Italian dude complains about a non issue _Alternate Title_

There's something else. In real world when You drive a car, You look generally forward. But our brain also see, less detailed 180 degrees FOV. That's makes us feels like we are drive fast without even look at speedometer. In games it feels like You are driving with binoculars

The Netherlands has roads that purposefully put trees almost right at the road's edge to give a heighted sense of speed to drivers, and thus naturally makes them want to drive slower and more cautiously. They do not reduce the speed limit, rather use human fight or flight instincts to have people drive better. The jungles in Forza Horizon 5 and the eastern ocean front city are almost like this, where the trees and buildings + objects are really right off the side of the road. besides the canyon, this area is my favorite to make maps in and drive hypercars through. It feels like Sunshine Keys in Burnout Revenge.

Increasing FOV *alongside* your speed is a fantastic way of implementing that feeling of being pushed back in your seat from acceleration

One point that you forgot to mention: More variation amongst the decorations that line the track. If you keep going down a forest of deciduous trees for the whole duration of a certain straight, then you don't get a feeling that your surroundings actually change. Whereas if there's different types, heights, and colors of tree coming into view in quick succession (and maybe some buildings as well as openings in the trees), then you'll feel much more like you're making progress.

Burnout 3 is in my opinion the best example. It has small lanes, lots of traffic and need incredible reaction times to avoid everything

There is a quote in the NeedForSpeed franchise that said: "If you feel like you're under control, you're not driving fast enough"

The motion blur part also highlights my issue with motion blur in games. i hate it when im playing on foot and the world turns into a literal blur just because im turning the characters head But i love the blur when im going fast like racing a horse or , yes, driving a car fast

I work as a software engineer for a motorsport company, developing a full immerson 6-DOF racing simulator. The biggest impact on speed for me was the peripheral vision. We use a 180 degree wrap around projector screen which fills your peripheral view. I guess this sort of falls into the realm of FOV, but it's more about the physical viewscreen rather than the in-game projection.

The camera height (distance above the ground) plays a huge role in how fast a racing game feels. Burnout Paradise has one of the lowest cameras, which is why that decades-old game still feels terrifyingly fast.

"Gran Turismo 6 was my first racing game." Thanks for making me feel older than dirt, bro.

Lotus Esprit turbo challenge on Amiga was one of the first car games where you could feel the speed. What we can learn from that game, is that dashed lines on the road that flickers faster and faster can be enough to create a great sense of speed.

When you drive fast and pass by something stationary (like a parked car or an object), you hear that distinctive 'whoosh' sound of air being displaced. You know the sound I'm talking about - it’s often amplified in media to create a palpable sense of speed. The drag races in NFSU incorporate this 'whoosh' sound, and when combined with camera shake and motion blur, craft an environment where you can truly feel the velocity. There's a narrow street in my town where, if I drive with the windows down, I feel like I'm in a drag race in NFSU. 😂

And I think BeamNG feels scary because the transition from gripping to sliding is still abrupt like a light switch being flipped from on to off, so it’s legit hard to push it. Seems like there’s not much sliding *only a little” in Beam.

the 'scared' part is one of the huge reasons why the sense of speed in NFS Pro Street's speed challenge events is so good, especially at Nevada Highway. You're on edge 95% of the time, hoping you don't lose control and total your car.

As a developer I can confirm that you are spot on. Driving feeling boring is something I fought against a lot. And I probably will add Wind sounds after your video 😉 The game is Savage Turret if anyone is curious.

I highly recommend talking a bit about Star Wars Episode 1: Racer and the way it conveys speed. Because relative to the pods, the tracks are actually huge. But it all still seems incredibly small when flying past. Probably the best sense of speed of any game I have ever seen or played. The sound design also does ALOT there. Everything about that game still holds up incredibly well today. The graphics don't need to be any better than they are. You wouldn't even have time to look at all the eye candy anyway, given just how fast you shoot past it. Edit: now that I think about it, driving fast in DayZ is also scary AF. because not only can you wreck your car and get it wrapped around a tree, but you also end up killing your character in the process. And the roads in DayZ are of fairly realistic width, so you don't have an awful lot of space to work with, especially when driving down a forest road.

NFS Shift 2. I remember one review calling it a Survivor Racing game and they were right. That game had such good feeling of speed that it was scary.

Actually the speed that objects, buildings, cars are moving next to you makes a huge difference. That's what need for speed does, when you drive past an AI in nfs it really makes you feel youre going fast or when you flash through the city the buildings are moving so fast next to the car you can't even really tell what they look like. It's the same when you're driving a car in real life. Going 50 miles an hour on a highway will feel really slow because you're not passing anything but 50 miles an hour through a small street with houses will feel fast.

i think one more aspect to consider is the surrounding map itself, aside from the road, but what's beside it. on a race track you have the border and samey trees beyond that. No matter how fast you go, the environment stays mostly the same. but if you're in a city like GTA5, then you have other cars, pedestrians, street signs, buildings and more all wizzing past you quickly one after another. Speed can only be measured in relation to other objects, so its important to give players a frame of reference, how much ground they're actually covering in any given time. That is best shown by rapidly changing scenery

Great video! This is a must for immersion, and yeah testing the limits in games for the adrenaline and the glory without the 90% chance of death real life brings you for those situations

If they added damage physics. I think that would help severely. The ‘being wrapped around a tree feeling’, would make you stay up lol

Narrowing roads is actually one of the most effective tools for naturally enforcing lower speed limits. A massive road with a 30mph (50ish kmh) will always have speeders, but if you narrow it with trees, parking lanes, etc, people will think they're speeding when driving the speed limit.

I saw a thing a while back about parabolic fov being more natural (steeper fov toward the sides, shallower toward the center) and giving you a better sense of distance and speed than traditional fov.

Contrast patterns on the track, like marks on the Nürburgring or light and shadows when going through some trees (Sarthe), will greatly convey the sense of speed. Taking inspiration from Real Racing, one key sound is how realistic the game reproduces the sound of going over the red-and-white rumble strips at the inside of a track corner. This really adds to the sensation of cornering at a race track.

NFS: Most Wanted (2005) did the speed aspect really well . It's still a spectacular racing game despite it being almost 20 years old

Dirt Rally 2.0 with a steering wheel set up makes you feel like you’re going 150 when you’re only barely reaching 60. The FOV, Camera Shake, Narrow Roads and the fact that the cars SOUND powerful, really makes you feel fast. That and your co-driver starts yelling and becoming out of breath the more frantic you drive. Fantastic feeling in a game.

Good solid soft-body physics collisions help sell the speed too. Not in the moment of course, but after the fact. If your car goes tumbling around more or less intact it feels like you're watching kids play with Matchbox cars. On the other hand if you can wrap a car around a pole like a noodle, or better yet split the car in half and send it flying in two directions while the pole itself breaks and topples, that's magic.

As a teenager I remember playing Burnout Dominator on my PSP and being awed by how well they achieved that sense of speed despite the lack of motion blur and low resolution (480×272) It's been years since I last played it but from the top of my head I remember a good camera shake effect, a good FOV, good sound and doppler effect and a perfect lane width. You were also racing in busy streets instead of dedicated race courses and you can even crash with regular cars. The lanes were perfectly wide so you can squeeze between two cars if you're good enough. Also this game has an emphasis on drifting on turns instead of slowing down, which greatly helps convey this feeling of speed and you need to master drifting cause otherwise you'll often go off-road Also, crashing onto a wall or a car will send your car flying for a few seconds until you respawn, and crashing multiple times will total your car, which adds this sense of danger

Dirt rally did a wonderful job of this, the rock noise on the chassis, the trees inches away from your car flying by, you feel like you're doing 300,but really you're doing 80 and wait did he say hairpin?

"Sense of speed" on hitting the Nitrous in need for Speed payback is some next level

In order to see things zoom by at your sides without the shrinking of the view from high FOV, perhaps something like panini projection to expand the center of the screen again and tighten up the edges of the screen. It might feel weird playing with this on though. You can experience this in Unreal Engine if you unlock the console with the Universal Unreal Engine Unlocker and the various commands for enabling and adjusting the intensity and upscaling. You can also experience this with ReShade using the Perfect Perspective shader. I think it's very good for screenshots when I want to get a good view of an area without looking incredibly distant or warped, which bizarrely the warping from the panini projection avoids and keeps straight lines. It's magical.

I think another thing is the feels. In real life you can feel the G forces and acceleration, the motor, etc. This is why haptics are important and that’s why I felt a bit more immersed when I played Dirt 5 with the dualsense

"Gran Turismo 6 was my first racing game." God that makes me feel so old. I wasn't even that young when I played the first Gran Turismo. 6 feels unbelievably real to me

This is a phenomenon you feel in real life too. In my city, they temporarily replaced streetcars with buses, and everyone remarked how much faster the busses were than the streetcars, and actually petitioned the city to keep buses and do away with the streetcars. But the city and the transit agency were confused, because all of their on-time data showed that the busses were performing worse than the streetcars, and rides were longer. The reason, was because a bus shakes and jostles you around, while a streetcar is a much smoother ride. It was peoples perception that the buses were actually faster because how much more of a bumpy ride it was. They actually were going slower though.

i love the way noodle described speed in his NFS video - feeling like you have control of the car, but _just barely_ that scary feeling of being right on the edge of losing control of the car is another great way of conveying speed

UKposts just recommended me this masterpiece. Was thinking about this topic a few days ago, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. Also, love your sense of humor.

I think that g-forces play a big part in this. When you're driving a car and you step on the gas, it feels like a rollercoaster. But when you're sat in your room playing your xbox, you can't feel the ridiculous g-forces of going 200 mph round the nurburgring.

"Race Tracks are naturally wide" Nordschleife: Hold my beer

I still come back to this video so many times , it's such a great critique on the genre

“And also the fact… that you can yet pedes-“ Had me on the floor

I feel like Burnout Paradise and Prostreet had that incredibly, over-the-top sense of speed and danger. Literally could not go full speed all the way through a race because you know damn well if you did, you would eventually crash.

This is why I love Need for Speed:Most Wanted 2005, it's such a good game overall and it just feels right. It feels fast. The screen effects, the shake, the motion blur, the sounds, the sound of the car scraping the air is just .. right . It's such a great experience and i recommend it to everyone who thinks racing games feel slow.

I think you're spot on in every comment you made. I would just add that, especially when viewing from inside the car, the road should funnel the faster you go. That's the effect you feel when going really fast in a car: the road just gets narrower and everything blurs around you.

I’d say the height of the camera over the ground has a huge impact on the feeling of speed, it also true irl, if you are in a high truck or in a kart for the same velocity the feeling of speed is very different

One of the best representations of speed I’ve seen in a game is definitely dirt rally 2.0, I feel it’s a culmination of a lot of these features but going 60 down those dirt roads feel infinitely more horrifying than going 200 in forza or assetto

well spoken. subbed. also i think that the current level of console hardware limits what we can do for racing sims, on a simulated damage level. what your talking about is the clever shit, the really cool stuff that devs can do to make us FEEL like were going fast on a screen, well done mate. see ya in the next one.

I totally agree. The last point of road wideness is also something that effects your sense of speed in real life. I also think that objects or buildings that are closer to the road make you feel faster.

More ways you can feel quick. First person: Driver camera moving back with sudden acceleration; suspension bumps/scrapes; tunnel effect (Real life race drivers experience a tunnel effect when reaching 200 miles an hour) Third person: Slight camera tilt with applying force onto the tires (turning, acceleration and braking counts, an example of this would be the camera movement when you hit a pool of water in Forza Horizon 5 going 165); louder turbo whine at higher speeds to show the turbocharger undergoing stress as it works harder

This effect is experienced in real life too. You will feel that you're going a lot slower in a vehicle that is more sound proofed and has better suspension.

Car noises other than the engine rally games are really good at this hearing multiple subtle noises like your tires or amount of rocks you hear hitting underneath the car that intensifies relative to your speed makes a big difference

Im glad i got this video recommended, i really enjoyed it, very well put. My favourite series of arcade racers and overrall racing game series, is Burnout. My favourite is probably Burnout 3, and that game has everything, minus the camera shake, the sound of objects hitting your sound barrier, cars honking at you with their doppler effect, and the wind sound almost deafening your car engine, gives you the perfect feedback of speed and visceral action that an arcade racer packs. If anyone wants to play a fast and action packed arcade racer that feels fast and fun, try out Burnout Paradise or emulate 3 on PCX2. You won't regret it

NFS Shift does this really well. Really makes you feel the speed and fragility of control a real racing driver feels while still being pretty arcadey. Awesome game

Dirt rally actually is a really good example of a sim that gives you these options, while youll never hit breakneck speeds on a rally stage (other than sweden ones), theres motion blur, screen shake, dynamic camera to an extent, and the tracks are usually about as wide as the car that youre driving, it checks all the boxes.

Another thing for feeling speed, crash physics! I understand there are processing limitations on these platforms, but I am certain it could be implemented to a further extent at this time. And those comments about camera movement, on-point. Those vibrations and position changes are essential to the experience. Edit: just considered this, road debris! The sound of little rocks hitting your bumper and whatnot.

In Project CARS 2, when you chose the “pilot” view, you look out from a helmet while your head bobs when you turn, break or accelerate, looks into the curves and shakes when you drive fast and it’s just awesome. The best camera play I have ever seen in any racing games.

I worked on the first _Need For Speed_ (PS1) and this video is an absolute gem of summarizing and showcasing the biggest issues.

It's all just about the aggressive sensations you get from speed: The loud intrusive noise, The pinning back to your seat from hard acceleration, the movement of your body when you corner hard.. I've been on track with my own car and the feeling you get is exhilarating, the sense of danger from reaching speeds of up to 100mph with a corner fast approaching, the sensation of the tires squealing on hard corners.. But, you get home, plug your GoPro in with the recorded footage on and you watch back a video that makes GT6 look more exciting, especially with the added effect of video stabilisation. Video games have to rely on camera shakes, camera movement, controller vibrations and noise to make you feel the speed, but there's always so many limits a video game has, and the sense of danger is one that is incredibly hard to replicate.

Really love seeing someone highlight this. Dirt 5, Driveclub, and Need For Speed all excel at giving a sense of speed. I do wish more sim-heavy games would aim for that more. Playing Forza or GT and going like 200 MPH and not feeling anything versus going like 60-70 in driveclub and it feeling faster than that, is such a sad situation.

Top Stuff...I've been positing this same question to my game design students for at least the last 7 years. Nice vid.

2:04 FOV: Further -> Faster 2:29 Motion blur: More -> Faster 3:29 Camera: Stabilized, no lag -> Slower 4:54 Sound: Wind noise -> Faster 5:55 Road: Narrower -> Faster

I love playing with vr cuz i think it gives bit more life to it

Its all about the immersion, try with VR headgear which has huge fov, like pimax or something. Sound is a big thing too when you go past under bridges or things that give car vibration, pressure changes etc. it all adds up to the realism. Same with most gaming wheels, I've yet to find a one that would feel similar than in real car.

The design of the stage also makes a difference. The stripes, repetitive patterns, and objects along the road as you pass them can all add up to a sensation of speed.

For controller, when driving I think the vibration of the controller should always be little to none when not moving and more aggressive when going fast. I find it really helps because when you drive a real car you feel everything from the friction of the road to the motor vibration through the car and steering wheel. Controller vibration would then allow you to feel like you are really behind the wheel of the car and allowing for you judgment to be far more accurate.

Sense of speed is soo important. I remember in NFS heat when you're going incredibly fast then hit the boost your camera would go out like 40 feet and everything is so blurry around you

Racing is about being bombarded with visual information and practicing to react to them fast enough.

i played all these games,im surprised none of these videos bring up midnight club series,its the series that did this the best by far

Interesting point about the road width - I've seen this talked about a lot in real road construction, how wide open roads entice drivers to go faster, while people will naturally drive slower on narrower roads. Thus why traffic engineers (in the US at least, Europe figured this out decades ago) are finally starting to figure out that neighborhood streets shouldn't be built like freeways if you don't want people going freeway speed on them.

The cockpit/helmet camera of Shift 2 was a bloody masterpiece. Your eyes would focus on the apex your gages fade , your head would slowly tilt, the whole thing shakes in you blast off after the corner the whole thing clears. I swear it gave the game such raw bloody sensation of taking a corner at speed.

4:32 NFS really looks like speed. It really deserves credits for that. Having the camera move further away when going quicker makes it feel quick.

Related to the field of view setting is the screen size. Best setup I had was a translucent screen right behind my steering wheel with a projector shining from the back :D having the cockpit 1:1 with your wheel in it feels great

One of the methods used in the old days, specifically by the F-Zero franchise was the pattern of the road and walls design. What they did was give the road a pattern with very close and horizontal lines, a very tight grid of some sort. They tried to squish as many lines possible in the smallest space possible so that you'd pass lots of them very quickly, giving you the sense of speed.

Dirt rally actually scared the piss out of me. Especially the section where you have to go flatout then suddenly a serries of tight hairpins come up. Really fun and thrilling to play

Excellent points. I think the biggest factor is road width, and not just road width, but the overall scale and distance of the nearest objects to your car. You can see this in practice, driving at 100km/h on a suburban street feels incredibly dangerous, but on the highway where the dashed lines on the ground are several meters long (take a look next time you're in traffic!) and all the signs are oversized and pretty far away, it feels way less intense than even 50km/h on a really windy road with nearby trees and stuff overhead. Of course, IRL you have a lot of other signals. Your ears can detect acceleration, you have steroscopic vision that gives you a measurement of depth, you probably drive a car that doesn't handle as tightly as a sports car. However, all these speed cues can be defeated by just driving along a large, smooth straight road without nearby reference objects.

AGREED!... I remember when Need for Speed Shift came out... the big thing they was advertising was how the helmet cam looked so realistic. The cam shook and auto looked into turns. Felt amazing and I logged so many hours running it on my triple monitor setup, despite not liking the game that much. It just felt faster than anything else I was playing at the time. Now I find that the only way I can play most games is in car view with triple monitors for those fast immersive peripheral views.

Not necessarily about speed, but one of the reasons why I found Forza Horizon 2 so exhilarating at points was because of the score system. If you do some insane things you get points, but a timer needs to conclude before you get said points. Hitting anything (and I mean ANYTHING) before the timer ends will result in all your hard-earned points going down the drain. Going at 260kph down a highway and weaving between the cars gaining points and holding my breath as I j u s t miss that pillar is really fun.

I recently started riding a 125cc motorcycle. Even though it barely reaches speeds above 100 km/h, it fells really fast because of the aspects you mentioned. Wind, engine sounds and the feeling of air pushing against your body make a huge difference compared to sitting in a car. Overall great video. Love the content. Keep it up. :D

I like how I grew up on the first Gran Turismo game and this guy on the 6th and we both got into the game for the same reasons. Way to stay in form and on brand Gran Turismo!

I like your style of editing :)

I think road texture might affect the sense of speed too. When you’re driving on a road that’s all one solid texture, it’s harder to tell your going fast. When you’re driving on a road with lines, patterns, etc that moves really fast where your camera is most focused on (the car), you can clearly tell that you’re moving fast, it’s similar to the POV thing where the more you see moving, the faster you feel. I think, I dunno

To add on to the sound portion mentioned in the video: Something that I really appreciate from Asseto Corsa Competizione is the excellent job they did with the noise of the car scraping on kerbs and low points on the track. You can bounce the car over the kerb for that extra tenth of a second in other racing games and get little to no sound feedback, but in ACC there's loud scraping noises, the interior shivers, and you might even hear reverberations from the car's suspension. All of this reminds you that you are driving a 2700lb/1200kg racing beast at high speeds and there are some intense forces involved. One side of this heavy speed demon could be lifted into the air by a kerb, and you think nothing of it, but when it goes up and comes down with a loud crash, you might stop and think if it's worth possibly damaging the car over that tenth.

On a related note about the sense of risk towards the end... After I got my first motorcycle, I was still putting around regular roads and stuff for about a month to get used to it. When I decided to finally take it on the freeway, even hitting 55MPH was hair raising that first time. Which reminds me, on motorcycles it's often easier to go faster than you think you're going because you're generally sitting higher up than you would in most cars. I guess since being closer to the ground means stuff on the ground (like lane markers) appears to travel faster relative to you.

Hope your learning to drive went well. As you drive different cars and on different roads you'll notice lots of these are entirely applicable to real life driving too - swap to a car with better noise isolation and smoother suspension and you can go waaay too fast by mistake without really realising. Drive down a street with good use of furniture to make it feel tight (normally objects near the pavement edge, so the perception of road width is reduced without actually narrowing the road) and you'll slow down naturally. Rougher roads you drive slower naturally than super smooth ones and so on.

Well, a racing game that definitively gave me one of the best speed feeling was Burnout 3: Takedown. I still remember the day I played a level with a F1 Ferrari in a sprint race that passed through a city, racing at 200 mph and the more seconds I went without crashing, the harder it was to stay on track and the more scared I was of hitting in the next corner. No other game has given me a greater sense of speed than this level since then.

Hotwheels Unleashed does an amazing job at making you feel fast when you boost. The fov heightens, a powerful noise plays, intense motion blur at the edge of your screen, the camera lags behind and shakes... Its got everything

Basically, what a good racing game needs is good camera tricks that imitate how you'd feel while driving a fast car. Vibration, rumbling, motion blur if it can be done right, and the dynamic angling has to be shot well for a racing game to feel good. And the sound is important too! I love this video! I like how you do your essays.

I know the rocking of your car when you turn could be a factor. Maybe in 1st person could give that effect a bit as it could give motion sickness. The other I can think of is adding more sounds, hearing your wheels at top speed, hearing poles as you pass by them, or when you crash you hear more damage to not only your car but the environment.

A gem of racing critic video, I agree even tho I don't play racing games, but I can add that in real life driving an old car at 130km/h with not so modern suspension and less outside noise isonlation is similar feeling to going with a modern car at very high speeds where car feels like failing, better adrenalin rush than going fast.

As a game designer I can say that another effective tactic is to make the camera feel like it's just about dragging along. Yet again, Pro Street did a fantastic job of that, you will notice that when you accelerate the camera gets pushed back (almost like it's trying to catch up with the car - which is getting too fast to catch up with) and then when you shift gears there is a pause in acceleration so the camera goes almost completely back to normal, and then shortly after we, yet again, get that strong pull of the camera backwards, giving us that sensation that either (a) we're the camera, and we're being pushed back into the invisible seat by the G forces, or (b) that the car got so fast that the camera can hardly keep up. Both are valid points/theories. EDIT: My bad, I realized he said "camera lags behind" in the video, so he did mention this already.

I'm making a rally game and going downhill is the scariest part. Having the car speeding up even if you are not accelerating is giving you a great sense of danger. Also, having cliffs just next to the road really helps. Another elements are lights in a tunnel or lamps on a street, helping you to get that sense of speed because they are equally distanced but you get the light/darkness more and more often.

instantly liked this video right at the end when he yeeted the pedestrians in GTA 5 good commentating and vey well edited video good job thanks for the video.

I love the fact that you bring up the that hardcore sim racers hate any form of camera motion. Most of the forums I've seen, especially with assetto corsa when I ask about adding more movement to interior cameras for my own playstyle, the proper sim racers act like I've murdered their dog and tell me I'm stupid and I should be banished from racing games forever. But assetto corsa has an incredible modding community, and using the custom shaders patch and content manager for it, I have managed to tweak the camera settings. So much so, that the interior camera looks left and right into corners, and also, upon acceleration and braking, the camera jolts forward or gets pushed backwards, as though the characters head is getting forced about by the g forces. Even on bumps and kerbs, the camera jumps up and down accordingly and it has helped me throw better lap times Down because I can actually sense the cars movement better through the camera motions. This is made even better on the modded free roam tracks, modded cars (especially when you make your own exactly how you want with 3d modeling and knowledge on assetto modding) and paired with the right sound mods, and stereo mods that display what you're listening to on Spotify in the car radio INGAME, make for an otherworldly experience and I don't even have VR or anything crazy, just a thrustmaster wheel and some fanatec pedals. Nothing is like launching a brutal sounding 900hp r34 GTR with launch control, on the roads of the English countryside, as the camera conveys just how violently it is accelerating. It truly is an incredible experience of realism and sense of speed that no other racing game has been able to convey to me

Some more to add to the list: - Road noise (rolling noise from tyres, sounds from road debris hitting underside of car, changes to the sound where driving over road markings, esp. rumble strips) - Effects on car from driving over things like lines or gusts of wind when conditions are appropriate - Additional camera/visual effects like DriveClub's water on the windshield or stains on the bumper camera like you hit a bug or something Generally speaking more realism.

I think that general traffic (of course only applies for open world games) adds to the sense of tightness. Anything that keeps you from driving a straight line makes you understand just how fast 230 mph can be. So, I think that slow paced traffic helps to create that effect of a tight road without narrowing it down

Having the audio attenuate and become more tinny sounding can convey a sense of extreme speed.

Dirt Rally does a fantastic job of conveying a sense of speed, and I think that game dabbles a little in all 5 of these topics. I'd say primarily, however, the narrow roads and the sense of danger have the biggest impact. I always drive slower during the second half of a stage because I'm scared of resetting and doing the first half all over again.

Object reference helps a lot in my opinion. Having things close to you and moving against your direction helps this as well. Buildings, traffic, trees. Another reason Circuit Racing can be boring is because there are very little reference objects. Everything on a track is clean and straight forward. No sense of scare there knowing every corner and what it looks and feels like. This is also why Street Racing is vastly more exciting than the highest degree of F1. To me, to me.

You should check out Shift 2: unleashed. The sense of speed in that game is just insane. Especially using the "helmet cam" (not dashboard). To the point that gets scary like in real life when you are going 200+km/h. Beside Drive club, no other racing game could replicate that kind of sense of speed.

A factor that i consider good in this aspect is light, for example, how Midnight Club 3 uses light trails for the scenery, or how NFS Unbound does it for the car. Or how Blur uses mostly light in its artstyle to convey an amazing sense of speed, wich is also explored similarly by NFS Carbon, but in the latter case, it's not as intense