
I also worked on the Blazer quite a bit to make it more controllable and less prone to spinning out. This lead to some issues with the suspension and/or wheels scraping during heavy oversteer that I’ve mostly eliminated. The motorcycles in this game are a real challenge to extract realism from, but I did the best I could to get some level of oversteer and quell how darty they behave. Base game motorcycles now supported as well.

New for 5.0: Every DLC update now supported.

– Downforce disabled from all but supercars Finally, the original game had many cars sitting at unusually low ride heights, so they have been raised to reflect the ride heights of their real world counterparts. Downforce has been removed from everything except supercars that would actually produce downforce. Damage/deformation has been increased to a realistic level, similar to GTAIV. Off-road traction has been overhauled for realism. Power levels and acceleration have been adjusted to match vehicles’ real world counterparts, to the extent of calculating the net SAE horsepower ratings of old muscle cars that used a different rating standard (SAE gross) to determine a true realistic power output. The police variant gets a power boost and improved handling to reflect the police package upgrades, but still feels like a heavy Crown Victoria that’s prone to oversteer, whereas the Interceptor drives like a more modern car. For an example of the attention to detail: The taxi has less precise steering and poorer brakes than the police variant to reflect wear and tear because taxis are often driven hard with high mileage.

You’ll also notice vehicles like the Emperor have a very soft suspension and more body roll (but not cartoonish GTAIV levels of roll).

Now, heavy and old vehicles have a realistic delay between steering inputs and the car reacting, giving something like the Emperor the sloppy feel of a ’70s Cadillac, and making semi trucks actually feel like you’re driving a massive rig. The most critical change I felt was needed was the Z-axis rotation, which is what made the vanilla cars feel so darty with every flick of the wheel. Every vehicle is unique (even some variants that originally shared the same handling line) and has had careful attention to every single dynamic attribute. Drive V is the result of 5 years and over 2,000 hours of learning the physics system and testing in order to create a realistic and fun experience.
