jeffareid (AT) hotmail (DOT) com (jeffareid) wrote:

I must admit that this is a big draw. Any sim which takes the time to model the
Ring must have its heart in the right place, surely?

As for an in-depth review... I think most of us can tell a decently modelled sim
within a few minutes of climbing into the cockpit by now. :-)

Mind you, with joystick control you might have trouble getting a real feel for the
driving model. I guess only time will tell.

Given the financial incontinence I now suffer thanks to iRacing breaking down my
resistance levels, I will probably crack anyway; no doubt ending up paying over the
odds to download it from directtodrive.co.uk in a fit of impatience. But I like to
pretend I still have some self-control. :->

Andrew McP

Although there's no cockpit view, an old (2003) budget game, Ford Racing 2, had
a good implemenation of head movement, or at least car movement. The
horizon tilts in response to corners, and you can see suspension reaction
in the view.

http://rcgldr.net/fr2/fr2stk.wmv

http://rcgldr.net/fr2/fr2mst.wmv

mcp.andrew (AT) DELETTHISgmail (DOT) com (Andrew MacPherson) wrote:

There's some very different views being posted on http://www.virtualr.net/

Some seem to love it, lots seem to hate it. If I had any sense I'd cancel and wait
for the dust to settle. But the 'Ring does look amazing... apart, obviously, from
the silly advertising banners.

Andrew McP

On Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:34 +0100 (BST), mcp.andrew (AT) DELETTHISgmail (DOT) com
(Andrew MacPherson) wrote:

It indeed looks great! But those AI cars.... The thing I liked about
GPL was the fact I had to improve to beat the AI. I don't like those
games where you adjust the speed of the AI to your own skill, taking
away the challenge. (And I really hate those games where the AI slows
down so you can keep up).

Cheers!

Remco

no@email (Remco Moedt) wrote:

Yes, but I just lost my nerve and tried to cancel... too many people (including
those playing the pirate PC version) are reporting disappointment. While it's
always important to take first impressions with a pinch of salt, there are too many
people saying negative things to make me comfortable. At least one patch may be
required to make this worth buying.

However my credit card has already been charged this morning. Too late! :-/

Oh well, it's only costing me a few pounds more than the WRS alpha, so I can hardly
complain. If nothing else it will be a very pretty distraction when I get a bad
attack of iRacing withdrawal. :-)

Andrew McP

schooner (AT) accesswave (DOT) ca (schooner) wrote:

Neither can I. :-) After GPL split into lots of mods, and other sims came along to
spoil the 1967 party, I slowly fell out of love with simming. I bought a lot of
sims, but never settled into any of them.

At least iRacing got me interested again, so I'm grateful for that. But I suspect
that this may be my inner child's last attempt to get back into simming. Part of me
is very tempted to sell the gaming rig & G25 and forget gaming altogether. But it's
hard to do that when I know I enjoy iRacing, yet can't live (for long) with its
inflexibility.... or the stream of tempting distractions they keep adding to dilute
the (admittedly growing) user pool.

All the more reason to walk away for good really, but some people just don't know
when they're beaten. I will no doubt still be here in two year's time having the
same, tediously repetitive thoughts. Still, it's cheaper than therapy. ;-)

Andrew McP

(Andre Warringa) wrote:

I read that elsewhere and nearly blew a fuse. It really is inexcusable. I suspect
they ran out of time to finish the PC version off and left 'optional' stuff like
this until last.

With graphics which looks that good, this is perhaps not surprising. but it's still
annoying in any game/sim.

That's another real problem. I like LFS, but stopped running it because the AI bugs
the cr*p out of me.

GTR2 still sounds superb, so it's nice to see that they didn't forget how important
this is for immersion... and grin-factor. :-)

The WRS demo I've been pointing people at has a pretty impressive engine sound.

Ok, that's the only thing which really matters. I feel less like cutting my wrists
now. ;-)

Interesting. Watching a movie is different to actually doing the driving, so I will
be interested to see if I find it as annoying as I thought I would.

Hopefully the PC version will be hackable to open it up in some way, avoiding the
career/badge stuff.

Yes, it is a concern that they may have over-estimated the appetite for a more
serious 'flavour' to the NFS brand. I did a lot of reading yesterday and it was
hard to find much to be optimistic about. Only time will tell if EA stick with this
experiment.

Thanks for the report Andre. I appreciate it.

Andrew McP

mcp.andrew (AT) DELETTHISgmail (DOT) com (Andrew MacPherson) wrote:

Especially after watching this...

http://vimeo.com/6606607

....which I found on the LFS forums. Put the movie into fullscreen and just watch
and listen. Even if it's not a perfect sim, it's hard not to smile when seeing some
of these movies.

Andrew McP

Ok, time for my first impressions. I could have posted them yesterday, but I didn't
realise it had landed in my letterbox a day early.

If I had to sum up my initial experiences so far in one sentence it would be...
believe everything you've read, both good and bad. There are console and design
decisions which will make you want to eat your shirt in frustration. For example
during your first race (part of the setting up process) you cannot quit. At all.
Ever.

I hadn't turned on my wheel so after a little messing about with the keyboard I
parked and tried to escape. Couldn't. Waited for the race to end. It didn't. Went
off for a shower, came back... and the race was still waiting for me to do my laps.

Had to CTRL-ALT-DEL that session. Not a good start!

Blah, blah, blah... movie bollox again, game bollox again, yes, come on, get on
with it... yes, there we are. Menu screens, set up the G25 as posted on one of the
forums, buy a Toyota Corolla with my tiny pool of money I earned coming last in the
first race (some things never change), then head for a quick time trial at The
Ring.

And...

Mmm... first impression is that the steering is just wrong. Something's definitely
not right. Maybe the hands on the virtual wheel lag the actual car input. If I
ignore them and look ahead totally, I feel less disorientated. I have yet to work
out what the issue is here. It's not diabolical, but there is something not quite
right about it.

Visually, it's not as initially impressive as I'd hoped, but the more you drive the
more immersed you get. I even found the blurring *far* less of a problem than I'd
expected. Heck, I may even like it... a little. :-) It only affects you at high
speeds and then you really are mainly staring wildly out of the windscreen, not
checking your instruments. So as an immersive technique it seems to work better
than expected.

I've now had three laps of The Ring. Second lap was in a BMW something-or-other,
and the third was with about 80k's worth of add-ons, which made the car handle much
more like a sim vehicle. Less sudden sideways action, more correctability. But
still that sense that there's something not quite right with the steering. I
obviously need to take the recommended settings and do some experimenting.

Not now though, I have a chilli to make and some washing-up to do. Extra hot
jalapenos anyone?

Andrew McP

PS Overall verdict so far: I don't regret buying it. There is a very good simulated
racing experience buried in here trying to get out. If we can peel away the movies
and annoying game elements, and solve control niggles, I think we may find there's
more here than meets the eye.

On the other hand, it took me far less time in the WRS demo to find a big grin on
my face. But then it doesn't have the best rendition of The Ring so far brought to
the PC, or anyone to race against... which reminds me, I find the Shift AI pretty
impressive so far. So far they make human-style mistakes.

PPS Load times aren't as bad as reported by many IMO.

The in car steering wheel doesn't seem to follow your steering inputs.
I'm not sure if there's a delay, but it's just off. Doesn't seem to
affect the cars though.

The cars have a large number of physics paramters, so much so that each
car in NFS Shift is like a different game. You'll run into this once you
start running the different cars. Some of the cars can be upgraded to
factory "works" level (removes the nitrous), and my guess is more attention
was made to those cars to make them more realistic.

After upgrades, some of the cars end up traction limited, tires will spin
in gears 1 through 4, so you end up running a taller gear or turning on
traction control.

Another issue is that some cars, like the Camaro SS bumped up to works level,
are bouncy. Setting the fast rebound rates to max stiff cured most of this.
I now set all the cars that way.

Yet another issue is that some cars get into an oscillation mode that is
like a speed wobble. Easing off the throttle and not moving the steering
wheel seems to help, but mostly you have to avoid it.

It's just annoying to me, I'm not looking there anyway, so why bother?
I turned motion blur off, but it still happens.

Each car is different. As mentioned above, each car is like a different
game. Some seem to be flawed.

Seems like a long time to me. It's over 30 seconds for a race to load
up on my system. I remove my headphones so I don't have to hear that
same loading background music. It really slows things down, and the
career mode is very time consuming if you plan to get every "star".
I just completed tier 2 and the invitational events, and the stats
show 90 wins and 410 stars.

Where the load up time is really annoying is when you try to adjust
a setup. You're waiting almost a minute for each change, not including
driving time.