Disagree! Standards use the same physics as premiums, so drive just as nicely. Also, as nice as the dashboard view is, nothing beats bumpercam for accuracy.
It's not about the physics in this case, precisely because, as you said, it's the same driving model.
However, look at all the attention to detail shown to the Premiums vs Standards, many of which are direct CnP from GT4 by all accounts. Not just interiors, but externals, audio, and damage. I find it hard to beleive that they didn't also put more time into the underling data that defines the handling too.
And yes, bumper cam is good for accuracy. I noticed that early on, turn off the interior and run better.
But that's the point.
In the IL2 world (PC Flight Sim), we call the equivalent "wonder woman view", and it is held in extreme disdain. Ranks right up there with cheating, because in a sense, it IS cheating.
Here me out - in a simulation, the idea is to, well, simulate not just the given bit of machinery, but also the experience of piloting it. This means that visuals are important (ie, graphic quality of the envrionment and externals of other vehicles and so on), but most importantly the primary thing the pilot would see around him... his cockpit. Not only for reading gauges, but also, and perhaps more so, to provide the _limitations_ that being stuck inside imposes, as well as provide greater sensation of "being there".
This is why a dinky '68 Fiat 500 or VW Sambabus are more fun than a '99 GT-R Vspec N1, which is standard only.
Again, every simulation most be accepted for the limitations of the hardware used to run it, and the PSX almost certainly didn't have the power for interiors, and with 14 people on the crew, corners had to be cut. That's fine, and for it's time, GT1 was par excellance. It could claim it's self-applied sub-title. By the time of GT4, it was pushing it, but, due to history and other content, it got away with it. But now that we have interiors on a next gen console... there is no excuse anymore. (I can see adding them since they are already "there", but time needs to be taken to use standards as a half step, tossed in just to flesh out the numbers and make past fans happy rather than revoking them, but the effort should be made to upgrade them to premiums - particularly when we have a friggin premium prius of all things)
