F1 by Codemasters

[TurinTur]

I didn't find the previous thread (if there was one), so here it is one new.

I just found this video, and looks pretty good, both in looks, and the features commented. Enjoy

http://www.golem.de/1006/75841.html

[Paul_cze]

That did look quite nice.
Looking forward to having this weather system in codies racer games I actually care about.

[Fugitive]

The PC version is available for preorder on Steam now, for $36/£27/40.49€, and a September 21st release date (here, anyway). I haven't heard any actual hands-on impressions yet, but it still looks good, at least.

[Manresa]

a September 21st release date (here, anyway).

I guess they think F1 fans don't care about Civ?

[armand v]

I wet my shorts from that first clip. Some of the things he was describing were amazing and all the cars and Spa and the weather effects look amazingly well done[too bad GP cars are designed so ugly these days].
I'm just getting excited about Grand Prix racing again and I can totally see this dominating my gaming time before the holiday rush.

obviously not as good as the clip in the OP, but here's a recent trailer http://formula1-game.com/en_US/index.php

[Rock8man]

I guess they think F1 fans don't care about Civ?

Yeah, I'll be too busy with Civ 5 to play this. Plus the idea of a racing game exclusively focused on F1 cars doesn't appeal as much as a more diverse racing game.

[djotefsoup]

VirtualR linked a couple of review scans:

Playstation Magazine (http://www.virtualr.net/f1-2010-playstation-magazine-review-steam/)

XBox Magazine (http://www.virtualr.net/f1-2010-xbox-magazine-review/)

Have to say every time these guys put out a new video I get more excited about this, where I've gone from "eh codemasters" to "wow this is might be as big a jump as the old F1-99". This one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKRLSLY_CQg) of monaco in the wet from the other week is pretty awesome.

[Manresa]

the idea of a racing game exclusively focused on F1 cars doesn't appeal as much as a more diverse racing game.

It depends: if the physics are on par with Forza or Grid, it'll be a disappointment, if the single-series focus means they nail the physics, I'm all in (meaning I'll buy it, set up the wheel for a week or two, and never get within 3 seconds of a good lap time).

[Manresa]

Then again, maybe not:


Players will become immersed in the building excitement and drama of a race weekend as they interact with rival drivers, team members, fans and the press which all affect the way the gamer’s career plays out.from the Codemasters (http://formula1-game.com/en_US/f1news_page.php?article=Live+the+life+of+a+FORMULA +ONE%E2%84%A2+driver+with+the+new+F1+2010%E2%84%A2 +developer+diary) site

[Tim James]

I almost wish I hadn't seen that video since it was running low realism settings. It was goofy watching him casually driving along and still keeping up.

It also seems like we still can't make a smooth racing game in 2010. Getting tired of watching cars jittering around each other when passing in the slow turns.

I'm open to a pleasant surprise though. And I usually do time trials anyway. Need the hardcore sim racers to get their hands on it.

[djotefsoup]

There's a long review of the gamescon build on 360 (full real) and PC (assists) by RobinNL (old RSC dude) over here (http://www.robinchung.com/articles/columns/f12010gamescomimpressions.html). Apparently gamescon still didn't have final physics code for the build there.


And like that my F1 2010 experience was over. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it, especially because the handling was so good. It felt like an updated F1 CE, which is a good thing. The cars understeer more than they did in F1 09 for the Wii, and I honestly felt where the grip was and where it wasn’t. And some of the curbs were ride-able but not all of them! These are aspects that give me the impression that this game is somewhat doing a good job of representing the difficulties and experience of F1. Handling wise it’s more forgiving than the likes of rFactor but who says which one is more realistic?
Bottom line is this: F1 2010 has close to the whole package. It has the sound, it has the graphics and I enjoyed the racing very much. I could feel what happened to the car and found myself coping with everything off on hard. But then again I’m used to the likes of GTR2, rFactor and back in the days GP4. I’d say that I’m an enthusiast with a capital E. And this enthusiast is definitely buying F1 2010 as soon as possible.

[armand v]

good stuff- thanks for posting that.

More+more it appears this is the game for me before holiday avalanches.

Anybody know if you can create your own driver? Or do you have to drive as an existing Grand Prix driver?

[eliandi]

I'm watching this one to see how the physics turn out. The review above is heartening, so I hope its not a dumbed down arcade racer.

[Tim James]

I'd like to know what RobinNL thought of GRID. I didn't like how it felt at all with a wheel.

[djotefsoup]

I agree Grid was awful with a wheel controller. I would definitely think he would mention it if it was that bad. There were some nasty bugs in the control setup of the release version of Grid though - some typo in the controller files that treated them like a gamepad, and they did eventually improve the controller code a bit for the 1.3 patch. Dirt 2 was a big step up from Grid on a wheel too - not great with a high rotation wheel setup, but once you got it into 270-360 degree sort of territory it was fine. In an F1 game there's really not much reason to use more than that, so if they can just manage not to screw it up with a typo again it should be fine.

[Lunch of Kong]

Any updates or reviews? If I liked TOCA 2 and GT Legends, will this float my boat?

[TurinTur]

Reviews are going from 8.0 to 9.0. Driving feeling is well done, and in general is worthy F1 game, at least, but it isn't a true sim, there is concessions in that regard, from the damage model to the contact with the grass. The interviews with the press and all that is novel but repetitive. AI seems to be pretty hard.

[spiffy]

I'm a huge fan of the Dirt2 control feel, but I'm worried that like most other open wheel racers I've played, the driving will be too fast and twitchy for me. that's the nice thing about Dirt.. when you drive sloppy you still feel like you're doing it right. In open wheel racers, if you haven't memorized the track you're screwed. And even if that driving line thing is supposed to help you, it's such as immersion buster.

[intruder]

From a PC collector's perspective it's sad but the game better dies a fast death (is not successful).

Why?

Because apart from pre-orders it will be digitally only in the UK.
It's digitally only in the US btw meaning it will not be possible to have a retail English PC version once the game is released.

Luckily "Split/Second" tanked which also tried that stunt in the UK.

[spiffy]

wut ?

[rei]

lolwut?

[sam and the firefly]

I dunno, is what essentially amounts to a sports game with a number on the end really a precious collector's item for you? I don't think I'd be bothered, much less be able to find a physical copy in a physical store in the first place these days.

I'm interested in this game for sure, but a demo would be useful.

[red guy]

Because apart from pre-orders it will be digitally only in the UK.
It's digitally only in the US btw meaning it will not be possible to have a retail English PC version once the game is released.
Maybe you can buy from Holland? Chances of translation of this game into Dutch are slim.

spiffy, I think that's an integral part of F1 racing: if you don't know every inch of the track, you're screwed. So I wouldn't expect the game to reward sloppy driving. Also, on Fidgit, you can read the opinion that as a kart game, it fails (http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/09/f1_2010_is_the_worst_kart_raci.php). But I don't know if that opinion is based on anything more than the press release, which follows in F1's great tradition of taking itself way too seriously.

[Sander 001]

Got my copy a bit early and have been playing this for almost a day now.

Impressions:
-The sound of 19,000 rpm Formula 1 motors is absolutely exact. When you're accelerating over the kerbs and the tires are looking for grip so the engine is sort of struggling or bouncing on the rev limiter...wow it's exactly like watching a real F1 race on television.

-the difficulty is a challenge. I mean: There are 4 overall settings which can be further adjusted within with things like traction control, ABS, line suggestion etc. BUT the thing is that 3 of those overall settings make the AI cars so slow that I was able to put my Force India on pole by well over a second with no assists at all on Hard. Expert would be great but on some tracks it seems impossible to keep up(Australia) and if you push too hard and make a mistake, there's no Rewind feature(on expert)!

-oh yes, you have to have the tracks memorized even if you have the suggested line on at all times. I've played F1 games before so I know most of them but your first race is in Bahrain, a relatively new track so before I went to do the race, I probably did 70 laps in the practice sessions, qualifying etc to get the handle on things.

I could go on...overall, I'm having a pretty good time but I'd say if you're not an F1 fanboy, you likely won't enjoy it very much.

[djotefsoup]

Same here.

Not great.

Not terrible.

Ferrari Virtual Academy has little to worry about from F12010, hardcore simracer wise, but it's much improved from Grid. I've seen some strange things (spin at 150kmh brought to an instant stop by slamming down the accelerator while the car was sideways - buh!?) but in general as long as you don't go looking for stuff to poke fun at you won't find much.

The controller defaults are truly terrible - I have no idea how hard this actually is to do from scratch, but it seems to me, if you have an option for setting a deadzone, and you make the wheel presets ship with 5% deadzone in the middle, you should be taken out back and shot. I spent a long, long time getting the saturation/linearity right - it feels like there is a small delay in the engine sound vs actual engine physics vs shifter light/hud display and this doesn't help much.

The codemasters piss-christ light filter has made an unwelcome return - I saw shots of the PC vs PS3 and 360 versions and the PC seems to have this the worst of all, but wow, it's distracting. I don't know why they insist on it, it looks terrible. As with Grid the underlying assets, minus the piss filter, are very, very nice, and I expect to see a lot of the tracks stolen and converted to other games the moment a file converter is made.

The interface is very Dirt2, lots of pointless camera pans between options, lots of screens where it's not readily apparent there IS something else you can select, lots of 'ambush' menus where you find you're buried in something that is 4-5 levels down from racing or the main menu. If you are in any way an impatient person this will drive you absolutely nuts.

[Thongsy]

I'm really just happy to have an F1 game again. Not really into super sim racers, but how does this compared to the last F1 game? I'll have to take at look at it sometime this weekend possibly if I get a chance. Hopefully it's actually widely available and not something I would've had to preorder.

[djotefsoup]

I don't mean to give the impression it sucks (how could you get that impression from a post that says it's not great and then complains endlessly? :)), it's just that most of the positives are adequate rather than mind blowingly awesome, and there are some issues with framerate, the AI, the interface, etc, that prevent me from really getting into it as much as I'd hoped.

As a "car sim" it's not bad, and as an "F1 career sim" it's really, really good. There's a lot of stuff to do with that - managing your supply of engines, tyres, your teammate, rivals, etc - that hasn't been done anywhere near as well before, and on those grounds it's a huge leap ahead. It's got a lot of features out of the physics toolkit of something really, super beardy like netKarPro. Perhaps not always with exactly the same feel or fidelity, but they're there, and it doesn't embarrass itself in the attempt by any means. It looks and sounds great - both the tracks and cars, every track and car looks distinct, and different areas of the tracks even sound distinct from each other.

For me it's definitely in solid "8" sort of territory on the old 7-9 scale. It's more that I'm annoyed at a collection of small things that prevent it from being the 9.5 sort of game I was getting my hopes up for.

[djotefsoup]

OK, so just to check whether I'm insane:

http://i56.tinypic.com/i4quk9.jpg

http://i53.tinypic.com/286uwl3.jpg

OK, so the blue level is blown out a bit on the top one, but surely anything looks better than the grey/yellow piss filter? Right? They made it look like that on purpose, but I don't know why...

[Sander 001]

I'm really just happy to have an F1 game again. Not really into super sim racers, but how does this compared to the last F1 game? I'll have to take at look at it sometime this weekend possibly if I get a chance. Hopefully it's actually widely available and not something I would've had to preorder.As far as console F1 games, it's the best ever. That isn't saying a whole lot but I will say it's a very good racing game. I like all the things that try to make it an F1 experience like setting up your car with your engineer, weather forecasts, live sector timing, car development, pit lane speed limiters etc etc.
The real meat of the game, the racing is very good and what you can expect racing an F1 car. The car takes high speed corners with such tenacity that it's no wonder F1 drivers must be fully fit because the G forces must be incredible. But the low speed stuff, particularly exiting corners, is where the real challenge is because you can spin out very easily if you don't have full traction control on. You must squeeze the throttle ever so softly and if you don't, you won't have time to counter steer and correct your mistake like you can with sports car sims like Forza. F1 cars are the fastest so require the best.

I actually really like the menus with the zooming and looking around. A fun little distraction, I spend extra moments in the garage just looking at unnecessary things.

Encountered a big flaw today: At the Chinese GP(4th race of the season) I was happily cruising on the last lap to secure 3rd place when right after I crossed the finish line the post race screen pops up and tells me that I finished 16th wtf! I did spin a couple times causing yellow flags and a small collision so maybe I got a time penalty or something actually. I wish it would've told me at the end of the race.

[kaosfere]

Dammit, I was hoping against hope that this wouldn't sound so good after release, so I could finish Mass Efect and dig into Amnesia

But now... FIE.

[PapaSmurf]

Personally, having watched some F1 racing and seen Richard Hammond try to drive an F1 car around a track, I'm of the opinion that there's maybe 1,000-5,000 people in the world that can drive an F1 racer properly. So any attempt at a simulation would be an attempt at frustration.

[Tim James]

Personally, having watched some F1 racing and seen Richard Hammond try to drive an F1 car around a track, I'm of the opinion that there's maybe 1,000-5,000 people in the world that can drive an F1 racer properly. So any attempt at a simulation would be an attempt at frustration.Yeah I've never been attracted to formula cars in sim racing for the same reason. Perhaps I haven't given them enough time. I'm relatively new to the genre anyway.

[kaosfere]

I must say, I absolutely love it if it takes scores of practice laps to turn a competitive time at a track you're not familiar with. It makes me sad when a game is so forgiving that you can bluster your way down a circuit you've never been on before and finish at least mid-pack. It cheapens the experience of hitting every corner at Spa *just right* within the first few laps because you've virtually raced about 10,000 laps on it in your lifetime.

Game downloading now. Can't wait to get home and play it. Dammit.

[PapaSmurf]

I stand by my point. Compare the in-game videos on Steam to the actual cockpit videos from the sport. Things are definitely slowed down for the game. It's just not possible to have Ayrton Senna-level reflexes, especially given that there's no "feel" for a car.

[kaosfere]

I stand by my point. Compare the in-game videos on Steam to the actual cockpit videos from the sport. Things are definitely slowed down for the game. It's just not possible to have Ayrton Senna-level reflexes, especially given that there's no "feel" for a car.

Oh, I agree with you completely. I'm a club racer myself, and only locally successful - I don't even pretend to have the most infinitesimal fraction of the skill the F1 boys do. Hell, karts terrify me; they're too extreme. I like having something that weighs a couple thousand pounds and corners on a quarter, rather than a dime. I just don't have the skill for anything else.

But it's fun to pretend, and the illusion is broken for me when you don't even have to *try* to find the perfect lines and the perfect braking points to be competitive. A true F1 sim would, indeed, be unplayable by almost the entire world, but I want to feel like it's at least *close* to reality, y'know?

Slowing things down a little for the cause is fine by me if the rest of it holds up and it doesn't feel like Need for Speed.

[PapaSmurf]

OK, so we're agreed.

My only point is that those complaining that this isn't a true "simulation", would in fact be racing at least in the JGTC if not DTM or at least NASCAR. Nobody else could handle the realism.

[krise madsen]

Personally, having watched some F1 racing and seen Richard Hammond try to drive an F1 car around a track, I'm of the opinion that there's maybe 1,000-5,000 people in the world that can drive an F1 racer properly. So any attempt at a simulation would be an attempt at frustration.

There's a remedy for that: Sir Geoff Crammond.

[djotefsoup]

The real meat of the game, the racing is very good and what you can expect racing an F1 car. The car takes high speed corners with such tenacity that it's no wonder F1 drivers must be fully fit because the G forces must be incredible. But the low speed stuff, particularly exiting corners, is where the real challenge is because you can spin out very easily if you don't have full traction control on. You must squeeze the throttle ever so softly and if you don't, you won't have time to counter steer and correct your mistake like you can with sports car sims like Forza. F1 cars are the fastest so require the best.

Yeah, I'm actually getting more impressed with the handling the more I play it. It does seem a little forgiving sometimes .. right up until the point where you count on it being forgiving and give it a little too much power on an exit or attack the corner a little too hard, and then you find you're on your own. It's not a "noob game" sort of thing at all - you have to drive Monaco very fast, and if you're off by an inch you kill the car. It does feel like it has a little bit of the Forza style steering assist sometimes, but it's not excessive, and it doesn't help you THAT much - you don't really get that much advantage out of it. Driving the wrong speed and wrong line is still punished pretty harshly.


Encountered a big flaw today: At the Chinese GP(4th race of the season) I was happily cruising on the last lap to secure 3rd place when right after I crossed the finish line the post race screen pops up and tells me that I finished 16th wtf! I did spin a couple times causing yellow flags and a small collision so maybe I got a time penalty or something actually. I wish it would've told me at the end of the race.

Well, here we get into something that really bugs me:

1) there is no view in the game that has any rear view mirrors in view that are of any use at all - they're just painted on, and they only vaguely sort of 'reflect' something that looks kind of like the part of the track you're on

2) the leaderboard display has no times displayed as to how far ahead or behind anyone is from you

3) the 'position indicator' warning you of nearby cars is just about the most useless thing I have ever seen

4) the AI are very, very similar to something you see in a Shift aggression race

5) every single collision with them is your fault, no matter whether you ran into them, or them into you. You brake early and they hit you? Your fault. They brake early (they will brake early and from out of nowhere, you can count on this happening) out of nowhere and you hit them? Your fault.

6) the AI seem to have very little awareness of what the line is, why they should be on it, or why it might be a bad idea to hop off it, then hop back on it, with little regard to who might be sitting on it at the time. In fact even when the game tells you they're going to let you overtake, actually, ESPECIALLY when it tells you they're a backmarker who'll let you overtake, it seems they will move from their current position off the line to blocking you from taking it.

In my book - you either simulate harsh penalties, or you make a game with crazy AI. If you put them both together you have something that is unbelievably frustrating. Half the time I feel like I have a multiple choice of which penalty to take - either for cutting or a collision - and no clean option, just because the AI stumbles around the line like a drunk idiot.

[jabroni]

5) every single collision with them is your fault, no matter whether you ran into them, or them into you. You brake early and they hit you? Your fault. They brake early (they will brake early and from out of nowhere, you can count on this happening) out of nowhere and you hit them? Your fault.
Maybe you have it in JPM mode.

[red guy]

But it's fun to pretend, and the illusion is broken for me when you don't even have to *try* to find the perfect lines and the perfect braking points to be competitive. A true F1 sim would, indeed, be unplayable by almost the entire world, but I want to feel like it's at least *close* to reality, y'know?
With traction control off, this game is unplayable for me. That definitely adds to the illusion, and it gives me room to grow as a virtual F1 driver with a Lotus contract.

This game beats the pants off that lifeless F1 2003 I have somewhere in my closet. My only gripes so far are that I would have preferred drivethrough or stop-and-go penalties to those silly "add ten seconds to your finishing time" (or in my case, 30 seconds in a ten-lap race) penalties they actually hand out, and that the second sector of Bahrain is just too damn hard. But every F1 weekend I get an itch to play some racing game, and this game seems the (almost) perfect cure. I'll be driving a lot of laps on the Singapore track tomorrow.

[djotefsoup]

There are drivethroughs, but it only seems to hand them out for collisions with multiple cars and when it thinks you're blocking the track.

[red guy]

it only seems to hand them out for collisions with multiple cars

Thanks. I suddenly foresee a major car pile-up right after the start of my next race; I have to see that.

[Timorous]

I had my first chance to play it last night and I did the first practice session for bahrain. I play with all assists off and I use an xbox pad. I like the handling, I tried playing f1c to get some practice but no matter how careful I was with the throttle the back end stepped out, in f1 2010 the handling feels stable without being easy. If you attack a curb too hard or hit a bump and put the power down before the rear settles you spin easily but you don't always feel like you are on a knife edge. The game does punish you for taking a bad line but it does so without being frustrating.

You can also tell the difference between the prime and option tires and between high and low fuel. I did a stint with high fuel on the primes and I struggled to hit apexes but when I did a couple of low fuel laps with the options I was about 8 seconds a lap faster and getting the apexes was a night and day difference.

The only problem I have is that bahrain sector 2 is pants, you have a bumpy sweeping right heading into a blind left followed by the double apex right hander where you cannot see the exit and I usually end up wide. Still I cannot blame codies for that abomination of a sector as they only copied what was there.

[Sander 001]

Once you get Bahrain sorted out, it turns out to be an easy track in terms of beating the AI. So far Bahrain is the only track where I won on Expert(with full traction control), from there on, I've struggled to even come close my teammate Sutil so I've put it down to Hard. And now on Hard it's very good because I'm where I should be(within the top 10 but not winning GPs).

[djotefsoup]

That's something I'm really liking about the career - there's absolutely no pressure to finish first, just better than someone else. Also, it gives you a great deal of flexibility in terms of hardware and setups, which in turn changes how hard you can hit qualifying, which totally changes how you approach the rest of the race/season. I'd really love them to take the F1 management side of it further next game - maybe it doesn't fit their "live the life" mould so well though. I wonder if it can be modded in somehow...

[Thongsy]

Wow, you guys are hardcore playing it on expert and hard. Doing 70 laps of practice and everything. If only I had the time to get that much into the game and do all that. The career mode sounds great though, with everything you can do. Looking forward to it. Stupid gamestop decided not to ship any copies up here even with a preorder, and it seem no other stores has it locally. So I'll now just have to play the waiting game and order it online.

[Sander 001]

I swear this game must be harder than driving a real F1 car sometimes. Yes there's a handful of people in the world who can drive f1 cars but I'm certain there's nobody in the entire world who can do the Monaco GP on Expert with no assists. There's just absolutely no freakin' way! With that setting, I think it would be an astonishing achievement to just finish the race by getting lapped less than 10 times.

edit: I've crashed many times already in f1 2010 but at Monaco I've had my first terminal crash: Destroyed the front of the car and a post crash window comes up telling me that I cannot complete the session. Also tells me I was doing 190km/h at point of impact, total damage was 87% to the car and that the g-force measured was 84. I hope I'm not dead.

[Timorous]

Well I think that expert is probably a bit too hard for me. I did qualifying in the HRT and got 24th, I was only a 10th off of 23rd but I was a fair bit further behind my team-mate. Although I hate sector 2 I am pretty quick through it. I was spinning more in P2 and P3 though because I tried to push that little bit harder. The game is rather forgiving upto a point but once you step over that line it kicks you in the ass.

I am enjoying it though and I will actually do my race a bit later on. It does require a lot of concentration to be consistent on each lap but I think I will cruise round at the back and I might pick up a few places from retirements.

[djotefsoup]

Some mods:

Frustration patch (http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/showthread.php?t=225202) - removes cut off, car collision and car blocking rules. These don't sound so bad until you drive around with 23 other cars that seem to completely ignore them leaving you as the one sucker who actually bothers taking penalties.

RPM lights fix (http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/f1-2010-game-89/f1-2010-rpm-lights-3271/) - such a small thing I know, but still manages to drive plenty of people nuts..

Realistic tyre wear (http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/f1-2010-game-89/realistic-tires-update-v1-3248/) - makes the surface texture change between fresh and worn tyres a lot more obvious.

Track lighting mod (http://www.nogripracing.com/details.php?filenr=29444) - which finally removes the piss filter from all tracks.

[Lunch of Kong]

I swear this game must be harder than driving a real F1 car sometimes.

I just had my first track weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, putting in 100+ miles per day doing laps. Trust me, it is not harder that the real thing. :-)

[Fugitive]

Some mods:

Frustration patch (http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/showthread.php?t=225202) - removes cut off, car collision and car blocking rules. These don't sound so bad until you drive around with 23 other cars that seem to completely ignore them leaving you as the one sucker who actually bothers taking penalties.
Aha, so it's not just my imagination that the race director AI seems way too eager to blame me for every little bump and scrape! Most of my flashback usage so far is just to undo a penalty levied against me that seemed unfair.

(Though mid-pack racing is admittedly my weakest point right now, and I do bump and ram other drivers too much when we're all bunched up. I do way better once we've all spread out.)

[djotefsoup]

Aha, so it's not just my imagination that the race director AI seems way too eager to blame me for every little bump and scrape! Most of my flashback usage so far is just to undo a penalty levied against me that seemed unfair.

(Though mid-pack racing is admittedly my weakest point right now, and I do bump and ram other drivers too much when we're all bunched up. I do way better once we've all spread out.)

I'm not sure - the AI is not really the game's strong point to begin with, and there has been a lot of monkey shit flung at CM for some of the stupid tricks it can pull. From what CM have said, practice and qualification times are entirely fake while the race times are "real" ("computationally real" anyhow) but affected by some bugs as the track streaming / AI LODing system does its work.

I don't really mind about the practice and qualification times being faked - other than that it is yet another thing the AI can screw up for you with no possibility of payback - but the AI LOD system seems to really mess it up when it comes to assigning scheduled pitstops and I think drivethrough penalties also get lost in the system somewhere too. They CAN get fully disqualified, and sometimes it appears their times are affected by penalties and place drops, so there's obviously something somewhere in there that does allow them to get affected by a penalty of some sort. But for the most part, yep, after a lot of career races my impression is still the same as it was at the start - almost any collision caused by them running into you is attributed to you blocking, and almost any collision caused by you running into them brake checking you is attributed to you driving dangerously.

I think at the core there are a few bugs (AI driving too slowly through some corners, AI LOD system, AI put system) that interact with each other to make it look like there are a lot more things going wrong than any individual bug. Really hoping there's a proper patch for this at some point, but the mod suffices for now.

[Sander 001]

Goddamn them. My 5 yr career has been wiped out by a corrupt save file.

With all the autosaving and only being able to save your career in one slot, I imagined these guys must be pretty confident about their save system. CONFIDENCE MISPLACED

And since it's all just one file, everything is gone, including all the car set ups that I tuned from each grand prix circuit. Goddamn them all.

[driillSGT]

I have to say that F1:2010 is now my favorite single player racing game on the 360. I've been playing this baby almost non-stop for the last two days. This is the first racing game that has ever caused me to lose sleep over. The career mode combined with an ultra-realistic driving AI is just so engrossing I just keep pressing on to see what course I'll find next; I just made it to Spa, now I can't go to bed because I need to stay up and see how it compares to the Spa tracks in my other racing games. This game has a tendency to unlock new tracks etc. very very slowly, so when you actually do unlock something new it's actually pretty damn exciting.

I own GRiD so I figured that this game would kind of suck in the same ways that GRiD sucked(horrible rubber-banding AI and sub-par graphics). F1:2010 fixed both of these major issues and has from what I've seen so far the best AI program in any 360 racing game. The AI has no problem fully lapping me if I'm doing really poorly, there's no rubber-banding, so you have to fight tooth and nail with 23 other cars each of which can potentially halt your progress if you don't master some solid over-taking skills.

On a side-note, I also have a lot of love for the AI in Need for Speed: SHIFT, except that the AI in SHIFT is not what you would call realistic. I've found that I much prefer the high tension created by the more realist racing in F1:2010, but SHIFT is still an excellent adrenaline rush with a decent multiplayer component. Forza 3's AI is poop so that game is not an option for me.

It seems like it would be easy for F1 to get lost in the shuffle of all the recent racing games, but if you're a serious circuit racing fan this is the game to buy. Unless you own a PS3, then you might opt for Gran Turismo 5. I don't own a PS3 though soooooo -shrug-.

[djotefsoup]

Yeah, I'm surprised the thread on this didn't get past 2 pages. They managed to kill off a lot of the 1.00 annoyances eventually, and mods have been created for most of the rest. F1 2010 is pretty much the standard for how good a single player career mode ought to be from now on as far as I am concerned.

[Rock8man]

Forza 3's AI is poop so that game is not an option for me.

It seems like it would be easy for F1 to get lost in the shuffle of all the recent racing games, but if you're a serious circuit racing fan this is the game to buy. Unless you own a PS3, then you might opt for Gran Turismo 5. I don't own a PS3 though soooooo -shrug-.

From all accounts, the AI in GT5 is much, much worse than the AI in Forza 3, so I think it's a good thing you don't have a PS3. :)

[newbrof]

I read the lap times for the AI drivers in F1 2010 are made up by the game. Right or Worng?

[djotefsoup]

For practise and qualifying they were, for races there was some confusion about how it measured lap times (race start, vs crossing start/finish) in v1.00 which confused some people. But not fake in races as far as I know. They do LOD out distant AI drivers and 'simulate' them at a lower-than-whole-3d-model level, but this is not really any worse than any "real sim" does when it comes to AI.

The F1 2010 community as a whole was, generally, pretty bloody silly about reading all sorts of things into file and parameter names that weren't actually borne out at all by how they worked. The lap time thing was along those lines. They could pretty much nuke the whole CM forum from orbit as far as I am concerned.

[driillSGT]

I read the lap times for the AI drivers in F1 2010 are made up by the game. Right or Worng?

In the actual race the times are real.

During practice and qualifying the times are fake. It's actually better this way IMO because the computer AI will let you pass when you're trying to get a good qualifying time rather than screw you by blocking your car while you're trying to set a good time. Personally I find qualifying to be the hardest part of the game, I've only had pole position twice. I usually end up around 15th or 16th place.

Rain can also figure into the Qualifying round because you only have 20 minutes to qualify and if it starts raining halfway through the qualifying round you along with any AI players that have not posted a good time will be stuck at the back of the pack. This is another little tidbit that I love about this game and how the change in weather can drasticaly change the whole layout of the upcoming race.

[Tim James]

Yeah, I'm surprised the thread on this didn't get past 2 pages. They managed to kill off a lot of the 1.00 annoyances eventually, and mods have been created for most of the rest. F1 2010 is pretty much the standard for how good a single player career mode ought to be from now on as far as I am concerned.Career mode has never interested me. Maybe I haven't played the right one. In the end, I only care about the feel of the driving. I like to crank out lap after lap in time trials, with an occasional race. I don't enjoy doing that with high-powered formula cars for whatever reason. Perhaps if I had some real world experience with them, I could relate and get more excited.

[djotefsoup]

Career mode has never interested me. Maybe I haven't played the right one. In the end, I only care about the feel of the driving. I like to crank out lap after lap in time trials, with an occasional race. I don't enjoy doing that with high-powered formula cars for whatever reason. Perhaps if I had some real world experience with them, I could relate and get more excited.


That's usually the case for me too, but they did some nice things with it in F1 2010. They made teams perform differently, have different R&D options and priorities, gave you a persistent rival (your teammate), let you change teams at the end of a season depending on what you made your avatar say and how you drove in certain spots in certain races, and the biggest thing, they made it so it's actually worth hanging on in a long race that you will most likely lose, or not even finish in the top 10.

That part has always been a huge issue in racing game career modes, and they found a way out of it that didn't involve tedious restarting/rewinding/reloading out of bad spots. They made the rewards for a good place meaningful, and didn't resort to "everybody wins" victories - like say, Shift giving you a 'win' for any top 3 place with only more unlock stars and money differentiating them - to do it.

[newbrof]

Thanks! Another thing is, do the AI drivers really never pit? That can't be true. I am starting to get into F1 and I am looking forward to a good F1 game.

[Fugitive]

The AI drivers do pit, but there was a bug that sometimes prevented them from doing so. It's supposed to be fixed with the latest patch.

[djotefsoup]

Yeah, there were a lot of problems with the AI system in terms of straight bugs and opaque behaviors that are fixed now. Most of the "crazy aggressive AI" stuff I was complaining about was more to do with them behaving strangely on certain corners (eg going much faster / slower than the player car) and failing to properly adjust at different stages of the race, which is mostly fixed now.

[Rock8man]

Thanks for the heads up guys. I'd written this game off, but I'll be looking for it once it hits bargain prices now. It certainly sounds like it's worth checking out for a racing game fan like me.

[driillSGT]

I started a second career and I'm gonna shoot for 7 seasons. The first season I started with HRT racing and it was fun but the car was soooooo slow I usually finished in the bottom half. I jumped ship on them at the end of the season and moved to the Torro Rosso team. That was like a night and day change. The car even without any upgrades handles as smooth as silk and usually finishes in the number 1 position(easy AI). The only races that I haven't won were Monte Carlo, Catalunya, and Budapest.

I'm currently wondering how the top three teams compare: Red Bull, Ferari, and McLaren. Anybody have driving experience with these teams? I tested them out a bit on the Grand Prix mode and my initial preference was for McLaren, if anybody else has raced with these teams let me know what you think. Are these cars any better than the Torro Rosso car? I play with full traction control on btw.

[Sander 001]

Good question. I seem to remember that McLaren has handling that's more forgiving but Ferrari may be better in straight line speed or some other area.

My career began with Force India and that car was surprisingly close from what I could tell. Results wise, I was able to regularly win on hard though struggled to even beat my teammate on expert half the time.

[driillSGT]

I was kind of turned off by that big giant pole sticking out of the Ferari hood. It did seem fast though.

The Ferari may be trying to overcompensate for something.

[Sander 001]

The Ferari may be trying to overcompensate for something.The lack of a Michael Schumacher. Zing! Oh I'd hate to be Fernando Alonso right about now...

[newbrof]

I love it. I started a 7 years career with full weekend and 20 laps for the race. I played it 2-3 hours and I am still on my first GP in Bahrain. You have to learn the race track in and out to have any chance at all to meet your goals (17th or better). I take it very serious, so I don't use other cars for bumping, I turned almost every assist of. This weekend I am going to tackle the GP...

[Fugitive]

F1 2011 is up for preorder on Steam now. I'd be more willing to buy them yearly if they weren't $50, though; now I know how Madden fans must feel...

[Fishbreath]

I'm waiting to see how it turns out. If 2011 is good, I expect I could stick with it for a few years, and it does look to be much more feature-complete than 2010 (as much fun as I have flying around tracks in 2010).

[Sander 001]

Yeah, I'll be monitoring the reviews and if it turns out well, I'll be there.
I really hope they fix the AI because sometimes it was too easy, sometimes you could get lapped 10 times by the entire rest of the field.

Did anybody race 2010 online? How was it?

[Thongsy]

I tried online in 2010 once, then never again. I crashed into two people in the first corner and felt terrible afterwards. There was about a total of five people in the race so I took out half of the field in one fell swoop.

[Fishbreath]

If you're a high-realism player, you're almost certainly better off organizing races at somewhere like RaceDepartment-- there's a fairly active F1 2010 community there, and they ought to know the start is the most dangerous part of the race. :P

[Sander 001]

'Thongsy, ruining it for the rest of us'
Kidding. Just showing remorse is already far better than the majority of online players.

[Fishbreath]

I've been frustrated by the AI's speed around some corners and sloth around others, so I finally went and tried an AI mod. This (http://www.racedepartment.com/f1-2010-mods/47322-download-team-ai-f1-2010-ai-tool-kit.html) one seems to be the most-used, and neatly adjusts the AI to be more consistent. Now they're just faster than my wee Virgin Cosworth around every corner, instead of slower around some and way faster around others.

[Sander 001]

1st review is in.

Playstation Official Magazine UK (http://www.metacritic.com/publication/playstation-official-magazine-uk?filter=games)
Sep 5, 2011

80

No rest, no pity, no remorse - it demands 100% of your attention. [Oct 2011, p.99]

[Fishbreath]

Sounds good so far. Probably a step up from the downright sadistic handling in 2010, but color me slightly concerned that they may have changed the handling for the worse from a realism standpoint. It's not as though I have any real frame of reference, but I feel like the twitchiness of cars in 2010 is really spot-on-- it's very, very easy to make a mistake and lose it (like I often did in the last chicane at Catalunya, until I changed my line to not cut the corners). I guess it's all speculation for now, though.

In other F1 2010 news, I took my first few laps around Monaco last night. I never had a good feeling for how cramped it is until then, and how hard it is to actually turn in good lap times.

[Sander 001]

Did you ever catch a spin before you went completely around? It took me a long while to realize you could actually do it because it happens so fast you think that there's no chance. But, because of the unrealistic recovery physics, you can.
I wonder if they've changed that for 2011.

[Fishbreath]

I caught a lot of things that were going to turn into spins-- no throttle and opposite lock straightens me out pretty well most of the time, and I've gone around a couple of corners almost sideways.

I've also stopped some real spins by locking up all four wheels, which doesn't seem like it would fix things. :P One of the 2011 video dev diaries shows a Red Bull getting into the air going over a kerb, then sliding a bit when it hits the ground but keeping it together through the exit of the turn.

[Sander 001]

As somebody who appreciates the genre, this is possibly the best review (http://www.videogamer.com/ps3/f1_2011/review.html) I've ever read for a simracer.

"Vehicles are less skittish than last year - heavier, that is - and require a greater degree of skill to tame. While putting more pressure on the player might seem like a step backwards, it's a much more faithful representation of car handling, rewarding those who use the whole depth of the right trigger and not just the two extremes."

[Manresa]

rewarding those who use the whole depth of the right trigger and not just the two extremes.

Trigger? I'm not sure you can evaluate handling in a racing sim without a wheel and pedals.

[djotefsoup]

Yeah, I'm not sure that the handling being too skittish was ever really brought up as a problem with '10 either.

[Sander 001]

So far getting 86 at metacritics. http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/f1-2011/critic-reviews

[Fishbreath]

Reviews in general look to be good. Impressions by a guy at RaceDepartment (who's reviewing it for some magazine/website in Australia) are a bit more nuanced-- the AI is very unwilling to leave the line and seems to have problems with running into you.

[Fishbreath]

On the strength of all the reviews I've seen so far in aggregate, I went ahead and preordered from Steam. Impressions to follow a little while after my commute home on the 23rd.

Edit: apparently it's unlocked today, so impressions... later today.

[Fishbreath]

Right, so what I think of it after half an hour and no races, in handy bullet point form:



In general I think the engine sounds are a step down. The Cosworth engines have a nice throaty sound to them, the Renault engines sound pretty pathetic, and I haven't tried Mercedes or Ferrari yet. In 2010, the Cosworth engines had very pronounced downshifts sound-wise. That's less the case now, and downshifts in general seem quieter, which means I'm having to learn to count the number of times I move my hand instead of the number of times I hear the downshift.
I don't know about the handling model. Reviews have been saying that cars feel heavier, which must be code for less responsive. No more darting into corners quite like you could do in 2010; the cars take an instant to really get into the corner. It's easier to tell that you're losing the car, but not much easier to fix it once you've lost it. So far the cars I've tried seem squirellier on corner exit than their 2010 counterparts.
The voice work is a step down (I think). The engineer is a lot less hammy and a lot less of a Geordie, which makes me sad. He got very, very excited when you exceeded expectations last year. Nor are there nearly as many voiced names for your career driver. 'Ian' wasn't one of them. You can either be coincidentally named the same thing as a current driver, or coincidentally named the same thing as a legendary F1 driver.
On that note, the career is largely unchanged mechanically, with the caveat that you can either do 20% races or 50%. There's nothing in between. Cosmetically, the career has been changed. You may or may not like it.
Speaking of things I did before P1 at Melbourne, the setup interface is nearly the same. The throttle map setting is now mixture, and it's possible to save fuel with a lean mixture or gain time with a rich one. You run the risk of running out with the latter.
Differences between cars are very, very pronounced. Moving from the Lotus car to the Williams was like night and day. Setup, too, is just as important as last year, if not more-- you may want to dial in a bit more cornering grip in the suspension so you can hit KERS or DRS coming out of a corner more quickly.
On the topic of setup, there is still no telemetry, which is a crying shame.
DRS and KERS are the game-changers they should rightly be.
Going into the grass is now a significantly greater penalty: grass has about the same effect on tires that bits of gravel stuck in do, except much worse.
Graphically, the game is slightly improved. Reflections are better. I got more of a sense of speed, as well. Per the last point, you can get grass stuck in your tires instead of just gravel.
The game is much more forgiving about invalidating laps in time-trial mode and qualifying. In related news, I'm currently 70th-some fastest in the world around Melbourne. Take that, people who haven't gotten home to time trial yet!

[Sander 001]

Yeah I watched some youtub clips and heard some terrible engine notes, but wasn't sure if it was accurate or not.
I hope to get my copy soon(PS3).
Thanks for impressions Fb.

[Fishbreath]

Further impressions: I'm two seconds slower or so. I'm about equally fast with the cockpit view and suggested line through the corners, or with the T-bar camera and no suggested line. Both feel about equally gamey to me.

Edit: I should have mentioned that I got an achievement last night called, "Have you tried DiRT 3?" after opening the DRS too early.

[Sander 001]

Heh, nice touch.
Surprisingly, Giantbomb has a quicklook of F1 2011 (http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-f1-2011/17-4927/). I haven't watched it yet.

[Fishbreath]

Gamespy's review was actually remarkably good. Once again they comment on how the engine sounds are good, which continues to baffle me. Maybe I have the wrong ones or something.

[Sander 001]

I've done the 1st 2 rounds of the season in career mode. The difficulty still has the same problem I remember from last year in that it can vary wildly depending on the track.
In 2010 I fine tuned the difficulty in round 1 so that I would compete realistically in my Force India, only to find myself dead, dead, dead last in round 2.
And now in 2011, since the Bahrain GP was cancelled and now Australia is Rd1, it's the reverse.

Anyway, I'm liking it but not finding a whole lot of improvement over last year's.

[Fishbreath]

With luck the modding community will come through with an AI mod to even things out, as they did for 2010.

In other news, the first major handling bug has been discovered: spring stiffness to 11 front and 11 rear leads to a car that's basically glued to the track. 10/10 is similar but less pronounced. 8/8 is some three seconds slower than 11/11 around Melbourne.

[divorced]

Man, this freaking game is brutal! Picked it up on Steam and thought I would try starting a career on easy just to get my feet wet. Did 5 good laps in Australia that felt like I couldn't have done much better...22nd spot!

I can't even imagine how hard this must be on hard!

[Sander 001]

When I played 2010, it was the first racing game I'd played in a while so maybe I didn't notice. But coming into 2011 with GT5 on mind and I find that F1 is really hurt by the lack of 60fps. You're further away from the gameplay, more divorced(heh) from your car and much less feel for the track. In GT5 you got great feel for your car, you know what each tire is doing, weight transfer, brake balance, downforce, all of it.
I envy you PC guys at this moment.
Man, this freaking game is brutal! Picked it up on Steam and thought I would try starting a career on easy just to get my feet wet. Did 5 good laps in Australia that felt like I couldn't have done much better...22nd spot!

I can't even imagine how hard this must be on hard!A few pages back I described how inhuman the difficulty could be and how I did 70 practice laps to get comfortable. Do the practice sessions and compare your lap times to see if you're on pace.
And remember to turn on all your aids like full traction control and driving line.
You're right though, Australia is much more difficult than average for whatever AI balancing reason.

[Fishbreath]

Yeah. When I finished my current computer a few months ago, F1 2010 became a whole lot easier. The difference between 30 and 60 frames per second is really, really easy to see when hundredths of a second matter.

divorced, car setup is absolutely critical for a good lap time. A good place to start is anti-roll bars, if you're not in the mood for cheating with the spring stiffness. If you're coming out of a corner and spinning out or finding no power (if you have traction control on), this should help: in practice, try stiffening the front anti-roll bar (toward minus) and softening the rear. That'll give you better traction through corners by keeping the front end flatter, and better traction on exit by keeping the rear wheels in contact with the road.

The AI is also much faster on Melbourne. Without changes to the difficulty, I went from two seconds slower than the lead at Melbourne to a full second faster at Kuala Lumpur, and that was on prime tires and with a non-optimal setup.

[Fishbreath]

There's something very heartening about watching Sebastian Vettel's pole lap at Istanbul and realizing that he's taking the same lines in the same gears that I was last night.