Smidlee said:
Don't get confused between the difference between a driving sim and a crashing/collision sim. Forza 3 (nor any othet race game) does not simulate a crash/collision. Hitting anything at a 100+mph is not ever a pretty sight. A Nascar driver learned this the hard way. While some drivers claimed the EA Sport Nascar help them improve on some track in RL (like Pocono) one tried to ride the wall to pass as he did in the game. Of course it didn't work as he did a lot more damage to his car than in the game. Collisions in racing games are as gamey as auto heal in FPS. P.S I didn't realize that there was a Forza 3 article that claims "realistic crash damage". Realistically if a car going that fast hit a wall it would no longer look like a car. Is there any video of this "realistic crash damage"? |
Well that's the kind of in the box thinking that will result in full simulation never making it into games. In order to simulate a physics event you can deal with things in several ways. The current thinking is that the amount of power taken to accurately model a crash in realtime is astronomical so you're right that what we have currently is "cheating" damage modelling. This is of course where algorithms guestimate a preset damage level based on certain factors involving the accident. This is of course why many declare Forza's driving model to be a better simulation than GT's currently though too. Rather than simply guestimate the levels of grip a car has Turn 10 created a entire tyre model to remove the rough guestimation.
Either method can trick the gamer into thinking what they're experiencing is close to reality but only one will ever be able to progress onto full accurate simulation. The downside to Turn 10's method is for some reason they feel unable to extend their tyre model to the complexities of wet weather racing, this is a creative decision they made that one feature was more important than another in their case just like PD in the past with their reluctance to add any damage to their games. I would rather have a unrealistic damage in my games though that at least punishes bad drivers so I'm glad PD have made the choice to include it on all cars now (even if it's just physics based and not visual).
What ultimately matters is that GT5 and FM3 are two games in the same genre but created with completely different visions of what they should be, neither vision is right or wrong for everybody though and hence there can never be a decisive victor. People will continue to argue over both games, I personally will enjoy both for the great and thankfully different games they'll be.
