Grand Valley Returns to Gran Turismo 7

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TealYellowOwl
The Grand Valley depiction in Gran Turismo 7 pretty much turns this iconic circuit into a death track, and i'm not even complaining about it. It's hilarious for me.

Strict safety standards you would encounter in any race track capable of hosting high-profile motorsport events are nearly non-existent. This is a modern-day racing venue with the safety standards of the early 20th century.
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And I'm glad for it. It's a video game. I want to see some scenery while driving. They hide all the beauty of Saint-Croix behind mile high Armco..I'm glad they rethought that strategy.
 
Magog
And I'm glad for it. It's a video game. I want to see some scenery while driving. They hide all the beauty of Saint-Croix behind mile high Armco..I'm glad they rethought that strategy.
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If this was Ridge Racer or Need for Speed, the lack of "simulation" or real world design doesn't really fit :ill:
 
R55NA
If this was Ridge Racer or Need for Speed, the lack of "simulation" or real world design doesn't really fit :ill:
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Not every race takes place on a Formula 1 style race track. Isle of Man, Pike's Peak, nearly every rally, etc. GT should and does have a variety of settings. Real world design is vastly wider than you're giving it credit for.
 
Magog
Not every race takes place on a Formula 1 style race track. Isle of Man, Pike's Peak, nearly every rally, etc. GT should and does have a variety of settings. Real world design is vastly wider than you're giving it credit for.
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Most hill climbs are temporary too. Goodwood, Shelsley Walsh (the oldest motorsport event still running), Gurston Down, Les Rangiers
 
Batschisane52
Why didn't Grand Valley look like California ?

California is huge an you can find pretty much every kind of landscape and vegetation there other than a tropical rain forest...

Pretty much every landscape you find in Europe you will also find somewhere in California(ok, something similiar the Scottish Highlands maybe not...)
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Parts of west Marin look quite a bit like Scotland - they even named a town out there near Pt Reyes "Inverness". Maybe not highlands, but definitely parts of Scotland. It's usually overcast and foggy out there too.

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CA
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Scotland
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CA
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Scotland
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Thread title: Grand Valley returns to GT7
Messages: Is Trial Mountain British or American?
 
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I was checking the roads of Yosemite through Google Earth, more precisely the region of El Capitan. It is incredible that this work of clipping iconic Big Sur locations and coupling the Grand Valley into one unit was fully realized by PD in the days of Gran Turismo 4 with the El Capitan region. Basically, it's all there. the Hairpin, the shallow bridge, the short tunnel.
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That's fantastic from PD!

I wonder what they could do with Rio de Janeiro, Bariloche, Lauterbrunnen and other iconic world landmarks with their makeshift road circuit race tracks.

PS. Interestingly, I found no reference to Trial Mountain in the Yosemite region.
 
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BrunusCL82
I believe that the first four permanent circuits of the Gran Turismo franchise (Trial Mountain, Deep Forest, Grand Valley and Autumn Ring) were idealized without any reference to reality. Racetracks were created according to the PS1 hardware limitation, according to the aesthetic sense of the PD designer and the trends of racing games at the time, such as Daytona USA and its tunnel scenarios, huge rocks, constant elevation change etc.

But, from the beginning, I believe that the famous SSR 5 and 11 were inspired by Tokyo Expressway, considering the side walls that look like hollow brick bathroom wall.

So, as technology advanced, Kaz and the PD guys effectively got into the habit of creating circuits with some reference to reality. They started doing this with city circuits (Tokyo, Amalfi Coast, Paris, London etc.) and some in the mountains like Grindewald, El Capitan, Eiger Nordwand etc.

The era of GT7 arrived with the requirement to nail the circuits somewhere on the world map and its panoramic views of the race waiting screens.. I think Kaz and team felt impelled by tradition to remake the original four permanent circuits and locate them in some region of the real world. So they researched and researched, and, good or bad, came to these current conclusions. I believe the same will happen with Apricot Hill and Mid-field Raceway.
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They could have made Grand Valley Speedway feel geographically authentic by placing it somewhere else in California or possibly Oregon. Did they really have to turn it into a coastal highway? No, that was a creative decision.
 
Nielsen
They could have made Grand Valley Speedway feel geographically authentic by placing it somewhere else in California or possibly Oregon. Did they really have to turn it into a coastal highway? No, that was a creative decision.
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I also didn't like the option to put it Grand Valley in Big Sur. I think it mischaracterized the circuit a lot. If the idea was to place Grand Valley Speedway in a real location, the Sidu River Bridge in China could be the place. Hubei's rugged and forested region closely resembles the original GVS. By the way, one end of the bridge ends in a tunnel.

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BrunusCL82
I also didn't like the option to put it in Grand Valley in Big Sur. I think it mischaracterized the circuit a lot. If the idea was to place Grand Valley Speedway in a real location, the Sidu River Bridge in China could be the place. Hubei's rugged and forested region closely resembles the original GVS. By the way, one end of the bridge ends in a tunnel.

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That does look cool though.
 
Canucks_9419
Not sure what folks are up in arms (as usual lol) about the remodel, sure it looks more coastal, but a fair amount of the original also had coast sectors. 🤔
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I would not really care if the original 5km layout got remodeled like Trial Mountain or Deep Forest
But the new ones have few things like the original one.
 
Batschisane52
Why didn't Grand Valley look like California ?

California is huge an you can find pretty much every kind of landscape and vegetation there other than a tropical rain forest...

Pretty much every landscape you find in Europe you will also find somewhere in California(ok, something similiar the Scottish Highlands maybe not...)
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What's the Californian equivalent of the Alps? The French Riviera? The Tuscan hills? Not to mention Scandinavia.

You are talking complete rubbish.
 
An unpopular opinion for sure, but how do we know this isn't how they originally wanted it to be but made differently for one reason or another? Things were very different 25 years ago, the PS1 didn't have that much power to be spared for track surroundings, and some original tracks are obvious stand-ins for real ones.

It's probably well accepted by now that Apricot Hill always was a rearranged Suzuka, since they for some reason couldn't use the real track. Now as Suzuka is in the game, Apricot Hill has finally disappeared (I'd like it back though) and the surroundings already changed a lot in its later versions. Deep Forest in its original version is very Nürburgring-esque, and in every game that has had the real Nordschleife it has been further removed from the narrow path through the forest. And I've said it before but will say for as long as necessary, the original GVS was very much a rearranged Watkins Glen - a long straight into a mid speed right hander, the uphill esses, the downhill section leading to a long slow right hander, and the rest largely comprised of 90-ish degree corners. Even the bridge is light blue, like the characteristic guardrails of the Glen. Now as the real track is in the game they could ditch the connection and give Grand Valley its own style, which leads me back to the beginning.

Many of the details on the current Highway version match the real road very closely - the bridge and tunnel locations, and the roads leading to and from them. Most of them are still in the same places as in the original, so without knowing better I'd say it's a real possibility that they originally planned the track from the Californian highway map but then crafted a more traditional race track landscape for it as what we have now might have been considered being too close to the Need For Speeds and Ridge Racers of the time.
 
Julius Tuscan
What's the Californian equivalent of the Alps? The French Riviera? The Tuscan hills? Not to mention Scandinavia.

You are talking complete rubbish.
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You named a few places that are famous for having pretty close analogues in California. They aren't the same, but I'm pretty sure the pictures could fool a lot of people.

Alps - Trinity Alps:
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French Riviera (Sausalito, Tiburon, Malibu, Etc)
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Tuscany - Pretty much every valley in Norcal and some in the Central Coast, here's Sonoma:

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Scandinavian geographies are not well covered, that's true.
 

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