u/These_Location4540

At first, i was waiting for it but it was a failure.
I've been playing a lot of racing games these last years, and the trailers were pretty interesting.

A friend of mine bought it on day one, and the frustration was really evident.
I kept following its developpement, and the news, but still it was a mess.

Then, some days ago, i went to his home and he showed me the game again, and i tried it again, and something had changed. It's far from what it promised, but the handling was really cool, the cars pretty nice, the interiors are sincerely beautiful to me, well made, the variety of cars made me think of AMS2, that is a good thing. I really enjoyed that session.

Played another session the day after, and i have to admit that i'm enjoying it.

To the point that i bought it today, with the year one bundle, at a very good price.

And since then, i've been playing it with some real pleasure, mostly the Sebring and the Nordschleife, 10 laps session, again and again :)

Even if there's still some work to do, i think that it's heading in the right direction.

There are some things i'd like to mention here :

- The game does lack the minimum amount of contrast, it's more on the greyish side, nothing really bad, as i'm using Reshade 6.7.3 to compensate, with Fake HDR and Curves to add the missing contrast and boost the tones, with this, the interiors are gorgeous and the overall graphis looks pretty nice (don't know if someone can confirm that, but someone said that you could get banned if going multiplayer with the shaders on, that's why i'm staying solo, i'm doing the same in AMS2 with only the fake HDR and keep going multiplayer).
I wish the devs could work on that, because with some better shaders, better contrast, nothing crazy, this game can look really awesome.

- One feature i'd like to see, but it's more of an habit, is the possibility to keep driving a bit at the end of a race, as it does stop really quick, something like pressing a button, the same way you're having it in LMU/ACC. Could be interesting.

- The last one, and i know some people won't agree, is to lower the exagerated sliding/spinning of the cars, when being bumped by another AI, driving two centimeters on the grass, or just losing the control of the car on a straight line at medium speed as it happend on some occasions on the Sebring with a GT3 and an hypercar. I understand the idea of not pushing your car too far and keeping the control of it, but most of the time it's not the case, i do accept this when i made a mistake (happened in LMU, AAC, AMS2 and i was responsible for it, but that's not the case here, it looks more like artificial difficulty to present the game as a sim racing than a real reaction due to a mistake).

- I'd like to mention here some better looking skies (EVO and AAC are a good exemple to me), with more density, as it's a good thing in my opinion to make the screen space as a whole (the road, the cars/interiors/exteriors), it would totally be a great addition, nothing crazy, but something to give more dynamic to the game.

These are only some small suggestions.

I'm really happy to see that this game is getting better and better, and i really think that it does have the potential to be something really interesting with some little additions.

I came back to it and i'm really enjoying it, glad to see that this game is evolving in the right way, cheers to the ones working on it.

With some graphical tweaks, some volumetric lighting, and some other technical things that the other players might mention as i'm trying to limit my reaction to what i've felt while playing.

I first was angry against this game as i was waiting for something different from what we saw on day one due to the promises that were made, but i really hope that the creators of this game will succeed on developping a great one.

The last updates are really promising.

Cheers.

Edit : I've added some screenshots of the settings i'm using in Reshade to boost the contrast/colors for those who are interested.

https://preview.redd.it/zsvg2u5ht73h1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=4304744894cd725318323348c5aff79701a474a9

Edit : an important precision, of course i did that offline/single player, never do that in a multiplayer session, don't waste people playtime.

I was just having so much good time on the 24hNurburgring with the beautiful Porsche 962C and the interior view (the one with the full body and the wide/wild angle), that i didn't want to end my 5 laps session, and continued after the cooldown lap, did another one, and suddendly, i had an idea.

Just before entering the pit, i did a U turn, as i was wondering if you could drive in reverse (most of the other games would put you in the right direction or disqualify you after 5 seconds).

But nothing happened, and i could totally reverse ride the infamous green hell, it ended in a 73 minutes session, and i had a huge amount of fun.

You know your Nurb, mates, but do you know your Nurb in reverse ?

Please, keep that thing, that's so pleasing.

This game is so satisfying when you finally found the right settings.

These are the parameters i want to share with everyone that had some problems struggling with the game just to play with a controller, i'm not saying that these are the best ones, you might have to adapt them if you're using another kind of gamepad, but as someone who spent a lot of time fighting to find the right handling, i know the frustration, the anger.

Let alone the debate about using a wheel or anything else, that is not the subject here.

You're starting to play this game and only have a controller, this is for you.

First thing first :

I fought a lot with this game just to find some playable parameters, as i was using a Nacon XBox controller, and the default parameters were bad.

After a lot of time, i found these ones to be very effective, they were the results of a massive amount of time trying to get the perfect balance :

Deadzone : 12%

Speed sensitivity : 50%

Steer filter : 45%

Steer speed : 1% (only affect the steering wheel inside the cockpit animation)

Steer gamma : 3.0

Steer assist : Enabled

Very effective, good handling, fast, worked for any car on any track, i was mainly using the view from the hood as there was still one problem that wasn't solved yet : when playing the cockpit view with a controller, the animation of the wheel was stupidly crazy, unplayble. But that was ok, because what i found let me play this game as it should have been in my opinion from the begining.

Never had this problem in LMU or Automobilista 2.

I tried a lot of things, and noticed that if the steer assist was disabled, the wheel was suddendly behaving normally. But you had to deal with the lack of assists and everything that went with. Over/understeering, sliding, name it, it was there.

I was wondering if there was a way to adapt my settings to compensate the disabled steer assist thing, and tried some things with no success.

Very recently, i had a discussion on the comments of a video related to the game with someone who posted some interesting parameters, and adapted some of his with the ones from a professional player

I tried them, tweaked them a bit, and here we go, added some tweaks using Steam Overlay to limit the steering range that was causing some instability, and suddendly, everything went well : fast, accurate steering in relation to my liking, fun to play with,

the best handling i've ever had, solving the only issue i could not solve since i've started this game, and i spent a lot of time looking for a solution on the web.

Here they are :

Deadzone : 8%

Speed sensitivity : 67%

Steer filter 12%

Steer speed : 1%

Steer gamma : 2.5

Steer assist : disabled

I've had for the left stick in the steam overlay joystick settings :

Horizontal / Vertical sensitivity : 84%

Output axis : horizontal only (you will use the dpad to navigate in the game menu, but not a big deal)

Outer ring : 11020

Note that this is the result of a collective work and i'm happy to contribute to it as i really enjoy this game so much and want those who can't play because of the bad default settings to enjoy it as much as i do, and join us.

The good thing with this set of parameters, is that the driving will fit the beautiful sound design and feedback of the tracks (i'm playing the 24h Nurburgring mostly, and this is purely epic), it does not result in an arcade kind of handling, you'll feel every part of the track and need to be concentrated, these are so effective that you can easily regain control of your car in case of a slight mistake, trust me, there is a lot of fun to come.