Driving physics

[Cazzer14]

It did take some getting used to, but I loved GTA IV's driving, once you got the hang of it you really felt good about pulling off a nice drift.

 

They just need to tighten everything up in terms of suspension, grip and steering. I've been playing San Andreas for a couple of weeks, and going back to IV, I understand by what Dan Houser meant by 'boatlike'.

[Meezarawcks]

 

Complimenting the worst thing about IV

All respect lost for OP

Immature attitude to state lack of respect for someone for merely having an opinion that differs from yours. The driving physics in GTA IV were actually very good and more realistic than any GTA game previous. The back of the car stepped out when you planted the throttle in a car with a decent amount of grunt because that's exactly what happens when you really drive a real car of that type. The kids bitched and moaned about this though because this fact was lost on them and they wanted to drive cars with arcade-style physics. Personally I hope the physics stay just as they were.

Well said. People just wanted to mash a button and go "VROOM" to there destination. Not realizing that easing onto the gas, like in real life, and taking off steady is how real driving works.

[poklane]

All I want is IV driving but let cars stick to the road more. If you drive on a pavement you launch into the air like a rocket.

[douggoud]

What am I doing wrong?

First of all, I would recommend driving normally, get a feel for how the car reacts to what you do. Then drive about that city dodging traffic and going around corners without using the handbrake. It may seem like going around corners just using the normal brake is slow, but it actually isn't, it is more realistic. Drifting actually, for most cars (excluding the early F1 cars and some others), is actually slower, contrary to popular belief. Do this until you start to understand how the cars react. I'd recommend the more boat like muscle cars and such, if you can learn how to go around a corner properly in these cars, then you'll be able to take pretty much any car in the game around a corner properly. After a while, you can move up to sliding the cars around corners, at first you will have problems with drifting these cars, which is normal, pretty much everyone that's played this game has dealt with it in some form or another, but after time you learn how to make it work properly.

 

Also, word of the wise, brake BEFORE the corner, not during, in reality (or rather, on the race track) it will normally put you into a wall, because your making the front tires do two things at once, which usually doesn't end well.

 

 

 

I've played driving games my entire life, from your arcadey ones (GRiD, Need for Speed) to your full out sims (Live for Speed, GT5, etc), I have a racing wheel as well (Logitech G27), but playing with a controller works about as well. Any game with good enough driving physics will feel relatively the same as another, in some form. The saying, "practice makes perfect" really applies to this.

 

EDIT: In fact, watch this video, this is a good example of how to drive in IV (at least while the person wasn't using the cinematic cam, lol):

 

Notice their braking points and listen for when they accelerate. Also, if you start to lose control, just let off the gas, it usually help when your trying to correct a mistake or when you land from a jump.

lol i watched the first lap and that guy's driving is cringeworthy. if i remember correctly he also played with no traffic! XD

 

@guy who can't drive

 

Ignore that vid, he slows down WAAAAY too much because his driving line is bad.

 

You don't need to brake a sh*tload, you need to brake a little bit to keep control of your car, but not like in the vid. If you've got a good driving line you barely even need to brake.

 

Instead of slowing down and going through the middle of the road, cut the corner as much as you can. Drive on the pavement through corners, but don't drive into lamp-posts etc, cut through them. Of course, cutting through narrow gaps like that at high speed while turning and keeping control of your car does perhaps take a little practice, but after doing it a few times it's natural.

 

 

V should have a mandatory driving school at the start of the game so complaints like this are less common.

Before you drive fast you should learn how to drive slow, that's what I was trying to accomplish with that video, just so you know.

[Flashify]

Loveddd IV's driving. More traction, no power cuts, stiffer suspension and someone that knew when to f*cking change gear and it would have been perfect hahaa. I'm happy to hear Rockstar addressing the "boat-like" feel to bring more of a 'racing' feel to it.

 

Oh and my opinion on SA v IV's driving is how the f*ck can you prefer physics that a 2 year old could master which isn't enjoyable whatsoever over IV's which is actually entertaining?

[dukee152]

GTA IV's handling was difficult. But it did feel like i was playing forza 2 when I was driving the cars. They did over do it with the body roll but GTAIV was the first game where the car would go over every little bump and crack in the road without simply just floating over it. The cars really felt more life like rather than just an object that transports you form point a to point b.

[GlitzyTomb]

Agreed. In SA I had a lot of fun but it was pretty much entirely due to the environment. I used bikes almost all the time because the cars were meh. In GTAIV I still used the bikes a lot but I'd just as happily hop in one of the faster cars and just jam down the highway at absurd speeds.

[I<3GTAV]

GTA IVs handling was almost perfect, however, the cars need to stick to the ground more. I was playing it earlier, and I had the police on my tail, so I sped away and hit a bump and my car was absolutely totaled after that.

[diss86]

Gta IV driving physics was improved compared to previous GTA's but still it felt like driving a boat. I hope they will keep the same physics in gtav and making it feel like a racing game, is a good thing because it won't make the car's handling similar to a boat.

[John The Grudge]

Forza and Gran Turismo are racing games and they have more complex, more difficult to master driving physics than GTA IV.

[Vin89]

I also put many (I don't really want to know how many, because I'm afraid of that number) hours into GTA IV, especially it's driving. With everything intresting done you can do, I was pretty much down to master every significant vehicle.

 

Just to prevent to bring forth a false impression: I liked GTA IV and it's driving physiques. But I didn't love the driving physiques. Let me continue this...

 

Wobbly Suspension

No matter which car the suspension was far away from "sporty" or stiff. Even my favourite, the infernus, kind of laid to much to one side when steered sharp. The comet was the master of wobbly sport cars. It was damn fast, had gread acceleration and all-wheel...great car actually. It was my favourite until I learned how to handle the beast called infernus.

 

Sudden loss of power while drifting

Drifting might have been fun for some guys here. That's because it was pretty easy. But drifting in GTA IV was not rewarding. Most of the time you time compared to just break and take the turn without losing grip.

Apart from that the game patronized the gamer by taking away power suddenly. With most cars you couldn't let your wheels spin while drifting. It's pretty annoying because it kind of takes away the whole drifting difficulty.

 

Motot sounds

Really, a game having "auto" in it's title can't have cars sounding like my vacuum cleaner. I don't really care about the sounds of some middle class family car (actually these sounded pretty authentic) but I want to hear the roar of a high end sports car. I want to drive into a tunnel, stop and just hear the glorious echo and curses of the people waiting behind me.

 

Too few sports cars

We only had a hand full of real sport cars. I would like to see some more, some variations of a model. Just take Mercedes or BMW. They have their "normal" cars and then there is AMG for mercedes or the M series for BMW (both former independent tuning labels). In IV we hat a tuned version of the sentinel and it sucked imho.

 

I hope Rockstar will take V's driving into a more realistic and challenging sphere. This should not be a risk to people who don't want to invest much time into learning how to drive like in GT5 driving school. In V you will still be able to just speed like a maniac, produce massive crashes and still get the job done.

 

I hope tomorrow we will see some of those points. It's one of my main hopes for V to have more realistic driving.

[Kifflom112]

The car handling in IV was wonderful. It had it's rough edges, but for the most part it was enjoyable and somewhat challenging. The people bashing it iNero *cough* probably just mashed into the gas and expected the cars to do what they wanted them to do.

 

IV's handling was fun and I can say I somewhat mastered it. The thing that pissed me off was how performance cars has horrible grip, and tbogt had way too stiff suspension compared to IV.

[richard1997jones]

I loved the gta iv set up but if test drive unlimited 2 set up came in

[Kifflom112]

I loved the gta iv set up but if test drive unlimited 2 set up came in

I'm sorry but Test Drive Unlimited 2 had hoerible handling and all.

[meson1]

IMO the handling in GTA:IV, while not without it's faults, was pretty damned good.

 

You had to remember that all the cars had speed sensitive steering. You would get a tighter steering angle at low speeds compared to high speeds. This made the cars less sensitive at high speed, but if you wanted to go round a corner you had to slow down. The best technique I found was to keep it smooth. Brake properly for the corner and then power through the bend and you come out the other side pretty quick. Depending on the car you might have had to modulate the power delivery while powering through the corner by lifting off for a fraction of a second and/or applying a teeny tiny dab of opposite lock when you anticipate the back stepping out.

 

As I say is not without it's faults. I found the three main ones were:

1. Sometimes the car would not pick up properly from low speed and the engine would be at high revs for too long before changing gear. This was remedied by lifting off and reapplying the power quickly. After a while it becomes second nature to deal with it, but it shouldn't be necessary in the first place.
2. The cars would roll excessively which didn't look good, though I didn't find that it stopped me from making quick progress.
3. The really bad issue I found is the way the rear wheels would pop up violently off bumps. The fronts would manage the bump nicely, but then the bump would ping the rear of the car into the air. The only real solution to this is to know where the bumps are and either manoeuvre to avoid them or drive slower over them. This was worse on bikes because it had a tendency to flip the bike over; even in TLAD.

It will be interesting to find out what "running more physics" turns out to mean. Will it mean that they more accurately replicate actual physics instead of using a hybrid model that uses a mish-mash of physics, effects and trickery to produce a semi-realistic impression of vehicle physics? Edited April 29, 2013 by meson1

[DarkDayz]

 

GTA IVs handling was almost perfect, however, the cars need to stick to the ground more. I was playing it earlier, and I had the police on my tail, so I sped away and hit a bump and my car was absolutely totaled after that.

Yeah, feel that, love the physics in IV. But when in high speed pursuits in cars like Huntleys etc, the car does flip far too easy. Houser said that's something they have fixed, which is great.

It is realistic in some sense for that to happen, but you have to find the balance between realism and what can become annoying when playing, so I'm glad they are doing so.