Hahaha. Secretly, I just got you in here so I would no longer appear to be the most pompous.
Not true, but it may have that affect none the less.
I don't care, i'll give my verdict anyway.
I can sum it up in one word right away, and I am sure everyone can guess it in 3 tries or less. Let me explain myself though.
Now first let me say that I am a Lancia Delta owner myself. I own chassis type 836, and type 831 is the famous integrale. Today I just drove some Dutch backroads (the kind from youtube channel "RallyMedia" by Joost Schouten) and even caught a ditch or two whilst I was taking 90 degree corners and tighter. All while avoiding traffic on this small road. It might be a tarmac road, but I did get a sense of the pull you can get in a car.
That set as my background... let's get cracking.
Equipment used: CSWv2 + CShub with 350mm rim + CSS-SQ 1.0 + CSPv2
Event type: Custom Event
Track: Argolis, Greece - Koryfi Dafni
Car: Lancia Delta S4
When I drove this car the car felt completely unresponsive. When combined with the new FFB that follows the contours of the track (it pulls you towards dips/pot holes) the car would still just plow straight ahead even when the FFB indicated the tyres were pulling and rolling into the dip or pot holes. The truth is that this didn't seem to be the case, and caused an immediate disconnect for me between FFB and tyre model, or even between FFB and steering rack.
That thought was further amplified as I started to tweak my SEN values, or soft lock via steering wheel. At first I had soft lock in game to ON and as the changelog of Codemasters suggested the Lancia Delta S4 has a lock of 900 degrees.
When I turned down my lock-to-lock setting from default (AUT (...automatic)) to a reduced value of 540 degrees I noticed that the FFB effect of pulling into the dips and pot holes got more in line with what the tyres were actually doing.
What that means is that if the FFB effect would pull the steeringwheel (the one on your desk/rig) a certain amount of degrees that those degrees of rotation would than turn the front wheels enough towards the right or left to make the tyres respond correctly. Cause remember the position sensor in your FFB steering wheel dictates the direction your front wheels are pointing at, so if FFB and tyre model are not in sync you get the above. A tyre model that doesn't respond and lets the car go straight, all while your steeringwheel's FFB steers you into a pot-hole that doesn't exist for the physical simulation of the tyre.
In fact this is a beautiful example of faulty physics programming.
If it was correctly programmed the physical tyre model would follow the contours of the road surface. If the tyre steers to a direction, this would push a tie-rod. That tie-rod is connected to a steering rack. That steering rack dictates the rotation of the steering wheel, which is exactly what the FFB does as well.
The FFB signal drives your FFB motor that turns your steering wheel. That steering wheel position is than fed back into the physics engine of the game.
What happens in Dirt Rally is that the FFB is dictation the position of the front wheels, which isn't the issue. The issue is that the FFB signal is not derived from the steering rack. In other words it is not derived from the actual movement of the tyre, and thus it is NOT related to the tyre model in any way.
Because the FFB signal is completely faked and not physics based you have this addity where the tyre model is still a model made with 270 degrees of rotation in mind, but the FFB model is now made with 1080 degrees max in mind.
So what happens is that at anything above 270 degrees of rotation in Dirt Rally the cars will feel irresponsive to you the player.
This I varified by setting my lock-to-lock on the wheel to 270 degrees, at which point the FFB came in sync with the tyre model. However, because the forces are completely fake I still did not feel any connection with the car.
The other effects next to the pull felt the same as it did in the past to me. Nothing new to report there.
Also the tyre model is probably an old Brush Tyre Model with a two stage construction. A low speed stage (which is basic in its nature) and a high speed stage (which is the more advanced one). Hence the irresponsive character when taking slow corners like hairpins. This is because the only focus has been the high speed model, but as we all know... with rally you have a lot of slow corners. So this old tyre model is not a good choice for a rally sim where you often quickly transition from high to low speeds to high speeds again. So for a rally sim it would be of the essence to have a advanced tyre model (like pCARS's SETA Tyre Model) that works equally detailed and accurate from standstill till top speed and beyond. This to ensure a consistant and natural response througout the speed ranges.
All in all... for me Dirt Rally is Arcade with the capital A. It should be ashamed of itself to call itself a sim, cause absolutely NOTHING is simulated in this game. Well apart from a tyre model that dates back to probably the ToCA games.
I am sorry, but this is my opinion and my verdict of the game in this stage of development. I read they would stop the early-access before Christmas 2015. With that in mind... god help us, cause they need a miracle to turn this game into a sim if they want it released before Christmas 2015.