Gran Turismo 5 has been many years in production and its easy to see why; the level of detail lavished on it by Polyphony is nothing short of staggering. Dogged by set backs throughout its development, its finally planned to hit shelves this November by which point GT5 will boast over one thousand cars; each beautifully recreated, a mirror of its real life counterpart.

We sat in a presentation at the Radison (a welcome change from the hustle and bustle of the show floor) as Kazunori Yamauchi, the creative mind behind the series, discussed cars.

First he introduces a few of the new cars that will feature in GT5; super cars like the Zonda R ’09, Subaru Impreza WRX and Lexus Prototype, classic cars such as the ‘67 Ferrari 330P4 and finally the Lamborghini Bertone Prototype that never made it to production — only one still remains in existence. As you might imagine it’s been lovingly recreated enabling petrolheads to finally get their hands on it — at least in the digital sense.

The track count has also been massively improved and totals some 70 in all, from the Nurburgring to the TopGear test track, they’re all here and if that’s not enough there’s even a bundled track editor. OK, not a track editor in the conventional way but rather a track simulator. You fill a form out with a number of changeable characteristics: frequency and intensity of the corners, road surface, weather conditions, etc. Once all the info is inputted the game goes and creates the track for you, even giving you the option to upload it for others to use online.

B-Spec makes a comeback too, while it did feature in the previous game it’s a much more robust aspect in GT5, offering a totally new experience for the player. For those who don’t know, A-Spec is your standard driving experience while B-Spec is a management simulation.

You don’t actually drive yourself, instead you manage a team of drivers to whom you issue commands, select equipment and generally keep in line your egotistical drivers. As with football management games it’s addictive stuff and is included on the disk for free, so there’s really no reason not to go ahead and give it a blast now is there?

The presentation then turns to 3D — as is plainly obvious Sony are really pushing 3D and GT5 is undoubtedly an excellent game to display the new technology. The trees and surrounding details are as stunningly recreated as the cars themselves; if ever there was a reason to pay out for the technology this would be it.

To finish up the presentation we are shown a clip of a new fun side to GT5: kart racing. This was originally planned for GT6 but as the info got leaked they decided to go ahead and put it into GT5. While kart racing is fun it still has all the real life physics and attention to detail that we have come to expect from the Gran Turismo series. As karting is where a lot of the F1 champions start out it seems strange that it has taken this long for a ‘serious’ driving game to pick up the sport.

Overall GT5 looks better than we thought it would, sometimes it was hard to tell if we were looking at videos of real cars or their virtual versions. The addition of kart racing lends itself to a more playful side while retaining all the correct and precise settings we have come to expect. The B-Spec option adds a whole new side to the game too; in fact there’s so much crammed in there that the game might yet prove too chock full of options for some; petrolheads look in for a massive treat though.

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