With a month to go until the launch of F1 24, EA has been busy revealing what players can expect from the annual title — aside from the obvious — over the last few days.
As usual, F1 24 will be available across a wide spread of platforms, including PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series, and PC, when it launches on May 31 — with Sir Lewis Hamilton, his future Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc, and Lando Norris adorning the cover.
Players who opt for the Champions Edition, featuring current world champion Max Verstappen on the box, will get three days’ early access, along with other in-game bonuses and options.
F1 24: New Career Mode
Codemasters has revealed that the career mode has had a major overhaul too, addressing one specific detail that hasn’t really been part of the series to date.
It’s referring to that as “Be One of the 20”, and that should give you a little clue. While you can still take part in the career in the same manner as every title since F1 2016, and with MyTeam mode too, you now have the option of making any driver on the real grid your avatar.
That means that, for the first time, you can race as your favorite F1 driver — whether that’s one of the four cover stars, a relative rookie, or anyone in-between. Not only that, you can step into the shoes of any existing F2 driver, or race as an “icon”. That includes champions like Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna, and Nigel Mansell, among others.
A new “Driver Recognition” system has also been implemented, giving the opportunity for you to grow your own reputation — tied in with short-term and long-term objectives, or “Accolades”. These could be relatively humble tasks if you’re a new driver, while playing as a real driver may give you challenges based on what they achieved in the real world. Perhaps you might like to right some wrongs in their careers…
Your reputation will affect the rate of development in your current team, and the balance of power therein. If your team-mate’s reputation is higher, you may find the car develops along a path they find helpful and not to your liking.
Contract negotiations also hinge on reputation, and you can even hold secret meetings with other teams to further your own ambitions. It’s not clear what happens if these meetings become known, but we’d assume nothing good…
Two-player career has all of this but, obviously, as a two-player challenge, while a shorter Challenge Career will see you competing against players around the world to score the most points in pre-set seasons. These will refresh periodically to introduce new events per real-world events and player vote.
F1 24: Driving Physics Changes
F1 24 will once again be running on the venerable Ego engine, but Codemasters has made a number of changes under the hood — adding that it has collaborated “closely with Max Verstappen”, the cover star of the Champions’ Edition.
After a rather lumpen entry with F1 22, the mild improvements of F1 23 have given way to a new “Dynamic Handling System”, aimed at replicating the real-world cars more effectively through changes to steering geometry, suspension physics, tire temperature, weight transfer, and downforce physics.
The new suspension system incorporates dynamic toe and camber changes, as well as the anti-Ackermann effect common on F1 cars. Weight distribution and weight transfer is also better replicated.
An all-new thermal model on the tires replicates relative degradation, as well as including changes to wet-weather physics — with drivers able to exploit wet lines to cool their tires for longer life and more grip across the stint.
There’s new power unit settings that improve the realism of energy harvesting and deployment, while Codemasters also claims to have enhanced the aerodynamic system with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques.
F1 24: Updated Circuits & New Features
Naturally the game will feature the 24 circuits and 20 cars of the 2024 Formula 1 season, but EA has been addressing the dated look of some of the courses (one of our complaints about F1 22) with updates to bring them up to scratch.
Four of the older tracks have been updated, although only three of those are shown in the video above: Lusail (Qatar), Silverstone, and Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. However the teaser also shows Monaco and Shanghai in a variety of weather conditions and lighting to show off the new “Dynamic Diffuse Global Illumination” system.
The clip also reveals a little of a new feature that replicates real radio messages, from pit wall to driver and vice versa. This has seen Codemasters pore over years of F1 footage to grab as much real audio as possible, to relay contextual information and emotion in the drivers’ own voices.
We also get to see a little of the new, 2024 season cars — including the renamed and redesigned Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber and Visa Cash App RB F1 Team machines — updated using CAD data from the teams.
With early access for F1 24 Champions’ Edition players set to begin on May 28, ahead of the official May 31 launch, we’re expecting to see more over the next couple of weeks.
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