The PC Gaming and Hardware Technobabble Topic

[Regulus]

That's a bug. Damage is simulated in GT5, by the user's request. It just isn't pretty.

[DGFone]

[quote="Regulus"]That's a bug. Damage is simulated in GT5, by the user's request. It just isn't pretty.[/quote]

Yup!



Grabs air. Rolls over several times. Hits a wall. Body slightly damaged. Drives away like nothing happened.

Remind me what't the definition of "reality" is?

[Regulus]

[DGFone]

So how about this for realism:

[quote="Regulus"]mechanical damage can be turned to 3 different levels: completely off, auto-repair after 30 seconds, or completely on (go into pits to repair)[/quote]

Here's what I found:

Damage level:
completely off. Unlocked from the start.
completely on: Unlocked at level 40. 40. 40.
auto-repair after 30 seconds: somewhere in between.

So combined with the fact that I might actually be able to total my car in GT5, not only does that include ignoring a lot of GT 5's shoddy damage physics (including the series-famous bounciness), but the fact that...

I HAVE TO GRIND TO DO SO???

Realism. I think.

[Regulus]

Stop saying things that aren't true. Seriously.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2010/11/30/ ... -explained

The intensity with which you bash a game that you have so very obviously never played is just absolutely baffling.

[DGFone]

Explain these then:

http://www.denofgeek.us/games/12081/do- ... ed-crashes
http://www.racedepartment.com/forum/thr ... gt5.27825/
http://gamer.blorge.com/2010/11/27/gran ... e-reviews/
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/11/30/gran ... #continued

[Regulus]

So... what's your point?

I ask because, quite honestly, I'm lost. I don't mean to be rude, but it seems that you have gotten so absorbed into trying to bash Gran Turismo for not having realistic-looking damage that you completely forgot what we were even talking about.

[Hydro]

My two cents is that for a driving/racing simulator to be a proper driving/racing simulator, it needs to take most factors into account - tires, weight, center of gravity, road condition, wind, etc etc etc ...and damage. Mechanical Damage. Preferably with decent visual modelling for obvious reasons. I believe that the state of the car during a race is critical to the realism of the gameplay. Quoted shamelessly directly from Wikipedia, the definition of a simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Hitting the side of a wall at 100 mph and then driving off nonchalantly as though the car is made of a Vibranium-Adamantium Alloy is definitely not any sort of imitation of a real life process. A simulation is a simulation. You can't bend rules at will just because casual gamers will have their johnnies flustered if they bump another car at the wrong angle and sent flying off the track.

[DGFone]

[quote="Regulus"]So... what's your point?

I ask because, quite honestly, I'm lost. I don't mean to be rude, but it seems that you have gotten so absorbed into trying to bash Gran Turismo for not having realistic-looking damage that you completely forgot what we were even talking about.[/quote]

My original point was that by being on the hardware-limited PS3, GT5 is the best sim a current-gen console can do, but compered to "Hardcore" PC sims, GT5 doesn't really compare. It had to juggle between what the PS3 can handle, and what it can't in getting the most realism out of it, but some sacrifices had to me made: specifically damage and AI.

[Regulus]

The AI sucks in GT, I'll give you that. That's why I race online with friends only. As a side note, the online matchmaking is actually really good, and that's why GT5 took as long as it did before it was finally released.

But, the thing about damage is, if you're actually racing clean like you should be, you'd never notice that the damage isn't modeled very well. Heck, more often than not, if you're driving recklessly and you get spun out, you won't even hit anything. You'll run off the track and drive safely into a sand trap. Your car will be brought down to a complete stop, and you'll struggle for about 20 seconds to drive back onto the track.

And, if you do hit a wall at any higher than 25 mph in real life, your day is over. You probably broke at least one part in your car, and chances aren't too high that it can be repaired before the race is over. Even if you can get back on the track, you're still screwed and you have no reasonable chance of winning the race anyway.

Is it realistic to be able to drive after scraping the wall at high speed? Yes, professional racers do it quite frequently. Is it realistic to be able to drive after hitting the wall? No.

But it's also not realistic to only run 5 lap races. It's also not realistic to be sitting in a desk chair during those 5 laps. It's not realistic to be chatting with the people you're racing with, or to have a glass of tea on the desk beside you, while you sit in the air conditioning listening to the radio at 2AM.

Race drivers, in actual race cars, don't have those luxuries.

Gran Turismo is called the driving simulator because it is all about simulating the pleasure, beauty, and elegance of driving, not the ugly side of it. If that's disappointing, then that's a personal preference. It doesn't say anything about the game itself.

But, truth be told, the lack of realistic collisions does not exist because of a lack of hardware capabilities on consoles. Heck, we even agreed that consoles are gaming PC's sold for dirt cheap, didn't we?

Simply put, modeling damage is just not what the game was ever about, nor will it ever be. As counter-intuitive as you might think it is, that doesn't mean it isn't still a simulation.

Gran Turismo 5 is realistic because every car is modeled almost perfectly from its real-life counterpart, as well as many of the tracks. It's realistic because of the way you can adjust even the most overlooked things inside the wheel well, and actually have it translate to faster lap times around the track. It's realistic because those lap times are usually rather close to the real world lap times, for the respective car classes and tracks (we can compete with professional driver's real-life lap times because we don't have to deal with lateral forces).

But, even more importantly, it's realistic because the game teaches you how to drive correctly: for instance, the in-out-in line of a corner, slow-in fast-out braking for corners, slipstreams, and and how to tackle S curves, to name a few.

In essence, Gran Turismo doesn't do crashes very well, because they don't want you to crash. Gran Turismo is about teaching players how to effectively control a car with either too much oversteer or understeer, instead of how to walk out of a crunched-up soup can without any emotional trama. Gran Turismo won't always punish you for being an idiot, but it certainly does reward you for not being one. If you drive recklessly, you won't kill your car, but you won't get fast laps either.

For that reason, it may be a different flavor of simulation than one would expect (especially to a PC gamer), but it's still a simulation in more respects than I can even think of.

Think of it this way: if NASA released a game similar to Moonbase Alpha, but where it is difficult or impossible to fail, would it still be a simulation even though all of the equipment and terminology is scientifically correct?

That's basically the way I think of Gran Turismo. It isn't harsh on the player like most simulations are, but it's still very technically accurate in many cases. Again, if you actually played it, I think you would understand what I mean by that, as I'm sure it's rather difficult to explain without experiencing it in first person.