At the end of the day real life vs. gaming is just that. No matter if it's the PS4 or the Xbox720, doesn't matter, they'll only be polishing up on what's possible. Comparing it to real life racing can only be done on a limited level.
But not
that limited! I enjoy games like these because they will teach me a lot about how cars behave, and it greatly helps the 'suspension of disbelief' if how they behave is consistent with what I know about the laws of physics and what I've experienced in cars, karts, and so on in real life.
I can write a 5 page post about all the things that Forza2 does to make things seems "realistic" but another 10 on what it and any other game doesn't. Until you get into a high HP sportscar and do some driving at a competitive pace, making comparisons is trivial and just a time passing activity.
I don't agree. I can watch motorsports on TV and see how the cars behave, what their maximum turn speeds are, how tire wear pans out, how they react to hitting curbs of various shapes and sizes, how much they lean and how much camber they have or people have set up with them (depending on whether these are possible to adjust in that particular race). I can observe a lot of things there that I can then compare to how cars behave in computer games.
Sure, driving to the limit on Nurburgring in real life cannot be compared to driving to the limit on a virtual track ... the fear and danger in real life is staggering in comparison. But it is very instructive to compare the two and understand what the differences are and what the similarities. It teaches you both about the game (how can I drive faster) and about life (discovering that the reason why certain elevation changes are so much more imposing in real life is because you see them in real 3d, rather than 3d projected in 2d).
Enjoy the games for what they are, games. Sure there are some realistic elements that are cool to witness and sometimes makes you go "cool, that's how it is!" but that's about it. Driving is very different when you're feeling the G's and tons of feedback that car and wheels are giving you.
But that's the thing. Games are getting closer and closer to the real thing in all respects. The feedback you can feel from the wheel these days in games is just phenomenal. Feeling the front wheels of an FF car reach the edge of grip as resistance on the steering wheel drops, or even falls away almost completely as you momentarily lose contact with the road or hit the grass, etc. These things are what makes me enjoy racing games the most. They matter to me immensely. Else I could just as well be playing Ridge Racer or Project Gotham Racing (which is pretty good anyway in terms of physics, compared to the former
).
Couple that with coming to grips with speed and corner commitment with something REAL to lose, and you'll stop taking these comparison seriously rather quickly.
That's why some people insist that damage is so important. For me that doesn't go. On the contrary - the feeling that you are gaining on your opponent when the latter is a real person you are driving against online, or at a LAN party in a competition, or have splits that could put your best lap on the leaderboard, or whatever, there are a lot of different ways in which you can invest emotionally into your lap. Not having your suspense of disbelief broken by things that are outside the realm of physics
With so many of us driving real cars during the day, it really helps if the cars behave according to the same rules of physics. This is what makes racing games on this level such a nice cross-over that brings people in beyond the usual gamers, the car enthusiasts and the truck drivers. It's something I can let any guest I have play, and almost all of them will enjoy the game. Every difference between reality and the game is magnified by them though. A steering wheel was an important step forward to letting people like my dad 'get' the game, but it took the 900 degree support in the wheel before he could really get behind the wheel and drive.
I had my wife's dad behind the wheel today, and noticed that when you are doing your hairpins, you really suffer from the fact that normally you would look into the turn. He's a bit of a scientist, and was quickly asking clever questions why he was so rubbish in the game when he should have been ok in the real world. Part of the question was already answered by Kazunori and others, who built themselves a huge machine that actually moves you left and right - these G forces help people determine how they are affecting the car, but most people aren't even aware of this. So you have to relearn taking in that information visually, or through force feedback on your wheel.
But of course Kazunori (and others) built himself several motion cabins, he's always exploring beyond what he can offer, to learn about the limitations he faces currently. There's a new video that combines a lot of old material with a few new shots of his latest cabin, and a bit of demonstration of how they build and test cockpit views for GT5 (great to see they are definitely in there). It's part of a French TV show (I'll post it in the GT thread, has no place here). It's great to see that the Forza team is exploring such options also, with the multi-display support.
For many turns you have enough of a view on a widescreen TV, but for turns like these you need more. I can compensate by memorising the turn, but if I could have been looking into the turn more that would have helped a great deal. You can do this a little bit with GT4 and GT:HD by the way, if you drive with the wheel, by pressing d-pad left or right on it, but there is no analog control. It's good for looking if there is someone besides you which could be a problem when you enter a turn, but though the movement is fluid, it is very fast and makes you nausious
. Would be nice if they map that to the sixaxis or something, so that you can turn it to where you want to look. It could work great combined with the cockpit view. There are some similar options to that for some of the PC sims already (not with motion control though yet I think, but I'm not sure) and that's in PGR3 already also if I remember from the demo I tried in a store.
Another option to deal with this is the multi display, so you just get some extra tvs for watching left and right of you, and can just turn your own head. Of course this is an expensive solution now, but for the die-hards who build their own cockpits it could be worth it. And it's great to see that Forza is implementing this beyond where GT3 and 4 already implemented it, i.e. available also in the single player game. (In GT you could only use it in LAN environments.)
(By the way I just got confirmation that I should be getting a copy of good ol' Forza 1 in the mail tomorrow or the day after.)
