Author Topic: Racing Sims  (Read 4503 times)

vladgd

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Racing Sims
« on: March 08, 2022, 06:49:33 PM »
So I was hoping I wouldn't make this thread, but my random spark of interest in trying a racing sim HAPPENS to be a few weeks before GRAN TURISMO 7 came out, and Gran Turismo isn't a series to make new games very often.

It's the first time in my life where I am interested "enough" in racing to actually have fun. So I bought it on ps4 because the benefits of ps5 didn't outweigh...not playing the game at all because nobody can buy ps5's right now. Besides loading into a race(quite a long load time, but not long enough to be ridiculous), the game runs pretty good and looks outstanding (I mean pretty much ALL car games look good...but..still...) so I don't think ps5 is mandatory.

I've only played like 8 hours (there's another...release I am playing that came out the same day...) and I've never had this much fun with a sim racer before. No real experience with sim racing outside of...sega gt on the original xbox if that counts? I can't even really say it's good as much as what I once thought to be boring, is now interesting. So don't use me as a source to gauge how much better GT7 is compared to the competition, no idea.

Two things of note though.

What I remember of sim racing styled games, they are fucking hard. They ain't jam the accelerator and win. Seeing people talk about the difficulty of GT7 as "fair to easy" and when I try some of the stuff they call easy, and can't even see second place as remotely attainable...there is a learning curve. This is not a problem, but with no legacy skill, it'll be a while before I am comfortable.

Which brings me to...racing wheels...ps4 controller is fine but...yknow...what if I had...THIS!

Yeah...I really want a proper wheel, but...dropping a grand to play pretend racecar at home? OHH BOY. There's also other games that would be fun with the wheel, I hear assetto corsa is good, I got some game called snowrunners that would look fun with a wheel, dirt rally...there's a lot of games that would be great on a wheel. To convince my girlfriend my unemployed ass is gonna build a sim rig...might not be possible even though I have the dough.

I do recall you mister spectere talking up one of the old forza games (3, 4?) back in the day, you still into the vroom vroom game? I did think about GT vs Forza, and consensus among the sim people is GT is more authentic, and I have a ps4, so that kinda solved that.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2022, 06:52:46 PM by vladgd »

Spectere

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2022, 04:09:03 PM »
Oh hey, interesting timing. I ended up getting my dad a Logitech G923 for his birthday this year. It's less than half the cost of the Fanatic one, including a shifter (and the G920 is even cheaper, though it didn't seem to be all that widely available). Might be worth looking into! I played some DiRT Rally with it and it is pretty goddamn solid. He ended up buying a mount for it as well (not one of the fancy rigs with a monitor stand and seat, but a standalone one he could plop in front of his PC), which makes everything a lot more stable.

And yeah, I still get into the vroom vroom once in a while! Since I got my Series X I've been playing Forza Horizon 5 off and on (though it is worth noting that the Microsoft Store PC versions of them are very solid—I played quite a bit of Forza Horizon 4 on PC), and I'm eagerly awaiting Forza Motorsport 8. I might actually pick up GT7 just so that I have something to play on the ol' PS4, especially since you mentioned that it still plays well.

IMO, Forza and Gran Turismo have similar levels of accuracy in varying ways (Forza seems to focus on tire physics while GT seems to focus more on the car itself), but I'd say that Forza is generally more accessible while GT leans toward being a more serious driving experience. Both titles are considered intermediate sims by people in the sim community, with Assetto Corsa (and other high-end sims) being a pretty big step over them. It's also worth noting that Forza Horizon takes some pretty serious liberties with realism (I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that you can drive and steer while off-roading at 200 km/h), so that strays pretty far from the mainline series. Fun games, though.

Dammit, this is making me want to buy my own wheel. Argh. y u gotta du dis 2 me mr vlad
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vladgd

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #2 on: March 17, 2022, 02:52:31 PM »
I'm gonna have to chime in again about GT7. Since it's a "live service game" any given patch can just fuck the game up, and they did just that. I was interested with forza 4, but not enough to take the plunge and difficulty scared me away. Again with whatever forza was first on xbox one, but heard how dirty the micro transactions were, same with gt6, so I noped out of both of em.

GT7 had a few races you could do for money, and the rest of the game gave you practically nothing, now the few races you could use are nerfed to not being worth doing.

If they don't adjust credits earned across the board, I'd pass on this title.

It's a blast to play, the cars feel great, but...$60 ps4 $70 ps5 game with a "f2p" feeling business model is unacceptable.

There is A LOT of cars in the 700,000+ range, most seem to be around 1 million credits.

https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10000956

$20 for 2 million...and it took about an hour to earn a million with the old method if you were good, longer if you werent. Now, what, 5+ hours to earn a million? I got my moneys worth out the game, but I wanted to play more, now I just feel like I gotta stop.

Still want a wheel doe, to play Snowrunner on pc, but my desktop setup isn't here, and my laptop setup is just couch, so not a great environment for a wheel right now.

Maybe down the road, the seeds have been planted. However stay away from GT7 unless they balance the credits issue. It's just sad to see a game that IS REALLY REALLY GOOD AND REALLY REALLY FUN be tarnished by corporate greed. I know videogames companies are making videogames to make money, but like, iunno, that's why I paid 60 fuckin dollars to play the game. Am I being entitled?

Spectere

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #3 on: March 20, 2022, 08:09:25 AM »
Heh yeah, I heard about GT7's recent outage. Their excuses for their service model are shockingly close to the excuses Blizzard used for Diablo III on release, which is weirdly fitting.

Thanks for the heads up about the credits nerf. I hadn't heard about that little mess, and making a somewhat grindy game even grindier just reeks of trying to profit from MTX. It really sucks that they felt the need to do that. The worst part is that they could have easily sold car and track expansion packs (you know, providing tangible, à la carte, and undeniably optional content) instead of taking the bullshit Shark Cards approach.

You know what's funny? It sounds like they nerfed the credit gain to be at roughly the same level as the older games (bear in mind that the last one I played heavily was GT4). It sounds like the car prices are out of fucking control, though. I mean, there are some expensive cars in the older games, but I think the median point was somewhere around 100-200k? I dunno. It's been a while.

Goddamn, Snowrunner looks sick. Might have to pick that up for my pops, drive to his place, and commandeer his computer and wheel (it's my old PC, and the wheel was a birthday gift, so it's all technically mine, right?). :P

From what I can gather, Turn 10 did eventually stop putting in predatory microtransactions in the Forza games. I ended up dropping FM5 because it was so in-your-face that it was kind of gross, but apparently FM7 is MTX-free. I can also confirm that FH5 does not have microtransactions, just the traditional car/track expansions. If GT7 doesn't straighten up it looks like I might just hold off for FM8. It helps that I'll probably be able to just snag it on GamePass, so if they did decide to revert to their past shittiness I can just uninstall it and forget that it exists.
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vladgd

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #4 on: March 22, 2022, 08:20:47 PM »
It's a shame really. GT7 is a fantastic game otherwise. One of those things where it's not "DO NOT BUY" but rather "wait for them to "hopefully" re-balance the game to a reasonable state". Not asking for riches here, but like...



That's what, 12 million earned across 48 hours?

There's two cars in the legendary car market (can only buy for a limited amount of time), that cost 18 million...EACH. They expect people to play over 100 hours within a week to buy two cars? No thanks!

Easy fix would just be to have a flat credits earned/minute raced across all races, then you could play whatever you want. With race car restrictions it would promote tuning different cars to use on different races...yknow, the thing I thought Gran Turismo was in the first place.

The internet is throwing a huge baby fit over it, so maybe something gets done in the next few patches? Time will tell I suppose. At this rate I've heard so much good things about Gran Turismo 4 that I kind of want to play that...and yknow...I mighta bought it(it's cheaper than lunch, easy impulse buy)...but it probably plays better on emulator with analogue break/accelleration...

On snowrunner, I reading steam reviews before I bought it...around time I was addicted to death stranding. (check out death stranding it's really good and original)



Pretty much immediately bought it at that point. HAVE YET TO PLAY IT THOUGH...maybe soonish, but I'll have to suffice with mouse/keyboard for now.

*edit*

Booted up Snowrunner for a trial run, played about an hour. It is pretty neat, controls fine on mouse/keyboard, but doesn't feel like a "sim" game, so unsure how getting it working on a proper wheel would go. I do see the Death Stranding comparison though, just getting from point A to B seems to be what the game is all about. Will definitely have to put more time into the game later, but works on my laptop just fine.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2022, 12:40:26 AM by vladgd »

Spectere

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #5 on: March 23, 2022, 09:26:28 AM »
The ball's definitely in Polyphony's court now. Someone wrote an auto-farm script that works with PS Remote Play that nets 15 million credits per day. Now, are they going to hack together a "fix" for that (and bear in mind that since the script is just automating gameplay, "fixing" that would most certainly impact gameplay) or are they going to actually address the root of the problem? Going to be interesting to see, methinks.

As far as credit earnings are concerned, earlier GT games had tiered earnings. Basically, the pricier the cars in a certain tier would be, the more money you earn. Of course, that's on top of stock car races, manufacturer-specific challenges, and stuff like that. It was a good system, and the rate of advancement felt strangely linear despite everything.

I think you'll really dig GT4. It's modern enough to be very playable, even by today's standards, and it's just consistently good. GT5 was a bit uneven in a lot of ways: disqualification in some events if you hit another car (including if the AI just fucking rams your rear bumper), inconsistent model detail (most cars were literally lifted directly from the PS2 version, with a small number of "premium cars" being PS3-quality), etc etc. I haven't played GT6 so I can't speak for that one, but I heard that it largely resolves GT5's numerous issues.

Dammit, this is making me want to sit my ass down in front of my PS2 and boot it up. Agh. Gran Turismo always had a certain feeling that even my favorite Forza games lacked. I don't know what it is, considering how much overlap there is between the two titles. Maybe it's because Forza feels more like a game (wide range of difficulty settings, etc) while GT feels more like an experience (no bullshit. Just drive. If you lose, git gud).

And yeah, I do need to try Death Stranding at some point. It really seems like something I'd be into.
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vladgd

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #6 on: March 25, 2022, 03:34:05 PM »
Seems like Polyphony got the message? Now here's hoping they follow up on it.

Latest patch with some standard fixes, however, they promise re-balancing of earned credits("as much as 100% more") early April + adding more races and whatnot. On top of that a 1,000,000 credit voucher for anyone to redeem before April 25. This is all good news, still don't want to play the game in it's current state. Again, the game is great, but time invested towards making $$$ now is pointless when it'll be buffed later with hopefully a more enjoyable "endgame" gameplay loop. Before that the cafe is perfectly fine, but I've already completed that and I'm at the "collect cars and dick around with whatever I want" part of the game, being able to race what I want to race WHILE earning credits is worth waiting for.

We shall see how it pans out, people still mad about the always online requirement. I do feel that sentiment, and winning a race to have the server go down for a bit...for that race not to have counted...kinda sucks. ONLY HAPPENED ONCE...but it shouldn't happen...ever...in single player yknow. But the big thing for me was the in game economy. If they wanna do micros they should do it with dlc cars, or "expansion packs" type of content, not "ruin the base game to make room to spend $$$" style of micro.

I'm plenty happy to spend more money in a game I want more of, and this game has plenty of content for it's $60/$70 pricetag, the economy was just the glue to hold it all together, and it was tainted. With skyrim, a game I purchased on 360, pc, ps4, and switch...and beat the game on all 4 platforms, you bet your ass I would buy another dlc. Make a game good enough and players will fork over cash for meaningful content, and GT7 is good enough not to need IRL money for in game money to be a thing.

Final note, while I "logged on" to get my wellfare 1,000,000 check, I did my daily workout (race 26 or more miles across anything in the game within the day, get a roulette ticket), got a ticket...tickets contain 5 things, and "randomly" land on one.

-invitation (if you don't have millions stockpiled, which you don't, these are worthless. limited time offer to buy a car unavalible outside of an invitation, and the car is always over 1-2+ million it seems)
-engine swap (people seem to like these, im too new to understand why, however they are locked behind raffle tickets, I have never earned one in my time playing)
-5 gold bars (each gold bar = 100,000cr, 5 = 500,000cr)
-NEW CAR!
-car parts for a specific car (probably more useless than the invite, with over 400 cars in the game, who's to say you need a new muffler for your Bugatti you don't have or even want because those cars are hideous)

The selection is always random, but usually has a 5000 credit gold pile, and 9/10 times you'll land on that 5000 credit pile. In a game where 50,000 can't buy tires on some cars, 5k is so little it's not even worth the time to go through the animation of opening the ticket, literally.

But I landed on the 5 gold bars, so, either really lucky, or maybe some hidden re calculations of the rewards? I'll take it either way.

I'd say on a positive note, the huge backlash wouldn't exist if the game itself wasn't good enough to warrant the effort in making a fuss over it. Whenever they patch the new economy in the game I'll give it a test drive (pun semi intended?) and see how the game feels. It would be nice to put my Nissan GT-R to work!

Spectere

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #7 on: March 26, 2022, 08:34:38 PM »
Hah! A Friday apology post. I knew it!

Yeah, it still bothers me that they did the nerf in the first place. I mean, they had to have known that it wouldn't go down well. From what I've seen GT7 is already kind of grindy, even by series standards, and I don't understand what they could have possibly thought would happen after they implemented it.

Still, keep me posted. If their rerebalance patch makes the game playable again I might pick it up. I dunno.

I ended up installing Forza Motorsport 7 (on Series X, though it's available on PC as well). I'll let you know how that goes after I log some hours. Honestly, I think one of the biggest advantages of the Forza franchise is cross-platform support. It's nice having the option to either chill out in the living room or to crank up the graphics and enjoy it at 144hz on my gaming rig.
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Spectere

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #8 on: March 27, 2022, 01:01:08 PM »
Ugh. Turns out Forza 7 isn't actually available digitally due to licenses expiring, but for some reason it still let me install it despite not owning it? Wha? Good thing my Internet connection is uncapped, I guess.

Anyway, I did the logical thing and ordered a physical copy. Should be here tomorrow. Blargh.

Edit: Tried playing Forza Horizon 5. Fuck, I forgot how annoying the Horizon games are. It's basically the Far Cry 3 of racing games. Just a bunch of obnoxious dudebro bullshit, coupled with the game shoving shit in your face every five minutes. Like, I just wanna fuckin' collect cars and race.

Speaking of collecting cars, another huge issue with FH5 is the fact that they just shower you with S1/S2 cars at the beginning of the game. Like, you gave me a goddamn McLaren pretty much right from go. Why would I want to go through and buy worse cars after that? What happened to the idea of starting from the bottom and working your way up? Sheesh. I mean, if you want to start from something a little better than a baseline Honda, you can give the player a selection between, say, a Mustang Fastback, a WRX STI, a Civic Type-R. Y'know, reasonably zippy cars in that ~$30-35k price range that produce around 300bhp. Actually, those three would be perfect since you'd have your choice between FWD (Civic), RWD (Mustang), and AWD (WRX).

But hey, what do I know.

At least FH5 is a GamePass thing, so I'm only out a couple hours. And hey, uninstalling it allowed me to reclaim 114GB of storage on my Series X, so that's kinda neat.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2022, 10:23:56 AM by Spectere »
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Spectere

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #9 on: March 30, 2022, 10:39:38 AM »
I've managed to play around with FM7 for a couple hours now. So, let me start off with what annoys me right out the gate.

So, the car licenses expired. From what I understand, car manufacturers tend to be rather unfriendly when it comes to license deals, so I guess it's no surprise that a bunch of them expired and essentially halted digital sales. However, the game itself wasn't really programmed to manage this in a sane way. See, the game gifts you with a bunch of cars, like the other Forza games. Monthly giveaways, yadda yadda. Here's the problem: a bunch of those cars are DLC, so right now I have a bunch of cars in my garage that I literally can't use. If you haven't claimed the free DLC and registered it to your account, or purchased the car packs in the past, you are now permanently locked out of them.

Now I'm sure if they had a choice they would have kept the packs up for purchase indefinitely, so I can't blame them for that, but couldn't they have released a final patch that prevented non-purchased or non-claimed DLC from showing up? Argh. The worst part is that the game doesn't handle it all that gracefully. You select it, it shows a download bar that instantly finishes, and…nothing happens. Annoying.

It would have been nice if they would have at least kept the licensing valid up until the release of FM8, but it's not like they could have predicted a pandemic. I'm sure that delayed the game by quite a bit.

I'm a bit "meh" on the new cup format that Forza uses. And by "new" I mean "the system they've used since FM3." It's a bit more of a guided experience (select a cup, do four races, select a different cup, repeat) rather than a system where you can freely select events. It's not bad, per se, but I dunno. I think it does unlock the ability to freely select events after you've completed everything, but we'll have to see.

Thankfully, the rest of it is good. Very, very good. Amazingly well-polished experience, very solid graphics despite it being a last gen title (it's Xbox One X enhanced, so it even runs at native 4K), and I think the only downside is that it hasn't gotten a 120hz patch for the Series X. Oh well. 4K60 is fine. It's a bit chatty, but it doesn't yank the controller out of your hand and beat you with dudebro bullshit like the later Horizon games do. If you already know what's up you can just hit A and continue on with your day. No big deal.

One thing I sorely missed when I messed around with the Horizon series is the feeling of weight and power. FM7 delivers that in spades, and it just feels right. You can't soar through fields at 200mph like you can in FH5, and thank god for that.

Oh, and the rewards are quite generous. Completing one event essentially earned me 350k credits, which can buy quite a bit of cars and upgrades.

I can definitely see myself enjoying this all the way up until FM8 comes out ("late 2022").
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vladgd

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #10 on: March 30, 2022, 05:08:21 PM »
I pretty much only know Forza stuff based on what the GT people say. Hearing about the roulette wheel for cars as it's only? Source of getting cars sounds kinda bad...Like the money situation in GT7 is ass, but given a few hours of playing, you CAN get one of 95% of cars in the game. So like I wanted to play through most of the asia pacific races in a nissan GT-R of some flavor, I can just focus my money on that thing and get it. I don't think the problem is getting any car you want (sans the 3 million+ cars, of which are not the majority), because you can...it's just in a game about collecting cars in volume, attaining that volume would take like 1000 hours.

Not gonna say roulette is "bad" but I think the gameplay loop of playing races to earn money to buy stuff is a good one...assuming it's executed properly. That said I've earned about 150,000 as I've been typing this due to...the script...Game seems to patch thursdays so I figured fuck it, I'll give it a try. Breaks after the race and I can't get it to loop properly, but at least I can multi task. Others getting it to loop properly, but whatever, if they increase money to a fun level this won't be needed.

Funny how like outside of the sim circle I thought Forza Motorsport, Gran Turismo, and that other series that almost got me into burning rubber Project Cars were the hardcore sim racing game. Now I see the first two (no idea on Project Cars) are sim racers but...a step below an assetto corsa or iunno iracing? Horizon is just like an arcade racer like need for speed or burnout aint it? Nothing wrong with that, I liked Blur and F-Zero, but having that Forza in the name could confuse people I'd suspect? On Forza, any news on FM8? I've heard nothing, and all sim racer youtube (recommended to me) is right now is GT7, assetto corsa, and beam ng.

And uhh, I bought the fanatec gran turismo DD pro...5nm version because that's plenty expensive enough, and you can upgrade to 8nm later if need be. Haven't purchased the wheel base yet because...with tax/shipping $770...so ouch wallet. Mostly got it to stop nagging myself about it, I'll figure out the rest later. Assetto Corsa Competzione (what a mouthfull) was on sale on steam so I snagged that for the future...If I don't end up being that into the vroom vroom on the wheel, I doubt reselling a very popular wheel will be that difficult. When I have a desire to spend money when I shouldn't be spending money (unemployed...uhh...) I FIND A WAY. Don't be me :) Also hunting down a ps5 disc version(almost went digital, but that loses you money in the long run)...just don't be financially irresponsible like I am...probably for the best...to my credit I HAVE the money, but yknow, could just...hold on to it. I expect longer shipping due to how the world is these days so updates sometime eventually.

*edit*

Assetto Corsa actually runs on this machine cooler than Mass Effect...somehow? This'll be great when I get my wheel!
« Last Edit: March 30, 2022, 10:57:48 PM by vladgd »

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #11 on: March 31, 2022, 08:57:06 AM »
See, stuff like that makes me really wonder if the GT people even played Forza. You most certainly can trade credits for cars. That's never not been the case. The roulette wheel was always for bonus loot. To really hammer home how hypocritical that complaint is, I distinctly recall GT3 having a roulette wheel that could give you one of the best cars in one of the first cups. The gross FM5 MTX that I referred to before lets you directly buy cars with cash, but 1) that never replaced the credits system and 2) that's been out of the game for longer than it's been in it at this point.

It's honestly kind of hilarious how batshit insane diehard GT/Forza fans end up getting, especially when you consider that neither title is really considered to be full sim. It's like when Eggman completely lost his shit because I dared to criticize some of the worst elements of GT5 (which. from what I can gather, is considered by fans to be the worst game in the franchise, at least prior to this recent GT7 debacle). Pretty sure his meltdown is documented on this iteration of s.net if you need a laugh one of these days. :P

I dunno. I love both franchises for different reasons. Not sure why the concept that both games can be flawed in certain ways is controversial, but, y'know, console wars.

Anyway, FM7 replaces the wheel with a system that gives the player a selection between a) credits, b) either a discounted car or a free car (depending on how ridiculous the car is), or c) CLOTHES!!1 when they reach the next driver level. Yeah, you can dress up your driver. Who woulda thunk it. *shrug* I like how it isn't always a free car. It never felt quite right to me when games give you badass cars for free (and yes, this includes the monthly gift system…sigh. I doubt that's going away, though).

I think a big part of the Forza/GT thing is that they always had to walk a fine line between being on the most popular systems of the day, being appealing to sim racers, and being playable with a controller. Assetto Corsa, iRacing, beam.ng, and friends don't really have to bother with adding in steering dampening and stuff like that. It also helps that the PC is capable of addressing any ridonkulous input device, while the consoles generally have more stringent standards.

And yeah, Forza Horizon's biggest sin (aside from the dudebro complex it developed, but that was fairly recent) is the fact that it's labeled as a Forza game. The game is fine, but when you see that name it's hard to shake the pedigree of the main series. Honestly, I enjoyed FH1 just fine. The main issue I had with FH5 (and FH4, to a lesser degree) is that the characters are absolutely insufferable. If you've ever played Far Cry 3: you remember the bit at the beginning where it showed the pictures of their vacation shenanigans? That's basically the entirety of FH5. I'm not saying that your racer and his/her friends need to be captured by Vaas or anything like that, but they just needed to turn the volume down a bit. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this shit, lol.

I haven't looked into FM8 much. My general policy when it comes to games is to check the release date, make a mental note of it, and check back later when the title releases. It's pretty much the best way to avoid getting hyped, and it allowed me to enjoy DNF and CP2077 for what they were rather than for what I hoped they would be. The downside to this approach is, of course, that I'm the absolute worst person to ask about upcoming games. :P

I think you've basically talked me into the Fanatec ecosystem if I do happen to get a wheel at some point. I don't really care too much about the accuracy of the force feedback (my dad's G923 feels fine, and that sucker is strong like bull) but I do like how modular the whole setup is. Considering how much abuse wheels generally go through, being able to replace parts piecemeal is far from a bad thing.

But yeah, let me know what you think after it arrives!
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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #12 on: April 03, 2022, 01:29:25 AM »
I have the first cup mostly cleared in FM7 (I technically have the cup, but I’m not moving on until I complete as many events in that division as I can) and it’s holding up for the most part.

I would say that the biggest mechanical issue I’ve run into so far is the dynamic environment system. One of the big features in the game is that the time can transition from day to night (and vice versa) and the weather than change. It looks fantastic and the devs have every right to be proud of it. However, I think they’re a little too proud of it. I know weather can, at times, be unpredictable, but I somewhat doubt that 20% of all races start with a clear, sunny day and end in torrential downpours.

One thing that I haven’t mentioned yet is the ForzaVista mode. I’m honestly amazed at how detailed Turn 10 modeled the car interiors. I have a car that’s fairly close to one in the game in terms of interior design (I drive a 2019 Civic EX, and the game features a 2018 Civic Type-R). I can’t really comment on the stuff that’s specific to the Type-R, but they even include subtle details like the side curtain airbag badging on the pillars and even normally-unnecessary details in the backseat (like the rear door kick panel speakers in the Civic hatchbacks).

If I had to complain about one thing, it’s that the widget that displays the turbo boost pressure on the console is too responsive. Maybe it’s better on the Type-R (you know, since it’s a Type-R and all), but the one on my EX is a bit laggy. :P

This doesn’t really have anything to do with the game itself, but rather the console itself. Music streaming! While the Xbox doesn’t have support for Apple Music or YouTube Music (I think it has a Spotify app, but Spotify’s audio quality is ass, so…), I found that it does have an app called AirServer that lets you connect to the Xbox via AirPlay, Google Cast, or MiraCast. So, basically, I can queue up a bunch of music on my iPad (or my phone), connect it to my Xbox via AirPlay (or Google Cast), and stream sick tunes as background music without having to dick around. Fucking sweet. I don’t know if the PS5 has anything like that, but I know the PS4 doesn’t.

This isn’t really all that new, either. The Xbox 360 allowed you to stream music from a PC running Windows Media Player, so when I was playing Forza 2 obsessively I would use that to listen to my own music.
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vladgd

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #13 on: April 08, 2022, 02:19:07 PM »
It's honestly kind of hilarious how batshit insane diehard GT/Forza fans end up getting, especially when you consider that neither title is really considered to be full sim. It's like when Eggman completely lost his shit because I dared to criticize some of the worst elements of GT5 (which. from what I can gather, is considered by fans to be the worst game in the franchise, at least prior to this recent GT7 debacle). Pretty sure his meltdown is documented on this iteration of s.net if you need a laugh one of these days. :P

Well to be fair Eggman would argue over everything...I had my share of internet nerd arguing with him. Didn't help that I wasn't exactly that mature back then either. I think he was bad mouthing Shadow Complex for not being Super Metroid, and like, it isn't, but doesn't mean it can't still be a great metroidvania (which it IS). Not all games need to be the best ever to be worth playing, and no game is immune from criticism.

I dunno. I love both franchises for different reasons. Not sure why the concept that both games can be flawed in certain ways is controversial, but, y'know, console wars.

Pretty pointless to pledge allegiance to a multi million/billion dollar company who literally doesn't care about you. I do see less of that in our age bracket, so maybe it's an age thing.

Quote from: Spectere
If you've ever played Far Cry 3: you remember the bit at the beginning where it showed the pictures of their vacation shenanigans?

I beat the game, but I swear those "friends" were meant to be insufferable? That said, I do have less tolerance for that stuff now a days, I'm not opposed to skipping dialogue/story anymore if it isn't entertaining "cough" inquisition "cough".

Quote from: Spectere
I would say that the biggest mechanical issue I’ve run into so far is the dynamic environment system. One of the big features in the game is that the time can transition from day to night (and vice versa) and the weather than change. It looks fantastic and the devs have every right to be proud of it. However, I think they’re a little too proud of it. I know weather can, at times, be unpredictable, but I somewhat doubt that 20% of all races start with a clear, sunny day and end in torrential downpours.

If you eventually get GT7, it also does this. Shorter races are mostly unaffected, but some races start rainy and end dry or vice versa. The final cup has a few VERY VERY DARK races, and on Nurburgring goes from dark to light. Makes racing harder, but also looks really really nice. Not sure to which extreme, but it totally has time transitions, weather, and wind.

Quote from: Spectere
Music stuff

I really wish I could change the music in GT7...it isn't horrible, but you have no say over what plays in the menus. AND FRANKLY I DONT WANT MY CAR RACING GAME TO SOUND LIKE A WEDDING, classic stuff is great, but wrong context. Hopefully ps5 version lets me play some chill beats or something, but ps5 is a hoax doesn't exist, what was I talking about?
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Wheel Stand 2.0 + Fanatec Gran Turismo DD Pro.

The Great
-stand is rock solid, ROCK SOLID, very well constructed
-having never experienced a FF wheel, this 5nm wheel has more force than my SUV...literally. I mean it makes sense for a car going 100mph to have, but one is my actual SUV, the other is a videogame. It's an experience.

The Good
-the pedals are better than expected, they kinda look cheap, and foam on the break...PRETTY GOOD. Not outstanding, but well built and nice to use.
-the paddle shifters on the wheel feel VERY nice
-rubber texturing on the wheel also feels very nice

The Bad
-wheel stand is ROCK SOLID...AND HEAVY AS A ROCK. Very stable, but comes at a cost. However would I trade weight for stability? On a cheaper wheel, sure, but on this thing with the power it cranks out, no.
-wheel comes with no screws. all the wheel came with was a few metal brackets you can use to bolt to a stand, but no bolts. wheelstand 2.0 had me covered with the correct bolts/washers/nuts I needed, but ymmv depending on your wheelstand of choice.
-I know for what this is, the price is considered a bargain (at least in the sim racer community) but ohh boy, entry level DD aint cheap no matter how you slice it
-the buttons on the gran turismo wheel feel very cheap. offset by them mostly being only used to menu, and to toggle TCS mid race, but it does make the wheel as a whole feel like a cheap third party controller, despite the nice rubber/paddles.
-wheel is a tad small. Not the end of the world, and you can buy bigger wheels for the stand, but as far as what I'm using on playstation, wish it was a bit bigger.

The Ugly
-my gameplay with this thing. I expected to be slightly better than pad off the bat, what I got was I am SIGNIFICANTLY worse on wheel. I might need to dial in a few settings, but it's VERY hard for me to clean lap even an easy course like monza with this thing. I have no legacy skills with wheels/racing games and doing a little reading, there can be a large adjustment phase. That said, I find turning with 0 TCS to feel a lot more forgiving on wheel than on pad with moderate TCS. While in the now, I'm so bad I can't even race circuits for money...the good is that it will eventually get better than pad.

Conclusion
This is a very expensive toy, but considering it can be used outside of just one game, I think it's worth it. Might not get my moneys worth out of it in a year, but over the years as games come and go I should have enough mileage on the thing to have it be overall worthwhile. In ACC just feeling the grass, through the wheel, it's a level of realism I don't encounter in games. I just need to run easier tracks for the next while until I can get a hang of this thing. Large learning curve.

Do I recommend it? If you aren't going to miss $1000 for a game controller, sure. However if given the opportunity, I would try before you buy. I like it, but I am a crazy person and I really have no other wheels to compare it to, so take all of my opinions with a grain of salt. Racing game novice such as myself should have went with a Logitech, but my mind was GO BIG OR GO HOME, so yknow. Definitely something I want to have my friends try, my girlfriend tried this thing and was laughing and smiling, so definitely a cool thing to show to people who are over.

*edit*

Spent so long typing I forgot GT7 got patched.

ALWAYS ONLINE...ain't going anywhere. They've said nothing, but GTSport far as I read did the same thing, so fact of life. I myself don't like it, but I played diablo 3 world of warcraft, persona 5 with a dlc (GOD FORBID I HAVE A DLC MAKING IT SO I CAN'T PLAY OFFLINE SONY!), sucks but that's just how a lot of games are. Not defending it, but if my choice is not playing a game, and playing the game, I'm going to play it.

But they added a bunch of stuff.

Biggest thing to me is the circuit experience. Basically most tracks in the game have a mode where you can play through each sector with a specific car, and you can go for bronze silver gold like the license tests. Then you have a one lap challenge, and this is for almost every track. Some tracks like the small oval just have the one lap, since it's so small. The BIG oval special course X or whatever doesn't have any due to it being like a 16 mile long oval which is mostly driving straight, good for testing top speed. But they added monetary awards for getting all bronze, and another for all gold. AND it's retroactive...so getting all gold on everything? Is about 47 million credits...in total. You can't repeat the awards, but if you wanted to go into a track and go for all gold, you can get typically around 800k-1.2 million on average. Now I am too horrible at the game to do gold...but this is a great change. I did all bronze on Spa pre patch, all I had to to was go to circuit experience for the track then exit, and I was awarded my all bronze money. Honestly imo, if circuit experience was the only content in the game, it would be $60 worth of content, in my opinion. It's a great mode to play when learning a track, because it makes you do each sector, then you do a full lap made easier with the practice you got from doing the sectors.

They also added a few more races, tweaked money on other stuff. Some physics changes, so actual gameplay stuff.

It's a good start, and in a place where I'd be happy to recommend the game...again...

Here's hoping they continue, because I know there's more work to be done to the game. But it seems pretty good right now.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2022, 04:16:14 PM by vladgd »

Spectere

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Re: Racing Sims
« Reply #14 on: April 08, 2022, 05:58:45 PM »
Well to be fair Eggman would argue over everything...I had my share of internet nerd arguing with him. Didn't help that I wasn't exactly that mature back then either. I think he was bad mouthing Shadow Complex for not being Super Metroid, and like, it isn't, but doesn't mean it can't still be a great metroidvania (which it IS). Not all games need to be the best ever to be worth playing, and no game is immune from criticism.

Fair enough. I still thought it was pretty goddamned hilarious, though. :P

Pretty pointless to pledge allegiance to a multi million/billion dollar company who literally doesn't care about you. I do see less of that in our age bracket, so maybe it's an age thing.

It doesn't help that we're all getting old and cynical at this point. I mean, we all pretty much got punched in the face by a recession right when we reached adulthood. That's enough to cause anyone to become a bit jaded.

I guess the same is true with a bunch of older zoomers now, too, given the economic effects of COVID.

I beat the game, but I swear those "friends" were meant to be insufferable? That said, I do have less tolerance for that stuff now a days, I'm not opposed to skipping dialogue/story anymore if it isn't entertaining "cough" inquisition "cough".

Given the general vibe of the newer Far Cry games, it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

I think I could still tolerate FC3 because you have a ton of shooty shoot time between story segments, but FH5 doesn't let up in the slightest. I should have probably seen it coming given how in your face FH4 was, but FH5 is somehow even worse. The game constantly pauses itself to show you something, there's always someone talking to you on the radio, there's a ton of obnoxious characters. The game will let you up for air for a few moments, then you'll hit some sort of milestone and it'll just plunge you back into the toilet bowl for another swirly.

I mean, I've played the late Xbox/early 360 Need For Speed games (you know, the ones literally modeled after the Fast and Furious) fairly recently and those manage to have a fun edginess to them without making me want to bludgeon myself into unconsciousness with the Duke.

I'm only being slightly hyperbolic. Honest.

I really wish I could change the music in GT7...it isn't horrible, but you have no say over what plays in the menus. AND FRANKLY I DONT WANT MY CAR RACING GAME TO SOUND LIKE A WEDDING, classic stuff is great, but wrong context. Hopefully ps5 version lets me play some chill beats or something, but ps5 is a hoax doesn't exist, what was I talking about?

GT's music selection has always been a little odd, though they did throw some humor in there once in a while, like playing Yello's "Oh Yeah!" when you lose a license challenge in GT4.

I just distinctly remember GT5's opening video. It had this almost anxiety-inducing song, followed by My Chemical Romance's "Planetary (GO!)". I mean, I love MCR and that's a great song (one of the only goodies on Danger Days, sadly), but that just seems like an odd song for a racing game, y'know? Kinda makes me wonder what they had playing on the original JP release.

Wheel Stand 2.0 + Fanatec Gran Turismo DD Pro.

Sexy af.

-having never experienced a FF wheel, this 5nm wheel has more force than my SUV...literally. I mean it makes sense for a car going 100mph to have, but one is my actual SUV, the other is a videogame. It's an experience.

Granted, I've never drove in a car with a racing spec suspension, but driving on a road at 100mph gives you surprisingly little feedback even with a sport-ish suspension.

I imagine the thing would really come alive (and I mean that very literally) in DiRT Rally. I had to grip the G923 tight to be able to overcome the forces in that fucker. Good god, imagine how the 8nm system would feel...yikes.

-the pedals are better than expected, they kinda look cheap, and foam on the break...PRETTY GOOD. Not outstanding, but well built and nice to use.

I'm curious: does the brake pedal have spring tension on it? Like, it doesn't just go to the floor when you press it lightly, does it?

-wheel comes with no screws. all the wheel came with was a few metal brackets you can use to bolt to a stand, but no bolts. wheelstand 2.0 had me covered with the correct bolts/washers/nuts I needed, but ymmv depending on your wheelstand of choice.

To be fair, I think that's pretty standard with higher end sim kit. My dad's G923 only came with mounting hardware for Logitech's included desk mount and my X56 HOTAS didn't come with any mounting hardware (I had to source my own for my 3D printed mount, and my MONSTERTECH mount has its own hardware as well).

I think they probably assumed that any mounting system is going to have its own brackets and such, so there isn't much of a point in including something that the user won't use.

-my gameplay with this thing. I expected to be slightly better than pad off the bat, what I got was I am SIGNIFICANTLY worse on wheel. I might need to dial in a few settings, but it's VERY hard for me to clean lap even an easy course like monza with this thing.

Don't worry, it's not just you. Using a proper setup is definitely more demanding than fiddling around with a controller.

At the end of the day, the extra precision and control more than makes up for it.

GT7 blurb

Thanks for the update!

It kind of seems like if I want to get a console-compatible wheel I'm going to have to pick a faction, at least for the time being. Since I've got the SeX I'm probably going to get a wheel that works with that, and after that I might look into getting something that I can hook up to the PS4.

Or maybe a PS5, if those things ever actually come out. :)
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