Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Discussion Thread

[MSZ]

For those who are interested, this is what the northern part of the real life HKI looks like:

 

[whannel]

If it looks and sounds like this on console, while handling like their WRC series I expect it'll be fine. Even if using some frame generation and 1440p. Seeing folk suggest it looks like The Crew gfx so wouldn't mind watching a comparison, looks better than TC2 to me. Maybe once it releases a comparison to NFS Unbound or Heat. City still seems bigger than any city centre I can think of in a game, although maybe the 1:1 thing means the island? Quite certain they did say all streets though, just with some narrow ones widened. Be good if they add maybe triple the traffic and more pedestrians.

If it's a long term thing then maybe a ton of third person on foot sports could keep some folk entertained, a clean GTA?

 

[ALLSETFORMOVE]

Anyone joined the playtest? Is it super bad or regular bad?

 

[Mirai]

Regular bad, from what I’ve heard
It’s not completely unbearable, but it doesn’t really do anything particularly special
Not to mention it looks like a GTA 5 raytracing shader demo with how many puddles and other unnecessary detail there is

 

[Hdbd04]

Turns out, I had to change my computer's region to a "less populated" country in order for it to work. It was a mid experience overall with the online requirement being a hindrance over the flow of the game such as loading times.

(I know nothing deep about computer specs and performance, but this is how it was in a MSI Laptop with an Intel Core i9-13900H and GeForce RTX 4070)

The same issue with the A110's model is still visible even after I had emailed them about it in the last playtest. And even in the first shot, it looks slightly worse than the playtest's version of the game?

 

[ALLSETFORMOVE]

Kuru is getting 2K 60fps on a GTX4080. I wonder whether I can get a consistent 1080p60fps on Series X...

 

[Tornado]

2K?

 

[Bilu]

I played for 42 minutes. It's garbage.

 

[MedigoFlame]

I guess the recent update finally made it playable on my PC. Before, I would crash right after the company logos appeared at the title screen which was frustrating. Ended up playing on my brother's PC for a little while (with better specs than mine) and it ran okay.

First impressions are...how much I dislike modern gaming and always being online. Never got kicked out of the game itself, but not even being able to do "single player" time trials? That's a big concern when I couldn't even do a time trial without being disconnected from the race lobby or whatever it said. First time playing, I could never do a race without also being disconnected.... I suppose the update fixed it a bit and I am able to do some events without being kicked back to freeroam. At least there are AIs to fill in empty slots of races which I can at least appreciate. Was worried that it would be a purely only PvP affair with TDUSC.

Oddly, as a positive, I can't explain why but it feels better than Forza Horizon and (as my brother claims) The Crew 2 for just going for a drive in freeroam. Not sure why but it feels more rewarding going around finding collectables and just discovering areas, though it may be due to being a new game and not feeling burnt out on the Forza Horizon series like I do. Just a personal thing, so I wouldn't blame others for not feeling the same way about freeroam.

Physics honestly feel a bit like TDU2 still, especially when it comes to oversteer. Feels like the steering is too slow (maybe? or it is something else) to recover from a slide, which is a bit annoying for the RWD cars. Certainly felt like the AI with an AWD vehicle had an advantage. (Couldn't catch the 1st place amateur AI with an Audi TTRS in my Alpine A110) Curbs will make you lose quite a bit of control as well, which...there is quite a lot of for the city courses. Felt like NFS Unbound was similar in the sidewalk curbs screwing you up mid-corner if you hit them.

Certainly disappointed in the lack of lifestyle things like owning your own home. Being able to go to your garage and view all your cars in somewhat unique displays. Instead it's a rather bland looking garage of the hotel to view your collection. One thing I enjoyed so much about TDU2 was just organizing your garages at different houses, much like how GTA Online is doing now.

I feel like I have more to say, but I can't quite think of it off the top of my head.

 

[Draugnimir]

Kuru is getting 2K 60fps on a GTX4080. I wonder whether I can get a consistent 1080p60fps on Series X...

Lucky guy, I'm not getting stable 60 fps on RTX 4080 even with the lowest settings in 1080p 🤪

The game itself is good (open world, handling, TDU-like atmosphere), but releasing a demo in so poorly optimized state three months prior to official launch looks like a suicide to me.

 

[Terronium-12]

Kuru is getting 2K 60fps on a GTX4080. I wonder whether I can get a consistent 1080p60fps on Series X...

Just for the sake of information, if you're using "2K" as a means for 1440p, that's a misnomer. The resolutions closest to it (2K) would be 1080p, 1200p (1920x1200), and 1536p (2048x1536) to name a few. And that is not a good thing for a 4080.

I'm running the game with a 5800X and 6900XT at 1440p and can't get 60fps at all. At least not without dropping every setting under the sun. It's an unoptimized mess at the moment, which is fine for a demo...if it weren't for the fact this was already delayed twice and is three months from release.

That's to say nothing of the fact I don't intend on purchasing the game anyway because of the laughable always-online requirement that exists for no reason. Then, there's the fact the game uses a very...Forza Horizon-esque tachometer as opposed to the brand/car-specific clusters the previous two games used. Seems like instead of taking the game's existing identity and going further with it, the devs have opted for a comfier approach.

I can't say that I'm a fan. The cars that I've used do sound pretty damn good though so there's that.

Oh, and as for your question: considering the Series X GPU is closest to, at least in relative terms, to an RTX 2080 at its absolute best (I'd go so far as to suggest in-between the 2080 and 2080 Super), I would say...not natively. Not in its current state. At least not without a temporal upscaler...even at 1080p.

Yeah, the game runs that bad. Three months from release...

 

[ALLSETFORMOVE]

Just for the sake of information, if you're using "2K" as a means for 1440p, that's a misnomer. The resolutions closest to it (2K) would be 1080p, 1200p (1920x1200), and 1536p (2048x1536) to name a few. And that is not a good thing for a 4080.

I'm running the game with a 5800X and 6900XT at 1440p and can't get 60fps at all. At least not without dropping every setting under the sun. It's an unoptimized mess at the moment, which is fine for a demo...if it weren't for the fact this was already delayed twice and is three months from release.

That's to say nothing of the fact I don't intend on purchasing the game anyway because of the laughable always-online requirement that exists for no reason. Then, there's the fact the game uses a very...Forza Horizon-esque tachometer as opposed to the brand/car-specific clusters the previous two games used. Seems like instead of taking the game's existing identity and going further with it, the devs have opted for a comfier approach.

I can't say that I'm a fan. The cars that I've used do sound pretty damn good though so there's that.

Oh, and as for your question: considering the Series X GPU is closest to, at least in relative terms, to an RTX 2080 at its absolute best (I'd go so far as to suggest in-between the 2080 and 2080 Super), I would say...not natively. Not in its current state. At least not without a temporal upscaler...even at 1080p.

Yeah, the game runs that bad. Three months from release...

Thank you for the clarification - I was indeed referring to 1440p on that 4080 case.

Let's see what they can do in 3 months then. I don't think there will be major changes although KT is emphasizing this is more like a playtest rather than a demo.

 

[Kriptical]

oops!

 

[Tornado]

Whatever you say buddy.

 

[MXH]

Judging by the gameplay videos I've seen, the game looks alright and could actually be somewhat fun if the performance issues are fixed. What kills any sort of enthusiasm I could've had for this game is the fact that it’s always online.

 

[Downhill Dino]

So for a bit of fun I gave it a go with a couple friends as something to do. Surprisingly we had almost no performance issues, I would say it was almost perfectly running. The worst was a frame drop we experienced in a race that slashed the fps in half or more for a few seconds. Some quick thoughts:

The game is visually dated by a decade, maybe more. The only thing that looks decent are the cars and the player/people models are really bad.

Online MMO or whatever it's trying to be is not going to work. It looks like cars will rotate in the dealerships and the prospect of the battle pass does not bode well.

The map is actually alright, but only 8-ish players max? C'mon now. With the poor graphics I don't quite understand how 8 is the max, and judging by the traffic that is barely existent or just pops in and out right in front of you, I wonder how they managed to have those problems.

The "story" is lame and dare I say cringe.

While changing interiors is cool, basically zero car customization is a massive thumbs down for a car game in this day and age, and it would be 10 years ago too.

The foundation for something good is there but the systems they've tacked on it ruin the experience. I could only hope that maybe enough backlash through this beta phase or at least in the first month or so of release have them make changes.

 

[inCloud]

Surprisingly we had almost no performance issues

The game is visually dated by a decade

Not sure if you tried max settings. On the other hand, Rivals,Driveclub and Horizon 2 were released in 2014 and they aren't all that far from any modern racing game.

 

[Downhill Dino]

Sometimes you forget how much time has passed, let's go with 15 years maybe? We also ran on ultra/max graphics settings, I personally was sitting smoothly between 60-80 fps for any driving. 100~ in menus and if I turned anything excessive down in driving portions.

 

[inCloud]

We also ran on ultra/max graphics settings, I personally was sitting smoothly between 60-80 fps for any driving

RTX4090? Everyone reporting <60 with <RTX4080 systems. My low-end rig can't maintain 30 🥲

 

[Downhill Dino]

RTX3060... I was surprised too. I went in expecting a slideshow. I think they have 40 series.

 

[Dave A]

What CPU are you both using? It could be CPU bottlenecks that people are reporting @inCloud rather than a GPU one.

 

[inCloud]

RTX3060

Hilarious

CPU are you both using

10400F. Not sure how cpu could affect performance in different visual modes(aside from draw distance)

 

[Downhill Dino]

10870H.


I just remembered how the game defaulted to low and was astonished by how awful it looked, not realizing it wasn't ultra settings. Still don't think it looks good.

 

[Dave A]

Hilarious

10400F. Not sure how cpu could affect performance in different visual modes(aside from draw distance)

Just if people are getting vastly different results with the same GPU's or people with a lesser GPU are seeing better performance than someone with a higher spec one, either someone is making stuff up, or the GPU isn't causing the bottle neck. CPU is the next most obvious thing.

I don't know what visual modes you've tried, or people you're aware of have tried. Not saying that you, or they are wrong, just posing a possible option to what might be causing the bottle neck, assuming, the game does indeed run smoothly on an RTX3060.

I have a 3080, but I can't comment, I haven't tried this game yet. I much prefer single player gaming, so this is unlikely to be a purchase for me.

 

[Veinz]

Tried it briefly on my csl dd. Overall it feels ok for a game like this. But it felt really strange when I changed the rotation up from default (360) to 900.

I have a mid tier pc (16 gigs, 3070 and i7 10700f) and the game runs fine (50-60 fps) with high settings at 1440p for the most part, but they definitely need to work on optimization.

Not sure if I’m interested in this game, I’m not really a fan of just driving around most of the time.

 

[bluemoon_19]

I decided to give this a go on PC to see how my computer preformed. I only have a 1080P screen and i used the high graphics preset and I got around 40-50 FPS most of the time, it dipped into the high 30's a few times at the start of a race. It did manage to reach 60fps for a few seconds during daylight but only a few seconds. I didn't notice any stutters, it was just a constant low frame rate.

My specs are. CPU: AMD R5 3600, GPU: AMD RX6700XT, RAM: 32GB 3000MHz, SSD:Kioxia G2 1TB

 

[strela]

We can give some feedback about the demo here.

There are questions about the online aspect of the game too. Maybe things can change? I really hope so. A FH4(5) convoys system is a better option imo. The whole Sharp VS Streets isn't a good idea either imo. It reminds me of Factions from the first Crew where Wolves won 100% of the time. The other three stood no chance. I guess it will be the same with Streets here.

 

[MedigoFlame]

We can give some feedback about the demo here.

There are questions about the online aspect of the game too. Maybe things can change? I really hope so. A FH4(5) convoys system is a better option imo. The whole Sharp VS Streets isn't a good idea either imo. It reminds me of Factions from the first Crew where Wolves won 100% of the time. The other three stood no chance. I guess it will be the same with Streets here.

Can't see them changing it within the 3 months before release sadly, but hopefully in a future update. It was certainly frustrating getting disconnected when doing the time trials or getting the racing lobby error message right after completing an event for the game to give you rewards, but not say you completed it.

Glad to see the survey acknowledges the option to say you don't like that it's 100% online. Just hope the survey is enough to convince them to change it.

 

[MroczMR]

Can't see them changing it within the 3 months before release sadly, but hopefully in a future update. It was certainly frustrating getting disconnected when doing the time trials or getting the racing lobby error message right after completing an event for the game to give you rewards, but not say you completed it.

Glad to see the survey acknowledges the option to say you don't like that it's 100% online. Just hope the survey is enough to convince them to change it.

To be honesr, if demo was representative of current game status it should be definately delayed. This game will be dumpster fire if not.

 

[Pearl Jam]

Downloaded the demo out of curiosity as I’ve never played a Test Drive game before, asking to create a account for some bizarre reason so deleted straight away, don’t think I’m gonna miss it