Head lamps - Why can't I turn them off at Nürburgring?

[psavi]

It's just how they programmed the game, to mimic the real life track. I'm pretty sure pop-up headlights were/are always up on any version of Nurburgring on GT5 and 6. I doubt they'd bother to make exceptions to mimic manufacturer test days. I'm not claiming any of this makes sense, just something as simple as "Hey, you know how you always have to have your lights on when driving the Ring? Let's put that in the game, make headlights be in all the time."

Took me some time to get my GT5 back and test it, but I did it. Sorry, but you are wrong. I took the F40 for a spin in Nurburgring at 13 o' clock and the lamps were off, pop-up headlamps were down. I wish they could let it this way in GT6, too.

 

[BrandonW77]

Took me some time to get my GT5 back and test it, but I did it. Sorry, but you are wrong. I took the F40 for a spin in Nurburgring at 13 o' clock and the lamps were off, pop-up headlamps were down. I wish they could let it this way in GT6, too.

Something must have changed in a late update then. As you can see in this thread where I ran a DTM race in GT5 the lights were clearly activated on all of the cars. I will investigate this myself since no proof of the above claims has been provided.

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/orca-dtm-spec-german-grand-prix-events-complete.270577/

Also as seen in this video, with an F40, the headlamps are clearly up. This is an older video, so again, this must have changed in one of the later updates to GT5.



Here's a more recent one from March 2013, again the headlamps are clearly on.



And an even more recent one from July of 2013, you can clearly see the headlamps are activated on all cars.

 

[Devil240Z]

another question is, why sometimes the lights don't lighten the road or anything when it's daytime. Go to a track with a tunnel for example.

I think alot of the older tracks still use an older lighting model. so even if you flash your lights you cant see any reflection. I think some tracks are still using GT4s lighting.

 

[BrandonW77]

I think alot of the older tracks still use an older lighting model. so even if you flash your lights you cant see any reflection. I think some tracks are still using GT4s lighting.

My guess would be it's because they've determined this isn't a worthwhile allocation of what little RAM is available to them, same reason we don't see smoke or grass particles in our mirrors and why most of the AI cars don't project their lights further onto the track. Remember, they only have 206mb of RAM to play with (50mb is always allocated to the XMB) and with that little available they are always having to make sacrifices. To put that in perspective, most cell phones today have 5x more memory than the PS3 so it's rather amazing that PD is able to accomplish what they do. Sure, they could do more if their "vision" was a little more focused, but it would always be a game of sacrifices. Personally I've never noticed that my headlamps don't reflect on the inside of tunnels so I would say that was a good sacrifice to make (if it's generally not going to be noticed).

 

[JHB434]

In real-life anyone driving at the Nürburgring must have their head lamps on at all times, this is their house rule and it is replicated in GT, and it was this way in GT5 when driving any version of this track. This does not apply to other circuits.

I wondered about this also. I do wish we could turn them off or on ourselves though as having the controls set up and finding they're basically useless is silly. (Same with wipers.)

 

[BrandonW77]

I wondered about this also. I do wish we could turn them off or on ourselves though as having the controls set up and finding they're basically useless is silly. (Same with wipers.)

Agreed, it's a head scratcher just like a lot of other things in these games. I'm not the least bit bothered by it though and it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the game in any way.

 

[psavi]

Something must have changed in a late update then. As you can see in this thread where I ran a DTM race in GT5 the lights were clearly activated on all of the cars. I will investigate this myself since no proof of the above claims has been provided.

Maybe the videos were made in the track version without variable weather and variable time. In that version, the lights are always on.

I know it wasn't on a late update because I noticed this a long time ago when I started timing laps in Nurburgring for fun, before patch 2.00. The lights on bothered me since the beginning and I found that they were off in the version with variable time in a certain period of the day. So I started timing laps in that version.

 

[BrandonW77]

Maybe the videos were made in the track version without variable weather and variable time. In that version, the lights are always on.

I know it wasn't on a late update because I noticed this a long time ago when I started timing laps in Nurburgring for fun, before patch 2.00. The lights on bothered me since the beginning and I found that they were off in the version with variable time in a certain period of the day. So I started timing laps in that version.

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle, you sir are absolutely correct.

Static time version

Variable time version

 

[JHB434]

Agreed, it's a head scratcher just like a lot of other things in these games. I'm not the least bit bothered by it though and it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the game in any way.

No, I agree. I quite love GT6. Some things like this do get to me slightly, but then I forget they exist as I go on enjoying it. But it's little things like this that get to me when they do.