Real World Vs Gran Turismo
Import the real world into GT5, yes really!Published 19/01/2010 at 15:27 by cc_star
Sony Aiming At “October” For GT5 [27]
GT5 Release Date Announced Soon [41]
Gran Turismo Gets More Footage [41]
Everyone knows that Gran Turismo is ‘The Real Driving Simulator’ they’re even kind enough to remind you of that on the game’s tag line, but the lengths Polophony Digital have gone to, to make it a perfect driving simulator are quite mind-blowing.
The video below shows a real Lexus IS-F kitted out with a GPS tracking unit which monitors the cars position as it goes around a real world track, the car is also fitted with a Control Area Network (CAN) which monitors a variety of other data like handling, braking and accelerating, right down to the rotational speed of each wheel. This vehicle and GPS data can then be saved to a USB stick and imported into a driving simulator, and yep… you’ve guessed it GT5 is one of those simulators. So you can watch a replay in GT5 of the actual real world lap, or even import it as a ghost car to race against.
Personally I’m hoping the guys at Polyphony Digital speak to the Top Gear team about kitting out their ‘reasonably priced car’ with the necessary equipment so we can race the celebs around the Top Gear test track.
Source: GTPlanet.net Thanks AndyTorr.
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.
SIR-DARK-HAZE | 19/01/2010 15:33
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awsome, cant wait for this game, have we got a release date yet for UK. ty
JamboGT | 19/01/2010 15:33
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No release date yet. No release date for anywhere actually following the slippage of the March 31st date for Japan.
cam the man | 19/01/2010 16:22
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Christmas 2010?
cc_star | 19/01/2010 17:21
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‘11?
cam the man | 19/01/2010 18:04
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Christmas 2010 would be bad enough.
But it’s Polyphony so who knows, it could be’11.
Apnomis | 19/01/2010 15:51
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As much as I’m in awe of the lengths they go to on GT5, sometimes articles like this make me think whether the game really benefits from having GPS connectivity with a Lexus on a supported race track or if actually 99.9% of the people that will play the thing would have benefited more from a March 2010 release date instead…
I suppose it doesn’t help that I’m not a big car fan or even particularly a GT fan (don’t get me wrong it’s a great racer, but I’m not the type to custom tune my vehicle of choice), but I do wonder how much having accurate rotational speed of the wheels really improves the overall quality of the game and how many players even care! – from a gaming stand-point that is rather than as a professional training tool of some kind!
I hope it gets a feature in Top Gear after all the trouble they have gone to to add a feature that probably only Jeremy Clarkson and The Stig will get to use anyway! Is it true that the Top Gear track for the star in a reasonably priced car is featured in the game? Again, that sort of coverage is good advertising for the game – if say Top Gear invite the person with the best virtual time in-game to go on the show and try it for real…
cc_star | 19/01/2010 15:57
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Loads of people have track-days (not me unfortunately) but loads do…
They do seem to take the tagline seriously, IMO a bit too seriously as I much prefer Burnout, but we’ll all be able to benifit from imported ghosts as I’m pretty sure all serious race cars (F1 etc…) track this data, so could we be racing in actual real races?
andytorr | 19/01/2010 16:01
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You pretty much just wrote exactly what I did, as I was writing it
ScottW-1976 | 20/01/2010 12:04
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Not really, if you are only racing against ghost cars you are losing the major part of what makes racing fun. Would work with WRC stages though….
andytorr | 19/01/2010 16:00
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You’d be surprised how many true GT fans actually do a lot of track days themselves. I take day trips to Silverstone occasionally and would love my car tracked on GT5 using this tech. Also, I’m guessing this had no effect on the delay of the game, they probably have a completely different team of some sort working on things like this. But as cc mentioned, the Top Gear idea would be great! But thats only the start, maybe this will be used to implement famous driver times to download on a regular basis. With NASCAR in the game, imagine if they tracked every car during a race. You could watch it on GT5, virtually!
Apnomis | 19/01/2010 16:35
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Fair enough I suppose, and the ‘real’ driver races would be an interesting addition. I guess I’m just not a big enough fan of cars, racing or driving sims to appreciate the finer points. It’s good that the game takes it’s support of the ‘hardcore’ fans seriously though…
I will probably get this game just because it’s GT5 (and to dust off my old PS2 GT wheel for a few weeks), but much like CC I prefer the ‘arcady’ approach of Burnout…
JamboGT | 20/01/2010 01:30
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Its all about having connections with car manufacturers. The closer linked PD is with manufacturers the more data they receive as well as earlier access to new car models etc. This in turn makjes GT a better game.
bunimomike | 19/01/2010 16:02
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Technically that’s superb although perhaps also, tellingly, it highlights what Polyphony are trying to achieve. It’ll attract pure racing types. Anally retentive types, etc… but alienates the likes of me with the sterility of it all. Camera shake, is close to zero in the game. When the bloke clobbered the kerb the camera shook. Why didn’t GT’s?
Graphically it looked lovely albeit muted, although credit given, the realworld track is equally muted in features so no problem there. They just need to stop the cars looking showroom fresh and they’ll have it nailed. It’s the first time, in a driving game, where I’ve preferred the in-car view and it’s solely to do with not wanting to see the jarring exterior view with it’s unrealistically perfect shine. From a polygonal point-of-view the exterior shots of the car are stunning.
I still remain a massive fan of the idea of GT and I hope they win me back over, I truly, truly do.
If they employ an “imperfections team” for the last few months of development, it might turn out to be incredible.
andytorr | 19/01/2010 16:08
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I’ve got a feeling they’re saving the final image of GT5 for the relaase of the game. They already have a brand new damage engine which we’re yet to see in all it’s glory. I look at GT a bit like I see Metal Gear. They only ever show you so much. So much so that it convinces you that the game doesn’t have much more than you’ve already seen. Then all of a sudden, all this fresh content arrives and completely blows your mind. Nobody had any idea that MGS4 would take trips back to Shadow Moses, or you would play as REX.
Yamauchi has done a lot of interviews lately expressing how his recent races around Nurburgring had him rush back to the studio to tweak things within the game to bring it closer to real life. I trust him.
Blayney | 19/01/2010 16:21
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Agree with both posts heavily.
I do hope that they add some level of dirtyness to the cars, like you get in the codies games amongst many others. Dust should take the sheen away, scratchs etc.
To be fair cars lost their sheen GT4, what else was the car wash for? Okay it took ages and wasn’t very obvious but it was there. So hopefully it has been included and improved in GT5.
I also think they are holding a lot back, we first heard of this “vastly improved damage model” in like october and we’ve seen absolutely nothing of it. Reporters were supposedly wowed by it. I want to see this in all it’s glory.
So we’re gonna have to wait to find out what it’s truly like. I’m taking an excited but reserved approach. I don’t want to be let down, but I am hoping it will be great.
Also I think the camera shake is toned down so as not to alienate newcomers to the series/less series sim freaks. There was people who think they want the game to absolutely mirror real life. The trouble is if it were exactly as in the real world half of us wouldn’t be able to get that car around the track in anything near a competetive time. Hence they have ABS/TCS/ASM progressive levels, for how good you are, and the racing tyres are so damn good and there’s a “professional” physics level which makes it even more realistic.
So the reason the camera shake is a lot less is because if it mirrored real life and you couldn’t even see where you were going for some portions of some tracks people would complain that it was unfair and they crashed!
So it has to be toned down to keep the majority happy.
Atleast that’s my impression of it.
bunimomike | 19/01/2010 16:31
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andy… my hopes are still high and I’ll keep the reserved enthusiasm until the reviews come in (and I get to see it in the flesh).
Blayney, agree with most of what you say (and hope) but that wasn’t watered down camera shake. There felt like there was none! The damn car looked like it was robotic which didn’t impress me one bit. However, that’s one facet of my worries (and equally there are plenty of plus points too).
dirtyhabit | 19/01/2010 16:59
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Bollocks to the reviews. Its GRAN TURISMO ! Have faith
TctclMvPhase | 19/01/2010 22:08
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I think this hits on an interesting point with media in general. I personally liked NFS Shift because it was better able to convey the feeling I get when actually racing, yet it only did so by bending the the laws of physics and using some presentation tricks. Its a similar case with movies, which are over the top imitations of life because in order to illicit the same emotional effect on the viewer as real life, it has to go to extremes.
I am a die hard GT fan and it was GT that got me into racing, but I think the reason I have a tough time playing the series now is because it cant quite quicken my pulse the way it did before I actually spent time behind the wheel.
JamboGT | 20/01/2010 01:32
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RE camera shake, while it needs to be increased a little, the neck is a great damper, all the jarring bumps from a fixed camera are removed from a persons point of view due to that damping effect.
TctclMvPhase | 22/01/2010 05:14
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I think youre right and when you are in the car, your brain is taking in data about all the forces acting on you and is able to calibrate the images coming in from your eyes to further reduce “camera shake”. This is part of the reason why camera shake is so apparent when watching a video of racing, but nowhere near as much when in the actual car.
Rob92 | 19/01/2010 16:04
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That side by side footage looks awful, is it dumbed down graphics for a practical reason?
Anywho, I can sort of see potential, if they linked with Top Gear as you said and tracked their motions so we could race against the Stig or so have you, it could be really interesting. But at the moment, its just more content that wont mean much to the average gamer and is just delaying the game even further.
3shirts | 19/01/2010 18:16
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I’d love it if they linked to Top Gear. Racing the Lacetti against the celebrities times or racing supercars against the stigs ghost would be amazing
hazelam | 19/01/2010 16:05
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thought it would be something like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgCKaO6_O6A
teflon | 19/01/2010 16:10
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Was it just me, or was the GT5 side of things a few tenths of a second behind? A couple spots looked a little bit off somehow… Can’t put my finger on it… ~1:51 has the GT5 car quite a bit further away from the red and white stripes. Could just be the camera angle within the car, I guess…
Anyway, GT being ridiculously close to the real thing isn’t anything new. I remember that when GT4 came out, Clarkson nabbed himself a copy with steering wheel and everything and drove the same circuit in both real life and on GT4. I think GT4 gave him a result within about 2-4 seconds of the real life version, and so was dubbed by him as the most realistic driving sim you could get at the time.
On the topic of having real driving performances put in games. Im looking forward to the first F1 game that lets you drive against the GPS tracking data of the real drivers. Take on of them out, so you can play as them, and have the AI take over and modify the data based on how you race and who you’re near at what points… It’ll be interesting to see the first attempts at blending AI with reality in this manner. If it’s any good will be another matter.
cam the man | 19/01/2010 16:36
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Getting a bit picky in your first paragraph aren’t you?
I agree with the F1 stuff. It would be great to race along side the drivers.
Combining the GPS tracker with the ‘Real Time Race’ system would be interesting.
teflon | 20/01/2010 00:07
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yes, yes I am. But since it’s a side by side comparison to demonstrate how close to reality GT5 is, and it’s a real life course being driven by a real life car, both of which are meant to be 100% accurate in the game… Well, aren’t I allowed to be?
DuffyBox | 19/01/2010 16:15
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Pah. Nothing new. Python has been doing this fr years with good old “import_reality”
Raen | 19/01/2010 16:22
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Nice XKCD reference
DuffyBox | 19/01/2010 23:23
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Import_soul… I lol’d
Joe | 19/01/2010 16:46
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is it just me or is the tyre screeching a bit monotonous?
bunimomike | 19/01/2010 16:57
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It’s a bit of a running joke here. Seems that it’s the same sound they’ve used in every version! It sounds soooo repetitive.
Joe | 20/01/2010 03:59
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haha yeah you would have thought that in the pursuit for ultimate realism they would have re-recorded some tyre noise… i hope it doesnt annoy me too much in GT5… i just noticed in this video when the guy is braking on the straight the car is squealing like a stuck pig… slightly over the top i reckon, i dont think the car would be sliding from simply braking in a straight line, thats what abs is for
alisound | 19/01/2010 17:05
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That is one of my biggest issues with this game and all GT games. Cars just don’t screech like that. Its not real, it’s retarded. That and the lack of a sense of speed.
Jumping Monks | 19/01/2010 16:59
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If they use this to it’s full potential (things other people have said above) then it could be great. Other than that, I don’t see it being all too great. Looks like this is shaping up to be one heck of a game though… if we can still call it one.
gazzagb | 19/01/2010 17:08
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Very clever, although i cant really think of a use for it for me. I suppose that people that go to track days will love this. Would you be able to download other peoples data and use that, i mean say if a pro driver did it?
parker | 19/01/2010 17:09
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Wow, that looked amazing! Hype levels just quadrupled!
stingraz | 19/01/2010 17:21
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..yawn.. just another racing game. the other Gt ’s never impressed me neither, they’re just the same. It didn’t look very realistic too – the car was way too still, and it looked like it was glued to the floor, and went in perfectly straight lines all the time. I won’t be adding this to my collection of games.
tinytim01 | 19/01/2010 17:34
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i alays tho gt was slow as in a racing game but from the new video’s it looks fast and lovely one game i can not wait for
Machine Gun Ray | 19/01/2010 17:42
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forza 4 will come out by the time they release this!.
cc_star | 19/01/2010 17:55
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zing!
Jimster71 | 19/01/2010 18:11
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lol, I was just going to say that!
freezebug2 | 19/01/2010 18:08
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Great video and this game is just getting better and better, I need my GT fix soon can’t take many more demo videos lol. Really looking forward to the game….THIS SUMMER !!
funkyellowmonkey(ps3 id) | 19/01/2010 19:20
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Definitely, i dunno about this summer tho…