Racing Sim Thread, Part II

[pk500]

WoO 24 is phenomenal. I knew it was going to be something special when I pulled the right trigger and the car shot left....then, mid corner, I let out of the throttle and it DOVE hard to the right, mid corner.

Learning how to use throttle to steer the car is such a big thing in dirt oval racing...you do less wheel, more throttle and this game nails it. Plus I have done a few seasons in career mode and there have been VERY few instances where the AI just slammed into me. They're very aware of your presence--almost a little TOO passive as you can really send it on them and they'll back out every time.

Thoroughly enjoyed it, even on a controller.

Great point about the AI, Terry. It races much cleaner than in the excellent original game.

WoO 24 is f*cking incredible. I'm not playing any other racing games these days. Not even my beloved Forza, Assetto Corsa Competizione or Isle of Man TT 3. That's saying something.

[TCrouch]

WoO 24 is f*cking incredible. I'm not playing any other racing games these days. Not even my beloved Forza, Assetto Corsa Competizione or Isle of Man TT 3. That's saying something.

Same. I just completely "retired" from sim racing last year, and haven't missed it. Was just investing so much time, so many headaches. Just endless streams of preparation for one race, then it happens, then moving onto the next. Endless cycle of stress for really no reason. Broke down the rig, sold all my crap and hadn't spent a single second looking at any thing racing-related.

Then I saw World of Outlaws and figured it's more old-school, nostalgia from the Dirt Track Racing days of yesteryear. I figured I'd give it a shot with a controller and was so pleasantly surprised.

[GB_Simo]

This all sounds very tempting, but I think I'm going to hold out for a sale. I enjoyed the first iRacing World of Outlaws game a lot for as long as I played it but, as has become habit in recent years, never went back to it once the next new shiny thing came along. That wasn't so bad when I'd paid a tenner for it, but I'm more hesitant to get into the new version at full price.

My racing gaming lately has been a mix of things I bought cheaply and will definitely advance beyond the tutorial at some point (RiMS Racing), things I've put over 80 hours into while never spending more than 30 minutes on anything else (Gran Turismo 7, would you believe) and things I rinsed a decade ago but want to revisit without the tinted specs of nostalgia clouding my view. Chief among those are F1 2012 and F1 2013, both of which are perfectly decent experiences. Not as good as you remember them being, it should be said, but also less demanding than trying to remember whether you've configured your ERS correctly and set your diff properly in F1 24.

That very same F1 24 is on a Free Play Days weekend at the minute, definitely on XBox and Steam (possibly on PlayStation too - I've not checked). My thoughts on it are pretty much entirely unchanged even after several additional patches; while not a horrible experience, there is too much wrong, too much still broken and too much stripped out since previous entries to make it worthy of recommendation over F1 23. Download it for free and see if I'm worth listening to these days.

Then, if you fancy it, have a look at some words I've just finished writing on Formula 1 98, accompanied this time by some video because I'm not a particularly skilled horror writer.

[pk500]

Looking forward to reading about F1: 98 -- that was the first F1 game I played on the PlayStation! What memories.

Funny how you've dug into your vault to play some old racing games, including RIMS. I'm doing the same, playing RIMS and Ride 3.

RIMS is as brutally unforgiving as ever, but man, it feels good when you nail a corner and stay upright for a lap. I forgot how much fun Ride 3 is. The Forza of bikes, with a forgiving physics model and surprisingly good AI. A ton of pick-up-and-play fun.

[GB_Simo]

Looking forward to reading about F1: 98 -- that was the first F1 game I played on the PlayStation! What memories.

Funny how you've dug into your vault to play some old racing games, including RIMS. I'm doing the same, playing RIMS and Ride 3.

RIMS is as brutally unforgiving as ever, but man, it feels good when you nail a corner and stay upright for a lap. I forgot how much fun Ride 3 is. The Forza of bikes, with a forgiving physics model and surprisingly good AI. A ton of pick-up-and-play fun.

I've never actually played a Ride game (save for a demo of one of the early releases, about which I can remember nothing), but the special edition of Ride 4 for PS5 is just over ten quid in the current sale, and it sounds like a lot of game for that amount of money. From what I've seen on YouTube, there was a post-release patch that somewhat neutered the handling, made things slightly less realistic and so on, which upset some of the hardcore fans but sounds like exactly what I need, otherwise I'll fall over every 10 seconds.

Completely agree that nailing a corner in RiMS is properly satisfying. Staying upright for a lap, I'll have to let you know about once I manage it!


NASCAR 21:Ignition is currently £1.49 in the Steam sale. To put that into some perspective, I had cream of vegetable soup and a bread bun in my office's canteen on Wednesday, and that cost me £1.75. Which of those similarly-priced experiences do you think provides the best representation of motorsport? It may be useful to know that the soup was served in an oval-shaped bowl.

[GB_Simo]

Quick heads-up just in case it's of use, as I assume this applies to markets outside of the UK too: there are deals on EA racing games via the XBox store for EA Play members, which I am via Gamepass.

Of potential interest to readers of this thread is the 2024 update to EA Sports WRC, containing new venues, 2024 team/driver combos and some additional DLC cars, which cost me £4.49. If I instead wanted a game structurally identical to its predecessor but with less content and a slightly worse overall gameplay experience, I could also buy F1 24 for £14. Veering somewhat off our traditionally beaten track, there's the very arcade but also rather good Need For Speed: Unbound and a big chunk of DLC available for £8.49 or thereabouts.

These deals are up for grabs as part of the Countdown sale that takes us past Christmas, so you should have a little time to mull them over and see if anything there takes your fancy.

[pk500]

Thanks for the head's up on the WRC update, Adam. I may pick that up. Really enjoy that game.

I also took advantage of the $14 deal on F1 24. Cost me $7.50 after I used $8 worth of Xbox Rewards credits. I'm not sure what EA did to this game between launch and now, but the handling model is dramatically improved.

F1 24, at least for my meager skills, straddles the line of challenging to drive but still very race-able as well as any EA F1 game I've played. I'm pushing hard but still enjoying close racing. Only F1 2021 is close in that regard, but the cars were glued to the track a bit too much in that title.

[GB_Simo]

Thanks for the head's up on the WRC update, Adam. I may pick that up. Really enjoy that game.

I also took advantage of the $14 deal on F1 24. Cost me $7.50 after I used $8 worth of Xbox Rewards credits. I'm not sure what EA did to this game between launch and now, but the handling model is dramatically improved.

F1 24, at least for my meager skills, straddles the line of challenging to drive but still very race-able as well as any EA F1 game I've played. I'm pushing hard but still enjoying close racing. Only F1 2021 is close in that regard, but the cars were glued to the track a bit too much in that title.

The first handling patch took away a lot of the peculiarity within the handling model, I felt. At launch, the cars were really pointy on entry but as soon as you applied throttle, it was like running a locked diff. That's absolutely not the case any more, and it's now a game that really wants you to feel like you're pressing on heroically. I still find some of the slides and kerb interactions feel a little bit too assisted for my taste - not quite canned responses, but a definite sense that the game doesn't want me to crash and will do what it can to save me - but in truth, I don't really mind that too much.

I see a lot of gripes from the YouTube personalities and eSports pros around the handling, and they're entitled to them, but I take a lot of it with a pinch of salt. It's not their fault that the official F1 game is also the official eSports title, but neither is it the fault of Codemasters, who surely find it most commercially expedient to aim their handling model at pad users who have a rough idea of how to drive quickly. I don't see why they'd do anything else, and in the dry, I think they've landed in a reasonable place. I feel a bit differently about the wet weather, I'll admit.

Paying full price would be out of the question, because there's not really anything here we haven't done before (career, R&D, the practice programmes that were once so novel) and there remain things - the AI's ongoing tendency towards ERS and DRS trains in particular - which are worse than before. You'll certainly not feel robbed of $14, though.

[GB_Simo]

This isn't something I expected to find myself saying in 2025, but I've been playing a lot of Grand Prix 2 lately.

An enterprising community member has spent the last couple of years working to make GP2 run natively in Windows, eliminating the need to run it via DOSBox. Along the way, he's made a bunch of 'quality of life' improvements to the game. The on-screen steering wheel rotates, as do the tyres connected to it. Tyre wear is now visually represented by a change in the surface colour. You can look back, left and right to judge your position relative to traffic, and you can do that in full-screen mode now. Peripheral support is vastly improved, and modern wheels and controllers should all work without major issue - I'm using my XBox controller and setup is painless.

More than that - and I'm going to find this really, really difficult to explain - there's something going on under the hood here that makes the game feel better somehow. It's not the smoothness of the experience (it runs like butter, but it's 29 years old - you could probably run it on a stick of butter if the will was there), it's that something's happening to increase how connected you are to the experience. It feels exactly like Grand Prix 2 has always felt, except you can spot a developing slide and catch it in a way you never could before, particularly under power. There's also none of the invisible hand-holding that's always been present in Crammond sims, the guiding hand nudging you car in the right direction and refusing to let you stray too far from the intended path; where a car goes now is entirely your responsibility. Or your fault, depending.

The rest of the experience is still Grand Prix 2, which means no weather settings, along with AI which isn't as aware as that seen in GP3/GP4 and requires the occasional concession from you. I still lost 3 hours to it the other night, trying to complete a last-to-first run around Adelaide on 20% distance which I eventually nailed down, not before being stymied variously by a water leak, a brake issue and my evergreen nemesis, my own dreadful decision making. I believe, though I've not tested this for myself, that modded tracks and car sets are supported now too.

If you ever fancy a go, you'll need the 32mb download of v1.0b from My Abandonware (I don't think there's an issue around me directing you there - let me know if there is and I'll write some faux-cryptic bollocks to point you there instead), and the x86GP2 patch, the download link and incredibly straightforward installation process for which you'll find here.

[GB_Simo]

While I'm here...F1 Manager 2024 is free on Epic Games Store until February 20th.

If you fancy giving the series a try but have always been put off by the idea of having to spend even a single cent on doing so, this feels like the kind of offer you could get behind. If, like me, you've no intention of ever actually playing the game but enjoy claiming free things, there's a certain pleasure to be had in clicking the 'Get' button too.

[pk500]

Just read today where one of the most arrogant prats in sim racing, GTR and Project Cars creator Ian Bell, has formed another development company and will launch a game called Project Motor Racing (original name there, dude) on PC and consoles sometime this year:

https://projectmotorracing.com/

Mixed emotions here. GTR and GTR2 were insanely good on the PC. But the Project Cars and Project Cars 2 ports to consoles were a disaster, as the games clearly were designed for wheels, and Bell and his team did almost nothing to tailor the controls for a controller.

Combine that with this dude's incredibly thin skin and arrogance, and I'm not sure I'm interested. He's the type of prick who castigates his customers in public forums because they actually have the audacity to offer constructive criticism. He also depicts his games in pre-release as something God Himself played on his seventh day of rest.

[dbdynsty25]

I'm late to this party but since it is on sale currently ($11 on Xbox), it's a good time to bring it up.

New Star GP

It is an absolutely fantastic arcade/sim racing game. I picked it up just planning on it being a streaming game on my couch while my wife watches Love Island or whatever dumbass reality TV is on that particular week, and I ended up playing it for two hours straight on my main tv/console. It is engaging, fairly simple to learn, impossible to master. Great driving dynamics, lots of things to do in each GP weekend, and attainable goals. The driving AI is pretty good, tho a bit brutal sometimes as they take you out when YOU piss them off. The graphics are 90's era w/ some HD textures so it looks really cool. The pre-race strategies w/ regards to tires, fuel, weather, etc are all fun and interesting and it just really is a cool game. Hadn't really heard anything about this game - but saw it was on sale and checked the reviews and it's almost universally praised. So check it out if you're looking for an arcadish F1 racing game.

[GB_Simo]

I'd second that recommendation without a moment's pause. Engaging handling, interesting game mechanics, and above all else, just a ton of fun. If you're looking to spend $11 on a racing game this weekend, make it New Star GP. If you're not looking, consider changing your mind. Go on, treat yourself.

The driving AI is pretty good, tho a bit brutal sometimes as they take you out when YOU piss them off.

It's some of the most characterful AI I've played against in ages, especially when that character feels the same way about me as I feel about Love Island. Back about a year ago I had this happen to me:

I also genuinely mean it when I say the AI in NSGP is more fun than in F1 24...their behaviour towards you also changes according to how they feel about you; in my 1990s season, I had a wheel-banging tussle with Michael Schildhauer (there are no official licences, but you'll not struggle to identify each driver) and was asked post-race how I felt about comments he'd made around my driving. I selected the antagonistic response, received a phone call from Schildhauer with steam coming out of his ears and was still surprised when, during the start of our next race, he made a point of driving all the way across the track to crash into the side of me.

Like, the entire way across the track, from one white line to the other, specifically to plough into me. It adds an extra little layer of challenge to the racing, like the rival feature in the old NASCAR Thunder games but better executed - now I've pissed that driver off, how do I overtake them without having my car ground to pieces?

[GB_Simo]

Just read today where one of the most arrogant prats in sim racing, GTR and Project Cars creator Ian Bell, has formed another development company and will launch a game called Project Motor Racing (original name there, dude) on PC and consoles sometime this year:

https://projectmotorracing.com/

Mixed emotions here. GTR and GTR2 were insanely good on the PC. But the Project Cars and Project Cars 2 ports to consoles were a disaster, as the games clearly were designed for wheels, and Bell and his team did almost nothing to tailor the controls for a controller.

Combine that with this dude's incredibly thin skin and arrogance, and I'm not sure I'm interested. He's the type of prick who castigates his customers in public forums because they actually have the audacity to offer constructive criticism. He also depicts his games in pre-release as something God Himself played on his seventh day of rest.

I played this at Goodwood Festival of Speed a couple of weeks ago - there was a little Project Motor Racing stand in with some of the vendors and trade exhibitors.

There were only time trials, and a session only lasted 5 minutes, so no time to get into the finer detail of things. On the Friday the session was a Lola T70 at Mosport, on Saturday an Aston Martin DBR9 at Lime Rock. I marked myself out as one to watch by nodding intently as I was told to be careful on cold tyres, then binning the Lola within half a lap, finally getting myself together in time to bin the bloody thing again on my last flyer. In between times, I found it all very intuitive. The Lola was a lot of fun to hustle along, you could get the car balanced on the outside rear on power and hold a nice controllable slide, and if you got sideways over the crest into turn 4, the feedback was communicative enough to let you hold on to it all the way down the hill and come away feeling like an absolute hero.

Which must mean it wasn't the game's fault that I spun there twice like a complete chump. Never mind.

The DBR9 was an interesting drive. I expected it to be on rails, and in the high-speed stuff it undoubtedly was, but through somewhere like Big Bend it needed a lot of mid-corner input - constant little steering corrections to keep it going broadly where I'd aimed it. Not entirely what I expected, but a lot of fun, and now I've watched a few real onboard videos it seems to be about right. I didn't spin this one, so I immediately liked it more than the Lola.

However. Driving hotlaps was never really the problem with Project Cars. Clunky controller implementation, quirky AI, slow-motion Indy 500s...they were where the series tripped over itself, and nobody knows whether Project Motor Racing has those issues licked. They'll shortly be opening their "Factory Driver Program" (access to early builds and the opportunity to give feedback), which I may try to get into in order to find out more ahead of the official release, as those initial quick takes were good fun. They also gave me a Factory Driver t-shirt at Goodwood for failing to embarrass myself in the DBR9, so I'm already dressed for it.

Something else that took me by surprise: before playing Project Motor Racing on the Saturday, I'd tried a Simagic Alpha Evo on another vendor's stand. Project Motor Racing was set up with Logitech G Pro wheels. Having heard a great many reviewers raving about the Simagic base, I was not expecting to prefer the Logitech, and yet here I am having just ordered one...

[dbdynsty25]

I saw that Project Motor Racing was releasing. The preview looked interesting and I am glad to hear it’s not total garbage. With Forza development over, we need something new and fresh. We will see I guess.

Also just went back and looked at your summer ‘24 info on New Star GP and I agree with all of it. Guess I didn’t notice it at the time!