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Any news?

And finally after 2 years of screwing the whole community over twice he is for once being honest. Still not buying F1 2012 though

here we go again …..

CM saying that is like Karl Pilkington saying he never wanted to be like Einstein.   (HLAFO)

I think they have been very upfront about it not being a true sim and being accessible to the masses. Sorry, but they’re not going to retain the F1 license by making “the whole community” of about 50k hard core sim racers happy. They need to sell millions, not thousands. Think of it as a great gateway into PC sims. The F1 series has made more than a few people jump to the PC looking for more. Im one of them. ;-)

“We’ve never tried to make a game like iRacing, where you’re spending 99% of your time just trying to stay on the track. Our F1 games should not be that as most people should be able to start the car and complete the circuit, not crash at the first corner.”

Hmm funny, i feel the opposite, i crash in the first corner in arcade games because i have no got damn idea what the car is doing. 

Everytime you click on youtube video with F1 2010 or 11 there´s always crashes. 
Why? Because nobody can control the in-bred physics of Codemasters.

To be fair, an arcade racer with the goal of mass appeal should be easy.

That’s actually one of the things I like most about iRacing’s NTM, is I’m not spending 99% of my time just staying on track. I feel much more confident in the cars limits, now.

They never tried to make a game like iRacing.

This is good news to me. Not out of smug self satisfaction (ok maybe a little), but just for them admitting it. It makes it clear that this isn’t the game for me. All I can say is that if I’d seen them say this before the release of F1 2010, then I’d be far less bitter towards CM.

Stephen Hood said…

We’ve never tried to make a game like iRacing, where you’re spending 99%
of your time just trying to stay on the track. Our F1 games should not
be that as most people should be able to start the car and complete the
circuit, not crash at the first corner.

So why is he singling out iRacing for what appears to be crashes at the 1st turn?

Every online racing title I’ve ever played has always had online races where there are incidents a plenty in the 1st turn. It’s not just something that happens at iRacing.

Thet did say this before the release of F1-2010 but used rFactor as the example rather than iRacing

For me is still a good rfactor 1, I have a comfortable
feeling in game.F1 2011 is good, but there is in game something strange,unnatural.

If you have to spend 99% of the time staying on track in iRacing, then there is something very wrong with either the computer system, or the ability to understand how a virtual Simulator works.  A very weird statement from a head designer?  there is nothing wrong with an arcade based race, but why are they always so desperate to compare it to other products… 

Very narrow minded games designers are the very reason we don’t have a game which caters for all, I have tried and tried to explain to such people that the game styles can co-exist with cleverly designed software, All it takes is a hidden “hardcore mode” in a control file for PC users which then allows the use of a more realistic and challenging style of game play whilst the general masses enjoy a more generic arcade experience, win win.

I think the reason is more to do with budget and willingness to actually take it head on, and the lack of ability to create a more satisfying and realistic driving experience, a real shame when the bulk of the other elements of this game offer so much.

DIRT2/3 are great games and for me at least provide a level of authenticity to make me believe I am driving a car of some description with high enjoyment levels, f1 series thus far has not achieved the same balance, just occasionally it hints of possible greatness lurking below (in a non hardcore but just good driving game sense), but then frustrates the whole experience with shoddy bug control and poor implementation of driving controls for us NON gamepad users.

It wasn’t so long ago the guys were raving about their physics and authenticity, well I have news for you, unless you get the first part of the puzzle sorted (Ie controls) you will never have a game which drives anywhere close to authentic, such a simple thing to fix if you could be bothered to credit the development time to it.

Makes me so sad to see such potential being pissed up against the wall.

Umm no, I don’t see any sense in making game that caters to all. 
And no, it’s not as easy as making a hardcore mode file somewhere that would devs make in 5mins. Arcade racers are different in pretty much everything, starting with physics code itself which would usually need to be totally reworked, ending with different garage setups. In arcade racers you click on buttons like “extra power”, “more downforce” and you don’t need to have any idea what these actually do, whilst in sims you want detailed options with exact values like increase front spring stiffness by 500N/mm and so on. How would you like to make a mix of those? 

And if I get back to physics itself, in general any sim CAN be made into arcade, in about 5 seconds. It doesn’t work the other way round, though.

I never said it would take 5 mins, and be easy to do, if you allocate the correct development strategy to support such an option, and have the willing to provide such a product anything is possible. The key here is lack of willing to bring such options to their games, and that’s the shame. 

I have been a games developer, and specifically in the Physics area, I know exactly what is required down to every level, that’s why it annoys me so much that the notion is never given a credible chance to be successful.

I could post a million other reasons and conflicts to stand in the way of such an idea, but it only takes one company brave enough to embrace it into their game design for all those problems to suddenly become obsolete.

If you are so sure I’ll ask you specific questions then – how would you solve online play? Player A has tyre grip x, track grip y and player B has 1.05x and 1.03y…? 
You could make games joinable only if game maker has the same mode but thats ugly solution.

And what about marketing? Video trailers. Each video trailer needs to be satisfying in its whole length to increase sales. Make one half for arcade racers with shiny graphics and obviously boat-like physics and the other half for simracers, with ingame shots of garage and slipcurves lol? 

You say you can post million reasons that stand in way of that idea, but can you tell me TWO reasons why anyone should try to do such piece of software? 

Just doesn’t make sense to me. 

basically is a business and is being treated as such, the casual racer or arcade racer exceed in numbers the so call sim racer, they are gonna keep going with this approach until their license runs out or they get replace by somebody else to do the same thing.

Exactly people like you who cannot see the wood for the tree’s, needlessly making things over complicated.

In any case, I wont enter debate with you on this, I would be happy if the game even delivered the same quality of gameplay as Dirt 2/3, , I don’t think anybody really expects codies to do a full sim, a semi sim option would be more than nice, hell, even properly working and supported wheels and pedals would be a great start.

I think games like forza and gran turismo are great examples of arcade racers.But more on that later. 

The difference between a sim and arcade racer is not that a sim is automatically harder to drive. A good realistic sim is challenging to drive yes but it also makes sense how it drives. There is weight transfer in the car, there is suspension loading and changing the balance of the car, there is engine braking and moments when you get those wrong when driving. There are moments when the car spins but you can always go back and understand what made it happen. You can not go back and check what made the car spin in arcade game. It just did.

The biggest difference is the losing control aspect. In arcade games (for no reason) for the most part losing control is something that happens totally unexpectedly and you totally lose control without much chance to recover it. It is an on off switch. Like it was meant to be that way. A bit like driving a game which is coded only using if-clauses in the code. If driver presses x amount throttle while steering y amount -> spin.

This is what makes arcade racers hard to drive at the limit. It is very brutal and snappy and unpredictable. In sims the limit is not so sudden. Instead of instantly spinning you lose time. You are not fast anymore if you go over the limit. But you still can do it.

The biggest difference though is that in a good sim the drivers are expected to drive much closer (and over) the limit. In arcade racers the driver quality is lower and in fact for most people the only goal in those games is to stay on track.

That’s why the “physics” of arcade games are made easy. To keep people on the track. In arcade racers people are expected to just drive around and getting gold medal prizes after few lousy drives. It is not about short attention span or “stupid audiences not understanding simracing”. It is just meant to be easy to drive around. But the basic and unnatural physics model of these arcade racers falls part very quickly when you want to drive them at the limit. Instead of being easy to drive they suddenly become frustratingly difficult, unpredictable and unlogical. Sims on the other hand are designed to be driven at the limit and any good sim shines when you take it there.

Why I mentioned forzas and gran turismos in the beginning? Because those games do the arcade part really really well. They are fun to drive and don’t fall into pieces when you try to drive at the limit or over it. They work for everybody and not juts for the strange fringe group between simracers and arcade racers who want cars to be made to “feel” like real cars by using completely made up numbers in their physics engine. 

Personally I enjoy both gt5 and f4 very much. Fun games to drive. But clearly they are not sims. Just like f1 201x games are not sims. But for me the f1 201x games are not fun either simply because they don’t do that fun of driving part very well. It is not about the absolute realism or being hardcore about it. It is that “the limit” is just badly done.

Oh we already knew dat, Codie. Nothing new there.

I’m making it complicated because IT IS complicated. You just have some idea with NO details thought about and think how genius you are, well you aren’t. If combining pure arcade and pure sim could make money, don’t you think somebody in last 15 years would already do that. It’s not viable.
Why should codies care about wheels. Most of its players are happy with keyboard or gamepad at best. They want to sit in front of the game and win.

The funny thing is… Its easier, by far, to play iRacing Williams F1 without any driving aid with a joystick than it is to play Codemasters F1 2011!
And irony: the difficult in playing Codemasters F1 with a joystick is caused by… their accessibility system!
They lock the lock-to-lock steering axis angle to a default value and add a default aid to joysticks that try to make the turn smooth.
iRacing has a wizard to configure every peace of crap imaginable that has an axis and simply put an option to use two lock-to-lock settings at the same time: one for the slowest corners, one for speed. Simply and no built in crap.

Result:

You get to the Monaco slowest corner and… “How can I make this corner if my steering is locked?! I want my money back!”

And about the kerbs/out-track that make children fly in iRacing: just put an option, among those 10 aids that already there, to “turn them off”.

Codemasters always repeats: “We wanna make it simple”. Einstein is simple. Big Bang Theory TV Show is not.

“Its simple to make it complex. The complicated is to simplify”

lol, ok sure, Osella :)

What games / sims do you play btw ?? And what’s your personal favourites ?

Exactly where I am coming from, well said.

Ironically I usually get banged in the first corner in F12012 more than any other racing games. Beginners will try banzai in the inside, while in other simulators, most people know already that it’s dangerous and drive accordingly

They did? D’oh…

I’ve got no intention of getting in the middle of this, just thought I’d add two points which seemed relevant in my head. :)

Something you can probably find in the design of cars for sims is that the guy who puts them together can come up with comparative setups for it, as well as many of the people who drive them. Things like they can come up with a particularly soft suspension setup for the car, or an especially stiff one. Theoretically, you could get any setup in between by blending them together depending on the user’s input. rFactor does this, I believe, although it’s very clumsily implemented.

And on the other side, something Turn 10 mentioned about Forza is that in order to make the game playable on gamepads, they didn’t want to give up accuracy in their simulation model. So instead, they added a layer of filtering between the controls and the car, helping you do things like find the counter-steer sweet spot without FFB. And since it’s in the input rather than the physics, everyone’s still driving the same cars. I’ve never driven Forza with a wheel before though, so I’m not sure how it handles without this filtering. The theory seems plausible to me though.

I think the big thing which would stop any ‘one game for all’ attempt is the cars. Arcade/casual racing fans want a lot of cars. They want to collect them, have a wide range, have their favorite manufacturer, and so on. A sim fan wants every last detail of the cars to be exact. That’s a pretty tough cost/benefit curve to get over. Not only do you need to build as many cars as Forza, but you need to spend as much time on each as iRacing.

Forza and GT5 are probably the closest we have in this realm, but both of them take their input data, run enough testing to make sure the results didn’t explode, then they’re onto the next car’s physics. On the flipside, there is a reason that aside from sims focusing on just one series or type of racing, there aren’t multiple manufacturers in the same class. Too much work for marginal sim gain, if they’re going to add a new car they would rather have one each GT1/2/3/4, F1/2000, GP2/3, P1/2, etc to be as broadly appealing as possible or they build 4 GT2s, 3 P2s, and 3 P1s in the same amount of time and then they only appeal to Le Mans fans, no touring cars, no open wheelers. In general, sim racers would rather have a perfect copy of only one car from their favorite series, than a dozen with poor physics.

I think it will be interesting to watch pCARS in this regard. They’re aiming for a more realistic Forza. It looks like a car count higher than most sims, but smaller than a Forza or GT game. Have they announced any cars built to the same specifications yet? It will be interesting to see how this works out.

Yeah funny. I can make with fw31 about 10 clean laps +/- 0.2 pace in iRacing but in codemasters not a single clean lap cause the steering has so big input lag and it isn’t very sharp and lap times vary a lot.

 Thats because iRacing never tried to make the FW31 like Codemasters F1 game :)

The system works very well in Forza actually, even more so in FM4.

If there was ever a racing game where you were sure to crash in the first corner, it’s a Codemasters F1 game.

Do a YouTube search for “F1 2011 Online Crash Compilation” and come back to me.

Having a game that caters for all is a deluted thought that only exists in lala-land. 

There is no such thing as a game that caters for all. Do you have any idea how massive that game would be to incorporate everything. 

(not saying you are deluted or live in lala-land :))

Nobody has mentioned the complete destruction for F1 fans wanting to watch onboards on youtube. 

If i write Alonso onboard i won´t actually see Alonso,  i will see a 10 year old playing Codemasters instead.

great post.

Codie wake the **** up

 deluded ?   

What about GP4 ?  Newbies and simmers could get along with that cos Crammond programmed it the proper way.

>We’ve never tried to make a game like iRacing, where you’re spending 99% of your time just trying to stay on the track.

what a stupid bollocks.

Yep console racers are far worse for crashing than simulators. 

“Do you have any idea how massive that game would be to incorporate everything”

Yes I do actually, I managed the very resources you talk about to make things like this possible for more than 5 titles.

It works alright, but I’ve found it to be too unpredictable with the joystick. I have to keep correcting because the wheel keeps turning and won’t hold steady through the corner.

Going OT slightly here but what the hell :)

I find it easy with a 360 controller in Pro ?? Sim ?? (I forget now) steering mode, once you get your head around not applying full deflection for opposite lock and just get used to adding a tiny bit the balance for me at least becomes much more predictable, be nice to have the option to turn off the hidden helps however :)

Horses for courses isn’t it!

Maybe the comparison with iRacing is a little silly, because all Mr Hood was doing was revealing his lack of sim racing prowess. But that’s no big problem, because alien drivers are generally not developers and vice versa. The F1 franchise holds a sort of uncomfortable middle ground between sim and arcade and, quite possibly, is a master of none. There’s still a lot of enjoyment and driving satisfaction from those titles, but no real possibility we’re suddenly going to read online reviews that suggest the driving model has come on in leaps and bounds and GP4-style tweakery has become the order of the day.

I’m on the fence about whether not to buy this year’s offering when it hits the streets. I fear an EA/FIFA/Madden-style incremental upgrade of teams and drivers and tracks, plus the odd new feature. Not sure if that’s enough to make me part with any cash – at least until it gets hugely discounted, as every PC game does.

I find Hood’s comments inflammatory towards sim racing. I get it that he’s trying to market his product but if his target audience is not that of iRacing’s or other simulators, why aggrevate those communities by making disparaging comments about software you are not (Mr Hood’s own words paraphrased) even trying to compete with? LOGIC! 
http://pigipedia.blog.com/files/2011/04/kozakiewicz.jpg

Yeah, for some reason in sim steering it still feels like it’s overly filtered. Still probably one of the best with a joystick, but annoying enough to be noticable.

I find rfactor with no aids much easier to drive with thumbsticks than either F1 201x or Shift with their odd contrived setup.  rfactor with every aid on the car practically drives itself but also still feels much better than these weird controlling games.

Actually, Virtua Racing is more fun than Shift or F1201x to be honest.

Meh, it’s a child’s game that adults occasionally find entertaining to mess around on. We’re into simulators so I don’t know why we’re even discussing this. Consoles are a waste of time for anything other than feet up entertainment. 

I remember the days of playing GPL when all the cool kids were playing the original gran turismo. Think I’ve posted that here before… LOL 

Hehehe, so true.

That is the number one reason I lost interest in Codie’s F1 games. You get mad half the time and cannot do anything about it. Thrilling online sessions just because the non-willing are chilled away by Newtons laws would be reason enough to play sims.