Imperial units for the car's dimensions and weight?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Balocco
  • 27 comments
  • 5,418 views
Balocco

Balocco

Messages
273
I'm your typical American, which means I am incapable of comprehending metric, so does GT5 have an option to see the car's dimensions in inches, and most importantly, the car's weight in pounds? It would be great to not have to be constantly multiplying by 2.2 to get my head around what my weight reduction just did.
 
probably, i'm refering to GTPSP since my C E isnt here yet (still 23rd here) you can choose mm/inch, lbs/kg, hp/bhp, kmh/mph...
 
Balocco
I'm your typical American, which means I am incapable of comprehending metric, so does GT5 have an option to see the car's dimensions in inches, and most importantly, the car's weight in pounds? It would be great to not have to be constantly multiplying by 2.2 to get my head around what my weight reduction just did.
Click to expand...

made me lol 👍

OT: In my experience, every racing game i've ever played has the option between imperial and metric, kmh/mph so im pretty sure it'll be under the GT5 settings
 
As an American, I'm very weird with my measurements. I know distance by both by km and mi, but I only have a good grasp with MPH. I'm better with kg than I am with lbs. But I'm pretty sure you can change it in a settings menu.
 
I too am an american. Back in the days of my obsession with GT3, I switched everything in the game over to metric, so as to help 'learn' the metric system. Its not so much that its hard to understand, if anything it is easier, haha. The thing I have trouble with is putting things in perspective: Just how fast is 300km/h, just how heavy is 1200kg, just how powerful is a 500kw engine?
 
You just wait until you find out they use Imperial gallons for fuel economy and not US gallons (which are a fifth smaller) because they had no idea they existed.

I'm quite good at on-the-fly metric/Imperial/US conversions, because I grew up in an Imperial house as the UK moved towards metric (we still have miles and mph though) and because I'm a geek. As I've spent a little time in the US and the exchange rate between dollars and pounds is usually in the region of 1.6:1, being able to convert km to miles and back in my head comes in very useful :D.

To assist the above, 100km/h is 60mph (or as close as need be for head conversions), so 3x100kmh is 3x60mph. 1kg is 2.2lb, but there's 1000kg in a tonne and 2240lb in a ton - so tonne-to-ton is "subtract 2%" (2% is a hundredth twice) - 1.2 tonnes becomes 1.2 tons (1200 becomes 1176, which rounds to 1.2). One horsepower is three quarters of a kilowatt, so divide by kW three and multiply by four - 500/3 is 166annabit, 166*4 is 666annabit horsepower.

Simples.
 
Just learn metric and hopefully your backward country can eventually come over to metric like the rest of the world... I hate doing calculations in imperial units :p

I've gotten decent at converting basic things in my head (inches -> millimeters x 25.4, miles -> km x 1.6ish, kW -> horsepower x 0.75ish). Its just doing calculations in Imperial units are annoying when you have meaningless units, like horsepower. :p
 
Watts are for kettles, microwaves and PC PSUs. Not cars.
 
Not at all. Torque doesn't do squat without a gearbox in the way. Torque is just force and needs to be divided by time to get a meaningful unit of work - horsepower.
 
Famine
Not at all. Torque doesn't do squat without a gearbox in the way. Torque is just force and needs to be divided by time to get a meaningful unit of work - horsepower.
Click to expand...

Torque is Force x Distance, not just force.
 
I had a nice metric (km/h) speedo until I updated to version 1.01 and now its gone all imperial Mph. I am in the Uk though.
 
balang_479
Torque is Force x Distance, not just force.
Click to expand...

Torque is also force magnitude x force direction - which is why it's measured in units of forcedistance (mass x accleration [magnitude] x distance [direction]) - which is a vector force (or mass x acceleration, which is also force).

Torque is a measure of angular force or, as we say over here, moment.

LucaT
a nice metric (km/h) speedo
Click to expand...

404 - Concept not found
 
I'm wondering why on earth they don't let us decide on what units we want to use.

Here in Sweden, we never use anything other than Km/h, Nm (not kg/m), and HP (not BHP)... from what I can see, that is not an option. Such an easy thing to implement.
 
In GTPSP, they did. You could chop and change as you liked. I haven't tried GT5 yet, but I'd be surprised if they've removed that.
 
Famine
In GTPSP, they did. You could chop and change as you liked. I haven't tried GT5 yet, but I'd be surprised if they've removed that.
Click to expand...

In the settings menu, I can pick between Turkish/Greek/XMB in one field and between km/miles in the other.

I don't know why Turkish/Greek are there.

Edit: Sorry, Turkish/Greek options are there because those languages are, supposedly, not options in the XMB interface.

Still nothing on how to correct the PD mess with the units, though.
 
Last edited:
Yeah in GT4 I had it set up EXACTLY the way I wanted. Kmph, Nm, and Kw.

"My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it" - Abe Simpson/anyone who still uses imperial measurements.
 
you wouldn't think it would be that hard to learn that different parts of the world in which you are selling your game have different measurements for power weight and dimensions and be able to apply with 5 iterations of a game series as popular as GT:crazy:
 
The measurement in russian ver. are OK, except power in kW. In ALL series I had Horse Power but NOT kW :( it's not comfortable.
 
Famine
Not at all. Torque doesn't do squat without a gearbox in the way. Torque is just force and needs to be divided by time to get a meaningful unit of work - horsepower.
Click to expand...

Err, I didn't mean divide by rotational speed to get torque... I meant horsepower is a meaningless unit because its of its arbitrary definition of 33,000 foot-pounds per minute.

Dividing horsepower by 550 still gets you a unit of power, its just a "meaningful" unit of power, ft·lbf/s, ie, something you can actually use in a calculation. That's why watts are nicer, 1 watt = 1 N*m/s. Then if you have an engine capacity measured in inches, yet another thing you have to convert.

When I was studying aircraft engines I always loathed seeing a problem involving an engine where power was given in horsepower, engine capacity in cubic inches and pressure in ksi, have to convert everything to something you can actually use in a calculation. :p
 
ChadSpeed
you wouldn't think it would be that hard to learn that different parts of the world in which you are selling your game have different measurements for power weight and dimensions and be able to apply with 5 iterations of a game series as popular as GT:crazy:
Click to expand...

Sloppy work, nothing else.

Same thing in the description of many of the cars. Factual errors everywhere.
 
WolfRacer543
Dividing horsepower by 550 still gets you a unit of power, its just a "meaningful" unit of power, ft·lbf/s, ie, something you can actually use in a calculation.
Click to expand...

If you leave it alone it's still ftlb/s - you're dividing by a number, not a quantity.

No-one but North America measures engines in ci. And they know jack about aerospace engineering...
 
I dont think that's how it works... though I guess it just depends how you define things... you get ft·lbf/s after multiplying by 550. They're all linear measurements that only vary by constants. You could just as equally say the unit of horsepower is watts... 746 of them. :p

Because you have to multiply by a constant to get it into ft·lbf/s means its unit can't be ft·lbf/s, unless you make new definitions for foot, lbf and second.

The Lycoming engines, which is one of the main engines we analysed when I was studying aircraft engines, tended to be given in cubic inches.
 
WolfRacer543
I dont think that's how it works... though I guess it just depends how you define things... you get ft·lbf/s after multiplying by 550. They're all linear measurements that only vary by constants. You could just as equally say the unit of horsepower is watts... 746 of them. :p

Because you have to multiply by a constant to get it into ft·lbf/s means its unit can't be ft·lbf/s, unless you make new definitions for foot, lbf and second.
Click to expand...

Mmmno. 1hp = 550ftlb/s. It's defined as the amount of power required to raise a mass of 550lb through one vertical foot in one second.

If you divide 1hp (550ftlb/s) by the constant 550 you get 1ftlb/s. If you divided it by a quantity, say 550 seconds, you'd get 1ftlb - which is a unit of torque.

WolfRacer543
The Lycoming engines, which is one of the main engines we analysed when I was studying aircraft engines, tended to be given in cubic inches.
Click to expand...

There was a minor hint of sarcasm in that part of my post - bear in mind that, three weeks ago, I was at pad 39A of the Kennedy Space Center...
 
Famine
Mmmno. 1hp = 550ftlb/s. It's defined as the amount of power required to raise a mass of 550lb through one vertical foot in one second.
Click to expand...


I'll still respectively disagree ;) Well, maybe, I'm not sure how "units" are defined.

Power, regardless of what units you define it as, has dimensions of length*force/time. That doesn't mean horsepower has units of ft·lbf/s. It'd be like saying 60mph has units of metres/second because you can convert it to metres/second. They both have the same dimensions, length/time, but the units are different and separated by a constant of 0.447.

Like if I have a glass of water next to me. I shall define the volume of liquid as being 1 glass. It has dimensions of length^3 by definition that it is a volume. But its units are ambigious, it could be defined as 562 millilitres, 0.148 gallons, 2.37 cups... they all mean the same thing.

Does that mean a "glass" has units of millilitres, gallons or cups? Or none of the above? I dunno... personally I'd say it is none of the above, yet via a conversion through multiplication by a constant, it can have any of those units ;) Maybe I'm wrong.

Horsepower is the same deal... it is defined as 550 ft·lbf/s, or 746 watts (N·m/s). Does that mean it has units of ft·lbf/s or N·m/s? Well, in my opinion it has neither, simply that it can be expressed in units of either ft·lbf/s or N·m/s through multiplication by a constant.

Hence why I said previously you need to multiply hp by 550 to convert it to a meaningful unit. ;)


Famine
If you divide 1hp (550ftlb/s) by the constant 550 you get 1ftlb/s. If you divided it by a quantity, say 550 seconds, you'd get 1ftlb - which is a unit of torque.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure of the significance of what you're trying to say, I'm not talking about torque, just power :)

Also your example looks wrong... power has dimensions length*force/time, if you divide it again by time you'd have length*force/time^2 while torque should have dimensions of length*force ;) I think you mean divide by a rotational speed, 550 rad/s... or maybe you meant multiply by a time to get an energy.

I can't believe I just spent that long talking about units and dimensions... that's what happens when you're stuck at home, sick, with nothing better to do. Its going a smidge off topic, my apologies. I wont reply again, I promise. :)

EDIT: Do you work as an Aerospace Engineer at Kennedy Space Center?
 
Sorry to bump this, but this is quite annoying.

Car mileage in the used section is in KM and distances in your garage is in miles. Weight and dimensions are annoying in metric too. Yet they game has a "distances" km/mi option. What's the point? How about just a metric/imperial option. And keep it consistent based on what you choose....distances, speed, weight, dimensions, etc. This should have already been addressed in these updates.
 

Latest Posts

Back