the look-ahead was actually kinda nice! what I mean about the stiffness is that the camera feels rigidly attached to the “car”, so every little movement directly affects the camera. I think it would feel better with some sort of camera interpolation or acceleration. it’s a bit hard to notice in games like F-Zero X/GX as they are very tightly tuned, but try to notice how the vehicle isn’t perfectly tracked during turns, when boosting, or after being slammed — they have a decoupled camera following the vehicle, not directly attached to it.
Awesome, thanks for the clarification. I totally agree, I wanted to implement something like that but ran out of time. There were some huge technical hurdles (at least for me) to get it moving smoothing over the twisting track and I was thinking detaching would help smooth it out even more, as well as allow for the effects you described.