Gran Turismo 5 is set to be the racing simulator of the generation. It’s so feature full that it’ll surely push the limits of a Blu-ray disc. As we’ve already discussed, the game’s premium cars really take things to a new graphical level. They’re hyper-realistic. But they only consist of 20% of GT5’s vehicles – the other 80% are what Polyphony Digital call “standard” cars. These have been brought in from previous Gran Turismo games. We had hoped that they’d just not had the same amount of love as the game’s premium cars, but it looks like their models are mostly copied from GT4.

Firstly, the 800 standard cars won’t have interiors – so no cock-pit views for them. Creating 1000 cars to the same exacting standards as the 200 premium cars would be an impossible task – and if not impossible, it would take Polyphony Digital another five-years to complete.

The premium vehicles will include headlights with ‘high and low beams’, with full deformation and dislodging of body parts. In comparison, standard cars will only have standard lights, performance damage, dirt, scratches and dents.

As for what the standard vehicles look like, Eurogamer claims that they’re “glossy, finely detailed, and a fair match for anything you might have seen in Project Gotham or Forza.” But we’re going to have to beg to differ. Sure, in motion they look fine, helped in part by GT5’s incredible lighting. But when you get closer, things are a little different. Indeed, many of the cars look to be direct upscaled copies of their Gran Turismo 4 counterparts. Take the following comparison (GT5 images taken from the official trailer below) – the polygon count is unchanged from GT4:

Gran Turismo 5 ’standard car’ (click to enlarge):

Gran Turismo 4 car model:

(Credit Jeseus of NeoGAF)

And then there’s the textures. The following image shows that, unlike the fully modelled lights on premium models, the lights on standard models are simply overlayed textures:

And just to rub it in, this screenshot (taken from the GT5 trailer below) shows the car advertising Gran Turismo 4 (although it’s a real world car, this still pushes the point home):

Sure, it’s a disappointing, but GT5 is packed full of content. Over 1000 cars, over 20 locations, 40 tracks and 70 variations. Night racing, weather, go-karting, the Top Gear test track, it’s fully playable in 3D and you can even make your own tracks. We don’t want the game to be in development any longer, so Polyphony Digital better stick to Sony’s announced 2 November release date.

http://www.playstationuniversity.com/gt5s-standard-cars-just-upscaled-gt4-models-4028/

Darn lot of the cars i like are in the standard category either way if those cars in the gameplay were upscaled GT4 models then thats some amazing upscalin

its supposed to say upscaled not unscaled

i'm ok with it, if they put some Generic Cockpits to all the 800 cars, i'll be VERY HAPPY.

That GT4 part of the argument is stupid. If the real car said Microsoft on it then it wouldn't say Sony in the game, it just wouldn't be in the game :P But you get the point.

Even if true they still blow away most car models in any game to date lol

I'm disappointed, but not down on the game.

Think of it this way. Over 200 of the most hyper realistic ridiculously detailed cars ever seen in a game, plus all the cars from previous GT games with overhauled physics and updated models.

yeah maybe they'll update the game via updates or dlc longer after the game releases

I don't mind at all...200 cars alone would make me buy this game at this point.

ok, so all this means is that GT6 will never come out, since it already takes 5 years for 200 cars and they will probably want to have 1500 next time arround...

The cars from GT4 looked pretty good anyways...and I don't mean "for the PS2 generation" I mean they genuinely looked near-photorealistic.  The environments were always the glaring problem in GT4.

Obviously they won't look as good as the premium cars made for GT5 from scratch, but considering we're talking about 200 new cars...eh..seems like it's not that big of a deal.

Either way I doubt I'll be buying GT5 for quite a long while - I prefer the bargain bin on racing games.