same road again in your new Honda Civic Type R (with its backwards stepping rear torsion beam suspension instead of the previos multi-link arrangement) your teeth will be rattling as you race around the same section of 'bad' tarmac.

(The Jag and Type R must be in GT5 - I'd bet on it)

"Feel" - thats what its all about - we want to feel that we are really driving that car.
 
opera paris in GT4 felt like a real road. i hope PD carrys this over to GT5
 
I can feel the potholes in various PC sims (or at least tarmac changes - there tend not to be potholes in the simulated tracks I race). PD are quite a way behind in FFB quality, but hopefully they will improve things by the full release.

Take Race07's Anderstorp 2007 track as a very simple example: On the back straight there is a new section of darker tarmac at the end. Not only do you feel the bump when you go onto that bit, you also feel the change in road surface (at least you do with a G25) and you have to be aware that braking distances are different on that section than on other corners.
 
Don't complain about roads in the UK untill you go to Puerto Rico. I have seen potholes big enough to be craters from some bomb.
 
I feel that PD could do a little bit more with the tactile response of the roads.

Cruising at 200mph down the straightaway at HSR it's completely dead for feedback.
 
Sounds like a great idea, but extremely difficult (if not impossible) to replicate as you never know how a car is going to react to a different piece of road at different speeds unless you trial that sort of thing. And with the ever-changing nature of a public road, it's almost impossible to recreate in a video game.

Gran Turismo already has an awesome feel to the way the road 'talks' to drivers and whilst there's always room for improvement, I can't imaging PD going to the lengths to run a Civic over a piece of road to try and simulate whether or not it tramtracks on a certain piece of bitumen. That sort of simulation would have to be done with every different tyre/suspension/rideheight/camber/toe/damper/spring setting imaginable.

Then we'd have GT5 in 2049 instead of 2009 and in another 40 years, I'll be dead, LOL.
 
AERO_HDT
Sounds like a great idea, but extremely difficult (if not impossible) to replicate as you never know how a car is going to react to a different piece of road at different speeds unless you trial that sort of thing. And with the ever-changing nature of a public road, it's almost impossible to recreate in a video game.

Gran Turismo already has an awesome feel to the way the road 'talks' to drivers and whilst there's always room for improvement, I can't imaging PD going to the lengths to run a Civic over a piece of road to try and simulate whether or not it tramtracks on a certain piece of bitumen. That sort of simulation would have to be done with every different tyre/suspension/rideheight/camber/toe/damper/spring setting imaginable.

Then we'd have GT5 in 2049 instead of 2009 and in another 40 years, I'll be dead, LOL.
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No, I don't think they need to go to that sort of length to emulate road conditions, but adding a bit more texture to pavement surfaces is much needed.

It's not about simulating actual tire over bump responses and how that can affect stability, but merely livening up the feedback on the wheel. They already model this with the curbs on a track, so why not do the same with the track surface? It needn't be a replica of road surfaces, but some bumps and vibration effects at high speed would definitely aid in immersion.

GT4 did a great job of this with la Sarthe (le Mans). It made the drive interesting, and taught you to hold on tightly to the wheel at 200mph. In HSR, along the straight you let go of the wheel and drive in a straight line. There's zero feeling in the wheel. For this generation of racing games, I find that disappointing.

At this point in the series, I think a bit more attention needs to be diverted into other aspects of the driving experience. Graphics are bar none the best of any game, but tactile and sound effects are mediocre. Road surfaces are probably the most important, and we should be at the point where they can simulate things like wind effects. We all know how it feels driving on the highway in high wind at 70mph... why nothing in a race car going twice that? Surely these sorts of things can be implemented and interpreted by the physics engine without requiring all out test-modeling...
 
aphextwin
No, I don't think they need to go to that sort of length to emulate road conditions, but adding a bit more texture to pavement surfaces is much needed.

It's not about simulating actual tire over bump responses and how that can affect stability, but merely livening up the feedback on the wheel. They already model this with the curbs on a track, so why not do the same with the track surface? It needn't be a replica of road surfaces, but some bumps and vibration effects at high speed would definitely aid in immersion.

GT4 did a great job of this with la Sarthe (le Mans). It made the drive interesting, and taught you to hold on tightly to the wheel at 200mph. In HSR, along the straight you let go of the wheel and drive in a straight line. There's zero feeling in the wheel. For this generation of racing games, I find that disappointing.

At this point in the series, I think a bit more attention needs to be diverted into other aspects of the driving experience. Graphics are bar none the best of any game, but tactile and sound effects are mediocre. Road surfaces are probably the most important, and we should be at the point where they can simulate things like wind effects. We all know how it feels driving on the highway in high wind at 70mph... why nothing in a race car going twice that? Surely these sorts of things can be implemented and interpreted by the physics engine without requiring all out test-modeling...
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Brilliant response - like you say when you hit the rumble strips you can feel it - so its there and ready to be used - they just need to put a few 'rumbles' through the wheel every now and again as you go over bumps etc to make the game, well, to make the game come ALIVE.
 
Yeah that's fair enough, I agree with that sort of sentiment, hehe. It sounded like you were asking the world before, LOL.

I found that there was a lot more force feedback in GT4 as well, I don't know why they turned it down so much for GT5P. Could it be the physics model is hard enough as it is without introducing unnecessary bumps? If it is, then it's certainly a bit weak, because I'm all for realistic surfacing and a bit more 'grit' to the tracks themselves. The current circuits are a little bit too 'sterile' for my liking.

Nice to see you on GTP Aphex, been missing you at the other site lately....
 
nissan tuner
opera paris in GT4 felt like a real road. i hope PD carrys this over to GT5
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Really? I only felt that the extreme inside of the left-hander just before the first sector was the only part that resembled a real road, probably because it constantly threw me into the barriers on the far side because of the lowered apex.
 
AERO_HDT
Yeah that's fair enough, I agree with that sort of sentiment, hehe. It sounded like you were asking the world before, LOL.

I found that there was a lot more force feedback in GT4 as well, I don't know why they turned it down so much for GT5P. Could it be the physics model is hard enough as it is without introducing unnecessary bumps? If it is, then it's certainly a bit weak, because I'm all for realistic surfacing and a bit more 'grit' to the tracks themselves. The current circuits are a little bit too 'sterile' for my liking.

Nice to see you on GTP Aphex, been missing you at the other site lately....
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Hehe, well I should be here for a while. I'm just getting my feet wet online, and I'm realizing I have to relearn how to tune.
 
I guess I'm a bit spoiled since I drive 2 of the most communicative cars on a daily basis ('91 MX-5, '84 911 Carrera w/ no power steering) and in my opinion, GT has a loooong way to go in replicating the road feedback that I'm used to. It is just not even close...

Maybe if I compared it to driving a Camry or a Civic, then I might have a different opinion about GTP.

However, for a game, it might be one of the best...I can't say for certain since I haven't played the PC sims.
 
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