So its been almost a year since I've played both GT and iRacing, I got both my copy of GT5 and my iRacing subscription in the same month last year... so this is a years worth of my observations, bare with me. lol.
I don't want to come off like I hate GT5 this isn't even about that, but these are largly the reasons why I only play GT5 a few times a month and play iRacing virtually every day.... I see so much potential in GT5, the game is oozing potential but at the same time there are so many things that bother me about it. I continue to play it mostly as a casual or social game, I've given up seeing it as any kind of competative avenue, but I hope some day that will change as the game no doubt will improve.
GT5 was pretty easy to settle into after xmas but I didn't really feel a huge urgency to play it because I had recently played alot of gt4 ... so doing all the liscensing over was tedious....but I was impressed by the networking options and the game seemed to have a bright future online. I did a little rally, drove around the ring etc. I was happy to be finally playing it but at the same time wasn't really overwhelming me with any kind of excitement.
As I got more into with gt5 I also spent more time getting into iRacing.
Why GT5 Needs Consequences
iRacing really kicked my ass.... as a begginner just finishing your first race without incidents is an accomplishment in itself. If you play with a clutch you really are in for a challenge as you are forced to learn proper footwork, smooth shifting, heel toe etc. hell toe Wrong and you spin the car out - pop it into the wrong gear and you blow the enging out and your race is done... on the spot - But because of these 'consequences' the sense of reward when you accomplish anything in that game is amazing, your first few clean overtakes, your first clean race, and eventually when you finally win one... the sense of reward from this game is second to none. Especially when you race online, because crashing and car contact matters ... you could easily get taken out of a race at any moment when in proximity to other drivers.... This puts you in the mindset of bringing your A-game or don't bother showing up. ..it raises the stakes to a level that 'most' console racers just have no concept of as yet. At first most of my races ended shortly in crashes.... but soon I adopted the strategy of driving safe - attempting to approach situations as if If I was using my own real world driving judgement (instead of my previous attempts at 1st lap heroics and retard strength dive bombing) to try to stay away from pile ups, aggressive drivers and my own slip ups... eventually as I got better I started to pressure the other drivers to see who'd choke and messup, only then I would pass if there was a clear opportunity - and further beyond that I would actually take the inside of corners and pray they'd race clean.
In GT5 however I really feel like there is way too much hand holding (Especially for a game that calls it self a SIMULATOR) - you can't drive out of the pits yourself - when you rally you get held back by invisible barriers ... its virtually impossible to break your car or the engine, the invisible walls on the Top Gear test track for me is especially bizare, not the mention the cones... why?.. you can't put snow tires on certain cars..... I know for a fact and have seen videos on youtube of people racing Karts in snow.. even F1 drivers have done it so wtf? ... but worst of all is probably the collisions. GT5 claims to be a simulation but in something like Richard burns rally when you drive your rally car off a cliff you've just driven your car off a cliff... in gt5 you literally can't make that mistake, so the consequence of that happening is never there.... thus the thrill of driving on those amazingly beautiful rally courses we have in gt5 is deminished.
GT5 needs better collisions, consequences AND Demerits
... the cars are virtually indestructable sure But where I really have a problem is in the crash physics ... not the actual damage but what happens when to 2 objects colide during a race. In gt5 the only way I can describe car contact is like 2 high speed bars of soap knocking into eachother, sometimes you even get that rubber band effect where there is a serious bounce off of eachother... but it all just seems wrong and its one of the biggest issues that I feel needs work
the collisions in iRacing however are very convincing, the cars generally react in a realistic manner to crashes and when there is contact its almost always bad or atleast very risky for both parties, you also get demerits for bad driving ... can you imagine how nice it would be in GT5 if aggressive bully drivers made less or even no money from racing dirty and you got bonuses for clean racing? ... there is no reward for good clean driving in GT5 and often I feel that people get more rewards from bad driving and forcing their way past you than actually racing properly ..... There is also no reason why GT5 can't adopt a similar Clean Driver Ranking, iRacers fret quite a bit about their safety rating ... good drivers take pride in racing clean and when iRacers have a string of bad races they end up at the bottom of the barrel keeping out of traffic, letting people pass and just trying to get that safety rating up ... how does that compair to GT5 where people just don't give a flying !@#$ and smash you out of the way from behind with no regard.
I know there is a penalty system in gt5, I just don't think it works very well... although I will admit the one in iRacing isn't perfect either.
Probably the first change I would make the GT5 or the next GT game would be to bring back Simulation Mode but this time when you buy a car its Break it and you buy it.... or if you crash it you fix it.... out of your own pocket with race earnings... if you want to race the same car all the time you have to race it clean and keep up repairs ... basically not use AI cars and online opponents as brakes... It would totally raise the level of play of every driver in GT5l.... it would be a huge incentive for people to race clean as they wouldn't want to risk smashing up their favorite cars. And if you don't like the sound of any of this there would always be Arcade Mode... hell I thought thats what it was for...
GT5 Needs More Fixed Class (Single Make Online Racing)
Back to GT5 ... as I discovered more and more how amazing and heated the races in iRacing could be.. I went back to GT5, maybe looking to see if I could apply some of my newly aquire racing skill to another game, maybe just because GT5 has more variety or just the fact that more people play it and its easier to get to know new people in GT5.... I had a hard time finding good races though, online races weren't very competative and often quite laggy or just a bunch of people screwing around..... so I found myself in Time Trials.... at first I was really getting into it but the Tuning aspect really turned me off, its not who can Time Trial the fastest with X car ... its who can find the fastest car out of 1000 and tune it... I found myself spending more time tuning and reading the forums for setups and such than I actually spent playing - On one occasion I spent a whole Saturday working on a Time Trial .. only to download a few of the fastest ghost cars to discover they were bouncing off the walls to get a better time.... I was like !@#$ this.
The exception was maybe the Nissan Challenge that was just that car - with that Time Trial I had alot of fun - but those are pretty rare.
But for me the Tuning issue is huge because I don't have the time or the patience for it, in iRacing I usually just download a setup for a car and I'm done..that takes about 5 mins at most .... but in GT5 90 percent of the time (just joining different servers) I had a slower car than alot of people, I was looking for online races where my skill level would be the defining factor, but I generally COULD LITERALLY NOT FIND THIS.... so I didn't have a fair chance most of the time and those races where it was fair were very difficult to find - nobody wants to race the recommended category and its just not happening .... even Nascar .. you buy a Nascar, join a Nascar server and a minute later someone online tells you you have no chance on their server and your better off leaving... its rediculous - by contrast in iRacing Everyone pretty much always has the same car because its fixed class racing (so its about bloody driving skill) the fact that there is virtually no fixed class racing in GT5 is a real shame - the races are rarely fair - even shuffle racing leaves much to be desired. And I'm not saying I'm always going to win with the same car but the results when I'm in a room where the host suddenly switches to All Karts ... or all whatever .. whenver everyone has the same car my results are drastically a different story.... I'm in the race usually in the lead pack or infront of the middle pack and sometimes even win a few... on the few occasions this occured it felt vindicating.
NET Code / Lag / Playability
And this ofcourse brings up the issue of league play, Ofcourse there are people out there like me who want this kind of fair racing, But in GT5 everything is up to the players to organize... you have to get on a forum like this, get talking to people and together work out when most people can get together to play etc. to sum it up its alot of work and showing up at a specific time gets tricky - by contrast iRacing is basically this 24/7 ... as the races start every hour on the hour or between and its all organized with no effort required by anyone.... sure there have been a few races where we only had a few people and some series are unfortunately less popular but its still a world of difference from GT5 where finding these kinds of races with like minded people is just alot more damn work
Maybe with this I'm asking too much - but I know the Online PS3 game MAG must have had some kind of dedicated servers because com'on 256 players and the game runs flawlessly?...... but something like Left for Dead (even on the PC) can only run 4 player coop smoothly without it... Dedicated server support is huge - its the reason PC games can easily run 32 even 64 players well... while the exact same titles on Console are running servers with 6 on 6... 8 on 8 .... lol
I don't know how much console gamers are aware of the tremendous difference dedicated server support makes to a game. GT5 obviously has a decent net code or it wouldn't work at all..... but lag is common enough to make me wonder if any result I get online is a fair one.
but iRacing's is virtually flawless - when you have 18 cars on a Nascar track running a tight draft bumper to bumper and just how smooth it runs. GT5 gets very twitchy, sometimes even with only a handful of players.... the worst I've seen iRacing is when one or maybe 2 cars were flashing ...but this isn't even common enough to consider common.... gt5 however lag is very common for alot of people and its amazing how bad it can get - the worst I've seen GT5 is racing behind a dust cloud of laggy cars as they snake around the track as if they aren't even remotely connected to the road at all... at the end of the day Servers are the reason iRacing can run a world championship for actual Cash Money and be legit while GT5 or any other game would have to run that thing live in person to have any credibility and fairness.
And to be honest I can't pick on GT5 as being alone with this lag problem, this is an issue with every online racing game I've ever seen that didn't have server support... Dirt Series, F12010 ... NFS Shift... hell everything..
What would be amazing if they somehow made an ap that could run on a windows server that would run/host the game from a PC ...and everyone would just connect to it. What this also does is literally provide a virtual place where people can meet... I know there are some great hosts out there in GT5 online, but with a Server you don't have to worry about someone Up and leaving everyone high and dry because he's missing the game or having a family crisis in the middle of a race meet.
Technology is amazing, there are solutions to everything.... Portal 2 is a cross platform game where supposedly ppl from ps3 and pc can play together... I think dedicated servers for GT5 running off a PC is actually less amazing than that.
Just to be fair there are probably a few things iRacing could learn from GT5 as well and I could nit pick iRacing about as harshly as I could GT5, especially on their pricing structure and a few limitations with car purchases that are down right bad business practice, lol ... but to be honest for competition iRacing really has no equal.
I don't want to come off like I hate GT5 this isn't even about that, but these are largly the reasons why I only play GT5 a few times a month and play iRacing virtually every day.... I see so much potential in GT5, the game is oozing potential but at the same time there are so many things that bother me about it. I continue to play it mostly as a casual or social game, I've given up seeing it as any kind of competative avenue, but I hope some day that will change as the game no doubt will improve.
GT5 was pretty easy to settle into after xmas but I didn't really feel a huge urgency to play it because I had recently played alot of gt4 ... so doing all the liscensing over was tedious....but I was impressed by the networking options and the game seemed to have a bright future online. I did a little rally, drove around the ring etc. I was happy to be finally playing it but at the same time wasn't really overwhelming me with any kind of excitement.
As I got more into with gt5 I also spent more time getting into iRacing.
Why GT5 Needs Consequences
iRacing really kicked my ass.... as a begginner just finishing your first race without incidents is an accomplishment in itself. If you play with a clutch you really are in for a challenge as you are forced to learn proper footwork, smooth shifting, heel toe etc. hell toe Wrong and you spin the car out - pop it into the wrong gear and you blow the enging out and your race is done... on the spot - But because of these 'consequences' the sense of reward when you accomplish anything in that game is amazing, your first few clean overtakes, your first clean race, and eventually when you finally win one... the sense of reward from this game is second to none. Especially when you race online, because crashing and car contact matters ... you could easily get taken out of a race at any moment when in proximity to other drivers.... This puts you in the mindset of bringing your A-game or don't bother showing up. ..it raises the stakes to a level that 'most' console racers just have no concept of as yet. At first most of my races ended shortly in crashes.... but soon I adopted the strategy of driving safe - attempting to approach situations as if If I was using my own real world driving judgement (instead of my previous attempts at 1st lap heroics and retard strength dive bombing) to try to stay away from pile ups, aggressive drivers and my own slip ups... eventually as I got better I started to pressure the other drivers to see who'd choke and messup, only then I would pass if there was a clear opportunity - and further beyond that I would actually take the inside of corners and pray they'd race clean.
In GT5 however I really feel like there is way too much hand holding (Especially for a game that calls it self a SIMULATOR) - you can't drive out of the pits yourself - when you rally you get held back by invisible barriers ... its virtually impossible to break your car or the engine, the invisible walls on the Top Gear test track for me is especially bizare, not the mention the cones... why?.. you can't put snow tires on certain cars..... I know for a fact and have seen videos on youtube of people racing Karts in snow.. even F1 drivers have done it so wtf? ... but worst of all is probably the collisions. GT5 claims to be a simulation but in something like Richard burns rally when you drive your rally car off a cliff you've just driven your car off a cliff... in gt5 you literally can't make that mistake, so the consequence of that happening is never there.... thus the thrill of driving on those amazingly beautiful rally courses we have in gt5 is deminished.
GT5 needs better collisions, consequences AND Demerits
... the cars are virtually indestructable sure But where I really have a problem is in the crash physics ... not the actual damage but what happens when to 2 objects colide during a race. In gt5 the only way I can describe car contact is like 2 high speed bars of soap knocking into eachother, sometimes you even get that rubber band effect where there is a serious bounce off of eachother... but it all just seems wrong and its one of the biggest issues that I feel needs work
the collisions in iRacing however are very convincing, the cars generally react in a realistic manner to crashes and when there is contact its almost always bad or atleast very risky for both parties, you also get demerits for bad driving ... can you imagine how nice it would be in GT5 if aggressive bully drivers made less or even no money from racing dirty and you got bonuses for clean racing? ... there is no reward for good clean driving in GT5 and often I feel that people get more rewards from bad driving and forcing their way past you than actually racing properly ..... There is also no reason why GT5 can't adopt a similar Clean Driver Ranking, iRacers fret quite a bit about their safety rating ... good drivers take pride in racing clean and when iRacers have a string of bad races they end up at the bottom of the barrel keeping out of traffic, letting people pass and just trying to get that safety rating up ... how does that compair to GT5 where people just don't give a flying !@#$ and smash you out of the way from behind with no regard.
I know there is a penalty system in gt5, I just don't think it works very well... although I will admit the one in iRacing isn't perfect either.
Probably the first change I would make the GT5 or the next GT game would be to bring back Simulation Mode but this time when you buy a car its Break it and you buy it.... or if you crash it you fix it.... out of your own pocket with race earnings... if you want to race the same car all the time you have to race it clean and keep up repairs ... basically not use AI cars and online opponents as brakes... It would totally raise the level of play of every driver in GT5l.... it would be a huge incentive for people to race clean as they wouldn't want to risk smashing up their favorite cars. And if you don't like the sound of any of this there would always be Arcade Mode... hell I thought thats what it was for...
GT5 Needs More Fixed Class (Single Make Online Racing)
Back to GT5 ... as I discovered more and more how amazing and heated the races in iRacing could be.. I went back to GT5, maybe looking to see if I could apply some of my newly aquire racing skill to another game, maybe just because GT5 has more variety or just the fact that more people play it and its easier to get to know new people in GT5.... I had a hard time finding good races though, online races weren't very competative and often quite laggy or just a bunch of people screwing around..... so I found myself in Time Trials.... at first I was really getting into it but the Tuning aspect really turned me off, its not who can Time Trial the fastest with X car ... its who can find the fastest car out of 1000 and tune it... I found myself spending more time tuning and reading the forums for setups and such than I actually spent playing - On one occasion I spent a whole Saturday working on a Time Trial .. only to download a few of the fastest ghost cars to discover they were bouncing off the walls to get a better time.... I was like !@#$ this.
The exception was maybe the Nissan Challenge that was just that car - with that Time Trial I had alot of fun - but those are pretty rare.
But for me the Tuning issue is huge because I don't have the time or the patience for it, in iRacing I usually just download a setup for a car and I'm done..that takes about 5 mins at most .... but in GT5 90 percent of the time (just joining different servers) I had a slower car than alot of people, I was looking for online races where my skill level would be the defining factor, but I generally COULD LITERALLY NOT FIND THIS.... so I didn't have a fair chance most of the time and those races where it was fair were very difficult to find - nobody wants to race the recommended category and its just not happening .... even Nascar .. you buy a Nascar, join a Nascar server and a minute later someone online tells you you have no chance on their server and your better off leaving... its rediculous - by contrast in iRacing Everyone pretty much always has the same car because its fixed class racing (so its about bloody driving skill) the fact that there is virtually no fixed class racing in GT5 is a real shame - the races are rarely fair - even shuffle racing leaves much to be desired. And I'm not saying I'm always going to win with the same car but the results when I'm in a room where the host suddenly switches to All Karts ... or all whatever .. whenver everyone has the same car my results are drastically a different story.... I'm in the race usually in the lead pack or infront of the middle pack and sometimes even win a few... on the few occasions this occured it felt vindicating.
NET Code / Lag / Playability
And this ofcourse brings up the issue of league play, Ofcourse there are people out there like me who want this kind of fair racing, But in GT5 everything is up to the players to organize... you have to get on a forum like this, get talking to people and together work out when most people can get together to play etc. to sum it up its alot of work and showing up at a specific time gets tricky - by contrast iRacing is basically this 24/7 ... as the races start every hour on the hour or between and its all organized with no effort required by anyone.... sure there have been a few races where we only had a few people and some series are unfortunately less popular but its still a world of difference from GT5 where finding these kinds of races with like minded people is just alot more damn work
Maybe with this I'm asking too much - but I know the Online PS3 game MAG must have had some kind of dedicated servers because com'on 256 players and the game runs flawlessly?...... but something like Left for Dead (even on the PC) can only run 4 player coop smoothly without it... Dedicated server support is huge - its the reason PC games can easily run 32 even 64 players well... while the exact same titles on Console are running servers with 6 on 6... 8 on 8 .... lol
I don't know how much console gamers are aware of the tremendous difference dedicated server support makes to a game. GT5 obviously has a decent net code or it wouldn't work at all..... but lag is common enough to make me wonder if any result I get online is a fair one.
but iRacing's is virtually flawless - when you have 18 cars on a Nascar track running a tight draft bumper to bumper and just how smooth it runs. GT5 gets very twitchy, sometimes even with only a handful of players.... the worst I've seen iRacing is when one or maybe 2 cars were flashing ...but this isn't even common enough to consider common.... gt5 however lag is very common for alot of people and its amazing how bad it can get - the worst I've seen GT5 is racing behind a dust cloud of laggy cars as they snake around the track as if they aren't even remotely connected to the road at all... at the end of the day Servers are the reason iRacing can run a world championship for actual Cash Money and be legit while GT5 or any other game would have to run that thing live in person to have any credibility and fairness.
And to be honest I can't pick on GT5 as being alone with this lag problem, this is an issue with every online racing game I've ever seen that didn't have server support... Dirt Series, F12010 ... NFS Shift... hell everything..
What would be amazing if they somehow made an ap that could run on a windows server that would run/host the game from a PC ...and everyone would just connect to it. What this also does is literally provide a virtual place where people can meet... I know there are some great hosts out there in GT5 online, but with a Server you don't have to worry about someone Up and leaving everyone high and dry because he's missing the game or having a family crisis in the middle of a race meet.
Technology is amazing, there are solutions to everything.... Portal 2 is a cross platform game where supposedly ppl from ps3 and pc can play together... I think dedicated servers for GT5 running off a PC is actually less amazing than that.
Just to be fair there are probably a few things iRacing could learn from GT5 as well and I could nit pick iRacing about as harshly as I could GT5, especially on their pricing structure and a few limitations with car purchases that are down right bad business practice, lol ... but to be honest for competition iRacing really has no equal.
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rologue. At the time, in a side by side comparison, it was cheaper to buy the PS3 AND a playseat than it was a 1/2 way decent gaming PC on it's own. So it was basically a financial decision for me.
