Ditto, I'll sometimes play arcady games on 1st person if i'm feeling like a challenge, since its quite difficult to see what your rear end is doing, but Trackmania is bloody impossible in 1st person.
As the general consensus above, 3rd person for GTA et al, bonnet/helmet cam for anything with a touch of realism.
Behind far. Behind near obstructs too much of the view. Any FP view results in poor side and rear visibility. Plus it's hard to tell how wide the car is, which results in collisions when trying to overtake.
In Forza I usually drive with bumper but sometimes when drifting I switch to third person so I see the angles and racing lines.
It's not a realistic sim either, there are other games that are much more realistic, and in comparison, GT is an arcade game, yeah you do have to break to go round corners instead of handbrake turning round them all, but that doesn't make it a realistic sim.
It's an interesting one, actually. This is pretty much the exact experiment the Psychology department carried out at uni - depending on the makeup and characteristics of your brain, players would choose between behind car or from the bumper appropriately. From what I remember; Logical, more analytical minds use the "Bumper" view. This is due to more acute spacial awareness and visual projection, so they can picture the rest of the car / game environment "behind" them. However, Artisic and creative types use the "Behind" view. This is because they find it far easier to project the image of the car onto a non-concrete concept such as motion and directional velocity. Then there are people like me, who choose "Cinematic mode". These people thoroughly enjoy winding up psychology students...
^^^ LMAO...haha...HAHAHAHA... i like behind..don't mind it's near or far....even in NFS MW...i use behind far. xD