Official GT5 discussion thread

[Arwin]

Agree about most of the menu stuff. They have a beautiful way of showing off your car but that's only available as a 'screensaver' basically that shows up only when you don't do anything. I'm sure they could do better there with nice overlays perhaps, as well as prevent loading from being necessary for any part of the menu.

I think he was referring to Forza 4. Forza 3 was actually much more 'hardcore' but then had some really frustrating 'bugs' in the traction/accelleration model, especially in combination with elevation, that would cause many cars to spin out for no good reason whatsoever. Forza 4 is more enjoyable to drive, but loses realism in the other direction. Also Forza has an 'interesting' off track car behaviour. GT5 has some better options here for various levels of difficulty just for losing grip when getting your tyre off-track.

 

[Gubbi]

Perception of grip in Forza varies a lot. Cheezedoodle thinks there is too much, Arwin posted a link to a review months back where they compared a Lexus LFA in F4 on the Nurburgring to the real deal and found F4 lacked grip.

IMO, it is entirely down to tyres. The auto-upgrade in F4 seems to favour grip over power-to-weight compared to F3, and thus applies sports and race slicks more readily than in F3. Running on stock tyres, F4 is harder than F3, you get a lot more fish tailing in RWD cars.

Cheers

 

[Nesh]

Perception of grip in Forza varies a lot. Cheezedoodle thinks there is too much, Arwin posted a link to a review months back where they compared a Lexus LFA in F4 on the Nurburgring to the real deal and found F4 lacked grip.

IMO, it is entirely down to tyres. The auto-upgrade in F4 seems to favour grip over power-to-weight compared to F3, and thus applies sports and race slicks more readily than in F3. Running on stock tyres, F4 is harder than F3, you get a lot more fish tailing in RWD cars.

Cheers

I think the video Arwin posted showed that the cars skid easilly a bit but that doesnt mean there is less grip. Combine that with grip and you get an arcady feel, where the car skids where it shouldnt but you can still have control and keep it going straight. Its something similar we get from Ridge Racer and Burnout but to a much much less extend in Fotza. In GT5 the cars dont skid inexcusably and when they do you could be in trouble. It seems to be a physics mechanic that kicks fully when you make a large turn that causes the oversteer. But slight skidding is also present when you are going straight too.

 

[fearsomepirate]

If you can't fit your entire menu system in 512 MB of RAM, you are doing something fundamentally wrong. Even last gen, games didn't take as long to load their menus as GT4 did, and that was on system with between 24 and 64 MB of main RAM.

 

[tuna]

I have played a bit of GT5 the last few days and I am really liking it. The only thing that really feels slow is when you are about to start a race and there are two loading screens. The 3D implementation is also really nice if you do not play on a crowded level.

Some of you that think some of GT5's level look PS2-quality, which levels are you referring to?

 

[Arwin]

Some of you that think some of GT5's level look PS2-quality, which levels are you referring to?

If you drive something like Trial Mountain or Deep Forest and you and most of the other cars are second hand cars, it looks a bit too much like GT4 HD ...

Yeah, the 3D can be pretty good. I like driving on the Ring with changing day-night and variable weather. Especially at night, the brake lights of the cars in front of you are really special in 3D, as you have way fewer graphical reference points, it really stands out, especially combined with the in-car view.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I booted up GT4 yesterday just because. The menus were faster than in GT5. I also forgot just how bad the aliasing could be on the PS2.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I have played a bit of GT5 the last few days and I am really liking it. The only thing that really feels slow is when you are about to start a race and there are two loading screens. The 3D implementation is also really nice if you do not play on a crowded level.

Some of you that think some of GT5's level look PS2-quality, which levels are you referring to?

Lots of Laguna Seca assets look pretty bad. All the trees are plus-shaped, and there only seems be about three unique texture pairs. Trackside ground textures as you approach the first hairpin turn are very bad and visibly repeat approximately every 20 feet. Same issue at the bottom of the hairpin--texture repetition is very visible, and the MIP level is way too blurry to boot.

In fact, I have both GT4 and GT5 running right now, and it is quite obvious they reused a great deal of geometry between the two games. There are very large polygon edges visible in GT5 that are identical to GT4 and have clearly been simply retextured using the high-res source assets used to make GT4. Much of the landscape geometry is last-gen, and some of the buildings are reused last-gen models. In fact, on the cliff on the inside of the track at the end of the first hairpin, both the geometry and the textures are the same; the only difference is HDR lighting.

Unfortunately, I don't have a capture card, so you'll have to take my word for it. If you have both games, though, you can verify it yourself. It does make me wonder how this was the second most expensive game in history to develop. Whatever they did, it is clear that they made very poor choices about how to allocate their capital.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I booted up GT4 yesterday just because. The menus were faster than in GT5. I also forgot just how bad the aliasing could be on the PS2.

If you ever played FFX, you'd never get over the trauma and eye damage of those grass textures...

 

[Nesh]

Lots of Laguna Seca assets look pretty bad. All the trees are plus-shaped, and there only seems be about three unique texture pairs. Trackside ground textures as you approach the first hairpin turn are very bad and visibly repeat approximately every 20 feet. Same issue at the bottom of the hairpin--texture repetition is very visible, and the MIP level is way too blurry to boot.

In fact, I have both GT4 and GT5 running right now, and it is quite obvious they reused a great deal of geometry between the two games. There are very large polygon edges visible in GT5 that are identical to GT4 and have clearly been simply retextured using the high-res source assets used to make GT4. In fact, on the cliff on the inside of the track at the end of the first hairpin, the textures are the same; the only difference is HDR lighting.

Unfortunately, I don't have a capture card, so you'll have to take my word for it. If you have both games, though, you can verify it yourself. It does make me wonder how this was the second most expensive game in history to develop. Whatever they did, it is clear that they made very poor choices about how to allocate their capital.

I believe they were in a dhilemma trying to decide whether to go with creating GT HD or a real full fledged sequel. I believe they begun working on it as the former. I remember PD originally talked about the idea about releasing a GT HD where you would purchase cars and tracks online. And I am sure they also hit a performance wall once Sony wanted to market it as 1080p game.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Given that the new tracks look pretty good, I don't think that wall was "reuse PS2 assets." IMO the game has the thumbprint of a management team that didn't know how to prioritize and direct the content creators in such a way as to create a consistent level of good quality across the entire game, rather than the wildly fluctuating level of quality this product has. How good the Corvette's headlights look in a photo mode close-up shot doesn't matter so much when in the game, you're driving it past blurry textures on trapezoid-shaped ridge lined with fourteen instances of a single plus-shaped tree.

They need to get their crap together for GT6. I doubt the market or their bosses will tolerate this for much longer.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

According to Wiki, GT sold 26 million on PS2, and 7 million on PS3. Sony must be aware of that.

 

[ERP]

According to Wiki, GT sold 26 million on PS2, and 7 million on PS3. Sony must be aware of that.

The numbers I've seen are bigger than 7M, but still a lot lower than 26.
The problem with stats like this is that there is no causality, I don't think it would have sold a lot more even if it had been much better executed.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The numbers I've seen are bigger than 7M, but still a lot lower than 26.
The problem with stats like this is that there is no causality, I don't think it would have sold a lot more even if it had been much better executed.

If it had been much better executed, it would have come out in 2008 or 2009, and GT6 would have come out last year.

 

[tuna]

If it had been much better executed, it would have come out in 2008 or 2009, and GT6 would have come out last year.

If the finished GT5 would have been released 2008 it would have sold shitloads and really pushed the PS3 in the market as well. Unfortunately for Sony and us gamers, PD could not deliver that.

 

[ERP]

I don't disagree, but I don't think you get the same game from the same team.

You can certainly prioritize dates over everything else, EA pretty much do this, but there is always a cost for that.

Could polyphony have put out a good game sooner, almost certainly, but you'd probably have to restructure the studio, and replace the people planning and running development, at that point, it becomes unclear how that affects the end product.

FWIW from the numbers I've seen Polyphony is still Sony's most profitable studio, changing development process externally when that's the case is a hell of a risk. IME you have as good a chance of killing the studio as changing it for the better.

 

[Billy Idol]

They should have presented their content in a better way.

For instance: allow to play the game in a premium mode, where you don't have to deal with all the old stuff. I would love that. I don't care for the ton of additional content, when it looks so bad. So I don't want to see this on my screen.

They should clearly indicate and market the re-use of old stuff: be more open about it, market it as addition, as free bonus to GT5 as a positive thing, free content for gamers.

But of course, this would have needed a smart marketing team, which Sony is not famous for.

 

[RobertR1]

The numbers I've seen are bigger than 7M, but still a lot lower than 26.
The problem with stats like this is that there is no causality, I don't think it would have sold a lot more even if it had been much better executed.

Selling 7million upfront with a higher ASP is better than 7 million over time with reduced ASP

Had the initial product released been more polished, it would have sold more upfront and been more profitable.

If corporate culture is the reasoning for releasing unpolished products then either take more pride in your product or get ready for a spanking.

Margins are tight. Sony cant have PD dick around basically.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

A product that massive is almost impossible to polish to the point of universal acclaim. No one has ever offered such an incredibly large racing game (especially considering the amount of staff and time).

 

[fearsomepirate]

I don't disagree, but I don't think you get the same game from the same team.

You can certainly prioritize dates over everything else, EA pretty much do this, but there is always a cost for that.

I don't even think it's so much a matter of prioritizing dates. It's a matter of prioritizing activities. Someone at PD needed to say things like,

"Yes, 500K polygons in a car model certainly would be neat! Unfortunately, having fifty polygons on a cliffside is beyond unacceptable. For this version of the game, we're going to have to settle with no more 100K polygons per car so that we have time to make the tracks look decent."

"Why, yes, a realtime day-night cycle with adjustable weather would be amazing! Unfortunately, I've noticed no one's even started on remodeling Laguna Seca, and that just has to happen before we start even thinking about rendering a day-dusk-night transition correctly. We might have to put that off until GT6."

"Absolutely. Designing a real-life Citroën GT would be really cool! Unfortunately, we've got about 800 car models imported from GT4 in desperate need of retexturing, so that's just not on the agenda for now."

"Sorry, we just can't do the big press event at the race next month. It takes too much planning, and we haven't even written new AI routines yet."

FWIW from the numbers I've seen Polyphony is still Sony's most profitable studio, changing development process externally when that's the case is a hell of a risk. IME you have as good a chance of killing the studio as changing it for the better.

I think if they keep going down this road, they're going to kill themselves off. I mean, yeah, you risk key people quitting if competent management comes in. But if they don't change how they do things, it won't matter in a few years. It took them six years and eighty million dollars for PD to not even keep pace with Turn 10. Next gen, what should we expect? Ten years and half a billion dollars to produce a GT6 with another 200 car models, a few new tracks, and the ability to put racing stripes on any car you want?

No one has ever offered such an incredibly large racing game

Not true. Forza 3 and 4 both have more new content than GT5 does.