GT5 damage model lacks impact Comments by Richard Leadbetter

The E3 trailer shows (albeit briefly) the bonnet getting dented...so either this is an early build, or damage in Arcade mode is set to simple or something.

But there's no doubt that PD could have done a better job communicating with fans that damage wouldn't be on all cars.

Indeed, it's pretty weird that they chose a mixute of damagable and non damagable cars for the demo, because I don't think I've seen so many hostile comments toward GT and PD, for some cars having damage and others not. Maybe this was their way of just getting all the bad comments out the way before they show all the other features?

Still, graphically, it's off the scale of gorgeous. Camera video off the TV looks amazing, so here's hoping we get some direct feed stuff soon.

TBH I really don't see the big deal when it comes to damage. You are only going to see the results if you seriously screw up!

Boy, thank god this is not Joystiq. Folks over there are going berserk, downranking anyone that says anything about the damage model being pathetic.

To me, it looks pretty bad. After all these years, I would hope to God that they've added damage and a challenging AI. The world has moved onto bigger, better things since the last GT, so I would hope they at least get on par with other racers on those two things.

@SHARXTREME

I'm glad I'm not the only one slightly confused by what DF were looking at, because I too have seen debris, deformation and damaged paintwork in various videos doing the rounds.

What gives DF?

considering the subaru t-bones a car in the first few seconds of the video, i'd expect something to fly off there. i doubt that gt5 would actually run at 60fps if they actually put in a physics model required for these collisions to work, however. i wouldn't be surprised if their current damage model is canned.

some random damage pic for Richard
http://i27.tinypic.com/ip9h6a.jpg

Actually I've seen videos with dents in the car. It just seems that you REALLY need to trash your car for them to start to appear. Or it could just be a simple case of hitting it in the right place for certain dent to appear (it not being dynamic ala Burnout).

I've also seen alot of scratched paint...

Not usual for a Digital Foundry article to go up like this with very little research... This will do more harm then good and should be updated.

I'll never understand why people are so desperate for crash damage, its hardly realistic no matter how they do it. Its very simple: if you crash a car into a wall at 150mph you'll more than likely die-never mind crash damage!!!

*Weeps

the dents that you saw were normal maps not actual change in geometry what DF is talking about.

also the e3 trailer was what DF talked about earlier, media BULLshots.

So, where are the videos?

"you should also watch few videos then decide to post and think before you post such stupidity. "

Another day, another troll session from the Shark. Is there any DF topic you won't criticize?

Another brilliant 'tech analysis' in which Richard 'the Framerate' Leadbetter is measuring framerate on PSP with his bare eyes live on showfloor :-D

I won't comment on the rest of the post but I must admit I laughed.

In all honesty, GT does not need damage. It's sold 50 million games without it.

In all honesty, GT does not need half decent AI. It's sold 50 million games without it. However, that doesn't mean I wouldn't welcome some actual updates in that area. The market can always be expanded, as it is, your average GT Legends fan isn't exactly falling over himself to buy GT games at the moment.

Personally, I think AI is waaaay more important than damage, even in these days of online play. The fact that Polyphony can't keep up with guys building PC games in a shed in this area is a bit worrying.

Coming soon: Digital Bazfrag. Where i will compare the ps4 and xbox next based on assumptions and a couple of sketches my mate drew while drunk. (xbox wins)

Too early for satire?? –noun
1. the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.
2. a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.

I'm not going to comment much on this analysis, except that in a French interview Kaz said that this build was their very first damage build, and they are currently finding out about how far people wanted damage to go (or something like that, my French is a little rusty and that was in turn translated from Japanese). I did see there is also wheel alignment damange, which seems very accurate in that its mostly felt at certain speeds (I used to have a car with such problems, only happening around two speeds).

More interestingly, it appears that the PSP GT has a cockpit mode. I didn't see that one coming!

Its certainly a beautiful game and i am a big fan of all of the games up until GT4 (which was not all that) but i am growing increasingly worried that all they have done is tart the visuals up and throw in some token dmage features. one of the vids stil shows the cars bouncing off of the wall on Tokyo R246

Wow - I've got to get me one of those new Sabaru's! Sounds awesome! :P

@ Secombe - I agree totally. Damage is all well and good, but the GT5 AI is woefully bad. As it stands now, implementing the damage model would result in a lot of trashed cars, simply because the CPU cars tend to barge you out of the way if you're on their preset racing line. Until the AI is actually capable of making its own mind up and reacting to you, rather than just racing along a preset course like it has been doing since the days of GT1, GT5 will continue to feel as sterile as it already does. Forza, on the other hand, offers much more robust AI. Time Polyphony Digital took a leaf out of Turn 10's book, methinks.

Wow, reading the desparately defensive comments here, you'd think the damage looks even worse than it actually does.

So what if the AI is bad. Theyve spent the last 3 years making the cars EVEN SHINIER.. .surely thats what matters ?

No really - its going to be great... A mate at work told me so.

I really disagree with a lot of the claims here.

The damage model itself is an obviously welcome addition, but somewhat limited. There is no actual deformation of the cars taking place – body panels remain totally pristine. Instead the Sabura is outfitted with a number of removable parts: front and rear bumpers, doors, the bonnet – these are the elements of the vehicle that work loose then fly away leaving just the barebones of the car.

I noticed the rest of the car getting scratched. If you really want the car to get completely deformed, I suggest you actually let it gain enough momentum before hitting the track walls?

In this sense it is somewhat "last gen", very similar to Burnout 3 if you're looking for a direct comparison.

Aaaaaah... So you were expecting the damage to be like in Burnout Paradise? Yep, sure, very realistic...

Right now there's no debris, no impact damage, and no breaking glass.

While I agree that I didn't see the flashlights getting broken (which do break easily in real life), I saw plenty of debris on the track.

Another telltale sign is that it appears that your car is the only one to sustain damage.

I suggest to anyone who is not blind to look closely at the video at 00:08. You'll see AI cars crashing to eachother and parts falling off.

Gfx looks awesome.

The AI may not be great, but a car banging into a crash situation isn't exactly the highlight of what's important when it comes to AI you race against. Under normal conditions the race would be pretty much over after such a crash. If you're driving half decent however, GT5 Prologue showed big improvements over AI being aware of you, both when overtaking on a straight and when driving together in a turn, the latter which isn't done right by very many other games (Forza 2 really got on my nerves with AI tipping my side-rear in a turn all the time causing me to spin out). So there have been some major steps taken on the AI front already versus GT4.

And talking about vs GT4, surely I don't have to make a complete list of features that we all wanted in GT4 that are now in GT5, making GT5 one of the most forward looking versions in the series? Are the sixteen cars on track, the cockpit views, the online, the improved physics (ABS can be fully off too) and so on and so forth already so taken for granted? :D And now there's damage too, and any damage (http://i30.tinypic.com/2qmzreb.gif is already a fair bit of damage) is more than GT4, after all ;). Combine that with the game's ability to update itself, and my only problem with GT5 remains still that it's not out yet.

My first reaction when I saw the show floor footage yesterday was "Oh, that looks nice" followed by "That damage model doesn't look very good."

It just feels a bit.. I don't know... jarring. You see cars get broadsided at high speed and there's no lifting off the ground, bodywork deformation or anything. You'd expect the car to be in a much worse state, especially if you've played any other racing game in the last couple of years.

Disappointing, but not game-wrecking.

@ Arwin

They are leaps forward for the GT series in many ways, yes, but other developers have made much greater strides in racing game technology and Polyphony seem to be playing catchup, rather than trying to set a new bar.

Sabura??

That linked photo wasn’t photoshopped at all!

It still looks to me like the damage model is more limited than TOCA or Colin McRae on PS1.

Graphically, I do think that looks really incredible (although it is replay mode rather than in-game mode). But the end of that video has the car hitting every wall it can and nothing happens to the body work at all. Hopefully it's just early days and there is more to come because at present that doesn't come close to matching Forza 2's damage modelling.

all I"M saying is that perhaps these vehicles shouldn't look and behave like bumper cars during a collision.

every other game seems to have this figured out. posters here say that a(lack of) damage model doesn't matter for this game... i didn't know this game was held to such low standards

@evilfoxhound - "When I play GT games I never crash anyway. The feature means nothing to me LOL."

Yeah riiiiiiiiiiiight... and that's because real life racing events never ever, EVER have accidents or crashes in them, not even F1, NASCAR and rally events, all of which feature in this game? :P

Any game that claims to be a simulation needs to accurately reflect reality as much as possible and since accidents DO happen in racing (no, really they do!) then logically damage modelling needs to be included along with its effects to complete the feature list. It doesn't matter whether you're a careful driver or not, people have accidents for real through no fault of their own, e.g. a tyre blows, the engine fails, someone else takes a corner badly and hits them, etc., etc.. ;)

The video says replay action. If you guys are basing stuff from that then.. too bad. The replays are prettied up.

Also, with a car game like Gran Turismo - that is to say, with all their shiny and pretty realistic looking cars one would actually want everything else to be believable as well. Such as damage, and crashing. It has to be believable - maybe not realistic, since you can almost never get that in a computer game.

The Biggest problem of the GT-series is the terrible AI code which can be translated into a single line: Drive on Ideal Line where max speed is determined by difficulty-level. There is no real racing going on in the GT-games it's just driving. (It took me 5 GT-games and countless hours to realise that).

I think its pretty poor form to be so critical of an upcoming title on the basis of a limited-exposure demo.

Making "technical" judgements on non-final code is pointless in the first place, but to use it as an excuse for an article that is so negative is inexcusable.

Yeah, I'd want AI over damage. I found GT4 a bit soulless after a while.

From the looks of things I would think (or hope!) that this is a long way from completion. At least it looks nice.

"Yeah, I'd want AI over damage."

I'd want both if I'm buying a game that sells itself as a sim, otherwise the 'sim' labelling is false advertising.

I think the GT series would be better served by losing the sim pretentions and trying to inject a little 'soul' into the gameplay, even if that moves the series even further into arcade territory.

It's already good looking but it's been obvious for a good few years that PD understand the surface of cars very well but have very limited knowledge about their inner workings or surface interactions.

While GT has steadfastly refused to improve handling, collision and damage models over the last 3-4 iterations, competing games have been making great strides and PD simply have far too much R&D and iterative development and testing to implement a realistic handling and interaction model in GT5.

Conversely it would take relatively little time to inject a little bombast into GT5 and give it the identity it so desperately needs right now.

I think it could be because of the number of cars that the damage models arent so detailed, the reason that GRID could afford to have such detailed models for every car, was that there was only 58 cars.

Anyway, they still have time...

@Bloodhunter

I'm guessing, but I very much doubt the damage is modelled per car. It will almost certainly be procedurally generated with the possible exception of a few specific items like headlight clusters.

AI in GT series doesn't exist,"AI" in GT series is intelligent as engine piston.GT is more like lone-wolf driving simulator and many people like it that way.

GT5 damage is more like... look look we have damage now

sounds very disappointing

maybe this is just a preview of the damage system and digital foundry should do more research before lolling it. The official site mentions the new crash system, "completely renders deformation from crash." Not scratches, not scuffs, but deformation."

as well as mentioning that cars will flip over

@ Nick_581

Or perhaps some of us already own both consoles and are able to come to our own opinions on the games, rather than 'picking sides' as you put it. And I don't really understand how you can call Forza bland looking when Gran Turismo is hardly a model for artistic brilliance.

Heh, this is like sonic V Mario for 20 and 30 year old men. Great!

/facepalm