How Realistic is F122? (According to an F1 Engineer)
Interesting video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VwhThyQ6V8
Forum Discussion
After driving F1 cars in actual simulators I can say the F1 cars int he game, (especially wheel support) are horrible in the feeling and feedback. F1 2020 is closer to real life 2022 cars than F1 22.
I know people might use medium traction but imo those guys cannot take part in this discussion as real life has no TC as well. the traction is completely different and you can feel this straight away as in an F1 car you could go flat in 2nd gear while ingame here its not possible. Also higher gears the traction of an F1 car is one of the easiest in any race car out there. Why they decided to make it so unrealistic, i dunno. (again, 2020 had fairly realistic handling) Same with the reaction of the car. Yes, this generation produces understeer but the amount of understeer IRL is significantly less. the car still turns in straight away unlike F1 22.
Also the gear sync is completely wrong in F1 22.
But the biggest difference compared to an Arcade or simcade game and an actual sim is the feedback. Yes, its no secret that wheels in F1 games havent been supported well at all for pretty much ever and the game is made for a controller (yes, 22 being first game where controller isnt the better device, and pretty much equal to wheel)
Still, the support for a wheel should be MUCH MUCH better in this game as practially you get zero indication what the car is doing in the device via FFB.
@Wollcott Before people ask: the most realistic F1 car in a game is the W13 in iracing as it was designed and programmed by mercedes engineers themselves. (and yea the FFB in iRacing isnt that great as well, pretty poor actually. But it is still miles clear of F1 22 - and that is insane to think as iRacing is from 2008 and F1 22 basically 2015)
@Wollcott did you get to drive a sim in a factory or in the team's entourage? This is off topic, but if that's the case I'd love to hear more about it and I'm most definitely not alone in that! Though there are a bunch of users who casually play the game, there's a good number of legit petrol heads here that will always perk their ears up to hear such stories 👌
However if you got into a sim in an exhibition, museum or the sort, please bear in mind that those sims are tuned for the general public. I'm referring to sims like those in the Ferrari museums or in the various exhibitions the teams promote around the world.
It is still a great experience, but the sims are tuned down with TC, lower FFB strength etc.
Regarding going flat on 2nd gear, I'll properly attach a telemetry screenshot when I get back to my desktop but you'll notice how their throttle application is not so binary. And race start incidents are there to demonstrate that it is not as simple as go full throttle from 2nd onwards. Healthy dose of upshifting or throttle modulation.
To those not entirely sure what this is about, think of the engine speed (RPM) as the source of power of the car, not the throttle. The throttle is a valve that allows you to increase or decrease the engine speed at different rates - so 50% throttle will increase engine RPM at a certain rate from idle to 12.000 or whatever, while going full throttle will do so much faster. It is not instantaneous though. You can be at full throttle in lower gears no problem, as long as you upshift earlier (shortshifting) when the wheels get close to breaking traction as the power increases as a result of higher engine speeds.
That said, the game has a lot to improve to get to a more realistic state. David Greco himself has mentioned many aspects he wasn't content about in F1 22 and even shared a long list of handling features and updates he'd like to work on, so that (not being in a good state) is not a secret.
Same goes for the FFB.
Comparing it to iRacing as a game "released In 2008" is misleading too. iRacing gets huge updates from time to time and the last one was pushed just a few months ago. Literally everything from AI to crash models to FFB gets reworked in these big updates. If you were to play the game in an earlier state it would not feel the same.
And I imagine you know this already, but for those reading iRacing's W13 was not designed and programmed by Mercedes. They did a great collab, with constant feedback from the team and even a Discord server just for Mercedes engineers and iRacing devs to hang out and discuss progress with the car.
It was still made by the iRacing guys over data provided by Mercedes.
You can take a peek at how it happened on the iRacing Downshift podcast with James Vowles, episode 40. Yes, that Vowles that has just jumped ships and is now the boss at Williams haha! In the show he speaks at length on how the car was developed, what sort of data they disclosed for the iRacing team, what the iRacing devs got right and what they got wrong. Keyword here being "they", as in iRacing devs - Mercedes didn't code or program anything, just gave feedback on how it was shaping up and tested it in a simracing rig with Anthony Davidson and Mercedes eSports drivers Jarno and I think Moreno.
- @mariohomoh Ive driven a car in a actual sim once and apart from the huge screen and the motion its not that different to rFactor2 or iRacing. Id say closer to rF2 as the physics are more realistic than iRacing. And we specifiically asked if there were any assists or anything but it was possible to do it without any of these.
And yes, ofc its true that iRacing nowadays is a lot different to the first days and the game is much more demanding on specs etc. The FFB tho hasnt really changed in at least the last 6-7 years. You get miles better feedback than F1 22 and yet its thousand times worse than for example Asetto Corsa. Feedback wise this is how i want the F1 game to be. If thats the case tho you can also argue that no pad player can ever drive against wheel anymore as the feedback would make the wheel way too good compared to pad. but then also i think thats just fair and fine as its still a racing game and i havent seen someone drive a car IRL with a stick. so i think proper wheel support is definitely needed in this game.
Regarding the W13: I didnt mean to mislead, obviously they did not code it for the developer, but as you already pointed out they offered a lot of data and collaborated while making the car. And the car feels a lot different to the previous iracing F1 car, although that one is very realistic as well.
About the gears: nobody in real life goes flat out in 2nd gear on every corner where you use it, but it can be possible, while in F1 22 flat in third is already impossible in many instances. But also this has been an issue for so many years in the f1 games and i have no clue why codemasters still goes this route. And every year its the same. First it feels like lower gears are back but after a month it turns out its even higher gears than the previous year. Its weird and silly.
@mariohomoh wrote:@Wollcott did you get to drive a sim in a factory or in the team's entourage? This is off topic, but if that's the case I'd love to hear more about it and I'm most definitely not alone in that! Though there are a bunch of users who casually play the game, there's a good number of legit petrol heads here that will always perk their ears up to hear such stories 👌
I'd love to hear that too.
And guys, don't get me wrong - the discussion is great - but it sounds like you are expecting something that was never intended for this F1 game series - as far as I think of the game in those years playing it. It's like judging a fish by its abiity of climbing trees. To implement this in such level of finesse the game could never be released yearly.
And to say that TC medium players have no part in the discussion sounds arrogant to me. Firstly 'cause splits the players into categories where some are relevant and some aren't. Second because those are the guys who feel the most this misbalance in traction - though they don't necessarily know what's going on and why. So, if it's hard for us, for them it's almost impossible - to the point where they could lose interest in learning and turning assists off and ultimately dropping the game.
@dancrodriguesVast majority play the game using a pad. So game should be optimised for pad as well as wheel. Without those on pad. The game wouldn’t be financially viable
afterall it’s advertised and sold as a game.
