Really? ::: smh :::
The 'sense of a car around you' is relative to the car you are in. In a Caterman you practically drive with your arms sticking out of the car and if you are over 6' tall the standard roll bar won't help you much in the even of a roll over. Some people think only giganormous SUV will give you enough 'car around them' IRL. At the track what matters is that you know where the corners of the car are, not that you can actually see them.
You see the hood, the roofline, and so much more. Especially when you are 6'2". Then even fitting in a 4th Gen Trans Am without hitting your head or having your vision blocked too much by the roof and still being comfortable can be a trick.... ask me how I know.
You missed the point. The harness makes you less able to move your head around (that is the restriction I am referring to) and the full face helmet narrows your field of view. The result is that you have to make an effort to look at the dash. If you just sit there and take in what you can see WITHOUT moving your head up and down / sideways, you see road/track. You DON'T see the dash (unless it higher than the average dash), you DON't see both mirrors (or rear view mirror, which btw most race cars don't have), you hardly can see your own hands and you certainly DO NOT see the gear stick.
That dashcam view shows less track and therefore is more restrictive/harder to play with is another matter. I agree it is harder, just not more realistic.
Actually no, it is
you who missed, or rather apparently, totally ignored the point. The interior in GT is an overlay. The view from the windshield does not get zoomed to fill the screen when you turn it off, it just gets removed. With interior off, you see more of the road and surrounding than you could see just sitting in the car without a helmet. And, it also removes any tinting effect of the glass, exacerbating the issue. The fact that you are trying to claim a helmet restricts visibility even more, totally undermines your entire goal to claim that wonder woman view (as in, the invisible jet) is in any way realistic. It's not. It's arcade, and a crutch, and the only reason to argue FOR it is to feel better about using it. You're either trying really hard to convince yourself, or perhaps you feel you are crusading on behalf of everyone else who wants to not feel bad about using an arcade crutch.
If you are sitting in the car at the traffic lights and move your head around you can see the spot on the carpet where you spilled coffee yesterday. But if you are looking at that spot you can't see (without moving your head) what colour the lights are at that very instant, but that is the sort of view that dash cam view gives you.
This shows that you never even looked (closely) at the GT interiors and are just desperate.
When I sit in my vehicle, as I took specific note of on the way home last night, I see the roof, the
effect of glass reducing brightness and visibility compared to it not being there, the a-pillars (both of them), all 3 mirrors, the hood, the dash, the instruments, the wheel, my hands on it, and stuff going on through the side windows. Now, it happens that I have nearly 180* of peripheral vision. I don't know if that's unusual, I assume it is not, and don't really care either way, but vertically, the limits are the eye socket, and I see a HELL of a lot more than just the windshield. I don't have to look down to see my instruments or wheel.
The night darkness obscured a lot. I just walked out to my truck to take a pic for this and realized (when I payed attention to it), I can see my thighs! If I had a gear stick I would see that, I see my knees, the windows buttons, the list goes on. This is looking straight out/through the windshield, not moving my head or even eyes, just taking note of what was within my field of vision.
In fact, what I see, is what is represented in GT5 and 6 fairly well. If anything, I see more of the interior in an actual car than what is in GT - as noted above.
This is what a camera sees when held at my right eye's level and position. A camera lens does not have
NEAR the field of view of an eyeball, let alone 2. Meaning this pic shows, not only much restriction of the vehicle around the windshield, it shows far less (of the vehicle) than is actually seen by a real eyeball. In short - You. Are. Wrong.
(yes, I removed the headliner, and the upper part of the interior with it, haven't put it back in yet, hence the wires showing)
Racing and flying are quite different on how much you depend on instrumentation. Flying you need to keep the plane at a certain angle relative to the horizon and you follow an imaginary line in the sky as flight path. You can't do that without instruments and looking at those instruments fairly often. When you are driving you got the road to tell you which way to go and you don't have to worry about the angle relative to the horizon. Most track instructors tell you that the most important instruments in the car are your buttcheeks because you can feel everything the car is doing, the revs the engine is at, the way the car is pointing , the amount of grip on the tyres, etc with them.
Maybe I am limited in my driving abilities (and maybe the handle fits) but I haven't noticed my times being any slower in dash cam view than bumper cam view. I find it a bit like 2 player view, you have to ignore half of the screen and make do with whatever you can see on the other half. After a few laps you don't even notice.
You don't know about flying, and you just demonstrated that. In any non-regimented-route situation you don't need to care about instrumentation once you attain cruise configuration. In formation, you care only about the guy next to you, navigation is on the leader. In a 2-ship combat air patrol, the leader navigates (with his head out of the cockpit) and the second man watches for bogeys (with his head out of the cockpit). In combat you are watching your sight, your tracers, and keeping your head on a swivel for other bandits. The only thing you care about instrument wise, in the main, other than your sight in combat is the ball, which is why Mustangs have one on the sight. But seat of the pants and sound and vibration tell you a lot of what you need to know regarding engine speed, prop pitch, and slip angle. Checking your altimeter is the main thing you need to do, but you get a slight sense of that from the windows - unless you enter a cloud.
Yet, despite that, for a simulation, you NEED a cockpit, AND the restrictions to visibility that that creates. Even though you look at that far less than what is out side. Even on a 19" 4:3 monitor.
As for skill, I'm not a great GT player. I think I'm good. I get by. But I often find it frustrating too. And when I have trouble with a mission or test, if I get frustrated to the point where I no longer care about simulation and just want the thing
done (the point where I'm ready to cheat), I turn off the interior. And I go faster (and stop running off the road so much). Bear in mind I havea 55" plasma, 1080p. I've tried moving close. It's not about magnification of the available view, it's about what the car blocks from line of sight when it is turned on.