F1 2015 Early impressions and needed changes (feel free to add)

F1 2015 The Game (Codemasters)
Hey guys, I'm going to try to get as many people and Codie's affiliates to see this to hopefully bring about some positive change to this solid entry to the franchise. Feel free to add your own constructive thoughts and evaluate mine. Whatever system you are using on doesn't really matter, but if it's system specific please note that in your comment (btw to interested buyers from Xbox, check out DigitalFountry's report, unfortunately 25% less resolution also comes with over 10 avg FPS drop than PS4 so if not a PC the PS4 is *probably* the safer bet).

Experience with all F1 Codie's titles, PCars, Iracing and many other racing titles. Have used the G25, G27 and DFGT. Second game using the T500rs.

Entered Championship season as Kimi Raikkonen, all aids off, maximum difficulty, 50% race distance and have completed Australia, Malaysia and China. I did not do any pre-practice prior to Melbourne practice. Finishing order of 3 races; Q18, P2, Q4,PF1 (last 10 laps wet), Q2, P1 (Last 8 laps wet).

Pros:
- Overall cinematic feeling helps makes races feel more important and helps enjoy a good result
- Love how awesome rear is when exiting low speed corners. In 2013 the rear was planted, in '14 the rear would always slide out uncontrollably out of the last turn of Melbourne or you must go ridiculously slow and lose over a second to rivals. Perfect balance in '15, you must control the power.
- New tyre model: For the first Codie's game ever I actually properly control tyre degradation. The first race in Melbourne I simply didn't have the pace, I wanted to understand the physics so smoothly ran around the same slow laps and the result was keeping the tyres nice and grippy. Weird thing is I could get the options to run longer at a quicker pace than the prime at two separate grand prix, which helped me win the race by doing one less pit stop. Could just be me though.
- I like how your engineer actually talks to you about your fuel level and other aspects of the car and race, I do wish he'd tell us more about the percentage of fuel remaining (KG can be meaningless), have more information and tell us how we compare in certain areas to our team mate or on track rivals in terms of speeds, fuel or sector times etc. I know you can ask questions via mic, haven't tested this though.
- Overall, the physics definitely seem well refined from previous years and I'm starting to feel we can properly call this racer a simulation which is easier to get into than a pure simcade.

* Having lots of fun, do not allow the length or sound of list make you feel the game isn't great, because it is *

Cons / Needed features:

- A career mode. Massive feature. I do not mind if they did a DLC / expansion / patch and added a bare boned career mode without any pre or post race stuff. I'd immediately play it. Having your own name and working your way signing through teams is far more satisfying than playing as X driver and more importantly feels like the campaign of the game, and lasts far, far longer than any X season with a driver. Has far more depth and I didn't believe the seller at the shop when he said no career mode. Absolutely blown away. A bare-boned career mode would be great, but if they added a career mode where you had to choose a pre-set face (of say 10) and a nickname (of say 30) and have Crofty and Ant commentate pre and post race would be awesome. Using the '14/'15 seasons back & forth would spice things up too.
- Handling wise I have my T500rs on the shortest wheel ratio setting as to mimick a real life F1 car. Not happy with the first 45 degrees either left or right, not feeling enough front bite from either FFB/wheel. Feels to mushy, to much like a boat. Need more feedback, especially during qualifying.
- Lacking HUD details like tyre temperature, track temperature, tyre wear, engine wear and engine temperature. Doesn't show you this at all, I assume you can ask your engineer (assume because why else would it not be there (and I can see the appeal of the realism) but not everyone uses the mic and I feel there should be a non-default setting to display the temperature once every time you cross the line or something (so as to not give an overly advantage to those who have it visible).
- The game is rigid in many ways. Why can't every setting be independent of each other? I wanted 50% race lengths with heighest difficulty A.I but was automatically assigned 'short' qualifying. I want the 3 stage qualifying with a 50% race and more practices but the game won't allow this. The settings come in groups. Please make everything independent and flexible to the player please.
- An extension of the above, at the start of the race you must choose from 2 dry or 2 wet pre-assigned strategies each involving a different starting tyre. What happened to the Q2 tyre top 10 rule? And why must I be forced into a strategy I don't like? Why can't I choose what fuel level I want? Recommendations only, please.
- The whole way about creating a custom setup on a race weekend is a little ambiguous. Once loaded any changes will require a manual slave which results in a full name reset, worse still - where are the brake settings gone to? the settings are missing the brake disc & pad size as well as the distribution of braking.
- Picture this; you've put your Williams into P2. It's time to race when you notice the track is 8 degrees colder than qualifying. You feel as though a drop in tyre pressure and a crank of front wing is required to get heat into the tyres round this front-limited circuit. As you open the setup you notice every single setting is on default, 6/6, 50/50, etc etc. This isn't your set up. You cannot load your setup because of parc ferme' rules, nor can you change them to your liking. Is this just a aesthetic bug/mistake? Perhaps your settings are actually being used and you just can't tell? Either way, there is no way of knowing and I hope this issue is addressed.
- No penalty for crossing white line out of pits
- No safety car?
- No improvement for damage,not a big deal though tbh.

What do you think of the game? Agree/disagree? Going to be linking to Codemaster's to try to grasp what kind of updates/patches we may be getting!
 
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Interesting write-up Ozzy, some things I like the sound of others I don't. I'm on the XBO and have always pre-order the game in the past (all of them from 2010 to 2014) but held off getting this one on release to see what people make of it.

Really don't like the fact that you are restricted in your selections for shorter races and agree with you that they should allow you to customise it to what you want rather than this preconfigured restriction :thumbsdown:

Are you seriously not able to use your own setup for shorter races, an I reading that correctly?

Regarding fuel for the race though it's correct that you can't select how much you want, All cars start of with 100 kilos in the real world, that's part of the regulations so good that they stuck to that.
 
Also on t500 wheel and i'd prefer the game to adjust wheel rotation rather then having to go tm profiler to change it, what keys are y, x, a, b and howcome you might suddenly get keyboard conmands in the mix, i wish there was a way to skip the animations of drivers climbing out of the cars etc. i wish the game Remembered that i'm on custom wheel profile rather than t500 profile on starting the game. 2h game play and I think I'll wait for a patch.
 
Regarding fuel for the race though it's correct that you can't select how much you want, All cars start of with 100 kilos in the real world, that's part of the regulations so good that they stuck to that.

Not exactly. 100 kilos it's the maximum amount of fuel the teams can use to complete a race but depending on the track the teams do some underfueling. So, we should be able to decide the amount of fuel to start a race with a limit of 100 kilos of course.
 
I think although they are a massive step forward, the AI need tweaking.

They are massively quicker than you in a straight line, and most of the time if they come across you on a straight and try to overtake they end up ramming you out of the way cause they switch sides way too late, only about a metre from the back of your car. But because of the huge speed difference they end up tagging the back of you as they cut across and spin you out.

But if those issues were addressed it'd be a good racing experience, but for me at the moment that's killing it.
 
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Thanks for the info, wasn't aware of that thought the fuel amount was fixed :thumbsup:

That being the case it's definitely disappointing that you can't mirror that in the game.

I also understand that you are still only able to select mix 1, 2 out 3 so no change there from previous versions of the game. Thought there might be more depth to it this time to equal the fuel management in real life.
 
In regards to set up for shorter races; right before starting the race the game defaults your setup and you cannot change them because of parc ferme rules.

Also, forgot to mention the issue of assigning buttons: either I choose the t500rs preset and then I cannot customise it slightly i.e change how to look back. If I want to customise it I gotta start from scratch by assigning each and every button.

P.S Apart from DigitalFoundtry's report I've only seen about 15 minutes of Xbox gameplay, how is it for XO players? Unforunately the frame rate isn't a locked 60 so I'm worried about both consoles ability to hold the frame rate in tougher scenarios like rain at Monaco. My PS4 is okay so far, but random FPS drops at the back end of China for no reason.
 
My first impressions of the PC version

Graphics
When i got the game yesterday i was put off immediately by the terrible blurry graphics. Turns out you have to go into the documents/My games/F1 2015/Hardware Settings folder manualy edit the hardwaresettingsconfig.xml and turn off motion blur.

Another BIG turn off for me is the constant disappearing and appearing of the opponent cars on the track. Sometimes you can see entire groups of cars vanish into thin air and suddenly pop up again if you get a little bit closer. Also the brake distant boards pop up.

This is at ULTRA setttings????

Physics/Ai
The physics feel pretty good. No understeer and the back of the car reacts like it should when accelerating out of the slow corners. You can clearly feel the difference between the different tyre componts. You really get the feeling that these cars accelerate like crazy and have great grip.

AI is good, but way to fast on the straights and sometimes too agressive

Controler support
Again codemasters have f..cked-up the controler support, since you can't bind two different controlers and use the same axis. My HE-pro gaspedal was assigned to the X-axis, but so is the steering axis on my Accuforce. Luckily i could swap the gaspedal with the clutch on the HE-pros and finally got everything working. It's also not possible to overide the input device.
Before every race start i have to turn the wheel all the way left/right to avoid having a huge deadzone untill the first corner

Data output / Simvibe / Accuforce
The one thing i was most afraid of is that Codemaster would also screwup the data output system, but i'm happy to report it's working perfectly. I used my F1 2014 profile in Simcommander and got great support for all my SimX stuff

After some tweaking with my AccuForce, setting it at 300 degrees and manually adding some roadnoise and increasing the bumps, i got great feedback from the game. The feeling in the wheel and the entire rig when you ride the curbs is the best ever.
I managed to get the same result with simvibe and my GS-4, transforming F1 2015 into a completely different experience.

The couple of races i drove were great fun. Good battle with the AI. I have always like a rewind option and i ocasionally still use it. I miss some settings like having the ability to disable the names above the drivers and turning off the some of the TV display info.

Overall the game feels pretty good to me, but it needs patching.

So untill it's patched, i will continue to play other racegames.
 
Hi guys, hello to everyone!
I'm playing PC version of F1 2015 from the day one with my best-friend: the G27 :whistling:
I bought the game on Steam on day one because I couldn't wait one more day without playing it, so I was very excited about trying it.
After 4 hours I want to share with you my thoughts:

PROS
  • Graphic: a lot of reflections and good overall quality of the tracks. I don't agree with guys who are disappointed about blurry atmosphere, I love it, excpecially in night races at ULTRA settings.
  • Handling: finally! My last F1 game was 2013 because I just hate how F1 2014 cars were unmanageable in traction and to have good lap times you have to drift around the track in a non-realistic way. This 2015 game makes the handling much more closer to what I used on Project Cars. The comparison between these arcade games and a holy monster like rFactor is pointless.
  • Engineer: it talks, he's helpfull and gives me every time the informations I need.
  • TV-CAM: nice to see your replay with real TV cameras
CONS
  • AI: that stupid AI from 20xx games is returned back, wrost than ever! This time the AI is so aggressive that every driver drives like Maldonado. Ok, not so bad beacuse it's competitive under braking and it's challenging in slow corners, but it kick you in the back on the straight line every single time!
  • No-career mode: I never played career mode in F1 game because it's pointless. Menus was worst than the worst need-for-speed quick race and I never felt in love with it. Codemasters should learn frome Milestone on how build a career mode. Anyway the lack of this mode is unacceptable!
  • Onboard cam: I can't play with the onboard cam, they point to high to the horizon and they have too many FOV .
  • Controller settings: I found impossible to change default settings on my G27. I'm searching for it, I will do, but it's not easy.
It's a fun game, but so many HUGE deficinecyes and bugs make this game a 6/10.
I hope they will fix it!
 
My first impressions of the PC version

Graphics
When i got the game yesterday i was put off immediately by the terrible blurry graphics. Turns out you have to go into the documents/My games/F1 2015/Hardware Settings folder manualy edit the hardwaresettingsconfig.xml and turn off motion blur.

Another BIG turn off for me is the constant disappearing and appearing of the opponent cars on the track. Sometimes you can see entire groups of cars vanish into thin air and suddenly pop up again if you get a little bit closer. Also the brake distant boards pop up.

This is at ULTRA setttings????

Physics/Ai
The physics feel pretty good. No understeer and the back of the car reacts like it should when accelerating out of the slow corners. You can clearly feel the difference between the different tyre componts. You really get the feeling that these cars accelerate like crazy and have great grip.

AI is good, but way to fast on the straights and sometimes too agressive

Controler support
Again codemasters have f..cked-up the controler support, since you can't bind two different controlers and use the same axis. My HE-pro gaspedal was assigned to the X-axis, but so is the steering axis on my Accuforce. Luckily i could swap the gaspedal with the clutch on the HE-pros and finally got everything working. It's also not possible to overide the input device.
Before every race start i have to turn the wheel all the way left/right to avoid having a huge deadzone untill the first corner

Data output / Simvibe / Accuforce
The one thing i was most afraid of is that Codemaster would also screwup the data output system, but i'm happy to report it's working perfectly. I used my F1 2014 profile in Simcommander and got great support for all my SimX stuff

After some tweaking with my AccuForce, setting it at 300 degrees and manually adding some roadnoise and increasing the bumps, i got great feedback from the game. The feeling in the wheel and the entire rig when you ride the curbs is the best ever.
I managed to get the same result with simvibe and my GS-4, transforming F1 2015 into a completely different experience.

The couple of races i drove were great fun. Good battle with the AI. I have always like a rewind option and i ocasionally still use it. I miss some settings like having the ability to disable the names above the drivers and turning off the some of the TV display info.

Overall the game feels pretty good to me, but it needs patching.

So untill it's patched, i will continue to play other racegames.

You stil can turn off the osd and driver tags. Its in session options now
 
Pros:
-The driving, much improved imo, it's delicious to have the car move under braking and "dance it" to the apex.
Same thing about picking up the throttle and controlling the oversteer with a quick counter steer move.

The "training wheels" are still there, specially on high speed corners (where i wish cars would be less "safe").
Plus i think the new setup screen allows us to change the balance in unprecedent degrees (for the Codemasters F1 series that is), the exception being aero balance, as i mentioned before, you can't setup the car for oversteer in high speed corners no matter how much FW you ad.

Maybes:
-The AI, it isn't good AI, but at least it races you... somewhat a improvement over the wimps Codemasters used to give us.
You need to be very aware of their "Maldonadoness", not only you have to respect and give room as if you were in a league race but you also need to understand that they won't back off even in positions that any rational human being should.

-Controller support/FFB, FFB seems improved, making it easier and more natural to catch slides, i'ts still miles away from being good though.
Wheel support is poor, a G27 on default settings felt like i didn't connect the power cable... It took me quite a while to find settings i consider acceptable (which again is far from great FFB).
And of course the in game commands are still limited by a console controller friendly interface, it can't be mentioned enough how terrible it is to access the Dpad on the G27, yet the options to it are limited and often convoluted.

-I never cared much for career(i did enjoy the "also gone" scenario mode though), but still removing things wih nothing to replace it is bad.

Bads:
-The bugs, OMG there's too many of them to go over.
So i'll stick to the ones i think are close to game breaking:

The Parc Ferme thing, the OP went over this, just... yeah.

The track cutting, needs to be addressed nuf said.

The pause/unpause bug, i don't see this mentioned often, when i pause/unpause the game doesn't give me control straight away, for what feels like 4/5s the game is not letting me steer my car f... up my race in the process.
Those are the most important ones i think.

On to the graphics, i can't stand the overdone post process and the dull color palette, it looks good in some situations, night racing, rain, replays...

But it looks awful from the most important one, cockpit view in day time, and no options to turn everything off either, heck, not even a gamma adjustment option... really shitty job here (to top it off it isn't moddable).
Right now i would prefer the old engine (which was showing it's age big time in the last outing).
Plus even if they allow us to "unblur" the game in the patches, it still wouldn't be a looker.
 
Poor Codemasters, people complained previous games were too saturated and looked like a cartoon, and this game dials back the saturation and people complain that the colors are dull. Codemasters can't win either way.
 
Iv been playing over the weekend

The ghost car in time trial mode is like it is lagging and jumping around.

The pit engineer still isnt accurate just like previous games,
In wet weather you are told to stay on the wet or intermediate tyre and then everyone pits for dry tyres.


The relections on some textures are too glossy like carbon fibre parts,

Cars in wing mirriors ghost like time trials and the lods are wrong,
This is on ultra settings.

You're controller profile doesnt always load.

The feeback feels abit numb its hard to feel the car at times but it does feel good when power sliding.

The ai needs some adjustments especially on the striaghts and not knowing when to back off.

The setup menu can be confusing Is my setup loaded ?

When entering the pits my car got stuck at the pit entry sign.

The exe crashes when exiting the game.

If you change from full screen to minimised and back again the screen resolution changes.
When you try to change your resolution back in the video settings the game crashes.

The audio balance is off and needs adjustment.

The quick menus are not quick enough anymore,
Its hard to change the brake bias quick before corners.

Codemaster had the chance to do something special with a new engine for next gen, but they didnt.
It feels like a overhualed game with some good cut scenes and commentry.
The graphics dont feel next gen.

Although i do like the do like the game it just needs to be fixed to make it enjoyable.
 
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In regards to set up for shorter races; right before starting the race the game defaults your setup and you cannot change them because of parc ferme rules.

Also, forgot to mention the issue of assigning buttons: either I choose the t500rs preset and then I cannot customise it slightly i.e change how to look back. If I want to customise it I gotta start from scratch by assigning each and every button.

P.S Apart from DigitalFoundtry's report I've only seen about 15 minutes of Xbox gameplay, how is it for XO players? Unforunately the frame rate isn't a locked 60 so I'm worried about both consoles ability to hold the frame rate in tougher scenarios like rain at Monaco. My PS4 is okay so far, but random FPS drops at the back end of China for no reason.
Stellastig on YouTube has Xbox one footage and review mate.
 
Cheers to above. Keep adding thoughts guys, gonna nag the devs on Twitter to check this out.

I'd like to add:
- No set up for brake size or distribution
- No set up for ride height
- AI has crazy straightline speed and on occasion rams you
- Back-markers are plain insane
- Lack of anti-aliasing (?) I see a bunch of lines moving and flickering on all the cars, really spoils the view
- Replay bugs from floating debris to parts of car vanishing
- Using the replay feature whilst in the pit lane will cause you to re-appear on the race track adjacent to wherever you would have been in the pit lane
- Race starts: I like how it's actually difficult and you don't go from 0 to hero in the first bend... but it seems a little off. I either spin it or lose 3-4 places off the line. I've tried giving it less gas, blipping the throttle, short shifting and turning engine mode down. Is there a mechanic to master here or will we forever be lagging behind the A.I at the start?
- In 2015 season max difficulty in a Ferrari, just finished Barca. I've won 3 races, Seb has taken 2. Rosberg the remaining ones. Merc are 90 points off us in the standings and Hamilton's heighest finishing position has been like 3rd. At Bahrain he finished 18th and didn't seem to have any issues. I thought the game was meant to be reflective?

Not a bug per se but I read that this game was going to be supported throughout the season with DLC to cater the game to the progress of real life F1. I also had faith that some form of a career mode would be implemented via a DLC, now I'm reading Codemasters are saying NO DLC at all? http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2015/07/09/f1-2015-update-for-day-one-revealed-no-dlc-planned/

Rather misleading Codemasters.

P.S Anyone compared '14 to '15? My first 3-4 hours were spent in a '14 Ferrari (I didn't download day 1 patch) I actually didn't realise it wasn't the 2015 variant until halfway through my first race. The '14 car was incredibly more difficult to drive, the rear was all over with torque steer and the brakes felt like iron ignots, kept locking up took me quite a while to get used to it. In the '15 I can slam the throttle and jam the brakes and it takes it. No wonder Kimi struggled so much in the '14 car, don't blame him lol.
 
Also on t500 wheel and i'd prefer the game to adjust wheel rotation rather then having to go tm profiler to change it, what keys are y, x, a, b and howcome you might suddenly get keyboard conmands in the mix, i wish there was a way to skip the animations of drivers climbing out of the cars etc. i wish the game Remembered that i'm on custom wheel profile rather than t500 profile on starting the game. 2h game play and I think I'll wait for a patch.
Make sure you always start your game, go through the game selection (2015/2014), and skip the intro videos via a button on your wheel. If you use your keyboard to click through the initial screens, then the keyboard becomes your default controller. When you now get to the wheel settings screen you have the default T500 available, and have lost your customisations.
 
I tried to submit the following as my Steam review after 1 hour of gameplay on launch night, but for some reason (after 3 submissions) it never went through, so I'll post it here instead. I never got passed technical issues with the game so couldn't comment much on gameplay.

The Good:

- Graphics: Although not entirely realistic, the visuals in general are very impressive. "Atmospheric fog" is somewhat overdone in places, and some of the colour correction is borderline crazy (Monaco on a sunny day is so brown / orange that it looks like sunset - need less CC or more blue injecting into the image). There's so many effects layered (like CA, motion blur, DoF) that the image is in no way sharp or clear - which although can be adjusted by file editing, should really / ideally be adjustable in game within the rest of the comprehensive graphics options.

- Car handling: A real challenge now (using a 360 controller) with careful inputs especially on throttle application (the car can spin in the dry while exiting mid to slow corners, which to me is a little too easy to lose traction). Driving in the wet seems like driving on ice at times, with a very high risk of losing control coming out of any corner.

- Audio: Sounds good to me so far, but can't hear the pit radio even remotely clearly (on 5.1 system comes out of centre channel too low a volume and too tinny a sound to understand).


The potential:

- Controller calibration: Simply needs better support and options to be functional. Previous F1 games allowed sensitivities and what not to be adjusted but right now (for Xbox 360 controller) it's non-adjustable. The control assignments can be changed but it then creates a custom profile which behaves differently from the official 360 preset - the most annoying matter is the right analogue stick (in cockpit) suddenly becomes way too sensitive, therefore jerky in motion and worse, has absolutely no deadzone so if you so much as brush past the thumbstick it'll decentralise your viewing angle. I also feel that like some wheel and pedals comments I've read, the 360 configuration for sensitivities also might need improvement as the car can seem too much of a handful throughout every element of gameplay.

- AI: Although much improved in terms of now giving you a race and overtaking if realistically possible, I've already seen drivers drive eratically around Monaco if a crash happens (they initially don't seem to know how to deal with this circumstance), and I was somewhat unfairly punted off Silverstone track limits by an over-aggressive Williams (and as it put me into a 180 degree spin I was disqualified for simply turning around to get back racing).

- Performance / optimisation: Running the game on absolute max settings and even on a lowish resolution of 1920 x 810 I can't get 100% 60 fps - all on i7 3770 & GTX 780 (Asus Strix 6Gb). Yes the game looks nice, but it's overly performance intensive compared to F1 2014.


The bad:

- Cockpit camera has been designed for 16:9 displays, but although the game has HOR+ behaviour, the cockpit view in 21:9 ratio shows that you're actually sat way too far back and just looks unrealistic and rubbish. The file system used has changed since F1 2014 so I'm currently unable to mod 2015 by .xml editing.

- Further 21:9 issues being some of the main menu graphics are fixed in 16:9 ratio so some pictures look "crushed", and the in-game HUD only spans to 16:9 limits, which I'd prefer were shoved to the edge of the screen in 21:9 mode.

- Some graphical glitches / errors like cockpit view has too big a steering wheel causing the drivers hands and arms to go straight through the cockpit sides (how that got past QA is beyond me). Also had my car leaving permanent and consistent tyre black lines from both rear wheels around the whole of Silverstone track while watching a replay.

- Seriously poor frame rate of drivers mirrors. Although not a massive issue, when you notice it, it stands out big-time.


Hopefully Codemasters will patch the game up soon, then it should be a worthy successor to F1 2014.
 
Not a bug per se but I read that this game was going to be supported throughout the season with DLC to cater the game to the progress of real life F1. I also had faith that some form of a career mode would be implemented via a DLC, now I'm reading Codemasters are saying NO DLC at all? http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2015/07/09/f1-2015-update-for-day-one-revealed-no-dlc-planned/

Rather misleading Codemasters.

What i got from that, is no visual upgrades (if Mercedes launches a new FW they won't add it), and no content updates(no extra tracks or cars)...
I think the support is gonna be car performance updates.
 

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