What's your preferred camera view in GTS?

Chase/3rd Person. I want to see what’s happening around me.

 

Cockpit , I use that for the best lap times.

 

Cockpit... but honestly, having a premium title like this not give us the ability to adjust f.o.v. is an absolute travesty.

 

Obviously cockpit view is the only view available in VR and that’s my preferred view. For racing I tend to go either cockpit or bumper.

 

I have a bit of a dilemma with the views.

Bumper view gives the best sense of speed from being close to the road, and the mirror for races is extremely helpful. It's the most popular view, probably for those reasons, and I've preferred it in GT right from GT1.

However, I do feel it gives a poor view of the track ahead, because it's so low, so in many places you're relying on having memorised the track and the exact path you need to follow, where to brake etc. Driving blind in this way has always been a weakness of mine, I like to be able to constantly visually judge the future path of the car on the track.

Roof view gives a better view of the track, but the sense of speed is gone, it feels like you're crawling along compared to bumper view. And you lose the mirror, plus the information layout on the bottom of the screen is worse than bumper view and my wheel rim blocks my view.

I don't like cockpit view because, paradoxically, I find it unrealistic compared to real life. In real life, if a front pillar is between you and where you want to look, you just move your head to look around it. Plus you can't remove the wheel, so you have two wheels in front of you. I just don't like it, it doesn't feel anything like real life to me.

It's a long time ago now, but I have a feeling a lot of this hasn't changed since GT1? My slightly fuzzy memory of it is that it had the same thing with a mirror in bumper view but not in roof view.

I agree with some other posters who have said what they really want is a view that currently isn't offered. I'd like to have a mirror, and a good sense of speed, but a better view of the track ahead than bumper view gives. Some customisation like PCars2 would be good, where you can position elements where you want on the screen.

 

Bumper view being too low is just an illusion, it's the same height above the road as cockpit view. It just seems so low compared to roof view. It also gives the correct sense of speed for the same reason. Once you realise bumper cam is the correct height it will help. Even if it's just subconsciously.

Totally agree over cockpit, this isn't a criticism as that would be unfair, but the separation from actually being in the cockpit spoils it. Like you say, the pillar being in the way etc. It feels like driving with your head strapped to the head rest. I suppose that's where VR comes in.

 

Well you ARE strapped in pretty good in a race car...the headrest envelops a driver's head, how much head movement do you think is realistic?

 

It's a fair point, but looking at the view from the camera on his helmet here, there is quite a bit of head movement:

e.g. look at 7:20-7:45. I'll admit it's a pretty unpleasant and restricted view. There comes a point when my personal goal isn't strictly realism, and I'd rather have it more enjoyable than as realistic as possible. For example, we don't fit ourselves with devices that will physically kill us in a severe enough crash in the game, so we're already accepting the basic principle that we don't want to truly simulate the real world.

 

Fair point, when you think about the conditions of actual racing driving, with a helmet, G-forces, vibration etc!
I was thinking more about the sense of immersion and the sense of the space around you. I feel that more with bumper cam. With cockpit view the dash feels like a layer pasted on the screen, I don't get the spacial awareness I would get if I was actually sat in it.
I'm talking purely from a gaming point of view, not a realism one.

Did you try bumper cam again looking at the heights? It is surprising when you first realise, bumper feels so much lower.
So the view of the track ahead is exactly as it should be. Nobody races a track "blind", you should have at least a passing familiarity with a track once you've practiced it a bit.

As with most things though, it's whatever you're used to. If you commit to something you'll soon get used to it.
Which i could apply to myself with cockpit view I know!

 

No, I did intend to, but completely forgot last time I played the game. I do think the view of the road ahead is much worse than in real life, but maybe it's a resolution thing. In FM7 there's no doubt playing on an Xbox One X in 4k gives a competitive advantage over 1080p in terms of how clearly you can see the track ahead. But even 4k has limited resolution compared to real life, you can still very clearly see the pixels. I think even 8k may well not match what we can see in real life.

 

I think the fact that it's a flat 2D image is the main difference to real life. Our brains just interpret the input differently, the spacial awareness just isn't the same, you can't adjust your focus etc.
And you must either have very good eyes or a massive telly!

 

I have a bit of dilemma here and I hope you guys help me out.
I love the cockpit view for the immersion, but my main problem is that the view is too narrow and focused on details that normally my eyes would not focus, like the dash, the steering wheel and even the top visor.
When you drive, you can "sense" all those aforementioned details but only if you set your eyesight on them.
However, when you are driving inside your car, your view resembles more the bumper cam view.
So I always end up switching between both.
Lately I've been using bumper cam view because it allows me to see the whole track and I can judge corners better.

 

Yes, I agree completely.
There's no dilemma though, just see bumper cam as cockpit cam but only showing what you focus on, showing the spatial awareness you would have in reality. With the black proximity warning (don't know it's official name) as your peripheral sense.
Probably sounds like nonsense but that's how I find bumper cam more immersive.

 

Yeah.
I'll miss on the nice in-car detail but it's too distracting and limiting when you are driving.

 

“However, when you are driving inside. your car, your view resembles more the bumper cam view.”

—ATTENTION BORING SCIENCE BIT—
This is because your brain does an amazing amount of editing/focusing on the world around you. Hold your thumb up at arms length, look at your thumb nail. That little patch, about the size of a stamp, is about all that you can actually see in any detail. Your eyes are constantly moving around and taking snapshots that are kind of stitched together in your visual cortex to make up what you see in your vision, most of your reality is based on old information, weird eh?. When your driving and focused on the road ahead, you’re not aware the dash because your attention is on the road, until you look at your speed or something.

————-LESS BORING BIT—————-
If you sit in a car seat and look forward and notice how much you can see, it’s not too far away from what the GT cockpit view is. In GT If your sitting close enough with a big enough TV (like a playseat and a 50”+screen) it’s possible to get a very natural view.
On the other hand if your sitting way back in the sofa with a sub 40” screen I can see bumper cam being the way to go.

 

My room is set up in away that I have the playseat sitting at about 4 feet from the tv, which is why I go for bumper cam view.
However, I think I should be putting it closer together, although my tv is 55" and having that tv that close is kinda too much.

 

Chase for pad and cockpit for wheel.

 

I’m at a similar distance to you, I really like cockpit view, I find myself bumping into other cars in the braking zone from bumper cam. And I have ambilight TV, which projects the colour from the edge of the screen onto the wall, in bumper it darkens the edge of the screen, and my wall, when a car is next to you, really brakes my concentration.

 

That's beautiful but not too practical, especially playing online.
I need my lap, tire and fuel indicators.

 

I have the hud on full on line, it saves me from the dive bombers and you can’t adjust fuel map with the hud off
I do all my career grinding with the hud off.

 

I eventually remembered to compare bumper and cockpit cam, and you're right, the height is the same, bumper is just a bit zoomed in by comparison, so you can make out the detail in upcoming corners better.
Re good eyes, and me saying we might need more than 8k to match real life, I actually got some new glasses recently, so currently have perfectly corrected vision. This monitor is a 27" 4k, and I drew a 1 pixel horizontal line on a white background, about an inch long, to see how far away I could see it. The furthest away I can get from the screen before I'm against a wall is 4m, and I can still see that 1 pixel line at that distance.