The speedometer in this game is oh so very wrong :(

[Flyojumper]

Note: please read the whole post before replying.

In real life, the speedometers in cars are linked to the wheel's rotation, so a car doing donut would have its speedometer indicate a speed even though the car may be stationary. The speedometer in GT5 is actually only measuring the speed the car is traveling in the direction facing directly straight from the front hood. If you try to be blocked against a wall in GT5 and wheelspin your tires, the speed will be shown as 0.

Well, you might say that GT5 is actually more realistic, right? Since it gives you actual car movement speed instead of wheel rotation speed? Well... Wrong!
Instead of using some sort of GPS-like tool to measure the actual speed of the car, the fact that it only reports the moving speed in the direction traveled straight away from the front hood is actually giving very misleading speed measurements.

Say you slide your car sideways while traveling at high speed, the car will still be moving very fast but sideways. Well the GT5 speedometer will report a speed of 0 if you are perfectly sideways during your slide... (because you aren't moving towards the direction the hood is facing)

"Well how often will I slide perfectly sideways in a race?" you might ask.
Well the problem is also very evident during mere powerslides through turns... Say that you are moving 100mph but you powerslide through a turn at a 45 degree angle. Well your speed will only be reported by the speedometer as being 50mph!! Only half of your actual traveling speed... Needless to say it can be extremely misleading as slightly changing the angle of your powerslide will result in you thinking you suddenly gained a lot or lost a lot of speed, while it actually isn't true at all...

I don't know if PD can fix that with a patch but this inaccurate speedometer could really mess you up in time trials or in any race really when you rely on knowing your speed through each turn etc...

EDIT: To clarify and summarize the point I'm trying to make:
My point is not that the speedometer is unrealistic but that it is now unrealistic AND inaccurate, introducing a speedometer concept that has never been seen in a GT game before and that frankly makes no logical sense. GT 1-4 had a GPS type speedometer that was maybe unrealistic but at least was perfectly accurate as it displayed the actual car traveling speed. For an unknown reason they dropped that speedometer that was working fine up until now, but instead of dropping it for a more "realistic" one (which would be tied to the car's tires or transmission), they went with a speedometer concept that is neither accurate NOR realistic, the worst of both worlds.

 

[mwoodski]

It goes off the front wheel speed.

 

[shigllgetcha]

it goes off the driving wheels, he is right. i dont really care but he is right

 

[jaysvw]

Wow. Just when you think you have heard all the complaints. People crying about virtual speedometers not being 100% accurate.

 

[Flyojumper]

No he is not right... Go test it yourself if you don't believe me, take any 4WD or FF car, put it against a wall and spin the tires, you will see the speedometer will stay put at 0.

 

[Peter]

Does it matter? I think it may get confusing if i'm in a super powered car which wheelspins on exits of slow speed corners. It'll show 100, when i'm probably doing 70. Will be confusing.

It's perfectly fine how it is.


I don't think evne the best of racing sims have speedometers connected to the back wheels.

 

[Flyojumper]

Wow. Just when you think you have heard all the complaints. People crying about virtual speedometers not being 100% accurate.

I love the game and this won't change my opinion of it, but it isn't a problem of it being 100% accurate, it is EXTREMELY misleading when you take a turn at 100 actual mph and it shows your speed as 50 because you took it at a 45 degree angle. Then on the next run your car is only doing an actual 90mph during the turn but it'll report 60mph if you took it at 30 degrees, so you think you actually went faster than last time, but you went slower. The higher the angle of your slide the more inaccurate it becomes.

 

[OkeyD]

Yay, something new to whine about!

 

[MadBullBunny]

nvm. xD scratch that.

 

[Flyojumper]

Does it matter? I think it may get confusing if i'm in a super powered car which wheelspins on exits of slow speed corners. It'll show 100, when i'm probably doing 70. Will be confusing.

It's perfectly fine how it is.


I don't think evne the best of racing sims have speedometers connected to the back wheels.

Please read my example above on how it can be very misleading in actual driving conditions. A GPS like measurement of speed would be perfect as it shows the actual speed of the car.

 

[Flyojumper]

Whining? You people are insane. I probably love GT more than most of the people that will be reading this thread. This is not a mere whine, I love the game but this is a gameplay issue, it's not about realism or not, that's not my concern here.

 

[MagpieRacer]

What on earth? What next? 1 too many stitches on the wheel of the Focus?

 

[barryl85]

Actually a lot of cars the speedo is determined by the gearbox

And this thread is silly its a game, i'd imagine the speed is on a scaled level of calculations within the games algorythm.

Thats like saying the windows on the cars in the game are junk because they arent made out of real glass they are made from transparent polygons duhhh

 

[rileyra]

eh all you need is a tach anyways

 

[Flyojumper]

This is nuts, it is a real gameplay issue here if you care at all about being faster around a lap. How can you tell that you are faster through a particular corner or what speed to maintain if the reading you get can be 100% off!! (I'm not talking 1-2% here, it can be 100% off if you are sideways, and 50% off if only sliding at 45 degrees...)

I'll keep hope that someone sane with common sense will read this and not put it in the "GT5 silly complaints" that I admit have been abundant in the past few days.

 

[r2nyGT5]

eh all you need is a tach anyways

👍

 

[VooDoo-Reverend]

Note: please read the whole post before replying.

In real life, the speedometers in cars are linked to the wheel's rotation, so a car doing donut would have its speedometer indicate a speed even though the car may be stationary. The speedometer in GT5 is actually only measuring the speed the car is traveling in the direction facing directly straight from the front hood. If you try to be blocked against a wall in GT5 and wheelspin your tires, the speed will be shown as 0.

Well, you might say that GT5 is actually more realistic, right? Since it gives you actual car movement speed instead of wheel rotation speed? Well... Wrong!
Instead of using some sort of GPS-like tool to measure the actual speed of the car, the fact that it only reports the moving speed in the direction traveled straight away from the front hood is actually giving very misleading speed measurements.

Say you slide your car sideways while traveling at high speed, the car will still be moving very fast but sideways. Well the GT5 speedometer will report a speed of 0 if you are perfectly sideways during your slide... (because you aren't moving towards the direction the hood is facing)

"Well how often will I slide perfectly sideways in a race?" you might ask.
Well the problem is also very evident during mere powerslides through turns... Say that you are moving 100mph but you powerslide through a turn at a 45 degree angle. Well your speed will only be reported by the speedometer as being 50mph!! Only half of your actual traveling speed... Needless to say it can be extremely misleading as slightly changing the angle of your powerslide will result in you thinking you suddenly gained a lot or lost a lot of speed, while it actually isn't true at all...

I don't know if PD can fix that with a patch but this inaccurate speedometer could really mess you up in time trials or in any race really when you rely on knowing your speed through each turn etc...

I just had the same thought yesterday, when I was doing burnouts on Daytona. I wholeheartedly agree. On the ring I get sideways often and it's a pain to guess how fast you're burning the rubbers in order to accurately correct the slide.

I have experienced it first hand, and it IS important to know how fast the wheels are turning, as oppose to the vehicle's speed. I'm not gonna dump the game without it, but it's one of those details I'd like to see implemented.

 

[BobElHat]

Say that you are moving 100mph but you powerslide through a turn at a 45 degree angle. Well your speed will only be reported by the speedometer as being 50mph!!

So you're saying that not only do PD have a dodgy speedometer but they don't even know basic trigonometry

At 45 degrees it would measure a speed of 100mph divided by the square root of two, which comes to 71 mph.

To measure half the speed the angle would have to be 60 degrees.

There endeth the lesson. Carry on!

 

[MagpieRacer]

Because its 100% accurate 100% of the time? 50mph apex spee 1st time round, 52 second time. Adjust and move on.

 

[Exorcet]

When at 45 degrees, if what you say is true, then you should get 70.710678118654752440084436210485 mph lol [speed * cos(drift angle)]

But anyway, I don't think it's confusing as is. You shouldn't be sliding that much in a race, and personally, I'm not always staring at the speedometer. After a while, you get a feel for when you're going too fast/slow.

 

[Kubalivre]

I feel that the "but it's a sim" argument is promptly disarmed by the fact that, if you can't tell how fast you are going or should be going by the visual and force feedback output, you're doing it wrong. Stop staring at the meter.

 

[Flyojumper]

Ok, I got the math wrong for the 50mph figure, but the idea stays true. On one run the speedo can report a speed X, then on the next run it can report a higher speed Y, when in fact your car was traveling slower on run 2! It's not a simple matter of the reading being slower or faster, but since the angle has such a huge impact, it makes direction comparison of the reading useless unless in a straight line.

For the record, I just booted up GT2 on PS1 and it uses GPS style reading speed...
If you slide sideways your speed will be accurately reported in GT2.

 

[SyxxPakc]

This is nuts, it is a real gameplay issue here if you care at all about being faster around a lap. How can you tell that you are faster through a particular corner or what speed to maintain if the reading you get can be 100% off!! (I'm not talking 1-2% here, it can be 100% off if you are sideways, and 50% off if only sliding at 45 degrees...)

I'll keep hope that someone sane with common sense will read this and not put it in the "GT5 silly complaints" that I admit have been abundant in the past few days.

INo its not nuts. It isn't a real gameplay issue. If you care to get faster around a lap then you wouldn't be sliding.

 

[Exorcet]

Well, it takes almost 20 degrees to get an error of 5%. Sliding isn't too good for lap times.

 

[Flyojumper]

SyxxPakc, if you knew a little more about the game you'd know that some cars are faster through certain turns while sliding than pure grip style. I'm not even going to touch on the rally races where you slide all the time and the speedo issue becomes huge.

Exorcet, thanks for at least being civil about this. Frankly even a 5% variation is too much. This can be a game of pure precision, the timers are down to the milliseconds, yet a 5% variance on your speed reported would be acceptable?

Also, I now booted up GT3 to make sure and it is also using the GPS style measurement that is perfectly accurate. So if GT2 and GT3 did it right, it surely can't be an issue of it being too complicated to implement...

 

[CTznOfTime]

This thread should be renamed to:

"How fast am i going as the wall is holding me back?"

 

[nioxic]

Lets complain about that too!

It's very important!

*WARNING: Butter*

Btw. technicly its the only correct way to measure speed?

I mean, speed isn't really speed unless the car is in fact moving?

 

[WolfRacer543]

I don't think evne the best of racing sims have speedometers connected to the back wheels.

Actually I'm pretty sure they do.

 

[SyxxPakc]

SyxxPakc, if you knew a little more about the game you'd know that some cars are faster through certain turns while sliding than pure grip style. I'm not even going to touch on the rally races where you slide all the time and the speedo issue becomes huge.

Exorcet, thanks for at least being civil about this. Frankly even a 5% variation is too much. This can be a game of pure precision, the timers are down to the milliseconds, yet a 5% variance on your speed reported would be acceptable?

Also, I now booted up GT3 to make sure and it is also using the GPS style measurement that is perfectly accurate. So if GT2 and GT3 did it right, it surely can't be an issue of it being too complicated to implement...

I love how you thank someone for being civil yet claim that I need to know more about the game. Thank you for knowing so much about my knowledge of the game. You are correct about Rally Racing, but everything else you are incorrect about. Besides even if you were sliding in real life, then your speedo wouldn't read correctly anyway as you would be doing a controlled drift around a corner (which I don't see you complaining to car manufacturers about). Honestly, if you are having this much trouble, then I'd suggest practicing the tracks instead of complaining about a non-issue.

 

[Flyojumper]

This thread should be renamed to:

"How fast am i going as the wall is holding me back?"

Can you gold IC-10 with all the helps turned off and ABS off? Because I just did yesterday and with a dualshock controller, so don't go spouting nonsense about my proficiency as a driver when what is going on in this thread obviously flies right above your head.