Should we trust GT4 in real life??

  • Thread starter Thread starter Boris Lozac
  • 75 comments
  • 4,805 views
Boris Lozac

Boris Lozac

Messages
337
I never driven some powerfull cars, i only drove a few cars, mostly VW golf(on my lisence tests) in real life, and i've never drove above 90 kmph... so i am asking you, how good will do GT4, when you drive a car in real life, you know, breaking distance, oversteer, understeer.. how much are these things transfered from RL in GT?
Will it be if i buy a car(i really have very little driving hours in RL), you know driving over 100 kmph, cornering, will my RL car behave like in GT??, i am talking about ordinary cars, you know, VW Golfs, Opel astras, vectras, Peugeot 206, and other "city" cars...
I mean does driving GT do you any good or bad in Real life circumstances.. ??
 
lol, I drive like a maniac in RL sometimes now :D

my poor lil' astra :p

no the game has had little effect on my RL driving. I tended to take the apex of corners b4 i played gt3 anyhow :)
 
It's going to be... SIMILAR.

When GT3 came out, my favorite car magazine, Grassroots Motorsports, posted a review. According to them, playing GT3 with a good wheel and pedals was a decent way for amateur real-car racers to stay in practice a little during the off-season. GT4's driving physics are in fact better.

The thing to remember is that no matter how badly you screw up, it's just a game. Even a minor screwup in real life can kill you.
 
Well, GT4 hasn't really helped me race or drive on the track since I've been driving my sports car on the track and road for months.

However, there is only 1 car that I am about to drive this year, and after driving it a bunch in GT4, maybe it will help me.
 
Well if your talking about driving on the street (hopefully) you wont be driving aggressive enough to expierence those things. If you mean about driving a real car in ulimited conditions (track situation) in GT and RL, By most accounts the game does a really good job of mimicking the real cars at limit tendancies.
 
Just make sure you select normal tyres for the comparison rather than sports. And don't forget that there will be hell of lot more than 5 idiots on the road.
 
Sports tires are a valid comparitor for many of the faster cars in the game, there's another thread that discusses that, presumably long since buried.

IRL though how much can you get from a game? Racing everyone is trying to do the same thing, get to the finish line first, driving is so different, many people don't sit correctly, are too busy on the phone, playing with the radio, eating, to be bothered with watching the road. You'd be hard pressed to find yourself in any kind of racing situation on the street legally, and if you think that lightly tapping the wall at 70mph is no big deal in the game you'll soon find yourself in a world of trouble when you lose all the paint on one side of your car, rebound off the armco barrier into traffic, taking out 3 other with you.

In sum, GT series is the real driving simulator, but you'll find things get out of hand quickly if you expect a video game to accurately reflect actual driving conditions.
 
A young kid died in a car crash about 2 weeks ago here in Sydney.
He lost control and hit a pole, killing himself.
I saw the family gathered around the accident site laying flowers around the pole he hit on my way home from work. A very sad sight indeed.
A week later as I drove past a young girl was standing crying at the site.

The public road is not a place to test your cars handling or your driving ability.
Either keep it to a race track or your GT4 game.
Dont be tempted to try things you do in the game on the road. You may end up dead.

You worked hard to get that license, dont be tempted to do anything silly that may make you lose it or you or your friends lives.
 
Uncle Harry
A young kid died in a car crash about 2 weeks ago here in Sydney.
He lost control and hit a pole, killing himself.
I saw the family gathered around the accident site laying flowers around the pole he hit on my way home from work. A very sad sight indeed.
A week later as I drove past a young girl was standing crying at the site.

The public road is not a place to test your cars handling or your driving ability.
Either keep it to a race track or your GT4 game.
Dont be tempted to try things you do in the game on the road. You may end up dead.

You worked hard to get that license, dont be tempted to do anything silly that may make you lose it or you or your friends lives.
Click to expand...
Where was this accident... its definetly not good when we hear young lives being lost... an example the kid driving his dads R34 GTR.... In my opinion GT4 is a game and will on teach you the bare basics about racing a car on track such has racing line and learning what oversteer and understeer are about.
 
after driving the f1 on seca for about 2 hours doing an enduro race, and getting into my car right after to go to my kung fu class....lets just say i was pushing it a little bit(not on purpose) it felt natural haha. i think racing for a long time ingraves that full gas, full brake, turn hard kind of stuff. from my little exp
take a short break between playing the game and adjust to RL before driving right after
 
The Porko
Where was this accident... its definetly not good when we hear young lives being lost... an example the kid driving his dads R34 GTR.... In my opinion GT4 is a game and will on teach you the bare basics about racing a car on track such has racing line and learning what oversteer and understeer are about.
Click to expand...

Burns Road, Turramurra.

It hit home hard, it could have been me 20 years ago.
I had a big lose 200 meters from where this guy died, I was lucky and did not hit anything.

As you say it can teach you the basics, but the difference from a big lose on GT4 and real life is it usually means you hit something extremely hard.

I save all my fast driving to GT now and drive very carefully these days on the road.
 
Boris Lozac
I never driven some powerfull cars, i only drove a few cars, mostly VW golf(on my lisence tests) in real life, and i've never drove above 90 kmph... so i am asking you, how good will do GT4, when you drive a car in real life, you know, breaking distance, oversteer, understeer.. how much are these things transfered from RL in GT?
Will it be if i buy a car(i really have very little driving hours in RL), you know driving over 100 kmph, cornering, will my RL car behave like in GT??, i am talking about ordinary cars, you know, VW Golfs, Opel astras, vectras, Peugeot 206, and other "city" cars...
I mean does driving GT do you any good or bad in Real life circumstances.. ??
Click to expand...

DO NOT drive a real life car like you do in GT4, you will crash.

Although GT4 "feels" real, it aint, there are some many more different variables that happen in real life that dont happen in the game, traction is a big one.
In the game the traction is fairly constant, but in real life it only takes for you to hit a patch of wet leaves at 100kph and you will be in a ditch, possiblly upside down with no head.

Dan.
 
I don't think GT4 is any comparison for RL. Sliding (understeer or oversteer) in GT4 gives the player no sense of the forces on the car. It's a lot different and a lot more scary when you can feel the car pushing against your whole body.
GT4 can sharpen your reactions a little, and teach you the basics of what to put into practice, but when it actually comes time for the rubber to hit the road, RL experience is the only thing that's going to help you.
You can be an excellent drifter in GT4, but the first decent slide you get into on a wet road, you'll go around for sure. GT4 just can't prepare you for what it's like in RL. Doesn't activate the same senses... :)
 
actually, I'm assuming your talking about legal racing and having a little bit of fun on the road but nothing to extreme, GT4 can help you with racing. I'm not sure if my skills honed in years of playing Gran Turismo or it meant nothing and it was all natural.

but I had my first racing experience and it was just as I had imagined it. sure it was a kart race then the next day an autocross, but nonetheless, it was a race. the kart handled like I imagined it would, didn't expect my arms, shoulders, and hands to be that sore though. and in the autocross the next day, I came in 4th out of 8 people on my very first autocross. I would have won the class if I didn't miss a gate and get a DNF. I was only 1 second off my neighbors time who has been doing it for years. I was also borrowing his Miata to autoX in since I sometimes use my parents minivan.he told me he was impressed by how smoothand quick I was since most people lock up the brakes, spin out, hit cones, etc.

like I said, I wasn't sure if that was GT helping or just natural ability, but I'm sure Gran Turismo wasn't completely useless, I assume it was a mixture of both.

BTW, anyone need a driver to race for them? I'm avaliable to race wether it be some club races, or kart races, or professional races.. I will work for free if you will just pay for travel if you live far away from me(not in the southeast).








rock. :cool:
 
The Porko
Where was this accident... its definetly not good when we hear young lives being lost... an example the kid driving his dads R34 GTR.... In my opinion GT4 is a game and will on teach you the bare basics about racing a car on track such has racing line and learning what oversteer and understeer are about.
Click to expand...
Amen. Even then when u know what they are they can still catch you out. I have been to a go-kart school and passed and also have a license which means I can race outdoors in any type of go-kart. Which means I know all about racing lines and about over and understeer. But the thing is in GT4 most cars can handle apexes in road going tyres. Where as you try it in RL and you find the car just tends to slide. Trust me I did an Early Drive thing when I was 15 at Oulton Park. Audi A2 on normal tyres with a police driving instrutor as company in the passenger seat. I tried to do the racing line at Old Hall corner (for those who dont know the track heres a map Oulton Park map) and ended up alot wider then the professional race drivers who go around there. Basically if u wanna try to drive like u do on GT4 make sure u do it on a track as that is the safer place to do it. At least on tracks they Marshalls and large grass verges and gravel traps to slow u down a bit. Drive carefully on the road. As some1 has said Lampost kills, and u also got other road users u could kill as long as urself. They could be on Motorbikes, foot or in another car. Also there are Trucks that weigh 40 tonnes that will hurt if you hit them.
 
Dan is very right. Also remember that GT4 does not try and bounce you out of your seat when you get a sudden return of grip after a slide. And, I don't know what the Driving Force Pro is like, but all other controls allow you to go to full opposite lock and straight back to dead ahead almost instantly. In a road car there's far more arm flailing going on, and when you have applied too much lock in the real thing, it can't be so easily undone as in GT4 with some ontrollers. Even the 900 degrees of lock on the DFP would be sharper than most road cars, especially older cars, which can often have 4 turns of the steering wheel from lock to lock. The steering weight is usually much heavier in a real car, even with power steering, and especially on a FF car with lots of castor. This means you turn the wheel more slowly than you would in GT4. It also means you need to be properly supported so that you can apply effort to the wheel, but this is hampered by the fact that you are either flopping over into the passenger seat, or bouncing up and down, and need to hold on to the wheel to keep yourself upright while turning it at the same time. Your legs are probably floating about too. If you are in the wrong gear, you can't just hit a button to get another one. If you are driving an automatic, it will likely select the wrong gear at the wrong time and get you into even more trouble. Meanwhile the solid object you are about to hit is far more distracting in real life than in GT4.

It's a game. It only simulates vehicle dynamics to the point of grip, it does not simulate what's happening in the car. It should be viewed as theory training, not practice, because in terms of describing the car's basic reactions to what you do as a driver, it seems generally accurate.

But, as everyone else has mentioned, consider this. Even if it was perfectly accurate, and you are, in GT4, how many times do you make accidental contact with a hard object? In a 10 lap race, do you leave tarmac at least once, or tap some armco somewhere? When you are actually trying to drive at the edge of control, lets say practicing drifting, do you get it right 5 times out of 10, or 8? or 9?

Think about getting it wrong just once, in the real world. Then remember that it's not only you on the road. If you want to learn good car control, and experience it, do not use GT4. Rather invest in an advanced driving course.
 
I recently saw fifith gear where Tiff Needel....The TOP gear driver....tests out gt4....the car characteristics are about right as Tiff says....but he did mention car control is difficult because your don't really feel the forces....he raced Kaz at the end...Kaz won....and Tiff was an ex le mans driver...."the car doesn't really move as much in real life....but the bumps keep u attentive" So please...DON'T DRive like you do in gt4 on roads....but do use it as a guide for basic car control...ie USE THE BRAKE. if you want try searching or IM me and i will send you the file of tiffs review....my aim sn is RL9010.

btw using the DFP changes the game entirely....i don't think you get the whole experience of gt4 unless you play with the dfp...its worth it....in fact i saved a spin in RL just cause i was playin so much gt4...well thas what i credit for knowin what to do with the steerin wheel...but don't rely on the game....after all it is still a game. have fun ppl ! GT4 for ppl that love cars...forza for ppl that love video games....who are you?
 
I guess GT can give us an idea of what to expect on a real race track. Like hey there's a turn coming up... better brake early, look at the apex and steer the car smoothly. Y'know the basics.

Since Kaz said crash physics will be a big part in GT5. I hope there is something like a "Crash Course" where they show how much damage is done to a car when hit head on, t boned,high speeds and what/why a car rolls over.
 
if you want to test your ability and car to its limits then do the general public a favour. go on an open pitlane track day. then you wont possibly injure innocents.
 
Answer to the original post : NO.
Of course you can’t 'trust' GT4 - the differences are immense between real life and GT4. To get a car round a track in GT4 you rely on a very narrow field of view (your TV) and very limited artificial non directional sound.
Whilst driving in real life even on the streets you are able to use so many more senses a much more comprehensive field of view - nearly 360 degrees and instant judgment of distances, directional sound, a complete feel of your own body movements i.e. how hard your physically pushing the break/accelerator pedal etc... And also G-forces even at very slow speeds the g-forces you feel on your body as you accelerate, break and steer under normal circumstances give you a massive insight as to how you are driving - like a second pair of eyes. you could (but please don't do it whilst your driving) shut your eyes and you would still have an excellent sense of what is going on around you just from the 'feel' of your body due to g-forces.
But I guess the most important factor is the predictability of GT4 - it only takes a few goes for you to learn how the AI drives. In real life you don’t have AI you have real independent, dynamic intelligence (RIDI??) you don’t have obstacles blown in front of you don’t have small children running out in front of you. Because of all of this the cars don’t really feel anything like they do in real life – they are a pretty good representation given the tools (TV, Speakers and Controller) PD had to work with. Basically just because you’re good at GT4 don’t for one second think your good in real life and visa versa as the post above regarding the race between Kaz and Tiff suggests.
 
WorksAccess
if you want to test your ability and car to its limits then do the general public a favour. go on an open pitlane track day. then you wont possibly injure innocents.
Click to expand...
Yep thats why most tracks have days so that any random person can take there car onto the track. yeah it cost but its a hell of a lot safer to every1.
 
Hey guys, thanks for the posts.. relax... :) I am not some nut kid, who wanna prove himself on the public road, i don't have a car yet, and sure, i am smart enough to know not to push car like i do in GT4, on the city roads, you barrely have oportunity to drive 100kmph... Me and my friends had a car accident two weeks ago, some drunk driver crashed into us(6 of us in the car :scared: ), and we had an incredible luck, only my friend suffered minor arm brake..
So, of course, i don't wanna see people to drive fast in the city, it's really a scary feeling, when you have a car accident, i realised what kind of machines cars really are, what that speed even over 80 kmph can do to you... !!
My original question was more like, can countersteering, braking distances.. etc... in GT4, help you in a real life situation, if for some reason you lose control over the car, or something like that.....??
cheers..
 
Something else GT4 can't prepare you for is what I like to call "random hazards". Things like puddles, gravel or slow vehicles on the road infront of you.

In real life, as has already been mentioned, you have to look out for other traffic, but you also have to be aware of the possibility of random hazards and be ready to deal with them should they appear. An example from my driving history happened almost 3 years ago when I first got my licence. I took a friend out in my beast of a machine (Ford Escort 1.4 :( ) on a country road. The road is always very quiet, so I was driving fast but well within the car's (and my) limits. I approached one of my favourite sections of the road (a fast left-right off-camber switch on the crest of a small rise) at about 60 mph, turned in for the left, perfectly clipping the side of the road, then turned in for the right. It was at this point that I saw a huge puddle on the road about 15 yards ahead. I was still doing about 55mph and knew that it would be foolish to try to brake for the puddle, and I knew that swerving to avoid the puddle would most likely unsettle the car so much that I'd spin into the trees lining the road. So, I eased my foot off the throttle slowly (trying not to shift too much weight forward) and the left front wheel went straight into the puddle. Immediately upon contact the rear of the car started to swing left and the tyres started screeching. I stuck on about a quarter turn of corrective lock just in time for the rear wheel to hit the puddle. Luckily the car was near enough straight as the rear wheel went through, so the balance of the car was basically unaffected. As the car straightened itself out, I took off the corrective lock, got the car straight, looked across to my friend and we were both just totally relieved. Anyway, needless to say, I stay very attentive after rain and am always on the lookout for gravel now :)
 
Boris Lozac
My original question was more like, can countersteering, braking distances.. etc... in GT4, help you in a real life situation, if for some reason you lose control over the car, or something like that.....??
cheers..
Click to expand...

Yes and no, braking distances are fairly close, but again, that comes down to tyre choice and road/track conditions.

Oversteer and counter-correction is nothing like in the game, you cannot put across the forces that you encounter in real life situations in the game, trying to add opposite lock to a 2-ton car that has gone sideways at 80kph is HARD WORK, your brain feels like it will melt as the G-forces pull you side-to-side and you are battling with the steering wheel that is trying to rip itself out of your hands, the only thing the game can teach you is to steer into the skid, which I guess could help.

Also, the FWD dynamics in GT4 in some of the cars are plain WRONG, an Alfa 147GTA or a Focus RS WILL NOT POWER-OVERSTEER.

Bottom line is sitting in your lounge playing GT4 is NOT going to make you into a racing driver or a better driver, get out on a track on a track day and do it for real, thats the only way to experiance these things for real.

Dan.
 
Agree with all of the above, I'v been driving an old bmw 318 for 7 years now and nothing in GT4 can compare you for those dynamics :D

Only thing is, we have some strange and elipsodial roundabouts around my city and I can take these alot faster (while keeping safe) since I played Gran Turismo.
 
Oh, and the handbrake, or parking brake or e-brake or whatever, is much, much, much more sensitive in any car I have ever handbraked while in motion than in any car in GT4. With the exception of an Alfasud, in which the handbrake gives terminal understeer because it acts on the front wheels... *memories a particularly embarrassing moment in my life* :dunce: :dunce: . I thought the handbrake in GT3 gave a closer approximation to reality. Also, there's no clutch to interract with, and few of the odd weight transfers that result from the transmission when swapping cogs. GT4 always gives expert shifts perfect for the circumstance. The lack of a clutch also means you never experience lockup of the driven wheels while downshifting in GT4... something which can really bite you in the butt in when you're hard on it and don't have room for sliding about before you've even reached the corner. There's no oncoming traffic. There's no hidden driveways, speed cameras, storm drains, punctures at inoppertune moments... In fact, there's very little about GT that translates to useful road experience. It may help you learn faster if driving on a race track, though.

I second Dan's comments on the FWD cars. I can't believe they will swing the tail under power, esp. while the inside front wheel is spinning. But, I've never driven a 147GTA or Focus RS so.... I can't really say I suppose.

Other than that I think the theory is good... lift off throttle = oversteer, countersteer helps resolve oversteer, always have the front wheels pointing in the direction you want the car to go, regardless of what the car is doing, etc.

But, no, do not trust it. Again, if you want to enhance your real life driving experience, invest in an advanced driving course. And do one which gives road tuition as well as skidpan skills, since it's better to avoid an accident completely in the first place than to possess excellent skid recovery skills while in the middle of an accident.
 
Ok, let's face it: a video game may never make you feel the g force, fear, random street condition, and full 360 degree screen on a normal buget, so let's leave the obvious alone.

Let's talk about what a video game can actually do: simulate cars' bodyrolls, reaction to various conditions, tire grip, etc. Let's talk about that because that, my friends, are the things GT, or any games in that matter, can deliver.
 
I also say no, but a while ago here, some 14 year old kid got in his mom's car and went for a drive, he was speeding and etc, ended up starting a police chase, and when it ended(he ran out of gas i think) the police asked him where he learned to drive, he said from Gran Turismo 3 or some "realistic" racing game. :P so i guess you "could" relate gt4 and rl, but i wouldnt lol, ill try to find the story on it.

us3rX
 
I'm not encouraging this kind of stupid action, but, without crashing or hurting anyone in a chase is "respectable", or that SOB is just plain lucky...
 

Latest Posts

Back