VERY Interesting comments from Ian Bell

[vrooom]

See, to me that is the really interesting part and FRAPS/youtube doubler is a pretty nice way to demo the tech underneath . I think those videos are just the tits and show a whole bunch of awesome stuff. Like - did anyone notice that the brakes on the outside of the donut got more airflow from describing a wider circle and cooled fractionally faster than the inside brakes? That is pretty cool.

Yeah, the way the car's handling is defined by the forces applied to the tires/suspension and brakes and how you can see (with the physics hud) and feel (handling, tire degradation, car tuning, etc) how all these forces, temperatures, etc interact is what I find the most amazing about Shift 2 and how much simulation games have progressed! Good job! 👍

 

[DrJustice]

^ The evolution of sims does indeed make these exciting times. I reckon both the physics and graphics are at a pretty serviceable level for consumer products, and it will only get better. Of course we'll not get the full performance of industrial sims (F1 sims, commercial flight sims etc.), but us arm chair racers are getting some good entertainment even though we have to live down some frustrations

IMO there are still a few items that need to be addressed to take sims to the next level, among them my pet peeve, namely the real time aspects, meaning response times from control input to frame output, and also frame rates. I bet e.g. the Red Bull F1 sim have those things down if the drivers can come in and be right on the pace. The last one, which should arguably be the very first, is software stability.

DJ
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[GumShoe]

^ The evolution of sims does indeed make these exciting times. I reckon both the physics and graphics are at a pretty serviceable level for consumer products, and it will only get better. Of course we'll not get the full performance of industrial sims (F1 sims, commercial flight sims etc.), but us arm chair racers are getting some good entertainment even though we have to live down some frustrations

IMO there are still a few items that need to be addressed to take sims to the next level, among them my pet peeve, namely the real time aspects, meaning response times from control input to frame output, and also frame rates. I bet e.g. the Red Bull F1 sim have those things down if the drivers can come in and be right on the pace. The last one, which should arguably be the very first, is software stability.

DJ
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Indeed. It makes me wonder why racing games never seem to have a public beta phase like FPS/RPG games etc. I think they're big and complicated enough now that a public beta would really avoid problems like steering lag, crashes etc, instead of us essentially beta testing things on release. Just look at GT5 and the Shift series...

 

[RomKnight]

SMS had those events to demo the game and gather input...

 

[niky]

Have erased a whole bunch of off-topic posts. Please stick to the topic and not each other.

For those who have issues with this, take it up in the feedback section. This is not the appropriate forum for this discussion.

For the others in here, I appreciate that you are arguing from a point of passion for the game, but please try to keep it cool... ey?

 

[mr_serious]

Very interesting read, especially Boxox insights into the code (as well as his temperate, clear and artculate posts) cheers mate.

I play on the PS3 but one of the first things I did before running any races was do some donuts, bounce off a few walls, roll the car. I was able to blow tyres and engine quite easily.

As a long time GT series player I doubted I was going to like this title. My very first go I just used the DS3 to play. It was so bad I wouldn't have picked it up again if the game hadn't been a present from my Missus.

I'm so glad I took the time to plug in the wheel and try a few cars. It is the only racing game I play at the moment (on hard / elite) Mostly I am just using quick race mode and enjoying losing and winning some races.

My main gripe with career mode is the use of loaner cars. There are some events I just can't complete because I can't modify the loaner car setup in any fashion. I'm sure if I could lower & tighten the suspension on the Corvette (Invitational B) for example I could complete it. I'd like to buy one and do 50 laps on default setting, but it is only available as the prize car of the event I can't complete d'oh!

I think some of these arguments would be less fraught & polarized if people could drop the Sim vs Game bit. Technically they are all simulating driving / racing. The point of contention is how much of the real physics they attempt to model and how accurately.

I find S2U harder to drive and much more punishing of mistakes than other current titles out there. More challenging all round really. Purely subjectively this feels more like reality to me, which is why it is now living constantly in the PS3 while certain other titles that are so easy to drive and win races are gathering dust in the corner.

 

[RomKnight]

The point of contention is how much of the real physics they attempt to model and how accurately.

That's how I would define the line dividing sim and arcade games. So not all are SIMs (to me)

 

[alfaV6boy]

"I think some of these arguments would be less fraught & polarized if people could drop the Sim vs Game bit. Technically they are all simulating driving / racing. The point of contention is how much of the real physics they attempt to model and how accurately. "

This.

Basically if we take what simulation means we can say that certainly Shift is SIMULATING driving, i mean, its not football is it. Whilst on this point FIFA games simulate football we have golf games etc etc...all SIMULATING something. Even FPS are simulating shooting etc.

As the above poster says its then just how they chose to simulate and to what level.

Now for me personally, the very bare basic minimum i ask for in any driving game is that it can at least SIMULATE the actual way i drive a car in real life.....which is basically........ in car!!

This is where GT5 let me down in 80% of its game and now Forza 3 looks cold a sterile in car, but at least all cars are in car....

But yeah, real proper mathimatical sim or not, shift 2 raised the bar for in car immersion.... for that i tip my hat...

Frankly anyone who talks of GT5 as being perfect in its physics well its all a mute point if you have to drive chasing the car like mario kart.

 

[NLxAROSA]

Interesting comments by Ian. As others have already noted and explained in quite a lot of detail, this confirms what we already knew. The Shift engine is actually quite amazing and detailed (up to the point where it's probably too much for a console to handle at this point), but is plagued by bad setups that are basically neutered to cater for pad users. Why they chose to do this in the car setups rather than the controller settings is beyond me, but I'm sure they've had their reasons for it. I hope they can fix this in an upcoming iteration (whether that be Shift 3 or something else), because I can definitely see the diamond in this rough gem.

 

[Tireseas]

Ironic that by "catering to the pad users" they screw up the pad controls to the point it requires hours of fine tweaking in the control settings *and* the car settings in some cases to make the game drivable comfortably with a pad. It literally feels at times as if they took all the criticism from the first game about the controls, most of which were eventually sorta alleviated, and went "Hey guys! lets make it even MORE twitchy!".

If it's a fault of SMS themselves they need to be chained in front of GT5 and Forza till they get the idea of what proper pad handling is expected to feel like. If it's the fault of marketing weasels, they need to be tossed in stocks somewhere public while *everyone* who purchased the game gets an opportunity to give them the swift kick in the ass they deserve.