Why driving sucks in most open world games?

[Jakers038]

I absolutely love open world games, mostly for the exploring factor, you are not limited by anything and you can stumble upon awesome and beautiful places, I could for example play Gta V for hours just exploring around and free roaming and not get bored, even if I don't do a single mission.

 

However, there are a few games like Just Cause 3, Ghost Wildlands (and to some degree Watchdogs 2) that have not just prettier, but also bigger worlds and more to explore than in Gta V, so it would be logical that I enjoy those games even more, right?

 

Well...nope. I don't know why, but cars in Gta V feel more "grounded"/heavy and feel way more natural, while cars in almost every other open world game feel like light toy cars that usually turn a 100mph crash in a concrete wall into a light bounce.

 

So, why is this, how can Gta have decent car physics not just in Gta V, but all the way down to San Andreas or maybe even Vice City (released in 2002!), while basically any other open world game makes extremely arcady physics?

 

Another game that has nice car physics is Mafia 1 (released in 2002 as well), Mafia 2 is ok'ish and Mafia 3 is worse of them all.

[3 Lions]

Have you tried BeamNG.Drive? 

[Enderman]

Because physics is hard.

[Cyberspirit]

Try BeamNG.Drive out if you want good physics. Get some custom maps from the workshop and have fun.

[monjessenstein]

As someone who is a simracing fanatic, the thought of gta V physics being somewhat realistic sounds crazy XD. But yeah, as other people have said check out beamng.

[Snipergod87]

Driving in GTA V is absolutely horrible, physics are all wrong, cars dont handle like that.

[Chronified]

14 minutes ago, Jakers038 said:

how can Gta have decent car physics not just in Gta V, but all the way down to San Andreas or maybe even Vice City (released in 2002!)

Have you even played GTA 4? It's literally like driving on ice. The only good thing it had was soft body physics. I still miss jamming my car in the swingset and ripping off the front end.

 

17 minutes ago, Jakers038 said:

I don't know why, but cars in Gta V feel more "grounded"/heavy and feel way more natural

GTA V has very balanced physics imo. They're scaled very well as you move your way up vehicle classes. Very heavy vehicles act as such (I see you've been driving Franklins Car too much lol), fast vehicles (but not high end) are prone to understeering + drift and high end vehicles have very tight steering but are prone to getting squirly if you jam the gas exiting a corner.

 

I recently got Beam.ng in the halloween sale as a "break" game to play when I don't feel like playing anything. It's very fun and you can easily waste a few hours on a different map every day. The repository (mods) section is really easy to use, it's in game and I highly recommend it if you haven't played the paid copy yet. 

[Jakers038]

On 11/10/2018 at 9:41 PM, LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo said:

Have you tried BeamNG.Drive? 

 

Yes, but that's an entirely different game genre than ones I mentioned, sure, you can technically drive on large empty maps in Beamng, you can download a car mod for Flight simulator X and have an entire real size world to drive around, but I mean games like Watch dogs 1/2, Just Cause 1/2/3, Ghost Wildlands,etc. there's pretty much no "heaviness", neither in the driving sense nor in the crashing sense, it's way too arcady. I get that physics is hard to do, but excluding the driving, all these games are lightyears ahead in complexity, tech generation, budget and dev teams from Gta Vice City or Mafia 1, yet they are somehow worse in driving.

 

On 11/10/2018 at 9:59 PM, Chronified said:

Have you even played GTA 4? It's literally like driving on ice. The only good thing it had was soft body physics. I still miss jamming my car in the swingset and ripping off the front end.

 

GTA IV perhaps went into the opposite extreme and had too heavy driving, especially steering, it felt a little like driving a boat, but I'd still take that any day over physics in Just Cause games. In real world, unless you're in a Bugatti, you don't go from 0 to 60 in 2, 3 seconds and it also takes a decent amount of distance to stop, it takes a moment to make the car steer left or right and it doesn't just instantly turn the direction, I can feel all that in Gta games (and in BeamNG and racing games), but not in other openworld games.

[Techicolors]

i really like the handling models in mafia 2 and 3, especially if you enable simulation mode handling. makes driving sports cars quite fun. trucks are pretty awful though 

[JZStudios]

Mafia 2 took a bit of getting used to, as well as GTA 4, but at least both of those kept up inertia and had tire slip. You couldn't rip around a corner at 90. I thought V's physics were rather crap and really don't like driving around in it.

Just Cause isn't really super focused on the cars. You're pretty much meant to wingsuit around everywhere. Ghost Recon has no excuse though, but it seems like Ubisoft doesn't know how to do vehicle dynamics in any game they've done.

[Mira Yurizaki]

When it comes to things like this, you have to balance between being fun and being realistic. And even then, what's the focus of the mechanics? I don't expect an FPS game to have realistic driving physics, nor do I expect a realistic racing sim to have anything but hit-scan weapons (if the game has weapons for some reason)

[Paul Rudd]

On 11/10/2018 at 3:40 PM, Jakers038 said:

how can Gta have decent car physics not just in Gta V, but all the way down to San Andreas or maybe even Vice City (released in 2002!), while basically any other open world game makes extremely arcady physics?

It's all about what the developers focus on.