Realistic engine tuning effects.

[Vegard]

Engine tuning in GT6 is a very simplistic and unrealistic representation of reality.

All power upgrades, excluding turbo and supercharger mods, function as a torque multiplier across the rev range.

The (fixed for all cars) increased rev range you get from some tuning parts, is not used to shift the torque curve, but to stretch it.

The results of this method are completely unrealistic specific power/torque output numbers, ridiculus power/torque curves, and static engine characteristics.

 

[shirakawaa]

I agree that engine tuning and especially the effect of components on the torque/power curves should be made more realistic. Tuning a stock engine to its maximum potential should radically alter its characteristics, but in GT they barely change at all. What we've got is preset, unrealistic increases. Some modifications stretch the powerband by 100 or 200 rpm, others add X% torque at all rpm. That's not the way they would work in real life.

Previous GTs, up to GT4 were more realistic on this aspect. Engine tuning would radically alter the power/torque curves at higher stages. In GT1 and GT2 pretty much all tuning parts implied a tradeoff somewhere in the power band (usually a loss of power/torque at low rpm), as one would expect in real life. All of this got lost since GT5.

A low-revving engine in stock form should be able to some extent to be tuned to a high revving beast. Large aspirated engines with peak power at 4000-5000 rpm (like most muscle cars in GT) are most often that way by design through specific tuning (intake/exhaust port size, runner length, cam profile, ECU mapping, etc) in order to increase reliability and/or decrease fuel consumption, and to some extent due to technical limitations. However those engine characteristics aren't set in stone.

There should be room for the side effects of tuning (for example, loss of engine flexibility at lower rpm, increased fuel consumption outside the optimal torque range, etc) and customization of engine power/torque characteristics (which can be done in real life).

 

[Vegard]

GT1

I remember my fully built Race Modified R33 would almost stall off the line

 

[shirakawaa]

I remember my fully built Race Modified R33 would almost stall off the line

The effect was a bit exaggerated in GT1 and GT2! The loss of torque at low rpm seemed to affect engine inertia, which would even make freewheeling engines in neutral a very slow process. In real life it doesn't take much power to rev up an engine without any load, so it would still rev up relatively quickly even after tuning which takes off much torque at low rpm (although the engine might have a rather irregular/jumpy response at low rpm in such case. This is usually caused by wild cam timings).

Still, the basic idea was realistic.