This whole thread is a laugh a minute. Comparing a PC sim that was designed almost 10 years ago by a small developer on a limited budget to the flagship racing game on the PS3 platform? Granted it's been tweaked and improved along the way, but it would perhaps be more accurate, along an evolutionary time line, to compare it to GT3.
When I bought my PS3 in 2008, it was a financial decision. Buying the PS3 was much cheaper than buying a new (dedicated gaming) PC. And with the money I saved by going the console route, I bought a Playseat and G25. And I harbor no regrets over that decision because I've garnered so much enjoyment out of my PS3 racing forays.
But over the years, the events I put together changed from 5~6 lap sprint races, to fully blown championships lasting several months, with individual races almost 2 hours long. I wanted more. More realism. More true-to-life physics. More 'virtual reality'. I wanted events and races that closely mirrored their real life counter parts. And I found over the years that the majority of PS3 racing games, and indeed, the vast majority of console gamers, didn't share my enthusiasm for virtual racing with quite the same intensity. Just look at my sig. There's a wide chasm in philosophy between what I wanted and what most people "out there" seem to desire. At least, in the console world.
And more and more, I began to wonder if what I really wanted was the kind of racing one allegedly finds on PC sims. And so, I decided to try. About 9 months ago, I bought a moderately powerful gaming PC. I spent countless hours pouring over online forums, weighing in on different PC racing sims: LFS, Race 07 & GTR Evolution, Netkar Pro, RFactor, iRacing and even Ferrari Virtual Academy. The things you can read in these forums makes your head spin. It would be like trying to decide between GT5 and Forza IV and venturing here to GTP and over to Forzacentral and trying to weigh each other's pros and cons by reading forum posts. PC sim racers can be just as biased and blind as PS3 and Xbox sim racing fans. It's unbelievable how closed minded people can be when defending their weapon of choice, without ever really knowing the other side.
After spending weeks, taking notes, and trying to make decisions, I gave up. I simply threw away my notes and went and bought or downloaded nearly all of these games. I tried to stamp out any preconceived notions and start from a fresh sheet of paper. I spent a lot of time with most of them. I only played one at a time and tried to immerse myself in that particular game and really give myself a chance to know it without constant distractions and comparisons. I joined communities for those individual games and tried to concentrate on tweaks and tips and suggestions, while ignoring the unhelpful comparisons. I downloaded updates and community driven content.
And each of them had their pros and cons. But what I found after many months of testing, was that one PC racing sim was head and shoulders above the rest. And it is that way because of the philosophy of the people running the company. They're the only ones to go through the trouble and expense of laser scanning the tracks. They have partnerships with real racing teams. One co-owner is also owner owner of a racing team, so there is real data going back and forth. But more importantly, on a game play level, the racing rating system and safety rating system employed by them is an ingenious system that forces you take the racing seriously, or bugger off. That game is iRacing. And for all the reasons I mentioned, any many I didn't, I found it to be on another level completely.
Well I am sure if you could someone blindfold people while they play they would not have such a high opinion of PC sims versus their console counterparts.
I would beg to differ. And those that can't tell the difference would probably be just as happy with a racing game and not a racing sim. As a console game, GT5 holds up remarkably well. It has the best physics in PS3 land by a wide margin. If you play the game with all aids off, it's clear they've done a decent job to make it a reasonably accurate driving game. But in the end, it's still a game. A game that has to appeal to a mass audience who aren't all dedicated sim racers and racing enthusiasts. And it will always be a compromise.
GT5 compares favorably with most of these games. And it still has the best visuals. It's breathtaking and when you haven't played GT in a while and come back to it, it's smiles all over again. But it also falls flat compared to nearly every PC sim I listed above for 2 reasons. The first is the tire model. Compared to iRacing's NTM, that is constantly being tweaked and refined with every update, GT's tire model is a joke. How can anybody consider GT5 to be an accurate simulation when it doesn't even account for tire pressure or wheel and rim size? Anybody who has raced a real car in a real race or taken a professional driving course or even driven their own car in an autocross competition should understand this. GT5 is at it's best with road cars on road tires (comfort tires). The physics, at the limit of grip, simply don't cut it. You have this magical grip at the limit of adhesion that in many cases, just allows you to regain control of the car with a casual flick of opposite lock. In real life, it's just not that easy. And sims like iRacing, show you very clearly how difficult it can be.
The second issue, is not really GT's fault, but IMO, an inherent flaw in online gaming through the PS3 and the PSN. No matter how good you connection, no matter how little noise and jitter is on your line, no matter how low your latency is to each other, there will nearly ALWAYS be some lag and issues with online connections. Sheer distance and the physical realities of time and space will mean somebody from Australia will suffer lag racing somebody in Finland. But after playing GTR Evo and iRacing with 30+ cars in the lobby with almost NO lag and apparent stutter, it makes GT5's or any console racing game with 12~16 car lobbies with cars jumping around wildly, seem like a second rate side show.
I still boot up the PS3 and play GT5 from time to time. It has many positive merrits and it can be a lot of fun. But these threads that spring up in the GT5 section from time to time, with people claiming it has comparable physics to the best PC sims, just make me laugh. Take it for what is, a very good, very impressive game, that has the best physics on the PS3. But that's where it stops.
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