Gran Turismo - Open World Freeroam? (Read OP)

[ParkourVeyron]

IT IS POSSIBLE TO FREE ROAM JUST JOIN A LOBBY THAT SAYS "FREE RUN" OR SOMETHING.
Right?

You clearly don't know what a free-roam/sandbox world is.

 

[Earth]

IT IS POSSIBLE TO FREE ROAM JUST JOIN A LOBBY THAT SAYS "FREE RUN" OR SOMETHING.
Right?

That's exactly what I thought when first contemplating free roam

There are many big differences between free roam and running a free run on a closed circuit. Free roam is about cruising around on the open road. You get more scenery that isn't hampered by catch fencing tire barriers and sand traps, and you don't see the same turn every 90 seconds.

Analog made the point that free roam has no end and no destination. Its just you and the car. You'll get an actual sense of going somewhere, instead of just going around a closed course in circles.

Gran Turismo allows us to race the cars of our dreams on closed courses. Free roam would allow us to race these same cars on the highways and country roads...without speed limits.

I think in order for it to work properly we will need at least 100 miles of road to ensure we rarely see the same piece of tarmac in a single run. With PS4 technology I think even 100+ miles would be possible and preferred

 

[RedPartyhat]

You clearly don't know what a free-roam/sandbox world is.

You clearly don't know Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto are different games.
As well as so many others here.

 

[SagarisGTB]

You can still race in free roam.

It's not legal or safe to race on open public roads. Do you think PD wants GT to be associated with street racing? I highly doubt it. The motorsports world generally advocates road safety and is anti-street racing, for good reason, and GT has gotten very close to the motorsports community in recent years (sponsorships, GT academy, Kaz racing). I would be very surprised if PD went in the direction of racing on open roads with traffic.

 

[Earth]

It's not legal or safe to race on open public roads. Do you think PD wants GT to be associated with street racing? I highly doubt it. The motorsports world generally advocates road safety and is anti-street racing, for good reason, and GT has gotten very close to the motorsports community in recent years (sponsorships, GT academy, Kaz racing). I would be very surprised if PD went in the direction of racing on open roads with traffic.

Good points

PD can overcome that barrier though. Don't include traffic, or if you do include traffic claim they are racers too. Also say that the racing/driving is being done on closed roads.

They can get around it, but if Kaz and PD think they may promote street racing with a free roam, I won't blame them for not adding it

 

[Teflonicus]

Personally, I would be disappointed if free roaming made it into the next GT game. The main reason for this is that the insertion of free roaming would, I fear, take the game away from the racing emphasis that I expect from GT.

Aside from that, if free roaming was implemented and immersive aspects like sound, car balance, physics, or graphics went unperfected, I would be doubly disappointed.

 

[SagarisGTB]

When I first heard about Forza Horizons, I thought it would be a barren "world" of roads. I was very surprised to find out that they included traffic, which reeks of street racing, very NFS, very Midtown Madness. Not something I would associate with a morally in-line sim racer.

I understand the appeal of free roam, the joy of driving an established "world" of roads with choices at intersections and no particular destination, but personally I don't think the reward is worth the cost. Though it lacks the vastness of a modeled "world", I still think randomly generating roads (closed, with no traffic of course) is a good alternative. It contains certain elements that are shared with "free roam", but at the same falls in line with anti-street racing dogma and random generating provides infinite possibilities. Though not randomly generated in this example, roads like Azure Coast and California Highway in pcars are just the types of roads that would be appealing to drive on in a GT game. Or a 20-km randomly generated point-to-point track on a road that winds through a coniferous forest. For pure driving pleasure purposes, I think this is a type of feature that can be implemented in future GT games, and it would fit in without any negative stigma.

 

[Spagetti69]

Random roads equal no leaderboards.
Not an option if looking to go forward IMHO.

 

[Zona]

I'd just like to see all the Special Stage Routes and Tokyo Route 2462 linked up and drive around all the areas on the tracks.

 

[Griffith500]

Random roads equal no leaderboards.
Not an option if looking to go forward IMHO.

No-one's suggesting we ditch the existing repertoire of fixed circuits. That would be a bit daft.

In actual fact, though, you can very well have leaderboards for "random" roads. Precisely because the only thing (by design) you can get from a computer is pseudo-random, based on "seeds". That means that for each "random" road, you will have a unique seed, which is as good as a "name" as far as a database is concerned. There's potential for the number of track entries to "explode", but there is always an upper bound for a given seed format that you can plan to, however ridiculous.

Leaderboards would probably take away from the desired effect of such roads, though, unless you hold them as rally stages, or something...
I wouldn't personally expect a leaderboard for all of my course generator tracks, although that's much easier to manage given they are much fewer in number than those roads generated by just driving.


Perhaps, then, a "wilderness" driving, continually generated road shouldn't have leaderboards applied to it, because the variance in start and end points, and the generation on the fly, means that practically no-one will drive the same bit of road as anyone else (unless you're online with them, in which case what need is there of a leaderboard anyway?).

 

[JBanton]

I think the fact that there aren't any other PS3 games that would offer an open world experience with realistic physics and a large car list is pretty unique. If done correctly could prove very popular.

 

[Griffith500]

We may not get a true free roam in the sense that most here are anticipating, but one thing's for sure: we can expect improvements to the course generator.

No doubt the "consensus" would be to have more control over the construction, in a Mod Nation Racers sense (or even, some will say, Bob's track builder which is somewhat wishful thinking on a closed platform). Such control would improve the feature, definitely, but it's not the only way.

More themes, point-to-point (e.g. GT Rally and Grand Tour Toscana special events), continual generation (just keep driving, and it keeps throwing road at you), branching (choice!) etc. would really expand it, even without changing the current level of control we have over construction.

 

[ParkourVeyron]

You clearly don't know Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto are different games.
As well as so many others here.

I do. I was simply stating the fact that free-roam/free run on a closed circuit vs. in a sandbox world are two totally different things. I wasn't saying anything about what I think should/shouldn't be in GT.

 

[CodeRedR51]

I've ignored this thread for a while but thought I would add my 2 cents.

I would in fact LOVE free roam, but to a certain point. Do I want free roam like Need for Speed? NO.

Would I like it if we could free roam the tracks? HELL YES.

What I mean by that is the ability to enter the pits / garages and side roads surrounding the track or inside it.

 

[Theace37]

I think that this would totally ruin the prospect of Gran Turismo and that if this is what your looking for, go buy a copy of Test Drive Unlimited 2 as thats exactly what this is.

 

[Theace37]

We may not get a true free roam in the sense that most here are anticipating, but one thing's for sure: we can expect improvements to the course generator.

No doubt the "consensus" would be to have more control over the construction, in a Mod Nation Racers sense (or even, some will say, Bob's track builder which is somewhat wishful thinking on a closed platform). Such control would improve the feature, definitely, but it's not the only way.

More themes, point-to-point (e.g. GT Rally and Grand Tour Toscana special events), continual generation (just keep driving, and it keeps throwing road at you), branching (choice!) etc. would really expand it, even without changing the current level of control we have over construction.

A Track generator that you could connect to you Ipad/ Tablet etc. and allow you to draw out the track manually and change the elevation and pitch, grandstands, bridges etc. is much more likely and frankly would be so much Better

 

[Griffith500]

Oh look, somebody hasn't read the thread properly.

EDIT: It's not nice to superficially dismiss something without actually reading and understanding the points being made.
And a manually drawn track would be fine, and in no way conflicts with what I wrote.

 

[diegorborges]

Simple idea, vanishing a bit from the whole big GT island/city and in the same thinking as some of you already posted. Just a quick one for GT5:

Pick the city tracks:

Rome
Madrid, Madrid Short
London
R246
SSR5, Clubman Stage R5

Remove the trackside build stuff such as barriers, sponsors, etc... leave just the city/street/buildings itself. (I think some video shown this, rome or madrid without the barriers...) In the tracks where there are multiple routes, leave both open.

Just give us that for now and let us drive on it. I bet it would be already fun on free run and photomode people will love it.

 

[Griffith500]

Yeah, it doesn't sound like much, but in practice it's actually pretty cool - at least going by what happened when LFS added open layouts to its tracks.

 

[thesuperfunk]

My main concerns with the implementation of a free-roam mode are that, [knowing PD], it would probably be badly implemented and to the detrement of other crucial features such as leaderboards, legacy tracks, decent a-spec ...

 

[Samus]

85% of the people who voted said yes, that is quite a big amount. Though most people probably would vote for a neutral option like 'I don't care if it doesn't affect the development of the actual Gran Turismo series'.
Like diegoborges said, it might be true that a lot of people don't care/take this serious yet, but I'm sure if PD manages to produce a free roam title which offers interesting locations and GT's physics, it WILL be interesting to a lot of people. At least to Gran Turismo fans who understand that real driving simulation includes more than racing.

Also, a fact you mention yourself: this thread is active since 3 months now, there definetely are people who like this idea. The question is if there will be enough to make it profitable for PD (and don't forget Sony wants some money too...), nobody would like to see them getting killed because of the development of such a title/game mode.



Pretty much this. It hopefully will be an addition to GT6 or a standalone title at that time, unless Forza Horizon 3 will be released by that time
Even then it'd be interesting to see what PD offers to compete though. It is the same about Forza 4 vs. GT5 - we, the users, only win because the competition gives them a reason to work harder.

Like I said, the percentage is irrelevant, it could be 50/50 for all it matters. The fact is only 300 odd people have seen this thread, opened it and voted yes in 3 months. That's not a big uptake. Even the other thread that got bumped from 2010 only had 600 odd yes votes. For a community this large that's a small fraction that want this.

There are other more important things that people do want before PD even think about doing something like this.

 

[DEATHSARTHE]

We've already got free roam modes so I don't see how it would be a good use of time rehashing a function that already exists. The feature is fine, they should worry about real DLC with things we want and not things like this. Very low on what I think their priority list should be.

 

[analog]

We've already got free roam modes so I don't see how it would be a good use of time rehashing a function that already exists. The feature is fine, they should worry about real DLC with things we want and not things like this. Very low on what I think their priority list should be.

Huh? You mean free run I presume (which is entirely different apart from the use of the word free), free roam isn't present in any form right now.

 

[Maccer_42]

As much as I love the idea of being able to take my favourite cars in GT5 and drive them on awesome real world roads with no invisible barriers or set direction I had to follow. But I don't want PD to be the ones that do it, because i'm pretty sure they wouldn't do it "right".

For me when I think about the idea of "free roam" in GT5 what I think is this;

GT5's Physics,
GT5's Tuning,
GT5's car list

All to be used in an open world with say 100square miles of recreated real roads linked together from across the world to drive on. (eg: some famous roads from Japan, Germany, Italy, USA etc linked together with some fantasy "filler" roads)

But what I expect would happen is things will be limited, the car list would be cut and they would focus featuring more supercars or topend production cars. (Boring to me, but some may want this and PD probably would too, supercars sell racing games to the masses)
The physics would probably be alterd in some way to make driving easier and more userfriendly.
The tuning may be limited or removed completely. (It's a free roam driving game there's no need to tune cars to make them faster)


The perfect "car game" (Not Racing game ) that i've wanted to see be made for years now but will probably never happen would be something alone the lines of,
GT/Forza Style car list
GT5's Physics
Forza 4's Tuning/Customisation
TDU/NFS Type of open world or map

 

[G219]

As long as Horizon can keep FM4's physics/handling in tact, I believe I'll be happy....

Inside Sim Racings first look:


www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFV3wfmUDn8&hd=1

 

[KiroKai]

Like I said, the percentage is irrelevant, it could be 50/50 for all it matters. The fact is only 300 odd people have seen this thread, opened it and voted yes in 3 months. That's not a big uptake. Even the other thread that got bumped from 2010 only had 600 odd yes votes. For a community this large that's a small fraction that want this.

There are other more important things that people do want before PD even think about doing something like this.

Of course a good 'classic', 'normal' GT6 is needed to be done first, as I said it should not influence the GT series' development too much. But hey, Kazunori seems to be one of these odd people like you call us, so there's still some hope.

Simple idea, vanishing a bit from the whole big GT island/city and in the same thinking as some of you already posted. Just a quick one for GT5:

Pick the city tracks:

Rome
Madrid, Madrid Short
London
R246
SSR5, Clubman Stage R5

Remove the trackside build stuff such as barriers, sponsors, etc... leave just the city/street/buildings itself. (I think some video shown this, rome or madrid without the barriers...) In the tracks where there are multiple routes, leave both open.

Just give us that for now and let us drive on it. I bet it would be already fun on free run and photomode people will love it.

Very good idea! 👍
Also, you are right about the cities shown as open roads. It was in some car trailers on GT-TV... I believe it was the California presentation... or maybe the FT-86?

Going to search YouTube, might edit this post.

 

[KiroKai]

Alright so I did some research on GT5 trailers to see if there's something interesting like an open city map... and I found several things.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezrmU9YayHs

First off, this trailer of the FT-86 Concept. Skip to 0:52... now that's a nice mountain road! It's probably a very early, modified version of Eiger Nordwand as the tunnel just before and the way the track looks remember a bit to that track, but at least they have rendered this to use it in the trailer... so... PD? GIVE US THIS!

Then again, the FT-86 also seems to sound very aggressive and interesting in this video... while it definitely doesn't as much in GT5.
Also, take notice that an actual driver is sitting in the car - not the usual driver which only consists of a suit and helmet, but an animated human!!
Seems like that driver got tired and moved over to Kyoto though. Would be nice to have that in a city car driving version of GT.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08svLVxcT0k

At 0:32 you can see an impressive road. Wondering if that's more than just the little part we see in the video?
Also, again, we see non-racing drivers behind the wheel.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCKX48KUDtA

Also notice that in the Spec II trailer at 1:38 there are city/street driving scenes shown. PD at least has it in mind, that's sure.

 

[KiroKai]

Sorry, you may remove this post now.

Thanks for your quick help amar212.

 

[amar212]

You should just copy the video #ID - numbers that come after the "=" inside the BBcode.

Like this: [YOU TUBE]08svLVxcT0k[/YOU TUBE], to get this:

 

[DEATHSARTHE]

What the hell is the difference between Free Run and Free Roam?? Same thing IMO, terrible use of resources and time.