What a load of bull!

[CoolColJ]

After playing the PC version and modding it a bit, everything Ian Bell says is a lie

How does Need for Speed SHIFT’s difficulty settings compare to other simulation-style games?

SHIFT is built on the most advanced physics engine we've made, and is by far the most advanced and realistic physics engine of any of the mainstream racing games. We're talking about an engine that can run unlimited threads, detailed physics parameters running at around 400 Hz on consoles. Things like tire deformation based on g-forces, tire pressures, rubber thickness, which only the most diehard sim fans will notice, but we know it's there.

We have a full realism hardcore mode called Pro that you can choose to race in from the start that will feel natural and comfortable as well as raising the bar for handling compared to anything out there (or due out soon) for all of our hardcore race sim fans. This can be combined with one of three AI difficulty levels, and on the Hard setting, the AI will fight extremely hard and give no quarter - even the most talented racers out there will find a great challenge here. The AI will block your pass attempts, take places back, make mistakes and end up overcooking corners, and will hold a grudge against you if you are too aggressive towards them.

You'll really get to know these drivers and rivals over the course of the game, and they'll get to know you and your unique Driver Profile.

How will the damage effect car performance in "Pro Mode"?

There are four levels to the driving model, and all driving models give you the choice of using visual damage only or 'full' (performance) damage. Again, the engine supports any level of realistic visual to physical damage but we will be tuning the levels to ensure a fun experience. Bumpers will fly off, hoods will be popped open, doors will be bashed in, and if you've got full damage on, your suspension will bend, your steering will pull or get sloppy, and your engine will be destroyed, barely limping around to the end of the race. We made the decision to keep the focus on action without critically severe punishment, since this is a racing game, not a crashing game. There will be consequences to your actions with full damage on, and it will likely destroy your race, but you will always be able to at least limp across the finish line to collect your profile points.

What did Slightly Mad Studios do to ensure the accurately reproduce the tracks?

Our track layouts are extremely realistic. This is an area where we are confident we are surpassing the competition. We use data from multiple areas to ensure this. In addition to satellite imagery and GPS data, our track modellers have studied thousands of hours of video, ensuring that the experience of racing on a real life circuit in SHIFT matches every detail of the live onboard racing footage seen. Additionally, we have been extremely fortunate to have been provided with detailed racing telemetry data from certain racing teams, which allows us to reverse engineer the nuances of a track's character through studying suspension movement, braking points, and g-forces on the real racing cars. It's not enough to simply get measurements and photos. If you want to recreate the experience, you have to know the subtleties of the track's surface contained in these data treasures that even laser scanning can't deliver. It does no good to know about a 5mm bump in the track if you have no data to show how it makes a car react. And the reaction, the experience, is what truly matters.

Will each different car model have a dedicated physics file? How many car and physics files are in NFS Shift?

Yes, each car has its own unique physics file, plus there are unique files for suspension types, tire types, gearbox types, turbo/supercharger types, engine types, etc. There are more than 500 separate physics files in the game as of now, many with dynamically changing aspects. This huge collection of files allows our physics programmers to create a detailed and realistic simulation of all of the key defining factors in car behaviour and many of the more subtle details that are missed in nearly all racing games. This is the difference that makes a player say "this just feels right!" when playing SHIFT. For example, when the tire sidewalls flex under load in a corner, it minutely changes the shape and location of the tire's contact patch, which in turn changes how the tire grips the tarmac as it strains to keep hold. Without details like this a driving game can still be fun, but it can feel sterile and dead. With SHIFT we're pushing the limits of physics processing on consoles, delivering a racing experience that is alive, gripping, visceral, and believable.

 

[jjaisli]

About a year ago, I exchanged thoughts with two people I would classify as industry insiders who had the chance to play early builds of Shift, several months or more before it's release. And both independently claimed that the the final product felt markedly different to what they remembered of the earlier builds. The consensus seemed to be that the EA think tank decided that some tinkering, more in the direction of 'arcade' style levels of grip and handling dynamics, were more in order to satisfy the general gaming public. And that's what we ended up with.

Taking Ian Bell's claims at face value, I tend to believe this is exactly what happened. A gain for EA sales but a loss for the Sim Racing community.

 

[boxox]

After playing the PC version and modding it a bit, everything Ian Bell says is a lie

Well,

How does Need for Speed SHIFT’s difficulty settings compare to other simulation-style games?

SHIFT is built on the most advanced physics engine we've made, and is by far the most advanced and realistic physics engine of any of the mainstream racing games. We're talking about an engine that can run unlimited threads, detailed physics parameters running at around 400 Hz on consoles. Things like tire deformation based on g-forces, tire pressures, rubber thickness, which only the most diehard sim fans will notice, but we know it's there.

The only change here in the final product is they ran it at 360hz.

We have a full realism hardcore mode called Pro that you can choose to race in from the start that will feel natural and comfortable as well as raising the bar for handling compared to anything out there (or due out soon) for all of our hardcore race sim fans. This can be combined with one of three AI difficulty levels, and on the Hard setting, the AI will fight extremely hard and give no quarter - even the most talented racers out there will find a great challenge here. The AI will block your pass attempts, take places back, make mistakes and end up overcooking corners, and will hold a grudge against you if you are too aggressive towards them.

You'll really get to know these drivers and rivals over the course of the game, and they'll get to know you and your unique Driver Profile.

Everything mentioned to do with AI is visible as an explicit setting in \ai\drivers\driveraitweaker.xml.

How will the damage effect car performance in "Pro Mode"?

There are four levels to the driving model, and all driving models give you the choice of using visual damage only or 'full' (performance) damage. Again, the engine supports any level of realistic visual to physical damage but we will be tuning the levels to ensure a fun experience. Bumpers will fly off, hoods will be popped open, doors will be bashed in, and if you've got full damage on, your suspension will bend, your steering will pull or get sloppy, and your engine will be destroyed, barely limping around to the end of the race. We made the decision to keep the focus on action without critically severe punishment, since this is a racing game, not a crashing game. There will be consequences to your actions with full damage on, and it will likely destroy your race, but you will always be able to at least limp across the finish line to collect your profile points.

They turned this off for the release other than aero damage, but everything else is literally a 0/1 switch to turn on as mentioned.

What did Slightly Mad Studios do to ensure the accurately reproduce the tracks?

Our track layouts are extremely realistic. This is an area where we are confident we are surpassing the competition. We use data from multiple areas to ensure this. In addition to satellite imagery and GPS data, our track modellers have studied thousands of hours of video, ensuring that the experience of racing on a real life circuit in SHIFT matches every detail of the live onboard racing footage seen. Additionally, we have been extremely fortunate to have been provided with detailed racing telemetry data from certain racing teams, which allows us to reverse engineer the nuances of a track's character through studying suspension movement, braking points, and g-forces on the real racing cars. It's not enough to simply get measurements and photos. If you want to recreate the experience, you have to know the subtleties of the track's surface contained in these data treasures that even laser scanning can't deliver. It does no good to know about a 5mm bump in the track if you have no data to show how it makes a car react. And the reaction, the experience, is what truly matters.

Have to agree here, the tracks are of a ridiculously higher standard - check Donnington in GTR2 vs Shift, or Brands Hatch in Race 07 vs Shift. Shift makes them look like absolute embarrassments. Some VLM tracks and the 3 new ones in Race On are about the same standard, but Race On shipped quite a while afterwards.

Will each different car model have a dedicated physics file? How many car and physics files are in NFS Shift?

Yes, each car has its own unique physics file, plus there are unique files for suspension types, tire types, gearbox types, turbo/supercharger types, engine types, etc. There are more than 500 separate physics files in the game as of now, many with dynamically changing aspects. This huge collection of files allows our physics programmers to create a detailed and realistic simulation of all of the key defining factors in car behaviour and many of the more subtle details that are missed in nearly all racing games.

He got it wrong here, there's actually 706 separate files in there. The turbo/supercharger and tyre model is a huge step up from what they did previously. The suspensions are slightly disappointing in terms of number but in terms of addressing a console audience, a big step up. Check something like Forza3's physics files and it's just a totally flat "aarm, leaf, tarm" set of assignments to cars - with less variation than Shift serving far more cars. I think they bit off more than they could chew trying to feed 77 cars through the ISI suspension model and kludged it as best they could using fit-to-wheel assignments and adjusting rates rather than dimensions.

This is the difference that makes a player say "this just feels right!" when playing SHIFT. For example, when the tire sidewalls flex under load in a corner, it minutely changes the shape and location of the tire's contact patch, which in turn changes how the tire grips the tarmac as it strains to keep hold. Without details like this a driving game can still be fun, but it can feel sterile and dead. With SHIFT we're pushing the limits of physics processing on consoles, delivering a racing experience that is alive, gripping, visceral, and believable.

Correct here again, also the tyre contact / ground contact model is handed off onto a dedicated set of threads treating the ground as a giant collection of physx meshes in contact with 4 tyres fed an area/volume/properties from the tyre files.

What exactly have you modded? It sounds like you don't really know where things live.

 

[Timppaq]

About a year ago, I exchanged thoughts with two people I would classify as industry insiders who had the chance to play early builds of Shift, several months or more before it's release. And both independently claimed that the the final product felt markedly different to what they remembered of the earlier builds. The consensus seemed to be that the EA think tank decided that some tinkering, more in the direction of 'arcade' style levels of grip and handling dynamics, were more in order to satisfy the general gaming public. And that's what we ended up with.

Taking Ian Bell's claims at face value, I tend to believe this is exactly what happened. A gain for EA sales but a loss for the Sim Racing community.

If this is true it annoys me to no end! If it's only depending of the tinkering, why not give an option (again, how hard can it be?) to change the physics, even just for private rooms / hotlapping, to the most realistic possible?

 

[boxox]

Yes clearly what happened is that SMS had a Real Sim ready to ship and at the last moment some guy (probably even a guy wearing a suit) at EA insisted that they put in a secret code saying sim=0. Because nothing says "industry insiders" like that kind of thorough understanding of software development.

 

[CoolColJ]

I'm using the Overhaul mod, but the FFB still feels strange, I tried copying the values from GTR Evolution, but it still feels different.
It feels better than Vanilla though, which means The statements made can't be taken with any truth....

The F430 seems to like to jiggle around a bit, which is cool, but none of the other cars thus far seem to feel the same. Weight transfer could use more work.
You rarely get into a situation where a snap spin will occur, which we know happens quite a bit in real life.

 

[boxox]

Well, I can't really speak for a lot of things in Overhaul (since there's a lot of people who worked on it up to now). But, the 3 main things I'm looking at changing for next version is restoring the original FFBMult (at some point in the past this got set to 0 rather than 1/1.2), restoring the default differential settings (at the moment a lot of cars have something closer to an open diff plus identical power/coast, which is OK for some cars, but absolutely kills most FWD and some EDiff style cars like the F430s) and changing the curve at which downforce relates to the bodykit level. So while it can be a bit of a mess in there in Overhaul it's not exactly a sitting target either

If you keep reading the Ian Bell interview you'll see that he basically regards frequent low and high speed snap spins in a "sim" as an example of something that sims tend not to get right rather than as some kind of Sim Mark Of Quality. It's not something that you should get mugged by for no reason - you need to go around wearin' a real purdy dress (put one wheel out onto a surface with different grip, try and use engine braking rather than brake brakes too much, too much throttle and too much lock before downforce kicks in) first, then you get mugged.

They actually ran into this same problem with GTR2, where, having fixed a bug that would reduce the contact patch size to 0 for a split second blip in GTR in some circumstances, they got pelted by a small minority of "real sim" fans for not replicating the same bug twice. Just being difficult about spinning in general isn't a great example of realism, it's just as much bollocks as Outrun if it's not difficult in the right circumstances.

 

[CoolColJ]

Well I do know that when you oversteer, the car can snap back real quick in real life, I get it all the time when I try to drift my work van

It regains grip rather abruptly which then swings the car in the opposite direction in quite a scary manner. These are with pretty crappy economy tyres as well, and I'm not using a whole lot of lock, at least nowhere near as much as what you'd use in a game to control the oversteer. When this happens I can feel a certain kind of "force feedback" from the wheel. This Van has no power steering.
Shift isn't giving me this feeling.

There is one specific case I had last week, where it was quite wet, and I did my usual hooning on this particular wide junction, without any traffic around. I entered this turn at about 60kph, the car understeered on entry and slide sideways ( which freaked me out a bit, I wasn't expecting it) the wheel went light in my hands, and you could feel the float, then the rear wheels dug in and it spun as I nailed the gas. The van started to oversteer, and the auto countersteer than happens kicked in, but when the rear wheels regained grip, there is a bit tug on the wheel loading up you hands to the opposite direction. LFS simulates this quite well out of all the games I've tried. And Enthusia as well.

There should be times where you become a passanger, regardless of what you do, this is where I feel GT5's current physics engine nails it. It's all about the weight transfer functions.

 

[boxox]

FFB in Shift is pretty similar to using 100% ReelFeel in RFactor, which is very different from something like stock GTR2/GTR Evo feedback. There are no canned effects, and the only thing you should get from it is feedback on what the steering rack is doing. It's literally running the 3d model of the tyres > wheels > suspension > steering rack > steering wheel, and you get only what is felt by the steering wheel at the end of the chain. So canned feedback you would ordinarily get in the default ISI style FFB from what the tyres are doing, or what the chassis is doing, or what the engine is doing, are totally absent, on purpose - if it's not something ultimately coming from the interaction of the suspension model with the ground surface, you don't get anything. The extent to which it can be changed is limited to pretty much how much weight it should give to the car weight vs current grip level (eg how easy the wheel should be to turn if given where weight is distributed on the rack, and how hard it gets to turn vs the tyres resisting motion from the rack), whether there should be feedback from the back wheels as well as the front wheels, and how much the FFB should be multiplied before it's sent to the FFB driver on the wheel. There are some good changes other people made to FFB in the first parts in Overhaul, but at the moment it's multiplied 0 times before being sent to the FFB driver, which can feel pretty weak (I'm pretty sure unlike RealFeel, Shift isn't designed around using that multiplier), especially as you increase the range of steering motion the wheel at the user's end is capable of using. There are HUUUUGE long threads about this style of FFB system over the years, ermax's posts here give a decent short version of how it works.

It does tend to lead to slightly awkward situations like ISR bagging Shift's FFB while Techade of ReelFeel plugin fame was simultaneously posting about the FFB being actually pretty good

But yeah, definitely for next Overhaul you should see more feedback from induced oversteer/induced understeer situations where the steering wheel is more aggressive about aligning itself with the front wheels.

 

[CoolColJ]

The main thing that annoys me is this feeling like there is a small deadzone and then this weird build up of force just off centre. Hard to explain in words, but it just feels weird to me. None of the other games I play feel like this. Vanilla or Overhaul, they both feel about the same to me in this regard. Perhaps the FFB is reversed or something.

On the PC, for me the benchmark would be the Ferrari Virtual Academy/Netkar Pro for FFB feel

 

[boxox]

As ermax says, the main problem with trying to use the method is a lack of power and depth in the FFB motors on most wheels. If you're only feeding in resistance from the rack, and have to use the stiffening spring to do that, you have no mechanism by which to centre the wheel on it's own at 0 degrees deflection. You would basically need a third motor/third magnet to totally replicate it. For me, I'd much rather just use some centering spring values in the wheel control panel and keep it related to the 3d world/3d suspension, than use canned effects.

 

[Destinkeys]

Sorry for a lowly console player butting in, but at least there seem to be SOME here that have a grip (LOL) on what is going on...

I'd REALLY like to know what is happening with the wild oscillation that happens as you thunder down a straight (or putter down a straight in a low powered car...). CoolColJ pretty much describes it. There seems to be a weird strong point in the FFB just off center, and it makes driving a straight line an exercise in frustration.

Sadly, as deadzones completely ruin the reality of the experience for me (I have a DFGT) and rigidly locking my elbows down and struggling (and usually failing) to maintain a straight line is tiring in the extreme, I am forced to keep Low Steering Assist on (but it's the only assist I use) and miss out on Pro Mode altogether.

So, can anyone explain what is going on, and whether it is likely that SMS can correct this for Shift2. Unless this changes, I can't honestly see me getting the sequel...

 

[LaBounti]

Ah so the developer is being dictated much like turn 10. It must really tick off the producers that the guys in suits want you to change all your hard work..... on the flip side Sony has been sweating bullets with the loss profits and high budget of GT5. Sony should get a grip like Microsoft and EA....

 

[CoolColJ]

I really don't know why, there are different levels/modes in the game. Pro mod should be just that.....