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

[Novice]

Yet another person who barely (or not at all) skims the thread and make an inflammatory response when his point has been addressed before... The current speedo is NOT showing you how fast the car is going, it is merely showing you how fast your are moving towards the point your hood is facing, two very different things and that measurement is entirely arbitrary. GT 1-3 had an accurate GPS style speedo that actually showed you true car movement speed. And no, I'm not merely looking for them to make the speedo realistic, but as it is it's neither realistic NOR accurate. Also if you tire spin a real car against a wall, the speedo will NOT stay at 0, so you are wrong there.

lol. i'm sorry. but i can't find the reasons of your complaint so i didn't read the whole thread. but others have already stated that speed is taken in different ways depending on the car. and each one has it's own drawbacks and of course inaccuracy in real life.

for example:

from tranny - tranny speed is of course not your road speed, so a conversion factor is used to convert it to a more meaningful value to the driver. this is usually based from final gear ratio (differential), tire diameter, and other things that gets in between the tranny and the road. anyway, even changes in wheel diameter would create discrepancies between the road speed and your actual "GPS" speed.

from driven wheel - speed taken from the driven wheel is also inaccurate on certain conditions, i.e. when the driven wheel is slipping. a lot of events can cause this, drifting, driving in wet/icy roads, on dirt, etc. basically, it's only accurate if your wheels are not slipping. do burnouts and it will also show a speed your car is not doing.

from not driven wheel - only accurate when the tires are travelling straight or with very little slip angle, differences starts to show the greater the slip angle of the tires is.



point is, speedos in real life are also inaccurate given certain situations that's why i find your OP a bit senseless. why complain about inaccuracy on irregular events (drifting and revving against a wall) when the real thing would also show inaccuracies on those situations?

also, i'm pretty sure that most of this technical data in GT5 is based on some complex physics computations and formulas. if it can be computed, it can be shown in-game or used for other computations. meaning there has to be something that the game can work on before it can show something. but GPS readings aren't computed, how can you retrieve data taken from satellites and emulate it in-game? if they can somehow make that into game, data has to be fake somehow.

 

[Flyojumper]

but GPS readings aren't computed, how can you retrieve data taken from satellites and emulate it in-game? if they can somehow make that into game, data has to be fake somehow.

I'm not privy to the programming details of GT 1-3 but I know the system worked perfectly fine there, and the readings were plenty accurate. The games are rendered in full 3d, so I'd imagine that the car's position at each instant has 3 coordinates on the 3d plane (X,Y,Z), so it just takes sampling those coordinates a few times per second and presto, you can infer the exact traveling speed of the car. Of course this is just theoretical but it should work and they did make it work on GT1-3 on much inferior systems than the PS3. The point is they had this system that worked, and they changed it not in favor of something that is truer to real life, but an entirely different made up system that introduces inaccuracies in a system that had none before. So it's a negative tradeoff any way you look at it, we don't gain in realism and we lose in accuracy.

 

[niky]

In that case, it really is an issue. But sadly, not something we can do something about unless PD decides to patch it. I wonder, though... is it an attempt to be more realistic, but hindered by the lack of a detailed tire model (spinning tire model... not static, mind you) to take the virtual sensor reading off of?

True, but that doesn't change the fact that the speedo in GT5 is doing things that aren't preferable. 💡 Which, is the whole point of this topic. Not a discussion as to whether we should be driving sideways or not, or whether we even look at the speedo, IzoAzlion.

I know I should know better, but it's an interesting side discussion which affects whether the inaccuracy of the speedometer is more or less relevant to the needs of the common player. Don't worry, that was my last post on that topic. If it arises again, I guess we could bud it off into its own topic... or someone could create a topic about whether slip or grip is faster in GT5, overall.

 

[alby13]

Thanks for this thread. I think it should be like real life. No reason not to be.

 

[jinjin12]

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

lmao i know right,..... i can't believe GT fans are so whiney....like little girls crying about everything....it's sad

 

[Flyojumper]

Thanks for this thread. I think it should be like real life. No reason not to be.

You're welcome! I'm glad at least a few people agreed and found the thread useful.

 

[SavageEvil]

Hmm after a bit more thought I have come to the conclusion that whatever GPS based telemetry PD used in the other GT games was too accurate. No car in real life can give the correct speed you are going while sliding, it's just not feasible. You just get a rough estimate(based on entry speed of the slide) which is basically guesstimates, since real life contains a lot more variables that do not remain constant like in a video game. The problem with the other GT games is that you were getting an accurate reading when at slip angles greater than used for normal forward progression, which in real life doesn't happen.

So what I am trying to point out is that your complaint is that because the speedometer isn't giving you a "proper" reading something is wrong, when in actuality nothing is wrong at all. Real life some cars extrapolate speed using one drive wheel, others use a non driven wheel and some get multiple readings from all wheels and extrapolates a speed from that, fact is none of these will give you an accurate reading like what you had in previous GT games. If you drive a gamut of autos you will find differences with what is shown on the speedometer while; driving, doing a burn out or drifting. No matter how you slice it, none of them will have the accuracy of GPS derived speed.

Here is where we come to a crux do you prefer realism or do you want precision? Sure it's a matter of choice, but realistically speaking what you want doesn't exist in real cars since GPS can be interfered with by solar flares, storms and other atmospheric anomalies. Since you don't get such a reading in real life, why should you get one in the game? We should ask Kaz about that and make sure he acquires the information on how each vehicle model derives it's speed displayed on the speedometer and have that accurately reflected in the game.

 

[kittybum]

Flyojumper is right. Speedo should look at the wheel rpm & the tire's circumference. Would be a basic algorithm to implement, don't know why they chose to show the cars actual speed.

 

[Novice]

i don't about the other guys here, but i rarely even take a glance at the speedo. and if I ever do, it would most prolly be on the straights where i would like to have a clue on my top speed and what not. on the corners, i usually find it more valuable to check the brake/accelerator bars.

 

[NOS Waster]

Hmm after a bit more thought I have come to the conclusion that whatever GPS based telemetry PD used in the other GT games was too accurate. No car in real life can give the correct speed you are going while sliding, it's just not feasible. You just get a rough estimate(based on entry speed of the slide) which is basically guesstimates, since real life contains a lot more variables that do not remain constant like in a video game. The problem with the other GT games is that you were getting an accurate reading when at slip angles greater than used for normal forward progression, which in real life doesn't happen.

So what I am trying to point out is that your complaint is that because the speedometer isn't giving you a "proper" reading something is wrong, when in actuality nothing is wrong at all. Real life some cars extrapolate speed using one drive wheel, others use a non driven wheel and some get multiple readings from all wheels and extrapolates a speed from that, fact is none of these will give you an accurate reading like what you had in previous GT games. If you drive a gamut of autos you will find differences with what is shown on the speedometer while; driving, doing a burn out or drifting. No matter how you slice it, none of them will have the accuracy of GPS derived speed.

Here is where we come to a crux do you prefer realism or do you want precision? Sure it's a matter of choice, but realistically speaking what you want doesn't exist in real cars since GPS can be interfered with by solar flares, storms and other atmospheric anomalies. Since you don't get such a reading in real life, why should you get one in the game? We should ask Kaz about that and make sure he acquires the information on how each vehicle model derives it's speed displayed on the speedometer and have that accurately reflected in the game.

This is win.
/thread. . .

 

[Flyojumper]

Hmm after a bit more thought I have come to the conclusion that whatever GPS based telemetry PD used in the other GT games was too accurate. No car in real life can give the correct speed you are going while sliding, it's just not feasible. You just get a rough estimate(based on entry speed of the slide) which is basically guesstimates, since real life contains a lot more variables that do not remain constant like in a video game. The problem with the other GT games is that you were getting an accurate reading when at slip angles greater than used for normal forward progression, which in real life doesn't happen.

So what I am trying to point out is that your complaint is that because the speedometer isn't giving you a "proper" reading something is wrong, when in actuality nothing is wrong at all. Real life some cars extrapolate speed using one drive wheel, others use a non driven wheel and some get multiple readings from all wheels and extrapolates a speed from that, fact is none of these will give you an accurate reading like what you had in previous GT games. If you drive a gamut of autos you will find differences with what is shown on the speedometer while; driving, doing a burn out or drifting. No matter how you slice it, none of them will have the accuracy of GPS derived speed.

Just because 2 measuring systems are inaccurate doesn't make them equivalent or interchangeable. If I took the GT1-3 GPS style speedo and introduced a random -3%/+ 3% variation during turns, it would make it inaccurate as well, but would you agree that it's an acceptable system just because the inaccuracies occur only during turns just like in real life?
They sacrificed accuracy but didn't gain any realism in the process because their new speedometer concept doesn't mimic ANY speedometer concept found in the real world.

Here is where we come to a crux do you prefer realism or do you want precision? Sure it's a matter of choice, but realistically speaking what you want doesn't exist in real cars since GPS can be interfered with by solar flares, storms and other atmospheric anomalies. Since you don't get such a reading in real life, why should you get one in the game?

Again, that GT5 speedometer concept has neither realism nor accuracy going for it, so the realism VS precision discussion (which could be interesting) does not apply in this case since we didn't trade some of one for the other but some of one for none of the other, which is a lose/lose.
Incidentally, I seriously doubt they removed the GPS style speedometer because it was too accurate and "unrealistic" because a myriad of other things in game are great gameplay tools that aren't found in cars in real life either (ghost races, G force meters/tire heat indicators, accelerator/brake input display, HUD map, etc...)

 

[gold_ultima]

Just a side note, but some newer cars have been known to detect speed based on a laser reading of the asphalt below.

Either way, he's right. Even if it's not a big deal to you, he's right. The speedometer is wrong. He has the right to point it out and discuss it. I for one used to use the speedometer all the time in GT4, but stopped in GT5 because it felt off. It was very useful for one corner in particular on Nurburgring where I had figured out the exact kilometre I had to brake to for one of the higher speed corners. Let him talk about something that bugs him. I'm sure there's something in the game that bugs you that he couldn't give two s***s about as well.

 

[niky]

since GPS can be interfered with by solar flares, storms and other atmospheric anomalies

0-100 km/h in 0.2 seconds. Top speed of 600 km/h. Oh how I wish Racelogic had included a sensitivity adjustment function in the V-Box to "ignore" spurious readings.

Because of those, we had to go back to the start of the drag strip... and do the acceleration-braking-slalom test all over again. Och, muh achin' ribs...