The question is,
why are these tracks different? This thread exists to explore the technical reasons. If there are no technical reasons, and the best GT5 has to offer goes toe-to-toe with other racing engines, then we can drop GT5 from this thread.
At this point, I'll add that the screenshots presented tend to be to highlight the worst that's going on. Do we have any screenshots of GT5 looking its best in gameplay to see what's being used? (DF's comparison should be up tomorrow, seeing as Richard aims for a Saturday article).
That´s the big question. Why. And, if you just compare, with the same engine, in the same game, different circuits, I cannot find any reason for such terrific (in the bad sense) courses that lack of polish, artistic and related with testing. Madrid or other courses are really, really good -let´s say, much increased polycount, better textures, more objects on screen, etc, even animated-. It´s curious that this type of excellence is related with urban circuits and maybe it´s to some extent due to artistic care. And you can think of Laguna Seca et all "reduced" in polycount because of the inclusion of dynamic lighting, clima, etc, but that´s not the case.
The whole thing point to (incredibly) a rushed game. It´s difficult to believe after so much time, but that´s my best bet. And, as liolio suggested, that relates with bad project management.
I think that the game was targeted to late 2009 release, or march (in JPN) 2010, but problems probably arised and were not resolved in time. And it´s pretty clear that, if this is true, in Sony people shouldn´t be very happy.
So, in short words, the quality of some standard cars and circuits is barely acceptable. Not -obviously- with previous Yamauchi standards (grrr). And that is REALLY strange.
A technical question: you take the highest polycount of each model in GT4. How many time do you believe that´s necessary in order to, just touching up textures and decals, improving resolution and so on, make them polished? 1-2 days/manwork? If that´s the case, 20 men, in 40 days, are enough to improve 20 cars. 100 cars would need 200 days... and 20 artists...
The numbers are big.
Other idea: how "better" can the game become just optimizing code, and patching it? Not taking different approach and modifying the engine to a big level, just optimizing things in the way they´re now. Memory saving measures? Reduction in time for certain routines and, as a result, more GPU freed to just improve filtering?
It´s this really so undoable now?
And just another question (i´m courious), as a producer. What option is the better: just going for GT6 in 1,5 years from now (september 2012 for instance) forgetting the GT5 engine or just sticking with it and giving starved people big updates -some of them not for free?
