One for every day of the week

Dirt Tracking

To some extent, we saw this in Gran Turismo 4, but it just wasn't the same; the routine dictated that, over a set number of races, your cars would become less reflective; not exactly the world's most accurate way of expressing wear and tear. In Gran Turismo 5, it's doubly impressive if you really, really, like filth. Maybe you get off on counting all the new water spots, grit scratches, or chassis crud at the end of each race? In Gran Turismo 5, specks of dirt are simulated procedurally and, like all good dirt should, it sticks. It'll still be there next race. In fact, it'll stay stuck until you put your motor through the car wash. Any idea how complicated that is to develop? Very, very.

Face Tracking

Yes, there's a lot of tracking going on here, and hopefully the game won't get confused between the two, although realistically spraying grit into your face would certainly be a unique touch. It's unclear at this stage whether the face tracking will be freeform or fixed point. To understand the difference, boot up Modern Warfare 2, stand still and look around; because your head is in a fixed position, the ‘3Dness' of your surroundings isn't that evident; surfaces don't parallax with your movement. Now try strafing left and right; this is freeform, and all of a sudden, three-dimensional space becomes interminably more clear. We're going with the fixed-point approach at this stage, going on the information we've thus far received; it's inferior, but it's also the most likely (although we do love to be surprised!)

The Most Cars

It's a genuine, inarguable fact that Gran Turismo 5 will feature by far and away the most cars straight out of the box, of any racing game to date. And before you quote some tripe about there being more user-created car skins in Trackmania, we're talking bona fide production, rally, and track cars here, not the Noddy car you and your brother knocked up in your lunch hour. Gran Turismo 5 is the first game ever set to break into four figures. When you consider the amount of work involved in describing just a single vehicle in terms of looks, sounds and telemetry, it's easy to see what a monolithic achievement this is set to be, and should go some way at least, to answering the popular question; why's it not out yet?

The Top Gear Track

It may seem like a small thing, but the chance to jump into the Suzuki Liana, Chevrolet Lacetti, Kia C'eed and take on The Hammerhead, Chicago and Gambon, is probably set to start a worldwide leaderboard revolution. Who, after all won't relish the chance to beat Tom Cruise's real world time in the Cee'd? Or Ellen McArthur's dizzying display in the Liana? With a bit of luck the game will also feature the ‘Vampire' jet car, and we'll have the chance to re-enact Richard Hammond's failed attempt to drive it all the way to heaven.

1080p

Before all you haters out there go running off the rails about Gran Turismo 5 not being true 1080p, yes, we know if it's like Prologue it will be upscaled a bit. 1280x1080 to be precise, which means that the scaling runs vertically, but, crucially, not horizontally. 1080 horizontal lines, outside of the vastly more simplistic vistas of WipEout HD, is a standard of image sharpness which is totally unique in a complex console driving sim. Of course, the pixel-counters will always take the glass-half-empty approach, but hey, it's higher resolution than almost anything else you've ever played. Chew on that for a while and maybe, just maybe you'll come to the conclusion that it's time to look at that glass in a whole new light.

NOTE: If you're one of those people, like us, who have smugly played DiRT 2, or some other such brilliance on PC and cranked it up to stupid-resolution o'clock, congratulations, but in console terms, the above is unique.

3D

Here's where we get a bit hazy; at this stage, we're unsure as to what kind of demands on system resource 3D implementation specifically in Gran Turismo 5 will have. One thing is absolutely certain, though; in 3D, you essentially have to render everything twice, which is why WipEout HD went from 1080p at 60fps, to 720p at 30fps during its translation. We can expect something similar here; a reduction should you choose to set the 3D option to ‘on' in both frame rate and resolution. Exactly how much, will be down to the good graces of Polyphony Digital, and how many clever tricks it can pull out of its bag to ease the harm. If you're not a pixel-counting ingrate, though, look at it this way: it's Gran Turismo in 3D, so for heaven's sake rejoice!

Custom Playlists

It may seem like a small thing, to not only rip your own CD collection onto your PS3's hard drive, but also to be able to knock up a custom playlist. But to anyone who's engaged themselves in the end games of GT past, you'll know that endurance races lie in wait. This includes the dreaded 24-hour ones yes, that's a REAL 24 hours where a good set of tunes is all but essential. If you want to test this theory, put Lady GaGa on loop for, ooh, we don't know, five minutes, say? Hurts, doesn't it.