>I've decided what the best thing about F1RS is. I's not the fancy
>graphics, the great sound, or the superb handling. It's the fact that
>you can see the front wheels. Read on...
>A friend came round who's played GP2 a lot.
>He saw F1RS, with me driving, and was amazed by my consistency. I was
>clipping exactly the same piece of kerb, and just locking up slightly at
>the last moment, in exactly the same way - lap after lap. He was amazed,
>and gave me many compliments on my driving. He then pointed out how much
>difficulty he had doing that in GP2.
>What I had to admit to was that I was the same as him in GP2. I used to
>get a bit fed up with it, because there were times when I went off, and
>didn't know why or what I did wrong. This NEVER happens is F1RS. If I go
>off I ALWAYS know what happened.
>Eventually I worked out why. It's because I can see the front wheels,
>and they are so accurately modelled.
>You can SEE when you've locked up, you can place the car very accurately
>in a corner, you can see when you're using too much lock and that's why
>the car is understeering. Once you get used to the sim it all becomes
>very natural, and because it's a sim you need this sort of feedback.
>I wonder if you'll be able to see the front wheels in GP3?
>I have to say "Well done UbiSoft".
>--
I really don't agree with this. The reasons being...
Modelling the front wheels is dumb because if you really were sitting in a
formula one car, you would not be able to see them given that the monitor is
only displaying a limited view ahead. Only if you had a monitor a metre wide
would you be able to see them. However, showing them anyway wrecks the
perspective you see, and it is difficult to appreciate how the road you are
seeing is supposed to be ?? metres across when the front wheels you see are
only 40 cm across and yet are supposed to be about a 1/10th of the width of
the road. Its curious how so many people seem to agree that the perspective
you get with GP2 (or GP1) is the best of the racing games (ie, the view out
of the***pit looks so real and believable) but then also criticise it
because you can't see the wheels like in other racing games. Perhaps these
two factors are connected? Also, the fact that Geoff Crammond who
undoubtedly is a genius at creating racing simulations, and is evidenced by
the sense of being there in his games, did not include wheels with both GP1
and GP2, despite I believe having included front wheels with some of his
earlier driving games, as well as undoubtedly trying to put front wheels on
GP1 and rejecting it, should tell you something.
Modelling the front wheels adds little feedback when driving. While the
wheel may lift when you hit a curb, you know you have hit the kerb anyway
because of the sound, and you are generally looking further up the track.
Similarly, wheel locking is also indicated by smoke in the rear mirrors and
also sound effects and these are both arguably more noticeable. Also, the
wheels don't necessarily help you to "avoid clipping kerbs" because you can
only see the inside of the tyre, not the outside which will be the first to
hit the kerb, nor the kerb itself when you are close enough to hit it. The
amount of lock shown by the front wheels is also very ambiguous and
therefore unlikely to be of assistance, especially if you are using a wheel
where you can feel how much you have turned it.
Therefore, the bottom line is that the front wheels don't really give you
any feedback you wouldn't be getting from other sources more easily, but
seeing the front wheels also wrecks the perspective so that the monitor
isn't representing what you would actually be seeing if you were sitting in
an F1***pit.
However, I do agree with you that it is much easier to drive consistently in
F1RS than GP2. The main factors I attribute this to are:
You do not need to be as precise with the steering in F1RS compared with
GP2. What I mean by this is that in GP2, to turn into a corner properly
without missing the apex, you would have to turn the wheel to a very precise
angle to give you the right amount of steering. For instance, an angle of 45
degrees. If you only turned it 42 degrees, you would go wide. If you turned
it 48 degrees you would turn in too sharply and cut the kerb (this is a
hypothetical example). In contrast, F1RS is much more forgiving in this
regard as the steering is less sensitive (ie, small differences in steering
lock don't have such a great effect on the attitude of the car). Therefore,
if you accidentally turned the wheel only 42 degrees, it wouldn't reduce the
steering as much as in GP2, and you wouldn't go as wide. Only if you turned
the wheel 39 degrees which represents a much bigger error would you not get
enough steering and you would then go wide. Therefore, in F1RS, you tend to
get close to maximum steering effect irrespective of the exact positioning
of your controller and therefore, it is easier to position the car
consistently.
Secondly, once you have turned into the corner, it is easier to change the
attitude of the car in F1RS than GP2. What I mean by this is that if you
turn in too soon, for example, you can open out the steering and the car
will go wider and the tighten up the steering again and the car will be
brought back on line. In contrast, GP2 seems to give the car more momentum
so that once it is set to go in a particular direction, it is more difficult
to change that direction, PARTICULARLY WITHOUT UPSETTING THE CAR. This again
makes it much easier to drive the car consistently through corners in F1RS.
Finally, the better graphics on F1RS also definitely make it easier to drive
consistently. For instance, I found that I could drive more consistently in
GP2 when I would switch the preferred line on. This was not because I needed
the line to show me the correct path around the course and rather, on some
corners I would actually take a quite different line. However, the preferred
line gave you a much stronger indication of your cars position on the track.
For instance, when approaching a corner, without the preferred line you
would just be presented with grey tarmac and you would have to judge the
turn in point from markers such as trackside objects which were far away
from your car and therefore, difficult to judge precisely. However, with the
preferred line, you could see it turning into the corner and it therefore
gave you a much better indication of just how close you were to the corner,
when the corner was going to open up again, etc.
With F1RS, it is worth noting that really everyone uses the preferred line
by default since, if anything, it makes the graphics look more realistic.
However, other graphical features in F1RS would also aid you in the
determining the position of your car much better than in GP2. While the
graphics in GP2 are undoubtedly good, few dispute that the graphics are
better in F1RS and in particular, detail on objects which are close to the
track are very good. This then allows you to do things such as recognise
where in the corner you are much better, judge the speed of the car much
better, and judge the position of the car relative to its surroundings. All
of these things add up, making it much easier to drive the car consistently
because you are much more certain when is the appropriate time to turn the
car in, etc. Also, if the car does start to go off line, you are aware of it
much sooner and can therefore correct the problem before it is too late.
Any comments?
Having said all of that, I think that F1RS is undoubtedly the most enjoyable
racing game available at present, although, as many others have already
said, it does have some minor faults with it which prevents it from being
the ultimate sim. Lets hope that Ubisoft listens to the criticisms and
patches accordingly. If so, F1RS could truly be a rival for GP3 when it
finally comes out.
