Neon Drift Suite

A handling and VFX suite that turns GTA VI's street roster into a night-drift playground without breaking mission checkpoints.

This package is authored for Grand Theft Auto VI only. It is not a GTA V conversion, does not install into GTAV directories, and will not run before the official Leonida PC release.

• Per-class drift angles and smoke dens
• Neon underglow sync to slip angle
• Mission-safe handling profiles
• Replay ghost lines for boulevard routes

• GTA VI PC
• Optional: custom wheel packs
• Controller or wheel recommended

Neon Drift Suite is a GTA VI vehicle dynamics pack focused on style without soft-locking Rockstar missions. It retunes lateral grip, throttle-induce oversteer, and handbrake pivots for sports, muscle, and select SUVs - then wraps the fantasy in pink-teal tire smoke and underglow that reacts to slip angle.

The suite ships with boulevard route ghosts for Ocean Drive loops, Port Gellhorn industrial ovals, and a Keys bridge run. Ghosts are cosmetic; times save locally. This is not a replacement for a full sim - it is a Vice City fantasy layer on top of GTA VI's arcade DNA.

Each vehicle class gets a drift profile: initiation threshold, sustain angle, and snap recovery. Sports cars hold long smoky arcs; muscle snaps harder and rewards opposite lock; SUVs are playful but tip-aware. Boats and aircraft are untouched.

A Mission Safe switch loads stock handling during scripted races and chase beats, then restores your suite when free roam resumes. You can force suite-on everywhere if you accept possible checkpoint weirdness.

Surface materials matter: wet asphalt from Vice Storm Engine lengthens slides; dirt in Ambrosia kills stylish arcs and throws dust instead of neon smoke.

Tire smoke color grades toward neon pink/cyan based on speed and slip. Underglow (optional prop) pulses with RPM. Sparks trigger on scrape thresholds tuned so downtown rails shower light without spamming.

Camera helpers include a chase-drift rig and a low bumper cam. Replay editor markers drop automatically at 30°+ sustained slips for easier clip cutting.

Three authored routes ship day one. Ocean Neon: 4.2 km of coastal sweepers. Gellhorn Grid: tight 90s and warehouse cut-throughs. Keys Ribbon: bridge crests and marina hairpins. Each route has bronze/silver/gold ghost targets based on style score - angle held × distance × proximity to traffic without collision.

Style score is single-player vanity. Leaderboards stay local until a community relay opens post-launch.

Drop NeonDriftSuite into mods, enable the handling merge patch, and run the included conflict checker against other handling.meta edits. Wheel users should calibrate soft lock in the suite menu.

Uninstall restores stock handling tables. Your ghost times remain in documents unless deleted.

Advanced users get sliders for smoke density, underglow brightness, assist strength, and a "touriste" toggle that adds slight auto-countersteer. Purists can disable assists and smoke for a cleaner film look.

Per-vehicle overrides let you mark a personal car as drift-primary even if its class defaults to grip. A garage stamp shows a small neon glyph on tuned rides.

Replace models keep working; addon cars need a profile stub (template provided). Incompatible with hardcore sim handling overhauls that rewrite the same lateral curves. Compatible with most visual packs and Solar Ascendant - flying away mid-drift cancels style score, obviously.

ApexLeonida's brief was "Friday night Vice City, not Tokyo legal." The suite celebrates GTA VI's pastel crime aesthetic: readable smoke, musical camera sway, and just enough risk that clipping a palm still hurts. It is a mood mod as much as a handling mod - and it waits for the official launch like everything else in this vault.

Start with a sports class car you already like in story. Apply Drift Primary stamp. Set smoke to Medium, underglow to Pulse, assists to Touriste for the first boulevard night. Run Ocean Neon until silver ghost, then disable assists.

Wheel users: 540–720 soft lock, FFB subtle, transient spring low. The suite reads slip more than sim titles; overdoing FFB fights the arcade sustain angle.

If a mission race feels wrong, confirm Mission Safe is ON. If free roam feels stock, you probably left Mission Safe forced globally - check the suite menu badge on the pause header.

Style score multiplies sustained angle, proximity to traffic, and cleanliness (no wall taps). Near-miss bonuses stack up to three. Hitting a pedestrian zeros the current chain - intentional. Wanted heat does not cancel score, but federal drones make clean chains harder, which is the point when Infinity is installed.

Local ghosts are stored as compact samples, not full physics replays. That keeps files small and avoids deterministic desync drama.

Dry asphalt: baseline. Wet asphalt: −18% lateral, +22% slide sustain. Painted lines: tiny slip bump for style. Dirt: dust, not neon. Metal bridges: spark chance up. Sand near Keys: abort fancy angles.

These numbers are starting points. Your personal car overrides can exaggerate wet slip for film. Do not complain that Mission Safe ignored your film overrides - that is the safety working.

Route JSON schema is public in the docs folder. When the vault unlocks installers, we will accept pull requests for boulevard paths that do not require broken collision. Routes that soft-lock story triggers get rejected.

Ghost formats stay local-first. Global leaderboards are a maybe, not a promise.