Demo Review by GTP (extra comments will be added)

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I've spent some time and went through the demo thread and found comments by the members of GTP regarding the Gran Turismo 5: Prologue demo. Hopefully this will help those who do not have a PS3/GT5:P demo


AI GOOD

AndrewOval: THE AI HAS STEPPED IT UP BIG TIME

Specialized: Something i did notice howeve ris the AI. I did a very ambitious over taking manuver where i went down the inside of 3 cars. Im pleased to report that not a single one of them turned in on where my car was. Luck or better ai? im not sure

Earth: Tested the AI, drove side by side through the esses with AI cleanly! The ai has moved out of my way numerous times now, even on straights, and they race side by cleanly now, no more running you off the road. The AI brakes frequently to avoid playing bumper cars with other AI. The AI can be fun to watch, unpredictable unlike GT4. Overall the AI is respectable for the first time in the GT series.

GT: The AI is better - they won't run you off the road on a straight anymore! After several races the only contact I've had with them is when I have ran into them and when I braked too early. They definitely seem to try and avoid you more now.

turbomp301: The AI has definitely improved. That is a fact that cannot be dissputed

Digital-Nitrate: They appear more "self aware"

DarthTurismo: ...has changed a lot.... not sure what the dissapointed ppl were expecting but after playing around and spinning out etc etc.... it is clear that they try to avoid you... change their line, brake hard... overcorrect.... all the things you would expect.... i did a 180 in the middle of the track at high speed and saw 6 cars behind me suddenly all spread to avoid me!!! only 1 clipped me as it was attempting to swerve! the rest missed! that's pretty good :-) It is also normal to see them fighting one another for position and even going off the track because they are trying too hard....

DaveA: The AI isn't great, but it has improved, they do recognise your there now and most bumps were my fault, not the AI's.

phantasm: MAJOR improvement from GT4. While it still can be better in terms of avoidance when you're doing something stupid (like spinning out or coming to a dead stop in the preferred racing line or coming back on the track wildly after going off) it seems to respect its surroundings much more. Seen lots of good signs compared to GT4, lots of passing, very little single file racing (only when it was advantageous to draft), no evidence of bumper cars, and AI making mistakes (running wide, spinning out, over braking, etc) and 95% of collisions were b/c of something i did

Raitziger: AI does good job of avoiding collisions with player, but lacks driving tallent

Jedi2016: I could count at least three or four occasions where, if I were in GT4, I would have been hit.. but I didn't. Maybe fifteen to twenty incidents where the computer has left it's racing line to avoid hitting me. A couple of examples. I went off-track twice today in the middle of a pack of cars. There were several cars coming up behind me when I got back onto the track, doing maybe 20mph (they're doing a hundred). Guess how many times I got hit coming back onto the track? Zero. I counted six cars that moved around me on those two occasions, and none of them so much as scratched my paint. That's what I call a real-world example of the "stop in the middle of the track" scenario, and in my case, the computer passed the test with flying colors on both occasions.

There have been multiple occasions where I've passed a car on the inside of a corner, and the AI car has remained on the outside. Once I even took a corner too sharp, cutting onto the grass (playing the "don't hit the AI" game from GT4, because the AI car was on the inside rumble strip). I was going too fast, and moved back onto the track halfway through the corner, and I hit nothing... the AI moved slightly to the left until he was past me (I got slowed down in the grass).

Oh, and the AI not being aggressive enough? I was driving Pro mode on N2 tires today, after reading the "Which tire?" thread (I'm going back to my S3s and to hell with "real" tires.. hehe). Anyway, I was driving very poorly as a result of the slippery car, and causing a bit of a backup of the cars behind me. If I didn't know better, I'd say the car immediately behind me was getting pissed. He kept darting to the left and right, trying desparately to get around me. Probably would have, too, if we had been driving different cars. As it was, our acceleration was identical and he just didn't have the muscle to get around me. But he looked like he definitely wanted to, and in a bad way. If he were a human driver, I would have said he was about two seconds away from ramming me just to get me the hell out of his way.


AI BAD

Kamus: The AI is horrible still, it IS somewhat different from the AI in GT4. but it's by no means good. it still has a long way to go...just about evry car hiting you as soon as they get close enough.

Speedster502: The AI I think are good,however they still make some mstakes i.e was pushed off the racing line around one of the esses.

matherto: the F430, in second is glued to the back of the GTR, it wont overtake, its following the exact same line, and down the back straight, it was bumping into the back of it every five seconds, it won't pull out and try to pass it.

Jedi2016: it still drives kinda funky in the corners.. brake-gas-brake-brake-gas, etc. They occasionally bump into each other (and me, with my sometimes overzealous braking into a sharp corner). Overall, their behavior isn't as smooth as a human driver's would be. As far as their general driving skill, I would say it's unchanged from GT4.

AI SCORE
11:tup: 4:tdown:


In Car View Good

Earth: Incar view isperfect, at times i forgot i was driving incar, perfect visibility. There is NO reason why ANYONE should race outside the cockpit in GT5. I've played alot of racing games and this cockpit view is the best I've seen. You can see the apex of turns, which most cockpit views in other racing games don't let you see

Kamus: the in car view, it's very nice...

Stevisiov90: it was bettier than I was expecting, you veiw bobs around a bit through G-force, the gauges work nicely, the interior looks stunning, then you press look behind and you can see the rear-wind screen and the big red Evo spoiler, nice

Digital-Nitrate: I really did not believe I would have any interest in using the new cockpit view... and I was dead wrong! It's enough to make me want to get a 3-screen PS3 set-up just to get the complete peripheral view.

DaveA: The in car view is great

phantasm: The cockpit view is amazing and will be my standard view of choice, added a new level of depth to the game i can't get enough of!



In Car View Bad

Kamus: the shadows need more res though, because sometimes when the light is hitting in a certain way the shadows looks really messy

GT: Great graphics too, but the mirrors, particularly the wing mirrors, look quite poor

dan_gtp: While in the cockpit view, the steering wheel doesn't rotate more then 200 deegrees...
What happened to all those fab looking hands crossing we saw in the trailers? This is quite anoying to me, especially when you correct a massive slide, my G25 wheel is almost at full 900 deegrees, and the in game wheel has hardly moved

slackbladder: The internal shadows need some work

liveforspeed: The hand animations, no animation for shifting, or hand-over-hand action

Earth: The shadows range from smooth most of the time to very jaggy at times.

In Car View Score
6:tup: 6:tdown:



SOUND GOOD

Mx2: anyone else hear the roar of the Mustang GT as you pass it? i think they finally nailed the car sounds.

Earth: The mustang GT sounds mean! makes the gt4 mustang sound like a kitten! cars that suppose tosound great do, like the ferrari and mustang gt. They have improved the sound over GT4 dramaticly. Big V8s have the rumble now. The Ferrari has that exotic sound. The Audi R8 has it's unique sound. The cars that are suppose to sound great, sound great.

Scaff: While the sounds are not 100% what I would expect they certainly are not crappy, again they have moved on a big way from GT4. What does impress with the sound set-up is the separation, running a descent home cinema its perfectly possible to tell the position of any other car around you simply from its sound.

Stevisiov90: ...I pulled alongside a mustang, and the mustang sounded impressive

Digital-Nitrate: I found the car sounds to be both superb and very realistic and not at all over exaggerated as found in some well known driving games... especially fed through 7.1 channel surround... fantastic low hertz base response from low RPMs!

phantasm: all the cars actually SOUND DIFFERENT! WOOT!

GrandPrix: there really is a lot of depth going on in the engine sounds department! Although some of the cars don't sound exactly like their real counterparts like with the F430, they do at least sound like petrol engines. Sound has improved vastly from GT4.

Speedster502: The sound of the cars is too me quite good, I had surround sound on and it was good. Yes, my own car I was driving didn't sound too good as the wind noise overide it but the AI's cars engines sounded good

Famine: The sound is much improved. I plumb my sound through a pair of Yamaha MS-101/II Monitor Speakers and the cars certainly don't sound like "modified leaf-blowers".



SOUND BAD

Kamus: The sounds are also a complete dissapointment, again

GT: I agree with the sound not being the best... Maybe improved a little, but they still remind me if GT4's

DarthTurismo: for me they appear to be all the same sounds we have heard before but at a higher bit rate....... i have a full surround sound set-up so it is coming out the best it can. It's not terribly bad or anything but it is very much the same as GT4. There have been a lot of comments about the Mustang V8 and how it sounds... I would say that it is sounding meatier from behind.... but if u watch a replay set the replay to follow the Mustang and then change the view to bumper cam u will notice it is pretty much as Kamas said (a blender)

slackbladder: The sound has improved but it still needs work. The exhaust and engine sound should be seperate rather than blended in and with a bit more bite to it. The F430 does sound right, essentially, but could do with some more guts.

phantasm: this has been my biggest disappointment so far. Only a minor upgrade from GT4

V1P3R: The sound department needs to be fired period.

matherto: the F430 sounds horribly synthetic, nothing like the real car

Jedi2016: The main flaw in the engine sounds this time around isn't so much the way it's processed, but rather what it simply doesn't have. The Ferrari appears to be the best example of this. The sound itself appears to be very accurate, but it's missing the "oomph" that the real car has under heavy acceleration. It's like listening to your surround system with the subwoofer turned off. The sound is the same, but feels incomplete.


Sound Score
9:tup: 8:tdown:



GRAPHICS GOOD

Mx2: the mirrors are good they show u the car behind you most importantly lol

Kamus: The demo looks amazing, it's VERY pretty to look at

Stevisiov90: First thing that hits you is the graphics, and they are impressive...The crowd, is acctually there, there is atmosphere unlike GT4, you acctually feel as if you are at an event

Digital-Nitrate: Graphics are tremendous, but I can see plenty of room for improvement!

slackbladder: What makes this demo and the game look so good is the lighting. Perhaps a little too much bloom but generally it's excellent, the best I've seen in any racing game

phantasm: what can we say even at this demo level the visuals are stunning

speedster502: The graphics are even more jaw dropping in game than I thought they would be, to me its a huge improvement to GTHD

Earth: The cars are very detailed. photo mode is unbelieveably real and gorgeous. Easily mistakeable for real life. I can picture a real person walking around and not looking out of place. It's THAT good looking.

Jedi2016: Daytona looks good, but then again, it's a very simple track. White walls on one side, grass on the other. But it looks more "polished" than Suzuka. Overall, though, I think the game looks fantastic. Even in it's early state, I think I can say with some confidence that it's the best-looking racing game on the market right now. The things that it has problems with (AA, shadow mapping), are countered by the things that it does better than the others (smoothness, 60fps, and it's exceptional HDR lighting).




GRAPHICS BAD

DarthTurismo: very pretty (but have noticed a strange clipping/jitter at times??? has anyone else noticed? Even in the car screens!!!

Samberto: Screen tearing - it's worse for me in 1080P

slackbladder: There is a little frame rate drop, mainly on the final chicane . A decrease in the HDR would be nice as driving in the in-car view creates a white sky

phantasm: Some minor clipping issues and obviously more 3d rendering into the environments needs to be there (trees, texture on grass),

SOLID_LIFTERS: While the graphics are next gen, I'm having a lot of problems with jaggies. I have 1080p HDTV set that's amazing. However, I get a lot of jaggies and image smears and it looks bad, when it happens.

nafai23: It just does not look all that good. I enjoyed the look of GTHD...shimmering, terrible v-snyc issues, and frame slowdowns

liveforspeed: The edges of the cars have an ugly white crap thing around it, really distracting and takes away from the beauty of the cars. Scenery around the tracks doesn't look too great if you ask me. Extremely ugly with smears all over the cars, white **** that lines every line of the car. Really annoying, such a huge disappointment.

Earth: Suzuka looks too flat. Daytona looks too clean. There is slowdown (20-30fps) at certain parts of the track with certain amounts of cars. The graphics in general look 'early'.

Rocket Punch: The game drop frames in certain situations. Track way to clean and way too smooth, That totally took the realism away.

Kamus: The tracks in GT5:P remind me of those in GT3, they look very under-detailed compared to the cars
linoleum - Wow, underwealming. Honestly, I think the GT:HD was a more polished demo. [with a better selection of cars] When viewing cars in the new showroom, it continuously

Max_DC: Some tearing every now and then, frame rate might drop sometimes aswell

Ske: Crisp but artifact-ridden graphics, too much depth-of-field hurt my eyes a bit in the long run

Jedi2016: the shadow-mapping seems incomplete. This is especially noticable on the Daihatsu. Look at the shadow of the steering wheel on the dashboard.. it's fugly. Seeing as how the other cars have much better shadows, I'm assuming this is a sign of "work in progress". The track. I don't like the track (Suzuka), I'm afraid. It looks like exactly what it is.. a slightly revamped version of the GT4 track. Few more polygons here and there, some better textures here and there, but otherwise unchanged.



Graphics Score
9:tup: 13:tdown:



PHYSICS GOOD

Grand Prix: The advanced physics option is awesome! The cars can actually oversteer

Scaff: donuts are easily achievable, ditto with handbrake turns and power-oversteer can be implemented out of 2 and 3 gear turns. This is quite a bit different to the GT4 physics engine, in which all of the above were pretty much impossible to achieve. One things that's clearly different with the physics engine is the lack (I'm glad to say) of the silly tyre bog down when you go wide open throttle from a standing start.

The gravel traps are a nice touch as well, they defiantly slow you down in a big way when trying to get out.

JAGUAR1977: nothings perfect but this is pretty damn good

Earth: oversteer is possible now. Slides are more controllable. When you get hit from behind you just don't get shot forward anymore instead your car wiggles a bit.

Stevisivo90: The grass and gravel has a much bigger effect on you car. i tried the GTR on the grass and floored it, the rear end snaked about and I nearly lost it, you bounce and bounce over the gravel, like you see in normal racing

godzilla_GTR: man the new physic's are great. You can actually feel the wieght of the car's drasticlly improved along with braking.

dan_gtp: The physics seem to really improve in the area of trottle oversteer

Sphinx: Drafting is a lot less than in GT4. This is a good thing for Online Racing because it means those of us who lose time to the faster guys on the track cannot make up for lost time by drafting and overtaking them on the straight. The painful understeer that we had in GT4 seems to have gone.

DaveA: the basics feel familiar but the control you have over your tyre's grip levels is so much better, as is the power delivery. The tyre's don't seem to go from full grip to zero grip in factions of input anymore, theres a decent transition there.

phantasm: WOW! Donuts, parking brake turns, power-sliding, all doable now. Take out the BMW and let loose, it's nuts! Yes i do think the tire grip needs some improvement, and while the cars seem to have a bit more "weight" to them it could be better, but it has stepped up tremendously from GT4 in the right direction IMHO. Gone is the incessant wheel spin off a standing start in an RWD car for starters.

Rocket Punch: car physics in general had improved.

Famine: I think the understeer physics are much better, but the cars are a little too happy to step the tail out under braking. As a reference for how much improved the understeer physics is, I could clearly see my Evo X vibrating as though the inside-front was scrabbling as I tried to put too much power on, too early in the corner.



PHYSICS BAD

Kamus: the new "simulation" mode is completley underwhelming, this doesn't feel that much different from GT4...it is somewhat less forgiving, but it has the same dreaded feel from the old one
I've disabled evry aid (i use DFP only.) and i'm using regular tires as oposed to the racing ones, while this gets the grip somewhat realistic, it still feels very loose as oposed to a real car or other sims out there. (you don't get feedback to tell just when you're about to lose grip... just like in GT4.)
In short, it's not even close to EPR physics, and this is very dissapointing to me..
So, at least as far as GT5 prologue goes, we can now confirm that the new physics engine is nothing more than a modified mode of the old physics engine, which of course is the problem to begin with. The tyre simulation is bad! this is, the most important thing in a simulator. and they didn't get it right. Now, you CAN get the tyres to feel more realistic if you choose the non racing ones, but the problem is that even those don't feel realistic enough, the grip just doesn't feel right at all, it doesn't feel like you're on actual tyres. They just made the new physics mode "harder" but it is based on the SAME engine, and like i said. that's the problem to begin with, because that engine isn't acurate.

Speedster502: The new physics don't feel new really, just a modified version of GT4. Which is a shame as I expected some great things from it.

Ske: pro mode (second option) seemed a bit too oversteery (and arcadey, too quick front end) to me. Classic mode (first option) felt more natural, but I was completely unable to powerslide the BMW with it. Keep in mind that I'm not that used to GT4 anymore either. Countersteer snapback is still overly harsh and severe, maybe signifying that there are still fundamental flaws within the physics. Not really improved over GT4 in this field (pro mode).

Famine: The physics are improved, but they've leaned a little far into oversteer now


Physics Score
12:tup: 4:tdown:

Earth's summary of the results

It appears gtplanet believes the physics and AI has been improved greatly.

However, most are not impressed with how sloppy the graphics can be at times, which affected the In Car View score. Hopefully PD will get all the graphic glitches/bugs figured out before GT5 and hopefully in time for GT5:P.

gtplanet appears to be split over the sound, though. It seems you either enjoy the sound or hate it.
 
nice review of all members. im suprised there weren't more complaints about the physics an AI. Must be the few who do complain about it just repeating themselves through the demo thread. We can safely assume that the game will improve by release.
 
Too bad that mine comments were omitted :( However - very good post, good information source, lets hope GT5P will be even better.
 
i think PD should do the same Bungie did with the Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta and allow players of the Prologue demo to issue "bug reports" so they know exactly what to fix instead of trying to fix what they think is wrong.
 
Great idea to collect all the comments together +rep (if i didn't need to spread it around a bit first)
 
AI:
I would like to reverse my thoughts on the AI. I shouldn't have use the r tires to test the AI as you literally will blow by them, but running at a slower pace reveals much more about the AI and how good really they are.

Graphics:
The demo may not be perfect, but it is one of the best looking driving game on a console.
 
In car view bad:

GT: Great graphics too, but the mirrors, particularly the wing mirrors, look quite poor
Do change this to good, as I find the view overall very good. There's just bits here and there that they need to improve apon, but nothing that makes me feel bad about it.
 
Interesting to see all the comments grouped together rather than drips and draps in crowded threads. At least I can vouch for my own words not being taken out of context which is good sign for when I read the others 👍.
 
You can take out my negative comment on the sounds, I changed my mind and replaced it with the positive comment. 👍
 
-> Where can I post mine? I'd like to give my own opinions too. What are the criterias? And especially +++REP on that compilation.
 
Everyone is welcome to add thier opinion of the demo to this post, and I will add it, but I only ask try and keep comments on each particular feature to around 1 paragraph
 
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