This was something I've been thinking about ever since hearing about the GPS app. I was immediately excited by the thought of turning some of my favorite driving roads into real courses. But then just as quickly it dawned on me that the capabilities of this course creator will likely be so limited, that the final products would be mostly unrecognizable vs. reality.
For example, I will be driving on the right-hand side of a 2-lane country road the whole time taking GPS tracks from real-world. What will the course creator want to do with the GPS data? I would think it will take the GPS tracks as a center-point on the "track" that it creates. Maybe it will give you the granular control to adjust that meter-by-meter? I'm not so hopeful. And then what will the landscape look like? Probably like Sierra - not too bad but nothing like what I want. Not a single shrub, tree, building or other landmark matched up.
The course maker
could work with Google maps data to determine the general geography and elevation of the landscape, road layout (lines on the road, how may lanes etc) and the general surroundings (structures, landmarks, foliage from satellite and street view) and make a plausible adaptation. It would model all roads and structures within sight. So when you come to a 4-way intersection where you turned left on the GPS app, it will model the whole intersection but automatically put barriers to prevent you going straight or right. Any trees or buildings would be chosen from GT's library of structures from other courses to find the closest match. They would probably need to add some more residential-style house and infrastructure models. This all would require some serious collaboration between PD and Google.. and just a generally huge overall development effort.
One other thing to note is that this could kill 2 birds with one stone - it could make an awesome course creator but could also allow for generating the big "free drive" worlds that people seem to really want.
For the record, these are not my actual expectations. We will probably get a GT5-style course generator that allows a little more flexibility to adjust track features and elevation curve-by-curve, and I'm not even holding my breath for the GPS app
