Weather needs to improve!!
I really don't understand the enormous step backwards with this series when it comes to track, weather and environmental effects. Go and look at the rain/spray/haze effects in F1 2010-13 and you'll be stunned at how great they looked. How do we not even have spray at all in these new games over a decade later and 2 console generations on? It seems that they've spent far too much time trying to get every hair on the driver's head right on the game menu, but can't seem to get tyre smoke to appear properly when you lock up. Spray effect in the rain is completely non-existent!
Racing in the rain, and dealing with visibility is a crucial skill and huge talking point in real F1, and yet that's not really represented in the game. Think back to the Australian GP at the start of the season. There was a huge focus on the incoming weather, what direction it would come from, what parts of the track could be wet/dry, the intensity, the crossover point between not just wet/dry compounds, but the inter/wet (full wet is entirely useless in F1 24) We don't have any of these issues in the game.
F1 2012, a 13 year old game from this very studio, launched with new feature: Dynamic Weather/Live track, with weather fronts making it rain on some parts of the track, but dry on another. We had puddles forming and wet/dry lines appearing, we had to adjust our racing lines to avoid aquaplaining, to cool tyres and stick to the dry line like a train if we gambled on going back to dry tyres.... This has slowly declined over the last decade. Now when it rains, we just get a blanket transition over 2-3 laps and it rains with the same consistency around the entire track! There seems to be very little change in grip until 2 corners before our engineer tells us to switch to inters where the grip level drops like a switch has gone off. There is no incentive to try anything different, and so all players peel off into the pits at the exact same time. Lap time and grip is not influenced or effected by the player at all!
Same when it starts to dry up. The transition back to a dry track is almost instant. In real life, we still see a set surface for a while. Why is the transition not varied? Why is it always the same?
The game needs to introduce a weather radar track map for players on the grid before the race, or to view during Qualifying too. We see this visual every time we watch a real race. We see the localised weather and what direction its coming from, and yet in game we still have the same Icons and percentage chance of rain that are never accurate, and have been the same since F1 2010. Where is the improvement here?
Let's talk about the visibility? It's clear as day in the game. You can drive an inch behind an opponent as see as clear as in the dry. No spray at all! Go back and play F1 2010-13 and the featured some incredible rain effects. That was back on the Xbox 360!!!! Not just the spray, but the way the screen would haze up when you changed line and drove in someone's wake. It was so much more realistic. How do we not even have spray at all on far superior hardware?? Something has gone very wrong there!
These are features that would bring some serious realism and authenticity to the player "ON-TRACK" so it's really frustrating that year on year, the only new features we see are new menu screens for My Team. Hotel names in Vegas and cherry blossom trees in Japan.... Please prioritise some real changes that improve the racing experience instead!
