I will be buying F1 2012 for the XBOX 360 on my first brake at work and I will have a go on it during my lunch brake.
But I on XBOX Live there is a F1 212 VIP Pass which costs 800 points.
The description for this is as followes.
Download the VIP Pass (There is a small star at the end of Pass above the last s) to unlock all F1 2012s extensive multiplayer modes, including: o 2player Co-Op career mode o 16 player GRAND PRIX races (There Is a small star at the end of races above the last s) Purchase is not required if you already have a VIP Pass code.
I buy the F1 2012 VIP Pass?
I need to know tonight so that if I do need the F1 2012 VIP Pass then I can buy a Microsoft XBOX 360 points card tomorrow at work when I buy F1 2012.
Im sure you get the vip pass free with the game inside the box, did last year, i think thats there for people who buy the game 2nd hand, like the code to get the free dlc with batman game came in box, but you could buy it if you didnt have the code/2nd hand game
The game apparently has not even got a championship mode. So you can not drive through a full season as Jenson Button are a real f1 driver. If this is true its a no sale for me.
Yeah, it's an absolute joke. Codemasters have also removed qualifying sessions 1 and 2 and scalable tyre wear.
Im sure you get the vip pass free with the game inside the box, did last year, i think thats there for people who buy the game 2nd hand, like the code to get the free dlc with batman game came in box, but you could buy it if you didnt have the code/2nd hand game
Thank you Mr. Brightside for your taking time to reply and for your very kind help.
I might still get a points card but just an 800 one for Jet Set Radio HD as I have never played the game but everyone says that it is great and when it was on the Sega Dreamcast it was one of it's best games.
I will go and download the Jet Set Radio HD demo and see what I think of it.
Just did my 2nd race of the season. Malaysia, 1st qualy i topped the times, didnt bother with qualy 2 or 3, wanted to keep my soft tyres for the wet race:D
The wet was fun, upto 2nd half way around the first lap, held my position. Track dried after 4 laps, followed the comp into the pits, the next two laps were tough on a drying track, waiting for the racing line to appear. I remember in 2010 edt it was quite easy on a drying track, easy to make time on the comp. It started to rain on the last 2 laps, it got tricky again. Worst thing was on the last lap motoring down the back straight my petrol light was starting to flash and basically my car was very slow at reving and changing gear, i was at snails pace. I had a 6 sec gap on webber and held him of right on the line. Didnt realise i had to save fuel, plus it was wet for half the race. I reckon this was far more epic than when schuey was stuck in 5th gear at catalunya and giving hill a run for his money.
My first moan about the game would be having to do your race stategy while racing. Having to chose your tyres live instead of pausing the game and then chosing:) I know it was only a few button combos but still. Just as well the track has 2 long straights plus my ma russia car has no kers, i had 1 thing less to do as it was. Kinect voice commands could be good for this i suppose, but even then i wouldnt be willing to shell out for it.
I had a quick race around the new austin track, love the climb up to the first corner, like the a1 ring, except you go left instead of right:D the rest of the track felt tight and twisty. I was in quick race mode as shuey and i spun alot of the time in the dry, i have traction set to medium and abs on.
Up to 130 gamer points, 7 chevos, after 2 races and 1 young drivers test:)
Damn it, i got night shift in 30 mins, i feel ill:D
Been playing the PC version at a friends today & my critisism's from the demo regarding steering & braking feel (or lack thereof) still stands.
Using a controller it feels pretty good, However with a wheel (Logitech driving force GT) there is no real feedback coming through & thats taking away all the advantages of playing with a wheel.
When you hit a kurb or run onto grass/gravel there is a good level of FFB vibration, However there is zero FFB from actually driving the car. There is no FFB vibration from things like bumps & debris on the track, No FFB feel at all when driving on straghts, through corners or when brakes lock or wheels spin.
When going through corners the steering does get heavier but it feels like its scripted rather than as a result of actually gooing through a corner.
I think the reason many wheel users are complaining of understeer & brake lock-ups is a direct result of this lack of feel coming back through the wheel.
In other games/sims (Including F1 2010/2011) you get good FFB down straights, When going through a corner when the front starts to lose grip you feel it through the wheel, When brakes start to lock again you feel it through the wheel so are able to compensate.
The lack of any feel through the wheel on F1 2012 makes recognising a loss of grip be it understeer or brake locking impossible to see happening untill its too late.
The actual handling model doesn't seem too bad & racing Ai seems like it could be quite fun, However the problems when playing with a wheel I detail above takes away a lot of that fun.
Like I said when playing with a controller things feel fine, However I don't want to play with a pad I want to play driving games with a wheel & right now playing this game with a wheel is a dead, flawed experience.
I've tried the game with a couple different wheels now & its the same 'dead' experience on all of them as far as the ffb feel goes.
playing this game with a wheel reminds me of what it used to be like playing driving/racing games with wheels pre-force feedback, you get vibration from kurbs, collistions etc... but thats it, there is no driving feel which you would expect from decent ffb.
i didnt especially like f1 2010, too many bugs early on & there was a lot wrong with the handling feel. however i thought they had improved on that in 2011, the handling felt better, the physics felt a bit more realistic (although nowhere near been a sim) & overall i enjoyed it.
f1 2012 seems like a step backwards, things we had in past games are now gone & the handling model seems to be more aimed at pad users.
I notice on Amazon website that they are selling it for £32 pound but do anyone know if any supermarkets doing like special offers for this game like the do for FIFA sometimes or would it be cheaper for me to get it from Amazon?
Am a wheel newbie, but found that if I set steering linearity to 30 or 40% it made it drive-able, with it at default 0% it's like driving on ice on the straights. Am getting close to the times I can do with a pad, which isn't bad considering I only got a wheel last week, also makes it a lot more immersive than nudging the analogue stick about.
For those having problems with control, don't forget that if it's the same as F1 2011 then the sensitivity control will be "backwards" so you need to dial it right DOWN to maybe only 5% to give you a full range of control when using a wheel.
Otherwise a tiny movement of the wheel gives you a huge steering input.
Funny thing is, I actually understand the logic behind that but I notice that Dirt 2 has the sensitivity set the opposite way around.
Anybody know if they've fixed the issues with tyres this time around so that the AIs can't run a whole f**king race on wet tyres and/or suddenly go much faster than you on inter's?
How about all the blatant fiddles related to the timing?
Have they been fixed this time as well?
Only last night I was playing F1 2011 and even though I was setting one fastest lap after another one the timing showed that Webber was going away from me by a second a lap.
And there's the bugs where various cars don't bother pitting at certain tracks.
Has that one been fixed?
What about the Rapture audio drivers?
Do they still make the game crash?
Probably gonna wait until I read the first reviews before buying F1 2012 but then just buy it anyway cos I'm a sucker when it comes to F1.
I notice on Amazon website that they are selling it for £32 pound but do anyone know if any supermarkets doing like special offers for this game like the do for FIFA sometimes or would it be cheaper for me to get it from Amazon?
I stood my ground for about 2 hours and then bought it off Steam (£29.95 btw). :rolleyes:
So, first impressions...
At first I found the steering was all over the place during the young drivers test.
Thing is, the game seems to need you to do a lock-to-lock "calibration" of the wheel before using it, so it knows how much of an input to expect.
You should also do the same thing with throttle and brakes too.
You should only need to do this once per gaming session but if it's anything like F1 2011 (which tended to forget the calibration every now and again) it'd probably be wise to do it every time you get behind the wheel.
The most common situation where this causes problems is when you're doing "flying lap" type things and start off in a moving car with, possibly, an uncalibrated wheel and requires you to stop, move the wheel from lock to lock and then move off again.
Anyway, once I realised I had to do that, with the deadzone set to 2%, the saturation set to 5% and the linearity set to 0%, the steering was fine.
Force Feedback seems VERY powerful in some ways but weak in others.
The overall wheel weight was amazingly strong. Almost like trying to park a road car with no power steering.
The effects (kerbs, water, collisions etc) were a bit weedy though.
Hopefully that can be improved by twiddling the settings.
Don't forget that you need to turn "device override" on (on a PC at least) before you can access ALL the FFB options.
Overall the cars certainly ARE prone to understeer although you do get oversteer if you turn off traction control in the driver assists.
Seems a little odd that they've made the cars handle like this, especially when you consider that blown diffusers have been banned in F1 which should make the cars more tail-happy but I suspect we'll get used to it.
Thing is, I recall that people said the same about F1 2011 when it came out but once you're used to F1 2011 and then go back and play F1 2010 the handling on that seemed seriously clumsy and unsophisticated.
The cars in F1 2010 would sort of run like they were on rails but then throw you into the nearest hedge without warning if you made a mistake.
I'm guessing that once people are used to the way the cars in F1 2012 handle they won't mind it so much.
By way of a function-test, I did a Singapore race and I found that I could easily beat the best lap-time in the real race yesterday.
This is a bit worrying because it's taken a year of playing F1 2011 before I could beat the best lap times in the real 2011 race.
It perhaps suggests that they haven't modelled the different performance of this years cars as accurately as they might have.
Graphics and sound are fine (so far). Everything seems more shiny than it was in F1 2011.
Game still runs just as well on my PC as F1 2011 did so there's no need to upgrade hardware.
Need to get a bit of practice in then do some wet races to see if they've fixed the AIs to be a bit more sensible.
^^^^ Thanks for that R410, I did buy it at ASDA and got it for £25 pound becuase I had £12 pound gift card from trade in F1 2011
One thing I will say is full game is must better then demo one but they are bugs in game which as sometime are problems special if u engine blow up on ur when u doing 200 mph
I get kind of bored with quali' so I changed the option to "Short race weekend, single quali'" assuming that'd be the usual "single 15-minute session" thing.
Instead, I discovered that it gave me a single flying-lap to set a time.
lap complete, session over and I'm told I'vequalified in 8th place.
Oh well, not bad I guess.
After the race I happened to notice the email thingy which tells you your results.
According to that I qualified 8th with a time of 1:26.71 and the pole position time was 1:28.48
Now, I'll grant you that this sort of thing could happen in F1.
A person could set a dry time which is only good enough for Q1 or Q2 and then it could rain for Q3, thus resulting in pole times slower than those knocked out earlier.
However, I qualified using the "one-shot" thing AND my time was good enough for a top-ten position so surely there's no legitimate way that I could end up in 8th with 1:26 while pole position is a 1:28???
Seems like the timing is still screwy at times.
2nd race was Malaysia.
Qualified on pole (after a full quali session this time).
Race started damp with everybody on inter's.
Maybe worth saying that I'm not keen on the way wet is represented in F1 2012.
The damp track was just slightly grey, like a lot of the textures were removed. No sheen or water to show you how wet it was.
During the first lap I got a message saying "Heavy rain expected in 5 minutes".
At the end of lap 1 all the AIs (and I mean ALL) pitted for options and I gained a 30 second lead).
It started to rain at the end of lap 2 and the AIs all pitted again for inter's.
My lead is now around 50 seconds.
The rain got heavier.
Not keen on the graphics for rain either. Still not very obvious on track where the water is and the rain, itself, comes "straight down", even when you're doing 200mph along a straight, rather than looking like it's coming "toward" you.
Eventually everybody went onto wet tyres and I began to lap people.
Rain stopped.
I got a message saying there'd be more heavy rain soon.
AI's pitted for inters.
Gap to P2 now up to around 1:40.
Rain started again.
AI's pitted for more wets.
I am now leading P2 by an entire lap.
Race won.
On the plus side, I guess the actions of the AI's suggest they're not programmed to "know" what the weather is going to do and respond accordingly but, blimey, they were a bit chaotic.
Anyway, beyond that, the AIs seem a bit more aggressive than they used to be.
They'll force their way past the player and they don't just concede position once you're in front by a nose.
Didn't have any wacky pitlane issues or issues with noticeably iffy timing during the race but I guess it's early days yet.
I was doing the Spanish race last night (100% race distance, manual gears etc and full damage) and I noticed quite early on in the race that there was smoke billowing out the back of my car.
I sort of tried to provoke a failure by doing stuff like using the rich fuel mix, messing about with the brake balance (in case my rear brakes were dying) and doing the odd dodgy down-shift but it just carried on billowing smoke out the back until the end of the race with no obvious problems.
The car monitor didn't show anything as overheating or being damaged and after the race my engine didn't show any huge amount of wear.
I know you can cause an immediate failure by downshifting into first at high speed but the smoke seemed to suggest that the game has random car failures in it so, in a twisted sort of way, I was actually kinda looking forward to the engine blowing up or summat and I was a bit disappointed when nothing came of it.
Also, while I'm at it, anybody know what the light blue dots on the track-map are, during the race?
I know your team-mate is a yellow dot but every now and again a sort of bright-blue dot appears as well.
They've usually been on a different bit of the track to me but, on occasion, I've beennear them and haven't seen anything special (sometimes not even any other car at all) and then they vanish and reappear somewhere else a bit later.
Perhaps an indicator about a car that your engineer has given you a message about or summat?
I had similar at Bahrain. They wanted me to start on Inters, sky looked blue so I thought I would go on options, me on options, everybody else on inters.
Of course I bombed away and they all stopped within a couple of laps to go on options. I was over a minute ahead and this was pretty much the only chance I had to win, even though I only won by 8 seconds in the end, which leads onto my next point...
I simply can't keep up for the final third of races, I'm fine on the first option stint and at the start when I switch to primes but every single time around 2/3 into the race I just can't keep up, my car seems harder to handle, no problem, but the AI doesn't seem to have the same problem, they just keep bombing around.
I'm finding it really frustrating.
Another thing, last race I qualified on inters and yet I still couldn't start on the prime, no choice but to start on options even though I wanted to do it the other way around.
The dynamic weather is a bit shit as well. Half the time the conditions aren't even recognised by the cars on the track.
Also, while I'm at it, anybody know what the light blue dots on the track-map are, during the race?
I know your team-mate is a yellow dot but every now and again a sort of bright-blue dot appears as well.
They've usually been on a different bit of the track to me but, on occasion, I've beennear them and haven't seen anything special (sometimes not even any other car at all) and then they vanish and reappear somewhere else a bit later.
Perhaps an indicator about a car that your engineer has given you a message about or summat?
Blue dots that appear are lapped cars that have been given the blue flag that youre about to pass.
Blue dots that appear are lapped cars that have been given the blue flag that youre about to pass.
Ah, right ho.
I did wonder if that might be the case.
Funny thing is, I did Monaco last night and there were blue dots showing up all over the place (during a changeable weather race) and at the end of the race heaps of drivers had 10 second penalties.
That's kinda good news cos it suggests the software IS actually paying attention to stuff that's happening off-screen a bit more than it used to.
The quali' is almost certainly screwed up though.
I've now done about 7 races and on about 4 occasions I've set the fastest time in Q3, only to be told that I've qualified further down the grid.
And, as I said, if you look at the emails after the race it often even SAYS that I qualified in, say, 1:20 and the pole time was 1:22 etc.
Unless somebody has a really good explanation for this, it's a bug.
Fortunately, for me, it doesn't really bother me cos I tend to just start from the back and get my jollies making passes during the race.
Regarding the handling, I'm feeling a bit more sympathetic towards it now.
I mean, I think the key difference between 2011 and 2012 (in real life) is that the cars don't have the same corner speed any more.
For the game it seems that they've reduced corner speeds by making the cars understeer more rather than making them oversteer.
That's wrong but it DOES create the same result - slower corner speeds - but it does so in such a way that means players can react to a slide before they find themselves going backwards into the barriers.
I think the handling has probably ended up like that because they've found that in the wet the cars are still incredibly tail-happy so they've been forced to make them understeer in the dry so that they're still vaguely controllable in the wet.
Try going through the Monaco tunnel in a wet race and you'll see what I mean.
Meant to say, as well, it's quite surprising how "normal" the tyres in F1 2012 are too.
With all the fuss over tyres in real-life F1 this year, and all the odd results they've contributed to, I was expecting the game reflect that a bit more, with players being able to burn up their tyres long before they're due a pitstop.
Maybe Pirelli didn't like the idea of the game showing their tyres to be inferior in some way?
For the game it seems that they've reduced corner speeds by making the cars understeer more rather than making them oversteer.
There was a thread on the codemasters forum somewhere from one of the developers where they say that a future patch to the handling will solve the understeer & improve the FFB.
Its something there not happy with & apparently havn't been for a while but didn't have time to fix before release.
I got the game on Monday, The understeer I've kinda adapted to although if the patch fixes it I'd be happier.
After a couple days of playing though I still think I much prefer F1 2011, I just had more of a feel for what the car was doing on that, On 2012 for some reason I never really feel like im driving the car. There are times when the car seems to start turning itself into a corner as if there's some sort of built-in steering assist that you can't turn off, Its especially noticeable in the young driver test at Abu-Dhabi where you can take your hand off the wheel down the back straght & have it automatically turn you through the little kinks in it.
The biggest problem I seem to be having is brake locking, Im locking brake just about everywhere & the only thing that seems to fix it is by turning braking force to low & setting brake bias rearward by a lot.
Going back to some earlier comments in this thread regarding a lack of feel, Im feeling that with my brake locking issues. I can't feel them locking, Only way im telling there locking is by either seeing them actual lock or when ive already gone straght on at a corner, Don't seem to be getting a feel for that through the FFB like in other titles (Including F1 2011).
I went back to F1 2011 & immediately felt I could push the cars, I could feel what they were doing, Feel the understeer building up & compensate for it & when brakes locked I could feel it & again compensate with the braking force to stop the lock. Im not really feeling any of that in 2012 & im not able to get the confidence to really hustle the car & Im not really liking that.
Of the 3 Codemasters F1 games so far I prefer 2011 & by a long way, I enjoy the driving experience of 2011 so much more than 2012. Maybe/Hopefully the patch Codemasters have mentioned that will remove the understeer, improve FFB etc... will change my views but right now I don't really like it.
It'll be interesting to see if they can make the cars understeer less in the dry while, at the same time, making them driveable in the wet.
I worry that codemasters tend to apply "fiddle factors" rather than relying on fundamentally good, consistent, modelling.
I mean, if you look at the way they model fuel loads, you find that the car won't stop in time for a corner on full tanks and that it'll act exactly the same way for the first 20-odd laps but then, suddenly, it'll change from "full tanks" model to "half tanks" model and you'll suddenly find that you can brake 50m later.
If they try and apply a similar principle to the steering people will find that a car that's easy to control in the wet on one lap will suddenly become MUCH harder to control on the next lap because the software has changed from "wet steering" to "dry steering".
I'd certainly prefer that the cars had less understeer but I'd also like them to handle consistently and, given the way they currently handle in the wet (as I said, the Monaco tunnel is absolutely terrifying in the wet) I can't see how they can properly dial out dry weather understeer without making the cars undriveable in the wet.
As for the braking, I think it's just REALLY important not to overlap braking and steering and (pleasingly, just like real life) it's important to balance the throttle through corners too.
In F1 2011 you could just get off the throttle, brake, steer and then feed in the throttle on the exit.
For F1 2012 it seems that you have to be much more careful about maintaining the correct amount of throttle through the corner to make the steering work.
I think a lot of the "problems" people are having are simply cos the cars aren't the same as they were in F1 2011 and that with a few months practice we'll probably be just as comfortable with them as we were with F1 2011.
I think part of the fun and challenge is figuring out how to get the best out of cars that handle differently so I actually enjoy the different handling.
As someone who has raced cars in the past (Including some open wheel) I personally feel that the handling/physics model in F1 2011 was a lot closer to a life-like feeling than F1 2010 or 2012.
The handling model in 2010 was quite poor, Cars felt like they were on an axis & they had way more grip overall than they would have in reality, I guess a good description would be to say the handling was too forgiving.
For 2011 the handling felt a great deal better, Codemasters made huge improvements in just about every area of the handling/physics model & it felt a lot more life-like than any other console F1 game i've played in the past (Which would be just about all of them).
For me the handling model in 2012 feels closer to 2010 & its even got the 2010 glitch where the car auto-corrects if you tap the brakes when spinning. The understeer seems as a result of the cars having way too much rear grip, The braking problems many are having is probably as a result of the same thing.
Something thats way off that Im surprised hasn't been mentioned more in KERS. When you use KERS in the game the engine sounds like your using NOS as the revs get more high pitched & then drop back the second you release KERS. In reality you feel the speed boost (About 80Bhp in real life) but there isn't any other noticeable difference in engine sound & the KERS unit itself is silent.
DRS seems to work about right though.
You know though something I dont get about the way Codemasters have done things is that each time they seem to totally re-write the handling/physics rather than tweaking/improving there existing models.
Doing that after 2010 was probably the right things to do as 2010 was way off where it needed to be, However as I say 2011 was pretty good & some tweaks & improvements would likely have seen 2012 be even better. Instead they seem to have started from scratch again so the gains they made in 2011 have sadly been lost & I feel that 2012 feels a lot less realistic as a result, Shame really.
Comments
Im sure you get the vip pass free with the game inside the box, did last year, i think thats there for people who buy the game 2nd hand, like the code to get the free dlc with batman game came in box, but you could buy it if you didnt have the code/2nd hand game
Edit: http://community.codemasters.com/t5/F1-2012-General-Discussion/VIP-PASS/td-p/56556Should
Yeah, it's an absolute joke. Codemasters have also removed qualifying sessions 1 and 2 and scalable tyre wear.
Thank you Mr. Brightside for your taking time to reply and for your very kind help.
I might still get a points card but just an 800 one for Jet Set Radio HD as I have never played the game but everyone says that it is great and when it was on the Sega Dreamcast it was one of it's best games.
I will go and download the Jet Set Radio HD demo and see what I think of it.
Just did my 2nd race of the season. Malaysia, 1st qualy i topped the times, didnt bother with qualy 2 or 3, wanted to keep my soft tyres for the wet race:D
The wet was fun, upto 2nd half way around the first lap, held my position. Track dried after 4 laps, followed the comp into the pits, the next two laps were tough on a drying track, waiting for the racing line to appear. I remember in 2010 edt it was quite easy on a drying track, easy to make time on the comp. It started to rain on the last 2 laps, it got tricky again. Worst thing was on the last lap motoring down the back straight my petrol light was starting to flash and basically my car was very slow at reving and changing gear, i was at snails pace. I had a 6 sec gap on webber and held him of right on the line. Didnt realise i had to save fuel, plus it was wet for half the race. I reckon this was far more epic than when schuey was stuck in 5th gear at catalunya and giving hill a run for his money.
My first moan about the game would be having to do your race stategy while racing. Having to chose your tyres live instead of pausing the game and then chosing:) I know it was only a few button combos but still. Just as well the track has 2 long straights plus my ma russia car has no kers, i had 1 thing less to do as it was. Kinect voice commands could be good for this i suppose, but even then i wouldnt be willing to shell out for it.
I had a quick race around the new austin track, love the climb up to the first corner, like the a1 ring, except you go left instead of right:D the rest of the track felt tight and twisty. I was in quick race mode as shuey and i spun alot of the time in the dry, i have traction set to medium and abs on.
Up to 130 gamer points, 7 chevos, after 2 races and 1 young drivers test:)
Damn it, i got night shift in 30 mins, i feel ill:D
Using a controller it feels pretty good, However with a wheel (Logitech driving force GT) there is no real feedback coming through & thats taking away all the advantages of playing with a wheel.
When you hit a kurb or run onto grass/gravel there is a good level of FFB vibration, However there is zero FFB from actually driving the car. There is no FFB vibration from things like bumps & debris on the track, No FFB feel at all when driving on straghts, through corners or when brakes lock or wheels spin.
When going through corners the steering does get heavier but it feels like its scripted rather than as a result of actually gooing through a corner.
I think the reason many wheel users are complaining of understeer & brake lock-ups is a direct result of this lack of feel coming back through the wheel.
In other games/sims (Including F1 2010/2011) you get good FFB down straights, When going through a corner when the front starts to lose grip you feel it through the wheel, When brakes start to lock again you feel it through the wheel so are able to compensate.
The lack of any feel through the wheel on F1 2012 makes recognising a loss of grip be it understeer or brake locking impossible to see happening untill its too late.
The actual handling model doesn't seem too bad & racing Ai seems like it could be quite fun, However the problems when playing with a wheel I detail above takes away a lot of that fun.
Like I said when playing with a controller things feel fine, However I don't want to play with a pad I want to play driving games with a wheel & right now playing this game with a wheel is a dead, flawed experience.
I've tried the game with a couple different wheels now & its the same 'dead' experience on all of them as far as the ffb feel goes.
playing this game with a wheel reminds me of what it used to be like playing driving/racing games with wheels pre-force feedback, you get vibration from kurbs, collistions etc... but thats it, there is no driving feel which you would expect from decent ffb.
i didnt especially like f1 2010, too many bugs early on & there was a lot wrong with the handling feel. however i thought they had improved on that in 2011, the handling felt better, the physics felt a bit more realistic (although nowhere near been a sim) & overall i enjoyed it.
f1 2012 seems like a step backwards, things we had in past games are now gone & the handling model seems to be more aimed at pad users.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Codemasters-Limited-2012-Xbox-360/dp/B0081XNV9U/ref=sr_1_1_title_0?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1348243887&sr=1-1
F1 2012 ~ Belgian Grand Prix Race (3 Laps) - Lotus E20 [PC / Full HD]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8UIxZ8jK94
F1 2012 ~ Singapore Grand Prix Race (3 Laps) - Ferrari F2012 [PC / Full HD]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J126lWX47Hs
F1 2012 - Yas Marina Day/Night Transition (Wet) / Onboard [Full HD]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8x9WwLWCEY
I hope you like it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrjbRScBDYs
Otherwise a tiny movement of the wheel gives you a huge steering input.
Funny thing is, I actually understand the logic behind that but I notice that Dirt 2 has the sensitivity set the opposite way around.
Anybody know if they've fixed the issues with tyres this time around so that the AIs can't run a whole f**king race on wet tyres and/or suddenly go much faster than you on inter's?
How about all the blatant fiddles related to the timing?
Have they been fixed this time as well?
Only last night I was playing F1 2011 and even though I was setting one fastest lap after another one the timing showed that Webber was going away from me by a second a lap.
And there's the bugs where various cars don't bother pitting at certain tracks.
Has that one been fixed?
What about the Rapture audio drivers?
Do they still make the game crash?
Probably gonna wait until I read the first reviews before buying F1 2012 but then just buy it anyway cos I'm a sucker when it comes to F1.
Asda last week were selling it for £29.97.
Edit, they have no put the price up to £37.97
http://direct.asda.com/Formula-1-2012---Xbox-360/003761870,default,pd.html
I stood my ground for about 2 hours and then bought it off Steam (£29.95 btw). :rolleyes:
So, first impressions...
At first I found the steering was all over the place during the young drivers test.
Thing is, the game seems to need you to do a lock-to-lock "calibration" of the wheel before using it, so it knows how much of an input to expect.
You should also do the same thing with throttle and brakes too.
You should only need to do this once per gaming session but if it's anything like F1 2011 (which tended to forget the calibration every now and again) it'd probably be wise to do it every time you get behind the wheel.
The most common situation where this causes problems is when you're doing "flying lap" type things and start off in a moving car with, possibly, an uncalibrated wheel and requires you to stop, move the wheel from lock to lock and then move off again.
Anyway, once I realised I had to do that, with the deadzone set to 2%, the saturation set to 5% and the linearity set to 0%, the steering was fine.
Force Feedback seems VERY powerful in some ways but weak in others.
The overall wheel weight was amazingly strong. Almost like trying to park a road car with no power steering.
The effects (kerbs, water, collisions etc) were a bit weedy though.
Hopefully that can be improved by twiddling the settings.
Don't forget that you need to turn "device override" on (on a PC at least) before you can access ALL the FFB options.
Overall the cars certainly ARE prone to understeer although you do get oversteer if you turn off traction control in the driver assists.
Seems a little odd that they've made the cars handle like this, especially when you consider that blown diffusers have been banned in F1 which should make the cars more tail-happy but I suspect we'll get used to it.
Thing is, I recall that people said the same about F1 2011 when it came out but once you're used to F1 2011 and then go back and play F1 2010 the handling on that seemed seriously clumsy and unsophisticated.
The cars in F1 2010 would sort of run like they were on rails but then throw you into the nearest hedge without warning if you made a mistake.
I'm guessing that once people are used to the way the cars in F1 2012 handle they won't mind it so much.
By way of a function-test, I did a Singapore race and I found that I could easily beat the best lap-time in the real race yesterday.
This is a bit worrying because it's taken a year of playing F1 2011 before I could beat the best lap times in the real 2011 race.
It perhaps suggests that they haven't modelled the different performance of this years cars as accurately as they might have.
Graphics and sound are fine (so far). Everything seems more shiny than it was in F1 2011.
Game still runs just as well on my PC as F1 2011 did so there's no need to upgrade hardware.
Need to get a bit of practice in then do some wet races to see if they've fixed the AIs to be a bit more sensible.
^^^^ Thanks for that R410, I did buy it at ASDA and got it for £25 pound becuase I had £12 pound gift card from trade in F1 2011
One thing I will say is full game is must better then demo one but they are bugs in game which as sometime are problems special if u engine blow up on ur when u doing 200 mph
First race is in Oz.
I get kind of bored with quali' so I changed the option to "Short race weekend, single quali'" assuming that'd be the usual "single 15-minute session" thing.
Instead, I discovered that it gave me a single flying-lap to set a time.
lap complete, session over and I'm told I'vequalified in 8th place.
Oh well, not bad I guess.
After the race I happened to notice the email thingy which tells you your results.
According to that I qualified 8th with a time of 1:26.71 and the pole position time was 1:28.48
Now, I'll grant you that this sort of thing could happen in F1.
A person could set a dry time which is only good enough for Q1 or Q2 and then it could rain for Q3, thus resulting in pole times slower than those knocked out earlier.
However, I qualified using the "one-shot" thing AND my time was good enough for a top-ten position so surely there's no legitimate way that I could end up in 8th with 1:26 while pole position is a 1:28???
Seems like the timing is still screwy at times.
2nd race was Malaysia.
Qualified on pole (after a full quali session this time).
Race started damp with everybody on inter's.
Maybe worth saying that I'm not keen on the way wet is represented in F1 2012.
The damp track was just slightly grey, like a lot of the textures were removed. No sheen or water to show you how wet it was.
During the first lap I got a message saying "Heavy rain expected in 5 minutes".
At the end of lap 1 all the AIs (and I mean ALL) pitted for options and I gained a 30 second lead).
It started to rain at the end of lap 2 and the AIs all pitted again for inter's.
My lead is now around 50 seconds.
The rain got heavier.
Not keen on the graphics for rain either. Still not very obvious on track where the water is and the rain, itself, comes "straight down", even when you're doing 200mph along a straight, rather than looking like it's coming "toward" you.
Eventually everybody went onto wet tyres and I began to lap people.
Rain stopped.
I got a message saying there'd be more heavy rain soon.
AI's pitted for inters.
Gap to P2 now up to around 1:40.
Rain started again.
AI's pitted for more wets.
I am now leading P2 by an entire lap.
Race won.
On the plus side, I guess the actions of the AI's suggest they're not programmed to "know" what the weather is going to do and respond accordingly but, blimey, they were a bit chaotic.
Anyway, beyond that, the AIs seem a bit more aggressive than they used to be.
They'll force their way past the player and they don't just concede position once you're in front by a nose.
Didn't have any wacky pitlane issues or issues with noticeably iffy timing during the race but I guess it's early days yet.
I was doing the Spanish race last night (100% race distance, manual gears etc and full damage) and I noticed quite early on in the race that there was smoke billowing out the back of my car.
I sort of tried to provoke a failure by doing stuff like using the rich fuel mix, messing about with the brake balance (in case my rear brakes were dying) and doing the odd dodgy down-shift but it just carried on billowing smoke out the back until the end of the race with no obvious problems.
The car monitor didn't show anything as overheating or being damaged and after the race my engine didn't show any huge amount of wear.
I know you can cause an immediate failure by downshifting into first at high speed but the smoke seemed to suggest that the game has random car failures in it so, in a twisted sort of way, I was actually kinda looking forward to the engine blowing up or summat and I was a bit disappointed when nothing came of it.
Also, while I'm at it, anybody know what the light blue dots on the track-map are, during the race?
I know your team-mate is a yellow dot but every now and again a sort of bright-blue dot appears as well.
They've usually been on a different bit of the track to me but, on occasion, I've beennear them and haven't seen anything special (sometimes not even any other car at all) and then they vanish and reappear somewhere else a bit later.
Perhaps an indicator about a car that your engineer has given you a message about or summat?
Of course I bombed away and they all stopped within a couple of laps to go on options. I was over a minute ahead and this was pretty much the only chance I had to win, even though I only won by 8 seconds in the end, which leads onto my next point...
I simply can't keep up for the final third of races, I'm fine on the first option stint and at the start when I switch to primes but every single time around 2/3 into the race I just can't keep up, my car seems harder to handle, no problem, but the AI doesn't seem to have the same problem, they just keep bombing around.
I'm finding it really frustrating.
Another thing, last race I qualified on inters and yet I still couldn't start on the prime, no choice but to start on options even though I wanted to do it the other way around.
The dynamic weather is a bit shit as well. Half the time the conditions aren't even recognised by the cars on the track.
Ah, right ho.
I did wonder if that might be the case.
Funny thing is, I did Monaco last night and there were blue dots showing up all over the place (during a changeable weather race) and at the end of the race heaps of drivers had 10 second penalties.
That's kinda good news cos it suggests the software IS actually paying attention to stuff that's happening off-screen a bit more than it used to.
The quali' is almost certainly screwed up though.
I've now done about 7 races and on about 4 occasions I've set the fastest time in Q3, only to be told that I've qualified further down the grid.
And, as I said, if you look at the emails after the race it often even SAYS that I qualified in, say, 1:20 and the pole time was 1:22 etc.
Unless somebody has a really good explanation for this, it's a bug.
Fortunately, for me, it doesn't really bother me cos I tend to just start from the back and get my jollies making passes during the race.
Regarding the handling, I'm feeling a bit more sympathetic towards it now.
I mean, I think the key difference between 2011 and 2012 (in real life) is that the cars don't have the same corner speed any more.
For the game it seems that they've reduced corner speeds by making the cars understeer more rather than making them oversteer.
That's wrong but it DOES create the same result - slower corner speeds - but it does so in such a way that means players can react to a slide before they find themselves going backwards into the barriers.
I think the handling has probably ended up like that because they've found that in the wet the cars are still incredibly tail-happy so they've been forced to make them understeer in the dry so that they're still vaguely controllable in the wet.
Try going through the Monaco tunnel in a wet race and you'll see what I mean.
Meant to say, as well, it's quite surprising how "normal" the tyres in F1 2012 are too.
With all the fuss over tyres in real-life F1 this year, and all the odd results they've contributed to, I was expecting the game reflect that a bit more, with players being able to burn up their tyres long before they're due a pitstop.
Maybe Pirelli didn't like the idea of the game showing their tyres to be inferior in some way?
Its something there not happy with & apparently havn't been for a while but didn't have time to fix before release.
I got the game on Monday, The understeer I've kinda adapted to although if the patch fixes it I'd be happier.
After a couple days of playing though I still think I much prefer F1 2011, I just had more of a feel for what the car was doing on that, On 2012 for some reason I never really feel like im driving the car. There are times when the car seems to start turning itself into a corner as if there's some sort of built-in steering assist that you can't turn off, Its especially noticeable in the young driver test at Abu-Dhabi where you can take your hand off the wheel down the back straght & have it automatically turn you through the little kinks in it.
The biggest problem I seem to be having is brake locking, Im locking brake just about everywhere & the only thing that seems to fix it is by turning braking force to low & setting brake bias rearward by a lot.
Going back to some earlier comments in this thread regarding a lack of feel, Im feeling that with my brake locking issues. I can't feel them locking, Only way im telling there locking is by either seeing them actual lock or when ive already gone straght on at a corner, Don't seem to be getting a feel for that through the FFB like in other titles (Including F1 2011).
I went back to F1 2011 & immediately felt I could push the cars, I could feel what they were doing, Feel the understeer building up & compensate for it & when brakes locked I could feel it & again compensate with the braking force to stop the lock. Im not really feeling any of that in 2012 & im not able to get the confidence to really hustle the car & Im not really liking that.
Of the 3 Codemasters F1 games so far I prefer 2011 & by a long way, I enjoy the driving experience of 2011 so much more than 2012. Maybe/Hopefully the patch Codemasters have mentioned that will remove the understeer, improve FFB etc... will change my views but right now I don't really like it.
I worry that codemasters tend to apply "fiddle factors" rather than relying on fundamentally good, consistent, modelling.
I mean, if you look at the way they model fuel loads, you find that the car won't stop in time for a corner on full tanks and that it'll act exactly the same way for the first 20-odd laps but then, suddenly, it'll change from "full tanks" model to "half tanks" model and you'll suddenly find that you can brake 50m later.
If they try and apply a similar principle to the steering people will find that a car that's easy to control in the wet on one lap will suddenly become MUCH harder to control on the next lap because the software has changed from "wet steering" to "dry steering".
I'd certainly prefer that the cars had less understeer but I'd also like them to handle consistently and, given the way they currently handle in the wet (as I said, the Monaco tunnel is absolutely terrifying in the wet) I can't see how they can properly dial out dry weather understeer without making the cars undriveable in the wet.
As for the braking, I think it's just REALLY important not to overlap braking and steering and (pleasingly, just like real life) it's important to balance the throttle through corners too.
In F1 2011 you could just get off the throttle, brake, steer and then feed in the throttle on the exit.
For F1 2012 it seems that you have to be much more careful about maintaining the correct amount of throttle through the corner to make the steering work.
I think a lot of the "problems" people are having are simply cos the cars aren't the same as they were in F1 2011 and that with a few months practice we'll probably be just as comfortable with them as we were with F1 2011.
I think part of the fun and challenge is figuring out how to get the best out of cars that handle differently so I actually enjoy the different handling.
The handling model in 2010 was quite poor, Cars felt like they were on an axis & they had way more grip overall than they would have in reality, I guess a good description would be to say the handling was too forgiving.
For 2011 the handling felt a great deal better, Codemasters made huge improvements in just about every area of the handling/physics model & it felt a lot more life-like than any other console F1 game i've played in the past (Which would be just about all of them).
For me the handling model in 2012 feels closer to 2010 & its even got the 2010 glitch where the car auto-corrects if you tap the brakes when spinning. The understeer seems as a result of the cars having way too much rear grip, The braking problems many are having is probably as a result of the same thing.
Something thats way off that Im surprised hasn't been mentioned more in KERS. When you use KERS in the game the engine sounds like your using NOS as the revs get more high pitched & then drop back the second you release KERS. In reality you feel the speed boost (About 80Bhp in real life) but there isn't any other noticeable difference in engine sound & the KERS unit itself is silent.
DRS seems to work about right though.
You know though something I dont get about the way Codemasters have done things is that each time they seem to totally re-write the handling/physics rather than tweaking/improving there existing models.
Doing that after 2010 was probably the right things to do as 2010 was way off where it needed to be, However as I say 2011 was pretty good & some tweaks & improvements would likely have seen 2012 be even better. Instead they seem to have started from scratch again so the gains they made in 2011 have sadly been lost & I feel that 2012 feels a lot less realistic as a result, Shame really.