I've yet to find an example in real racing where contact is punished by Time Penalties. Disqualification, yes. and I'd expect that.

Same goes for leaving the track. If you overcook a corner in games that punish for such things, you are doublely punished.. once for leaving a track and again for the speed and recovery. Its rediculous and takes the fun out of it.

If you stray from the predefined "racing line" you are punished, the only way to overtake is to take the straights and better handling can never win, because as soon as you've taken a position in a different line either by breaking early or late depending on the corner, you are instantly in the wrong, so the "correct line" driver can ram you with impunity even though this is not how it works in real racing.

 If they did include it, even for just multiplayer games. Then it'd better be an option, and I'd put money on 90% of people leaving it off as the wrong person gets punished way too often.

 Time Penalties for collisions and leaving the track are the worst thing thats happened to racing games for years, LFS is a good example of how it should be done if you want a non GT perspective.

Are you speaking of previous GT games?  I certainly agree that the AI has to factor in "right of way" for penalties to work.  I'm not sure if you are referring to other games or previous GT installments.

Time penalites exist for speeding in the pits (particularly F1 but I'm sure other forms have a similar thing) but I'm not currently aware of one for bumping.  There are a myriad of penalties in the various forms of racing that involve some type of "pause" for the driver or forced movement to the rear of the pack or something similar.  A simple time penalty in the game is a good way to factor in and penalize for agressive driving so personally I like it (at least in Forza 2)  I do agree with the off-track penalty being a double whammy, though, because you lose all sorts of speed and time and it's just not necessary.  I hate to keep bringing Forza 2 up because I'm trying not to be a fanboy, but the AI in forza does a great job of NOT bumping if you clearly have the right of way in a turn.  I can't recall any glaring situation where I clearly was in the right and the AI rammed into me.  I notice on many occasions where the AI will swerve slightly to avoid a bump when we are side by side in a turn or my nose is far enough in that bumping me would be "cutting me off".  I'd really like to see GT5 take it to the next level and add damage modelling that not only looks good (Forza is really cool) but also affects the way the car handles in a significant way.  Add 60fps 1080P and phenomenal textures and I'm buying the game, a steering wheel, and I'm taking some time off, lol.

Yes, I'm referring to GT3 and GT4.  GT4 had time penalties in rally races.  When you made contact with the other driver, it cut off your throttle for 5 seconds.  Didn't matter whose fault it was, and it always penalized you and never penalized the CPU.  Honestly, I don't think it's possible to design a failsafe system for determining whose fault it was.  Judges in real racing can't even agree sometimes.  Still, they should be able to improve the driver AI to allow for choosing an alternate line when there is traffic.  I'm glad to hear your report that Forza 2 does a decent job.  GT4 does not, and the AI that I saw in this video of GT5 looks precisely the same to me.

Contact penalties in multiplayer are an even worse idea.  The last thing I need is some jackass getting in front of me and braking hard in the middle of a straight, so that I rear end him, and suffer a contact penalty. 

GT is a SIM, so you should be penalized for contact. Maybe not fenders and fiberglass flying everywhere but there should atleast be some kind of slowdown.

Actually, I would prefer 1000 times the damage simulation than the contact penalty.

Breaking your suspension always makes you say "phuck, I need to get better..."

Anyway, I'm downloading, Orbit downloader FTW heh.

EDIT: Ok, I just watched it. Heh, the person playing it really lacks some skills.

Well, the cars look very fine, but I can't notice the environments very well because of the resolution of the video, but I do notice that the soft-shadows are not very high resolution... well, I couldn't really complain, soft-shadows is a really graphics intensive task anyway, it's ok I guess.

But I insist this should have damage simulation  

Any good driver in GT will at most make slight contact with other cars. I could care less about damage in GT, as it's always been about precision, not slamming into other cars and walls with impunity. With 15 other cars on the track, if you go off course, you're pretty much just going to finish in last regardless of damage and time penalties. Of course, I say this and everyone on line is just going to brake by ramming the guy in front of them...

The video looks great but the site is going crazy slow, only half way done. The cars look the best, 60FPS at 1080p can't wait :)

I don't think any game can come close to this for graphics.

Ignore my previous post. :o

http://kotaku.com/gaming/gc07/gran-turismo-5-prologue-to-feature-car-damage-improved-ai-better-physics-293208.php

Y no car damage... btw guys my fave GT was GT3 on PS2 what about yours...