Gran Turismo 4 : Ring Update

Last night, I was feeling dreadful, with a massive headache and a slight fever. However, this is nothing that a couple of Paracetemols and a spot of GT4 driving couldn't fix. Right now, in the Simulation mode as you can expect wish limited credits, you have to slowly build up the garage before some real fun begins. So, for now serious fun means Quick Race - Time Trials at the Nordschleife. And why not? The track is massive fun and its a tough one to remember.

My selection of cars were described in my last article, a short review of GT4. Anyway, without further ado, here are some selected times below. Now remember, these are standard cars with no modifications whatsoever, driven with the ASC and TCS very much switched off.

1. BMW M5 (2005) - 7m 42s (I think! I'm not exactly sure but I think this was the time)
2. Honda NSX Type R (2002) - 7m 58s (Very satisfying)
3. BMW M3 (2003 - non CSL) - 8m 05s (Tricky car with massive understeer!)
4. Toyota Altezza RS 200 (1998) - 8m 38s (Very proud of my baby!!)
5. BMW 330i (2005) - 8m 40s (A massive blow to my Mat Salleh car obsessed GT rivals!)
6. Honda Integra Type R (2001) - 8m 42s (Very suprised about this - see below)
7. Peaugot 206 S16 - ???? (I was so bored with this slow car I stopped halfway)

As you can see from the times, I am still in the process of learning the 'Ring. With all of these times, I was kinda making one mistake or another. The BMW M5 I described to you guys yesterday. Its absolutely unbelievable. But on second thoughts despite its surprising agility and undoubted straight line speed, 1700kg does tell. The NSX feels a lot more agile and with its downforce more stable. Perhaps its because the M5 is so bloody quick on the straights, its also a much more hairy ride.

I don't quite like the BMW M3. Yes its quick. In a straight line its 340 bhp has the NSX licked. But in the sweeps, it had more understeer and was not particularly agile in the slow ones. Its got grip but it hasn't got balance. I was quite disappointed by it and expected a whole lot more. You know the problem right? No, my rivals, I am good at GT, so its not me. The M3 has too much weight like all modern BMWs. Yes, yes I know an M3 CSL would cream it and there's the M3 GTR. Still a sports saloon ought not to be heavy.

With the NSX, I was looking to beat its real world Ring time of 7m 56s. Bloody hell, I could've beaten that too had I not be too enthusiastic a few corners from the end. Coming into the 3rd last corner (a second gear right), I approached it way too fast from 260 km/h and had a sort of half spin and lost loads of time. To Add to that I made some small errors in the middle sector. Otherwise, Mr Gan, you're going down baby! I believe a 7m 55s or even lower is entirely possible.

One time I was particularly proud of was the 8m 38s posted by my very own real world car, the Toyota Altezza RS200. Woo wooooo! It beat a car 7 years its junior (BMW 330i). So where's the 255 bhp now bozo? I'll tell you where, all gone to support your fat ass weight. Jeez, I mean BMW are so into cossetting cronies and mistresses in order to broaden its appeal and raise its sales that I sometimes think its lost all its essence. No, actually the essence is there but all this added weight gained to comply with regulations and please wannabes has completely hidden it. To the boys in Munchen. Please remember you once built great cars like the original Mk 1 BMW M3. That's the sort of car you ought to be building. Not these mistress mobiles.

OK, to be honest, the BMW 330i was the car I was using to learn the Ring with. Its actually a very good handling car, much more forgiving than the overrated M3. And it rolls less than my Altezza. So on its Banzai lap, I must admit to being a little cautious. I know I should be able to make up that 2 second gap to the Altezza. I'll bet it would actually be handy in a fight with the Altezza. Playing a two person game against your mates, one using the 330i and one using the Altezza should result in massive fun.

So we turn our attention to the Altezza RS 200. I was so proud of my little baby. Only 2.0 litres, but with good balance, neutral handling and massive body roll! She lacks ultimate grip. But when she breaks away, she does it nicely. As the people at Best Motoring and Hot Version would say, she's an adult sports car. If you and your mates organized a standard production battle limited to normally aspirated 2.0 litres (No Touring Cars!!), this would be the weapon of choice. Forget the BMW 120i, it would get creamed.

Last but one is the Honda Integra Type-R. Now, I'm a bit mystified but this one. I did make mistakes on its banzai lap. But still, I'd expect it to cream the Altezza and the 330i. That it did not was massively disappointing. Hmmm..... I'm not sure if I should get one in real life now. The problem is front wheel drive. It actually makes the Type-R very stable on the high speed straights. Its hard to unsettle the car over the Ring's dips and bumps. But it suffers frustrating understeer. Whereas with the M5, you can use its power and rear wheel drive to tighten your line, such antics will cause you to go straight ahead in the Integra. Its very quick in a straight line, enough to rival the 330i. But in the 2nd to 4th gear bends you have to slow down way too much to kill off the understeer. Very disappointing but this is probably true to real life.

The Peaugot 206 S16 suffers pretty much the same symptoms as the Integra. Understeer, understeer and more understeer. By now, it should dawn on you that I bloody well hate bloody understeer. I just don't know how my GT enemies cope with so much understeer. Oh well, I know for sure that if this is the quality of cars they expect to take me on with, I'm in for a winningly good time. Mwah ah ah. In the middle of the lap, I got really bored with the 206 and just stopped.

Yes, my rivals are by now screaming foul play. After all, there were no modifications to the cars. "Settings" have not been done, blah blah blah. But we'll get to that ok? In the meantime, I'm particularly looking forward to sampling cars like the M3 CSL and GTR, Bentley Speed 8, the Williams built BMW V12 LMR and especially the McLaren F1 GTR. Yummy. There's a whole host of other cars as well too many to list down.

I do have one particular gripe with the game though. Whilst the number of cars have increased, most of it are K-Cars, antique cars, sport trucks (what the f!@# ?), mini vans and the like. That is to say, lots of car irrelevant to the world of high performance. Of course if you were the sort thats into K-cars and sport trucks you can now really join in the fun. I suppose my rivals and I will be setting up some sort of categories for racing sport trucks. But no crony cars!!! No BMW 7 series or S Class Mercedes. I was bloody well looking forward to these but its not available in GT4. Not this Japanese version anyhow.

Some websites were mentioning the availability of the Lamborghini Murcielago and Gallardo (my favourite) but checking the credits on GT4 does not reveal any mention of Lamborghini at all. It seems that the big supercar makers Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche will not be joining us in GT. Such a pity. I'm not sure why this is the case but it must have something to do with perhaps Electronic Arts locking up the rights to these manufacturers. But good of Kazu to find us a way somehow to drive the McLaren F1.

Enough talk. Must go back to work. Tonight, more GT action!

GT4 Review

Toyota has just launched their TF105. So what? It's that time again that happens once every two or three years. Yes ladies and gents, the good folks of Polyphony Digital have done it again. The latest edition of Gran Turismo is now out. Its been out in Japan since December 28 in fact. Its time again to ignore your partners and give full attention where its due. On the racetracks.

Graphics, Sound And Music
I was a little disappointed with the graphics. That is to say, I had expected a lot more. Of course the background scenery has been improved tremendously but the rendering of the cars themselves haven't changed much. It is an improvement but not a quantum leap. Think of the difference between GT1 and GT2 and you will begin to understand. An evolution rather than the revolutionary leap between GT2 and GT3. I suppose Kazunori and his team have done the best they can from the Sony PS2 graphics engine. We'll just have to wait for PS3 to see vastly improved graphics.

Whilst I did mention improved rendering of the cars but then again, some things, like no driver in the driver's seat makes it look awfully wierd. This only applies to tintops. If your car is a convertible or open top, then you'll see a driver in the seat complete with action movements.

I'm not sure if its rendering errors or if its intentional but on distance shots the picture does tend to get jittery. Not necessarily bad but I'm not sure what they intended right there.

On the music front, I really miss the Cardigans and "My Favourite Game" on the title screen. Now it starts with an operatic score leading to some electric guitar muzak. Not very inspirational. The background music during the games are not so bad. I did hear Elvis though. Could've been someone else and you can check this. Before a soundtrack plays, the title and musicians name appears on the bottom of the screen.

All in all, the graphics, music and sound effects are of the usual high standards you'd expect from Polyphony. These folks have a way of squeezing every ounce from the PS2 but you'd of course expect that if this were an XBox game it would look way better. I must say though it does not in any way make the game less appealing. After all, those people who emphasize too much on graphics, people like pretentious art directors and graphics card geeks, are simply missing the point of the game. That is the driving.

Driving Impression
This is the heart and soul of Gran Turismo. Thankfully for the latest installation, the driving is much much improved over previous versions, living up to its name as the "Real Driving Simulator." As I said at the beginning, those of you who're used to GT3 will quickly acclimatise. For immediate thrills you can go to the Quick Races (or whatever it says in Japanese). There you may choose between "Real" circuits i.e. the ones that do exist in the real world, "Street" circuits for those who enjoy a spirited drive along the roads of some famous cities around the world, "Original" circuits that have been created by Polyphony. Of course, you must go the the "Real" section first. And why not? The first track you get is the Nordschleife.

As you may imagine having only received the game yesterday I haven't yet had time to go over most cars so I selected just a small sample to get a feel for the driving. This included the 2005 BMW M5 (standard), the standard BMW M3, Honda NSX-R (standard), Ruf RGT, the Spoon S2000 race car and my very own real life car, the Toyota Altezza RS200. I chose the Altezza because its the only comparison I have to a real world car.

The first thing you notice is the brakes. Standard cars dive and dive a whole lot. Its quite disconcerting at first but you get used to it. The Spoon race car had enormous brakes but if you brake hard for a hairpin for instance, the car begin its fishtailing rituals. The RUF's rear weight bias tells on hard braking, the momentum of its rear engine makes the car spin around like Kylie. The simulation of braking performance is much much improved over GT3. In GT3, braking was always a sedate affair no matter what car you drove. What I mean of course is that the car would always point where you want it to even under extreme braking. The only worry you'd have is understeer. With GT4 you'll have to contend with nosedives, fishtails and step on oversteer.

The other thing you notice especially at the Nordschleife is that during fast straights, standard cars will "float." This is especially frightful at the Nordschleife where you often will be in 5th or 6th gear balls out flat into a corner doing some ridiculous speed. The car's floating and suddenly there's a bump or the camber of the road starts to change. You're guaranteed to have a "Whoaaa oh me god" moment. The Nurburgring though is the perfect race track. Drive it people, and you'll know what I mean when I say that its the best track in the world. Its the definition of fast and flowing. Plus its got every conceivable type of corner there is. You'll quickly realise why all the major performance car manufacturer test their products there.

The Nordschleife tests all the major aspects of a car. You'll need mechanical grip, straight line speed, handling balance, high speed stability and aerodynamic downforce, suspension compliance and every other thing bar the kitchen sink to do well over there.

The modelling of road surface and camber changes have also been vastly improved. If there was one thing I thought very strange in GT3 was the fact that tracks were too smooth. In the real world though, circuits do have their bumps and undulations, that unsettle cars. GT4 has brought this to the fore and it feels great. I would imagine, you could use GT4 for finding initial base settings in a car. A pity then that circuits close to me like Sepang are not in. I bet you'd get loads of racerboys using GT4 for setup work then.

Of the cars I tested the BMW M5 impressed me the most. Sure it has a 500bhp V10 but it weighs something like 1700kg, so you'd expect rhinocerous like agility. Not so. Somehow in GT4 (and I assume in real life) BMW has completely sorted this car out. Not only is it stupendously quick in a straight line and it brakes on a dime as well. Like all modern BMWs it has a tendency to understeer but not so much that you'd be pulling your hair out in frustration. At the Nordschleife I managed to take it to 290km/h plus in seventh on the back stretch prior to the start and finish. The Nordschleife is not an easy circuit to learn what with the endless number of corners. So having those enormous brakes help a whole lot.

Nevertheless, there was one particular run I did that resulted in a huge spin. I somehow was on the verge of the blacktop and a wheel touched the grass at 290 km/h. Whereas in GT3 you'd still be pretty safe, in GT4 the car started to gyrate from side to side as I tried to counter and added to the aerodynamic lift and the fact that I lifted the throttle, at that speed I eventually lost it and round and round it went. Brilliant. This is much more like it, more realistic. Oh and of course I switched off the traction control and automatic stability control. Only wimps need to use that.

I also tested a Peugot 206 S16 for good measure since its a front wheel drive car and also I know for a fact that it will be used by many.... enemies. So I just wanted to see what my garage collection will be faced with. A front driver like the 206 feels like crap what with all that understeer it faces. For sure, it was only a standard model but the Civic EK Type R I purchased in the simulation mode has got it licked. Another car that disappointed was the BMW M3 although this was a standard version and not the CSL. It simply did not perform as well as the BMW M5. Put it this way, the M5 easily put the Ruf RGT to shame. But again I must stress, these were the standard cars and not the race varieties.

Conclusions
GT4 is a massive piece of gaming software. Its going to take months if not years to complete it all but I'm sure its going to be spectacularly good fun. In GT4, I would say that a steering wheel control and brake pedals would really benefit the player. Again, the physics model of the game is far far superior to GT3. The revolution may not have happened in terms of graphics but it sure as hell happened with the gameplay. Get your copies today maties. And see you in a couple of years!

GPWC

PlanetF1 has this interesting editorial here discussing among other things, the plans for the GPWC rival series in 2008. Underlying this of course is the share of revenues allocated to the competing teams. The article goes further and discusses the structure of those F1 revenues. Revenues from Formula 1 come mainly from the payment from the circuits themselves, TV products and from that corporate fat cat crony pampering Paddock Club, which as you may guess provides corporate entertainment.

As is widely known, the teams receive some 45% of the revenues from the main source of revenues that is the TV revenues. The market for this of course runs into the billions but then the teams collectively spend billions as well to compete (successfully or not). The teams quite understandably want more of these revenues. After all, in the spectacle that is Formula 1, the cost of providing that spectacle is borne mainly by the teams.

As an example take that brand spanking new hideous Hermann Tilke creation, the Shanghai circuit. Granted it costs something like USD 300 million or so. But if one considers that Ferrari's budget for the year exceeds this amount then one will have an understanding of the team's grievances. Essentially the Greedy One gets a free ride. I would estimate that 90% of the cost of Formula 1 is borne by the teams but they get only 45% of the revenues.

One might argue that actually its the sponsors that bears these costs but then one would forget that the sponsors are there as part of their marketing efforts and gain back tons more from the worldwide exposure. Sponsors like PC Suria (Oh My God!!!) being the exception of course.

Despite his greed, people like Luca di Montezemolo agrees that Bernie has done much good to raise the corporate marketability and awareness of the sport. However, there are limits to what the teams will consider acceptable. Despite getting preferential treatment from the FIA, in the end the bottom line counts. For all you bimbo Ferrari fans out there, the cost of the Ferrari team are actually paid for by parent company FIAT, incidentally now under the control of Senor Montezemolo. Essentially the Ferrari team ARE the FIAT team. The Planet F1 editorial article paints a good picture of the dire straits FIAT are in at the moment. Put simply they can't afford to bankroll the Ferrari budget in perpetuity. If the editorial is correct, very soon their bondholders will have a controlling stake in the company.

Well, there are two ways of getting out of this. First would be to cut cost. This then would be easier on the FIAT coffers. This is something that Ferrari with its wealth of testing and development facilities are loathe to do. So Luca opts for the next approach. That is, to gain more revenues to cover the costs instead. Despite The Greedy One's USD 500 million dollar enticement to the teams, I somehow do not think that will be enough and he is not going to relinquish more monies to the teams any time soon. So, the manufacturers of course band together to create the GPWC, essentially their way to ensuring that more of the profits from the sport reaches their pockets.

If a GPWC breakaway series does kick off, my main interest is in the circuits the series will race on. It is certain that the Greedy One will do everything in his considerable power to prevent the GPWC from racing on so called "Formula 1" circuits. With the exception of Imola, Monza, Suzuka, Spa and Silverstone, I really couldn't give two raised fingers about the rest. Well, maybe I'd still care about Montreal. However, I'd be overjoyed (and many would be too) if I don't see another Tilke designed dog ever again.

Let's speculate. What other circuits could they race on? Well, how about those who don't host Formula 1 races anymore. Circuits like Estoril, Jerez, Paul Ricard, Brands Hatch (yummy...) Brands is particularly apt since most drivers love the back section on the Grand Prix track and why not? It's full of fast flowing corners. Paul Ricard has been refurbished but I hope it still has the ultra quick Signe curve. If not Paul Ricard, the how about a race on the Circuit de La Sarthe? Grand Prix cars at Le Mans? Why the hell not?

Zandvoort in Holland hasn't seen F1 action in a while. Neither has Kyalami in South Africa. We could also bring back the Argentinian Grand Prix and perhaps the Rio circuit in Brazil. Japan could take on another Grand Prix in the Toyota owned Fuji raceway. Australia? No problem. There's always Surfer's Paradise (much more viable then London for instance) or even better yet, the much loved and sorely missed Adelaide street circuit. If Tony George of Indianapolis doesn't agree then the GPWC could go to places like Road America or Laguna Seca instead. Road America especially.

I know this must sound crazy but why don't we simply dispense with the new Nurburgring and go on the Nordschleife instead? Yeah, I know that's mad but I just had to put that in. If all else fails there are still some wonderful circuits in the UK such as Donington Park for instance. Zeltweg in Austria is another fast circuit unspoilt by the hand of the moronic Tilke (I think!). Of course Ferraris' Mugello circuit is another good option.

Hmmm.... it would seem that if they could rope in classics like Spa and Suzuka in their series, I would imagine that from a circuit driving and RACING standpoint the GPWC could prove more interesting than watching Michael Schumacher doing spins on some silly circuit modelled after a Chinese character.

Well, we shall wait and see. Whatever the pinnacle of motorsport turns out to be, F1 or GPWC, that pinnacle will still be faced with a ton of corporate and money politics. As I have often said, it is sad to see the "sport" in motorsport degenerating into a sea of greed and money. But there has to be a pinnacle to decide the true world champion. Hmmm... which brings me to another question. Could a driver compete in both series if the calendar permitted? Another thing to look out for.