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One of the reasons car damage isn't fleshed out in most games is due to licensing, car manufacturers don't want their cars smashed up. Usually they draw the line at broken windshields and doors flying off. That being said, Driver San Francisco struck a good balance.

"Huge game studios, like Ubisoft, go above and beyond in underachieving." Holy shit this quote describes them perfectly!

In my opinion "Wreckfest" has one of the most satisfying arcade style driving physics. It's butter... and crashing feels so good,

I loved the cars in GTA IV, but the biggest issue and the biggest thing most people dislike about it isn't that it has "realistic handling", it's the suspensions that are much too soft, which makes the cars feel bouncy.

One of the things that GTA IV did when creating that new driving was adding some layers of complexcity and difficulty. Driving in GTA was always really easy, but adding those two changes for IV's driving made the game super fun to me, you really need to learn how to handle the vehicles in order to play without unaliving yourself. Great video, I can agree with everything you said here.

9:48 The reason realistic damage isnt included in most (if not all) racing games is thanks to corporate demand. No CEO wants to see the car of their brand get mangled or destroyed (which it on itself is stupid, its like the long drawn out argument of "videogames cause mass shootings") the reason Burnout 3 has better damage models than FH5 is because you arent driving a Dodge or a Ferrari, you are driving a "Compact Type 1" or a "Super Type 1" TLDR: no brand = better damage spectacle

As a kid I always loved Midtown Madness, where destroying the car was basically a mini game. It was great how the cars limped along after breaking something important, like in a demolition derby. Old game, primitive by today, but a good game.

VR Support is not as easy as simply moving the camera inside the car and enabling motion input. You have to do a TON of extra work to make sure everything is intractable from inside VR, intuitive, and you have to put WAY more detail into areas like the rear interior of a car because the player can turn their head and see it, where they normally couldn't with a regular game camera. That's a lot of work for a feature 99.9% of players will NEVER use!

I remember in midnight club los angeles you could fully damage a car during a race but if you start the race afterwards the game will replace the parts you lost with Grey parts which is kinda unique.

BeamNG drive is the best example of good driving physics and damage. These few german devs created the most realistic Driving Physics in a game ever. The other games do not have to be THIS good but a least be standart. Good Video.

"Many games don't have VR support despite it being easy to implement." Tell me you aren't a Software Engineer without telling me you aren't a Software Engineer.

12:35 What I feel is not often talked about, and unfortunately it isn't mentioned here as well, is the fact that when you use the cockpit view in racing games, it is ALWAYS stiff facing forward. When I am driving, I want to look AHEAD of the curve; not turning blindly into it. That could be solved with an invisible dot in front of the car, that follows the track of the game ahead of you, which your camera always automatically focus at. And depending on speed, it will either be far ahead or close up front of your car. It's a very simple solution to a very common problem.

While I share your frustration with regards to damage in driving games, I feel that we might be being too harsh here. Isn't it odd that all the games with great damage (burnout, GTA) use fictional vehicels? This isn't a coincedence, It's actually the result of racing games' licenses with the car manufacturers they feature in their games. No brand wants their cars to seem dangerous, so they all agree that their cars won't be depicted getting destroyed or experiencing a fatal accident. Take Driver: San Francisco for example, that's got to be one of my favourite racers out there. 90+ percent of the cars in that game are licensed, real vehicles. the other ~10% of cars are fictional, these are the ones they use in cutscenes where a car explodes or kills / injures somebody. Gets around legal trouble and keeps the car brands happy.

3:26 FH5 isn’t a simulation racer, it’s still an arcade racer. That would go to iRacing or Assetto Corsa

Watch Dogs physics remind me a lot of Most Wanted 2012 physics. The cars are hard to steer and slide easily at high speeds making them hard to control especially in a crowded city setting, but honestly I like that. Makes it so driving fast feels actually dangerous.

A game not mentioned in the video is Wreckfest, it has good physics, interaction with the environment, very good damage and you can feel the weight of the vehicles. A game that can be played perfectly with keyboard, controller or steering wheel and feels great in all.

I think Driver: San Francisco, the first two Mafia games, and GTA IV had the best examples of not just car damage, but driving in general.

As a developer the biggest most important thing to make a vehicle system feel good is how the camera is scripted. Honestly good camera scripting can easily make up for some sub par physics. A good example of this would be need for speed most wanted.

I do think that vr isn’t a priority for games like FH5, considering its simcade physics, weird in-game wheel rotation and the lack of people who are looking into using their vr headset for FH5. Instead if you are looking for immersion then it’s probably best to play something like iRacing, Assetto Corsa or rFactor 2 as they all offer a far supperior driving experience even if they don’t have any major crash phyics

I'm glad you mentioned the weightiness of GTAIV's driving, something I feel has always lacked in most driving games is the sheer sense of speed and screen shake, if you ever see irl footage of time attacks, the driver is bouncing and swinging around inside the car, but in video games, the 1st person camera is static like a mounted camera, theres no simulated inertia.

I feel like beamng drive is the best driving game released honestly, from the car's reaction to steering, the bumps damaging your axyl, the speed management, reaction to the roads and the over all physics especially the crash physics it honestly makes me always go back to it to have a drive. If there is any game worth your money its beamng drive, there is no objectives exept for the missions but the physics alone are the selling point. And with modding support its literally perfect

I love the sense of speed in beamNG, the fear of crashing the car and the grip levels all add to the lightning fast reaction time you need to have to keep the car from turning into a fireball stuck to a tree which makes the game feel unique. Especially coming from a person who played forza games all his life.

The driving was very weird in Watch Dogs 1, I agree. Once I couldn't find a unlocked car without stealing one, so I took the train, which was funnily enough very relaxing, knowing physics wouldn't screw with me. Glad you picked up on the missing steering wheel support. This is one of the reasons I have so many hours in ETS2 and a few in ATS now as well.

2 things: Games like Forza horizon five and GTA 5 don't use crash physics because it makes the game more frustrating if ur car brakes every time u make a mistake. Considering ur in police chases a lot in GTA. And they want you to have freedom in forza, thats why u can smash through trees with only a scratch. U wanna be able to drive around without being stopped by damages. That being said, i can't believe you didn't talk about BeamNG Drive!!

Gta iv still holds up very well as an in between of arcade and realistic being just controllable enough to be worth using and just fragile enough to still be a challenge.

Driver: San Francisco was such a good game, last of the franchise. It's what brings creativity into light. The story, the mechanics, and the damage models especially with licensed vehicles. It's sad to see a franchise like that end.

I don't think gyro controls for bikes would be much of a good idea. They're good on paper and as a gimmick, but having to do that a lot with a controller that you hold in the air with your hands can get very tiring. The DualSense triggers were an interesting idea on paper, but in long term use it becomes annoying or outright uncomfortable. Same thing would be with gyro controlled bikes I feel.

GTA IV had physics based driving and it was superb. Perhaps it took a bit to get used to but it was way more precise and predictable than anything else. I also agree that Most Wanted was awesome.

I have to say I've loved watching BeamNG come along, especially in the physics department. Driving on dirt roads in particular feels incredibly satisfying.

One racing game I love is Wreckfest. It’s one of my favorite modern racing games, with great realistic car handling, a good sense of speed and weight, and awesome destruction. It feels great being in a big muscle car, smashing into a small subcompact, and still keeping most of your momentum while the other car gets wrecked!

For open world driving games, Burnout Paradise still remains my favourite in terms of the overall package. Fantastic feeling cars, damage models and a near perfection on the arcade style. Yes it had some jankiness to it, but even the bikes feel better than most others I've played.

Car producers are those, who actually preventing the damage being introduced into these games.

I do expect you to talk about Mafia 2's handling. Just like GTA 4, it strikes a perfect balance between realism and arcadey/easy controls (and it also featured a simulation mode which also makes the handling way more realistic). And cars do feel fast and dangerous (as hitting could kill you as cars back then didn't have safety belts (some cars have them as an option which barely anyone wanted) And Mafia 1 also implemented a proper steering wheel support with actual force feedback. And driving physics feel pretty good too at its time

GTA 5's damage was nerfed slightly after the PS4, Xbox One, and PC versions came out because of the first person camera. In GTA 4 and original versions of GTA 5, cars can be completely caved in. Especially when hit with a heavy vehicle or of course, a tank.

I had to lol when you say, VR is easy to implement, whilst on the surface it might seem so, in reality it is not - lots of love from a race game dev :) Ps. It is largely the publishers and licences which constrain and hold back our industry, not the developers themselves.

I like the damage physics in Flatout 2, it has the most satisfying crashes I've ever seen in a game Also, I've read somewhere that when a game officially licenses real cars, the manufacturers forbid adding damage physics because they don't want to see their cars being damaged. That's why cars in Flatout and GTA series don't use their real names and don't look exactly like their real life versions.

Something you forgot in my opinion is the sound design ! For me it completely break the immersion when cars in games have bad engine sounds, especially in GTA, GTA games always had fake and terrible engine sounds, for example a muscle car in a GTA game doesn't have a real V8 engine sound, it completely break the immersion and it feel like you're driving a fake chinese replica lol.

This is not an issue of lazy devs or bad physics, it's a licensing issue with the manufacturers, they don't want their cars getting badly smashed up in the games they're being licensed for.

You did a fantastic job outlining a lot of quirks of driving games! I have some additional input of my own: Part of the issue is compromise between expectations and reality. You have lots of people (kids) who really don't know how cars work, and realistic physics are annoying for them. Even adults who have driven their whole lives have a surprisingly shallow understanding of how vehicles really behave in the extreme situations you see them in on screen. Most people won't understand that their offroad truck isn't "steering" properly because it has a locked rear differential, which works differently than an open one. They'll just go "ugh, I hate this truck" and pick a different one instead. So developers will almost exclusively choose to leave that behavior out--if they even have any idea what a differential is themselves. Take, for example, motorcycles. Anyone who's ridden knows about "countersteer," but normal people don't. Hence, video games always require you to steer in the direction you want to go. but in real life, motorcycles require you to turn *opposite* of the direction you want to go, once you reach a certain speed. If games worked that way, people would get annoyed and give up, because it doesn't make sense to them. But there are *lots* of complexities like this in real life--even with cars. Another example is aircraft. I had a friend who played a game where the airplane steers like a car: left to right (yaw). He swore up and down that "that's how planes work in real life." But he'd get frustrated if the controls were realistic, especially if he had to deal with realistic performance, stalling, turbulence and crosswind, ice accumulation, the impact of altitude on performance and behavior, etc. etc.--or even situations where there's loss of control, like flat-spins, overspeed, dives of death, etc. Not to mention that even small changes in design can lead to fatal situations if you aren't familiar with the aircraft. On top of that, programming the behavior of any system is much more complex than it seems, especially because it can't be solved in an intuitive way. You can't program a car by typing "if it hits a rock, the wheel bounces." If you try to program it in an intuitive way, you'll have all kinds of hair-pulling bugs and issues, and it won't behave correctly. That's because our modern-day physics engines aren't 1:1 compared to, well, *life's* physics engine. You need an exceptionally rare type of talent to take a complex physics system and "translate" it into a (relatively) simple equation that produces the desired result. All in all, it's not just darn hard to program these systems. Most people don't WANT vehicles to work realistically. Just realistically *enough* to immerse--not everyone, but specifically--the *target* audience. And when you throw in these expectations, coding a system that works *as expected* is incredibly difficult. You have to figure out what inputs someone is expecting to give, and what outputs they're expecting to see on the screen. And then you have to turn that into code. Both of those problems--figuring out what your audience wants and how to give it to them--are more difficult to solve than people think, especially if you're a massive company where getting anything done requires wading through a swamp of "red tape." People who have both the *inspiration* and especially the *ability* to execute a vision like yours are *exceedingly* rare. And that's the real problem.

One thing to note is that car manufacturers often prohibit their cars receiving significant damage when licensing them for games.

As a person who's been riding motorcycles for many years now, I can safely say that GTA IV got the motorcycle riding physics very close an enjoyable experience with it still being a bit realistic.

It's crazy to think that indie games like BeamNG and Wreakfest have better car physics than pretty much all of the recent triple A titles with driving in them.

I feel like realistic damage in an arcade racing games such as NFS would be a massive hurdle in the gameplay. It's like introducing milsim weapon handling into something like CSGO or TF2, you don't want be slowed down by realism and have faster pacing with less random variables to get in the way of playing the game. People would find it infuriating when the smallest mistake in an arcade racer would cost them the podium.

A game that did motorcycles really well and driving in general, was sleeping dogs. That game had arcadey physics, but driving in it was always a joy. Along with the ability to quickly switch to different vehicles from all types by jumping from one to another during driving. I wish they'd make a Sleeping Dogs 2.

Driver San Francisco had one of the BEST arcade handling physics to date

Midnight Club 2 features the best motorcycle physics ive played. They're not perfect but it features the option to hold down L1 while turning to enable leaning, which feels great ingame.

Car damage in games is hugely impacted by the manufactures. Why would they want to show their car being smashed up...

im fairly certain (because i started playing 2 months ago when this video was released as of writing this) that FH5 in fact has damage. You can just turn it "On Cosmetic" and "On Simulation" and "Off" of course. It has decent crash physics in my opinion that are enough to maintain immersion but many of us just turn it off bc we bough the game for racing not crashing. I bought beam for crashing lol.

Not a big deal, but a pet peeve I've had for a while was tire smoke. After playing Driver: San Francisco and seeing how the rear half of a rwd car can be *completely* obscured by smoke when burning rubber, all other games kinda feel like a let down when I do burnouts.

Why did you call FH5 a simulator in this video? It's a Simcade, it was intentionally dumbed down from the FM handling model which only just brushed simulator territory to begin with. You had BeamNG footage at the ready if you wanted to use a simulator that wasn't track-only

I loved the Test Drive Unlimited games, if TDSC comes out, finally going to have a driving game to enjoy again.

I read it somewhere, damage on car is limited nowadays because licensing issue, the license holder of that car dont like their product looks wrecked in game.

GTA 4 once again being the standard-bearer for driving physics in open world games

5:17 as much as I prefer IV's handling, I do like how I can flip my vehicle back up. It isn't exactly what I would call "handholding", more of a QoL feature.

I remember that Forza Horizon 5 changed its collision model from the highly sensitive one used in Forza Motorsport to a much more lenient one for the sake of ease of play (too many rammers). It's easy to say that you want perfect physics but you need to keep fun in mind too. We don't need engines to stall because we upshifted too much for example

As far as bike physics go, gta iv on the ps3 had whats called "sixaxis". You would use the controller to tilt bikes, helicopters, and even reload. It was the only time ive seen any game use the software

If we get a game that mixes GTA IV and Mafia 2 handling, it would be great.

"Motorcycles are more complicated than vehicles.." So motorcycles aren't vehicles? What are they then, turtles?

The reason motorcycles are steered with one input is that when you're riding a motorcycle, you mostly steer by leaning and the front wheel turns with you. I can actually ride and steer my Harley without using my hands. (After locking the throttle of course) Dirt bikes are much different, but street bikes, sport bikes & cruisers are this way.

burnout and gta 4 have great damage and forza doesn't is mainly due to licensing. A lot of car brands don't want damage to be shown on their cars in games. It's not the only reason but its one of the reasons why modern racing games like the recent forza and need for speed (Especially the ones that feature new real cars) lack damage.

Apparently the deformation in gta 5 used to be better on last gen but it was somewhat disabled at the sides and roof I guess so the interiors wouldn't get messed up in first person. Don't quote me on that though, I never owned it on last gen and just read some forums. Still a huge shame :(

Vehicle artist in the game industry here. I'd like to chime in and share a few things. Regarding being 'half assed' you always ALWAYS contextualize the driving/handling around the type of game being made. If its purely a 'car' game eg :Forza, NFS then they really don't have an excuse for the physics being boring and broken, it would be like if in GTA the character couldn't walk straight. However with open world games like GTA, watch dogs, saints row etc usually (not always) the vehicle interaction comes secondary to the rest of the game. In other words that part of the game is deemed not as important and receives far fewer resources. There are outliers to this of course but you can probably count on one hand how many open world games actually have really good driving physics. Point two : Physics programmers and people that understand the nuances of car physics are usually not the same person, so you now have to find two or more very specialized people, and once again if your game's primary focus isn't cars then the companies will probably cheap out as the priority is the 'bigger picture' (usually characters and shooting) and not the vehicle physics. Point three : If your system is underdeveloped the studios can keep using a broken foundation for several titles and never fix the fundamental problems. On the flipside for one reason or another, studios like to throw away perfectly good systems and star over. The anecdote I have is that the system developed for Driver San Franciso was amazing (as is the handling in that game ) but for some reason Ubisoft decided to put it into the garbage for The Crew and start over. Point four : Real world car manufacturers are all over the place when it comes to vehicle damage but for the most part they do not want any kind of realistic damage depicted in a game. Fictional vehicles are therefore the prime go-to for this kind of thing, however on that point, fictional cars are also really hard to design well, there are far too many examples of games with really terrible looking fictional cars.

13:02 "Many driving games don't have VR [...] despite the fact that it's *easy* for racing games to implement" That's the hottest take I've heard in a while. VR definitely isn't *easy*, especially in a game where you're moving at high speeds and crashing. It's not easy to make that a good experience. But if you drop the word "easy", I agree that it would be good to have VR in many driving games.

A lot of driving games that have licensed cars won't have realistic damage because the car companies won't license the cars if they are destroyed in the game. Which is very dumb to me. Which is why games like Burnout didn't use licensed cars.

Man nfs most wanted was such a perfect game, heavy cars actually felt heavy and light cars actually felt light. The physics had that perfect balance between feeling realistic and feeling like an arcade game to the point that people who enjoyed realistic physics and those who enjoyed arcade physics could both enjoy the game. We need another game like that. Also I have a problem with the f1 game. It was so fun in 2019 with so much spray in the rain but all f1 games after it just had no spray whatsoever. I understand that alot of players may not have enjoyed spray but instead of removing it they could have just made a setting to enable/disable it. The emersion is just broken to me when I am driving in full wet conditions yet i can see all 3 of the cars ahead of me and not just their lights.

I would say FH5 is not a simulator, at best it's a "simcade", even though I personally think it leans to the Arcade side.

Kinda sad that you didn't mention NFS ProStreet as one of the examples. It's that middle ground between arcade and sim, where cars feel realistic in both damage and physics, while still being arcadish enough to be enjoyable.

Just a note GTA V originally has much more GTA IV esque damage. I distinctly remember tyres would fly off the cars. But since the PS4/Xbox One/PC versions release they tones the destruction way down.

I worked as a software tester for a large portion of my career. My first game was Need For Speed 3 for the PC. A great game for LAN multiplayer, but it lacked some elements that made the PS1 version more charming, such as the cops shouting at you on a bullhorn. The reason why Burnout and GTA are better at accurate destruction models is simply because they make their own cars that emulate real ones. Having licensed cars in your game or movie comes with a cost: Some manufacturers don't want their vehicle used by villains, and others may require that their vehicles not take realistic damage. The developers can do 3 things: 1. Make a simulation game that includes as many manufacturers as possible, sacrificing real physics and damage (and the cost of licensing the cars) to rely on brand recognition for big sales numbers 2. Include a handful of manufacturers that allow for damage, allowing for better realism while sacrificing depth 3. Make your own cars that sort of look and behave like the real thing, sacrificing brand recognition while potentially reinforcing a parody-esque narrative and allowing the player to explore what's available without specifically having to live up to the player's preconceived notions of what a specific real car would behave like. Players can do that over the course of multiple games. Designing your own vehicles keeps the costs internal (designers, modelers, artists, sound designers), preventing licensing costs and restrictions altogether. I prefer GTA IV's physics, BTW.

i heard that damages on licensed vehicles has something to do with the license itself because sometimes the manufacturers themselves don't wanna see their cars get damaged in video games and or the game publisher/dev have to pay more to apply at least cosmetic damage to them

GTA IV's motorcycle physics are still some of the best motorcycles I've ever seen, you can actually lean on them and the crotch rockets still work with body roll and traction, once you get the hang of them they're actually very dynamic

"What do you think the GTA 6 disc would smell like" NAHH BRO YOU DID NOT 💀💀💀

GTA4 on PS3 actually used the 6-axis controller to incorporate lean on motorcycles as you were describing.

Mafia II has the best driving I've ever seen in a game. Piloting those land barges felt exactly as it should, the body roll, the sliding and traction, the everything was dead nuts on accurate. The only thing it didn't have was a great damage model. It was passable but if it had GTA IV's damage it'd be perfection.

The problem with realistic damage is, that many car manufacturers don't want that in games. So you either have realistic damage or real cars. Doing both just isn't really possible, due to how stuck up car manufacturers are.

Hot take but I dislike the driving physics in NFS Most Wanted (2005), the cars felt floaty and weird, whereas cars were much more responsive and you could feel the tyres on the road more in Underground 2. Also people saying that every vehicle in The Crew 2 feels the same just haven't played the game. Cars definitely feel different, not vastly (as they should), but they're not all the same at all.

The later MX vx. ATV games on PS3 had lean included in motorbikes. IIRC it was left stick for control, right stick for lean, and it was hella fun.

I'm not trying to defend anyone but here are few reasons behind damage, for forza its because of licensing, and for gta v they decreased physics for better graphics, which was a mistake imo because they should have just released the game on next gen, also there are gameplay reasons, just look at gta v damage of roof on old gen (ps3) and next gen (ps4 and up), they introduced first person and with that they tried to remove camera clipping

how did you not even talk about wreckfest

This is going to sound weird but I think there's a large market segment in which innovation in car driving mechanics is not desirable. For games that merely feature driving rather than being all about driving (e.g. stuff like Just Cause or Watch Dogs, not racing games), I think customers would be much happier if "good driving physics" was a drop-in middleware that games studios could just buy and configure. Similarly to how lots of games just drop in Havok or Bullet or Box2D rather than inventing rigid body physics simulation from scratch.

As a kid, I played a lot of Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed. Porsche Unleashed is still a unique outlier in NFS games, because it emphasized the wild-tail-happy physics of the old rear-engine Porsches, and also had a decently comprehensive damage system, where crashing into a wall would negatively affect handling. If you ran into a wall on the left side of your car, your steering would pull to the left. In career mode you'd also have to pay to get the damage fixed. There were also snowy or wet environments that would predictably affect the way the car handled. All of that forced you to treat the car with a modicum of control and finesse. The reward of skilled driving while also organically punishing mistakes was incredibly engaging. Sadly, most modern games, even within the NFS series, don't have that level of skill application. The most recent NFS I played, Heat, feels very shallow in comparison. The handling rarely has any quirks, doesn't really require you to understand braking points and racing lines, and also includes that horrible drift system that is all too easy to engage by accident. (To say nothing of the fact Burnout did integrated drifting better.) And of course there's no weather-dependent driving or damage that affects handling in a granular way. I daresay Heat is significantly less of a driving game than Porsche Unleased.

Tourist Trophy on PS2 was the best motorbike racing game for almost a decade and the reason for that was because it was built upon the Gran Turismo 4 engine. It's outdated by today's standards but it's still a blast to play, even if it needs an update in its physics and other aspects. Kazunori Yamauchi has briefly mentioned that he wants to make a successor that incorporates proper racing sim setups and motion controls but it's still not possible with the current technology (or at least affordable to gamers). There's at least one UKpostsr who has mentioned that VR could work as a possible workaround in lieu of expensive racing hardware that it's not streamline yet. I also think this is a viable option even though VR is still out of reach for most of gamers' pockets, especially on the PC side.

For good bike physics, check out the controls on the mx vs atv games. One thumb stick is steering and the other is your body leaning.

I think most users of the game would bale their car on the corner of a building at the first bend (did you see the 120 mph crash on fifth gear?), thus game cars are made out of 8 inches of plate steel and given thirty thousand horsepower engines to compensate. That way they can drive into anything like battering rams and just get a few scratches on the paintwork. The exception is beamng and Garry's mod

One thing I can say about GTA V’s physics, even tho the ability to roll your car onto it’s wheels is very unrealistic and weird, it would be highly inconvenient to have to hop out of the car and find a new one, especially in GTA Online. So I can see why they added that. As for the damage physics, yes, they need to fix that in GTA VI. Some cars barely even deform, while others, such as the cop cars can literally be compressed into a toaster. The inconsistency is what bothers me so much.

This video gave me a vibe that old = good and new = bad doesn't matter the developers focus or intentions. And GTA4 tug boat handling is the best one in the world and everyone should copy.

Wow. You basically summarized my entire thoughts about this topic I had since the release of GTA V. Just like you, I was EXTREMELY disappointed with the physics in it and took me 2 - 3 years to get around it. You needed real skills to drive in IV, V held your hand all throughout. Every other game apart from GTA IV, the cars feel like an afterthought, where they don’t interact with the environment. No weight, no damage, no crumple zones, no suspension travel, and agile handling in EVERY vehicle weather it be a supercar or an SUV etc. it’s infuriating! Test Drive Unlimited 1 & 2 were great games BUT they also lacked the same issue with handling where cars felt like they drove on ice. Hopefully this issue doesn’t carry over onto the next one.

I think the best way to describe a physics (as well as damage if there's no licensing restriction) engine would be "predictable". Regardless of whether it's arcade, simulation or simcade, or even Criterion's "beloved" drift-to-turn mechanics, a good physics engine makes the cars and surrounding objects almost always react the way it makes you expect them to react. To make an analogy with another genre, it's why the very arcadey Virtua Tennis games (at least some of them) still hold up despite their age, and even feel better than the most recent tennis games. Players react the way you expect them to react depending on how the ball is moving, and the ball responds to your player the way you'd expect it to respond from the animation your player used.

7:00 GTA IV did have a feature that used the original PS3 sixaxis controller tilt feature to control the motorcycle. Although it was extremely difficult. I used it once and never again haha

Just a clarification: you can tilt your car mid-air in gta 4 and gta sa

Regarding damage, I used to feel the same about how GTA5's damage was a complete downgrade over GTA4's... But I ended up realizing that it makes life a lot more convenient in most situations, especially given the Online component. Dying instantly in Story Mode because of an unfortunate lamp post hit is simply an instant fun killer. Having a stunt session ruined because your car flipped on its roof is an instant fun killer (before 5 at least - this turning the car around mechanic is, imho, an absolutely welcome addition). The older cars in GTA5 were more malleable, but that comes with so many downsides. In some stunt races, just racing cleanly and normally would absolutely destroy the suspension of my Entity XF after a few landed jumps, making it an absolute pain to drive. In freemode, more recent sports and supercars are designed and built in such a way that the front bumper sticks out enough to usually protect the headlights after head-on collisions. Is it unrealistic? Of course. Is it practical? Immensely and absolutely.

All that talk about damage but no mention of what is considered fun. That’s a big reason why you don’t total your car just for hitting 1 wall. They may have even had that feature but it was removed because play testers said it made the game boring to constantly have your car get destroyed. It’s not always low effort or rushed, just because it looks like that to you.

This is a really touchy subject, realism is racing games isn't something that everyone wants, simulation games are there for it, games like NFS, Burnout, Midnight Club and etc. are more focused on the speed and fun, imagine a game like that with forza motorsport realism, it wouldn't be fun, forza horizon is the best example of an arcade game with realism in it, still has an arcade feeling to it with a decent touch of realism, some of the most realistic "racing" games aren't even built for racing, like BeaNG drive, it feels more like a tech demo than a racing game, there are people who actually use it for racing but it's a small portion of the fan base, realism isn't always the best choice.

This video expressed a lot of my frustrations pretty well, ESPECIALLY the comparison between Horizon 5 and Burnout 3

I love the work put into your videos man their top tier.

If you had any knowledge or even did a little research, you would know that licensing requirements of many manufacturers stipulate that their vehicles do not show crash damage.

Mx unleashed is a motocross game from 04 that was way ahead of its time for bike physics. The bikes and rider is smooth and responsive and very natural looking. And the rag doll physics when crashing is very fun. I’d say that game straddled the line between simulator and arcade perfectly.

15:00 This gave me goosebumps. Dark space videos are elite.

The Mafia series did pretty well with the weighty vehicles and suspension almost similar to gta4 although the cars didn't handle all to well. Also Mafia Definitive Edition and Mafia 2 had a fuel system that wasn't to cumbersome showing in moderation a fuel system can be done. I would like to see a fuel system in gta6 even if it's an option you just toggle on and off for players who don't like that thing but also for players who want more of an emersive experience like myself.