Imma gonna quote myself now.

Quote from BigPeBe :

Yeah sadly no physics mods available anymore. It's been quite a while now, I have googled every now and then to see if there are any people out there working with the physics, but surprisingly it seems that modding groups haven't been digging in to this. Maybe the devs made sure that Dirt can't be modded?

Things have turned for the better. Dirt Rally RFPE mod 0.4:
http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/dirt-rally-rfpe-project.12130/

Every car isn't featured yet, but it absolutely transforms the game for the cars that this mod supports. Difference is like night and day. Still not perfect, but a lot better than it was. RWD cars I still can't really enjoy, they seem to still feature this weird habit of self correcting the car from a slide without any real driver input. On AWD cars this isn't that much of a problem, because they have a tendency of straightening out with throttle IRL too, so in this game it just feels a bit exaggerated (ie. I would prefer a more oversteery setup myself).

Finnish stages were absolutely unplayable in the vanilla game, but with these physics dem Scandinavian flicks with 555 Impreza on the famous Kakaristo is just heaven.

Haha it wasn't quite as special as you are imagining. Yes that's a tree, but it was a fallen tree and the other end was hanging quite too close to the apex of that corner. So when I cut the corner a bit too bravely, the tree went trough the car's chassis near the tyre and buried itself in the engine bay. Thus swinging the car around and bringing it to a sudden hault.

Next weekend will include some fender kicking so we will get the car to drivable state again. Carbs need changing too, that tree bent one of the trumpets while it was penetrating the poor car. Will change the 40 solexes to a pair of 45 DCOE's while we're at it (have an extra pair laying around).

Quote from Keling :

Picked up this after playing at a friend's. Really enjoy the track modeling. (I'm not treating this as a sim so I don't mind the physics in general.)

Is it just me or is the AI highly inconsistent across different combos? I keep a comfortable gap ahead of the master level AI leader in most runs but every now and then there's a stage that makes me go "huh?" and retrying that combo leads to the same result.

I see some old "low grip mod" downloads floating around that change physics/setup XML files for each car to lower the grip. But as of version 1.22 the corresponding XML files don't appear to be real plain text files. Did they lock it down?

Yeah sadly no physics mods available anymore. It's been quite a while now, I have googled every now and then to see if there are any people out there working with the physics, but surprisingly it seems that modding groups haven't been digging in to this. Maybe the devs made sure that Dirt can't be modded?

Oops I guess. Lesson learned, NEVER leave gopro home.

Muh daily driven making some bangs and flames.

Am just gonna drop this here.
https://youtu.be/CVhUOqy-2fg

I was exited to try the new Finnish stages, but noticed that they have removed the ability to mod the tires to be slippier. At least before the combination Fiesta WRC + Gravel + low grip tires was fun, but now this game is completely useless to me.

Little video from my last trackday:

Quote from Gutholz :

So the chronometric gauge might be less disturbed by vibrations and easier to read?
Or maybe for some time it was just more accurate than other systems at its time.

I can not imagine that when the 917 was built it still was really huge advantage so perhaps tradition also played a role to keep it so long?

Yeah just after posting yesterday I read a little more about this, it was described that these types of tachos are quite stable under "hars conditions".
If you have ever seen how some old skool magnetic tachos react (slow, lagging behind, reading getting disturbed by g-forces etc.) it starts to make sense. Actually in my own car the original tacho reading fluctuates with cornering forces and it's not even that old ('86).

Chronometric gauges have become obsolete for obvious reasons, but even modern tachos tend to suffer from erratic behavior from time to time (at least the ones you don't have to pay top dollar for) so these things start to make sense to me. I still prefer the modern way tho.

Quote from Hyperactive :

Mechanical tachometer being worn or rusted or lack of lubrication. For example:
http://www.motorcycleforum.com/showthread.php?t=94629

Are you actually sure about this? This tachometer behavior seems really common with old Porsche race cars, mainly the prototype and Le Mans competition vehicles. I've seen it so often, and always in Porsches that it makes me wonder if it's actually designed like that. I'm pretty sure I've seen some historical period videos with them doing this back in the day also.

Funnily enough I have tried to google about this multiple times, but no info on the matter seems available.

-EDIT- Apparently I have finally made some progress with the googling. These are called chronometric tachometers and they are supposed to move like that. Thought why they are so common with old Porsches, that's another story.

Last edited by BigPeBe, Fri 17 Jul 2015, 19:11.

Quote from Scrabby :

started out with the Alfa Romeo Fulvia. Thought this thing was RWD at first

There is just so much wrong in these few words I can't even.

Quote from Klouczech :

I had quite exciting race on the Slovakia Ring. I really like that circuit.

Don't understand the the bad tire in the Race 1. It looked just same as others. Tires are used from Porsche Cup.

Whose mistake was the crash in Race 2, T1?
Tell me what you think

Beautiful racing. Clearly some adrenaline going on, but all gentleman maneuvers.

I'm gonna take a little back from my inital harsh review. I have found ONE car that feels natural to drive and that is the WRC Fiesta. Albeit with modded lowered grip and with funky setup (brake balance fully to rear). Still suffers from horrid understeer on the slow corners but I can at least "feel" the car under me and drive naturally.

Here's a video I recorded:

Since they released the FFB patch I had to give this a try.

Now there is finally self aligning torque. This is good, but on another hand it highlighted how broken the physics actually are. I just lost any hope of this ever becoming a sim. It's fun if you like pretty graphs and awesome sounds with physics that only remotely remind of a thing with four wheels, but if you guys are expecting a sim that actually feels natural to drive don't spend your money.

For a simracer it's actually really hard to drive because the way the cars act and react is completely unnatural.

Biggest problem definitely is with the RWD cars, AWD cars are a little better but I cant enjoy driving them either.

Well that looks disgusting. Fine for console guys I guess. Looks like the rim diameter is still toy spec small, so I guess they aren't planning stronger FFB motors.

I would like to see more competition on the higher level wheels to possibly make them a little more affordable.

I can't stop smiling watching this incar, just so damn beautiful.
https://youtu.be/iqx9cH_r9ig

Also:
https://youtu.be/Jk5Ve3hzsQQ

Some more historic Porsche goodness:

https://youtu.be/9YbKd1J2IFY

I haven't noticed anything and I'm typically quite sensitive to input lag. Altho the current FFB makes you kinda disconnected from the car so it's hard to say for sure.

Yeah I noticed but it doesn't work. Well, it kinda works because it alters the FFB, but it's still not right. There simply isn't any caster effect, or self-aligning torque (how you wanna call it). Currently the FFB is just a centering spring and some rumbles and shakes.

Ok I'm gonna confess I kinda hurried in to the decision and bought this, because I saw a thread about unofficial FFB fix on RaceDeparment:
http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/ffb-fixed.104679/

But no, it doesn't fix the ffb. I have driven this for a while now and I can see some potential, but with the current FFB it's impossible to judge the physics really because I can't feel what the car is doing, at all. Biggest problem is that the car doesn't counter steer (caster effect) thru the FFB at all, so I don't know when it's understeering or oversteering.

Codemasters seem to have acknowledged this problem, they mentioned they are working with this in the latest patch notes, so there is some hope.
There are other problems from a simracers POV too, not enough customizations to camera views and controller settings (I can't configure a H-shifter if it isn't the default G27 shifter).

Sounds are fantastic tho, I'm pretty sure that this is the first time I have actually heard a game to be able to deliver a believable representation of the induction note of a N/A 4-cyl engine.
And not just that, every engine I have yet heard sounds spot on. Even a realistical sounding anti-lag is there.

I found some nice footage:
https://youtu.be/no3cwtthlUs

At least on this video (proper locked incar view driven by a capable driver) the car's handling looks very realistic, better than previous Dirt titles. On another note youtube is full of footage where the physics look iffy to say the least, but it could be the controller/driver skill that causes this too. Even RBR looks like an arcade game when it's driven by a not so skilled driver.

I'm trying to not to get my hopes up, but it's getting quite hard. It's on sale now, but I will probably have to wait untill they patch the FFB, common opinion seems to be it's pretty non-existent right now.

Gotta admit from the footage I have found on youtube, this looks and sounds fantastic.
Of course I can't judge physics fully from videos, but at least on the replays it looks believable enough. I might just have to give this thing a chance.

-EDIT- A little question before I rush in to buying this, can you disable the virtual steering wheel? I had a little google on the cockpit view stuff and apparently you can adjust FOV, but I found no info about camera position and virtual wheel/hands?

-EDIT2- Also can you remove g-force simulation and vibrations from the cockpit view?

Last edited by BigPeBe, Tue 28 Apr 2015, 17:36.

Quote from PhilS13 :

Top drivers would get to the absolute laptime limit of these cars within 20 laps and then get so bored they'd want to throw themselves into a wall. These videos are most often fun to watch only because the drivers in it are normal drivers making a bunch of mistakes on relatively easy cars to drive.

So called "normal" drivers wouldn't have the skills or balls to drive a historic car on bias-ply tires on it's limit. The boring part of historic events are the "normal" drivers that don't drive on the limit and can't keep up with the fast guys. But on another note, even modern motorsport events has these drivers so it's not that different.
A skilled driver can enjoy pushing pretty much any car, be it slow or not. With your logic there would have not been top drivers at all in the 60's or 70's.

IMHO historic racing (and rallying) IS the top tier of motorsport currently. I have been going to the thousand lakes rally event each year for my whole life, but for the last few years I have also added Lahti Historic to my calendar. Needless to say, the latter one is much more enjoyable.

Anyone know if there's a way to disable the damage "app" that always pops up on the screen when I touch the rpm limiter (or damage anything for that matter)?. I find it quite intrusive.

-EDIT- If anyone else is wondering, it seems to be ctrl+q.

Quote from Hyperactive :

Quote from ACCAkut :

I like that the cars sound and seem a bit more lively, ...

I thought the turbo wastegate sounds were just cringeworthy bad and horrible. It sounded like this in every braking zone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVbYYd-yehk

I know this doesn't matter to most people, but I always cringe when someone describes turbo chatter, surge, or BOV sound as a "wastegate".