Polyphony Digital has revealed more on its new Data Logger feature, heading into Gran Turismo 7 soon in the December “Spec III” update.
While the new cars and new tracks (yes, tracks plural) might be the headliners for Spec III, there’s plenty of other features and tweaks coming along too. One of these is the latest version of the telemetry visualization tool we’ve seen in a couple of previous titles, updated for GT7 with new functionality and display options.
We heard a little about the Data Logger tool back when Spec III was originally announced. And we do mean “a little”: it was mentioned by name and there was a three-second clip of it in action. However we’ve now got a slightly longer video showing off what the feature offers.
Although there’s no further description, the video demonstrates the capabilities of the Data Logger, which appears to allow you to load up a single lap from any replay — selecting a specific lap from within the replay file seems possible — and observe the data of how it developed in several different ways.
There’s options for different views, comprising a two-pane view and two different three-pane views. In all three views, there’s a raw speed trace along the length of the lap in the upper pane, and the left side permanently has a view of the car, tires, lap, circuit map, and G-meter trace.
In the two-pane view, the entire bottom half has a driving line overview. This appears to feature zooming and repositioning functions, although it’s not immediately clear what the purpose of the thick and thin lines on this display is. That’s moved over to the right side for one of the three-pane views, with the left occupied by a road speed/engine speed trace — which broadly looks like a gear ratio chart, over time.
The other three-pane view switches out the driving line overview for two additional traces, each of which looks to be customizable judging by the hamburger button. We only see throttle percentage and engine speed in this video — as with the earlier one in September — but we’d guess braking effort and steering position would also be in there somewhere.
Where the really neat part comes in is that you can actually do it to two different laps and compare them directly. This appears to function by mapping one of the laps onto the other and stretching it to fit — regardless of lap time difference — such that the cars are positioned at the exact same point at any moment.
That allows for a precise visualization of track position and data such as speed, throttle position, gear selection, lateral and longitudinal forces, and any other parameters currently located within the menu selection.
The end result is a powerful tool for analyzing your own laps in comparison to other people’s, giving detailed information on where and how you are gaining or losing time without relying on downloading a ghost and chasing it all day.
It’s certainly an interesting time to release the tool too, as there is a competitive Time Trial event for the Polestar 5 coming in Spec III that offers one winner the prize of a VIP trip to the GT World Finals. The Data Logger would allow anyone to download and analyze a faster lap from the leaderboard in order to improve their own time — so hopefully there’s also a fix for the “replay hiding” technique sometimes employed by top time triallers…
Of course there’s also plenty more to come from Spec III so, as always, watch this space for all the latest!
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