In my short time of enjoying sim racing one thing that I’ve noticed cropping up repeatedly is that the developers often make many, shall we say, improvements to the physics model during the supported lifetime of the game.
This has certainly been the case with AC, PC2, GTS, F1, DR2, and now ACC is going through this cycle. Sometimes this is for playability reasons a’la GTS and F1, but mostly it appears to be a general desire on the part of the devs to bring the most realistic driving experience to their product.
In many ways I guess we should be happy about that, well, at least happy about the devs who are striving for realism. And I’m also happy about it… mostly.
There are nevertheless issues with such an approach.
With sims that use worldwide leaderboards it can leave times on there that are to all intents and purposes unobtainable with a newer version of the physics, unless the devs are prepared to do a reset.
Also if you’re heavily invested in setups it can mean a lot of work down the drain. One person over on the AC forums said a few hundred hours of work were lost after ACC introduced body-flex.
And for those of us, like me, that make use of minimal changes, it can go to needing to drive the same car on the same track in a completely different style overnight.
From my own personal point of view I half think that all physics engine changes should be done in the beta, public beta and early access versions. As soon as the sim is officially released then the physics engine should be locked down and set in stone, unless there is a glaring problem with it. That way everybody has a consistent baseline. Anything you can do today will be repeatable 2 years down the line.
Then again I welcome all the physics improvements that occur during the supported lifetime of the product.
So, I guess I’m on the fence. Where do you stand?
This has certainly been the case with AC, PC2, GTS, F1, DR2, and now ACC is going through this cycle. Sometimes this is for playability reasons a’la GTS and F1, but mostly it appears to be a general desire on the part of the devs to bring the most realistic driving experience to their product.
In many ways I guess we should be happy about that, well, at least happy about the devs who are striving for realism. And I’m also happy about it… mostly.
There are nevertheless issues with such an approach.
With sims that use worldwide leaderboards it can leave times on there that are to all intents and purposes unobtainable with a newer version of the physics, unless the devs are prepared to do a reset.
Also if you’re heavily invested in setups it can mean a lot of work down the drain. One person over on the AC forums said a few hundred hours of work were lost after ACC introduced body-flex.
And for those of us, like me, that make use of minimal changes, it can go to needing to drive the same car on the same track in a completely different style overnight.
From my own personal point of view I half think that all physics engine changes should be done in the beta, public beta and early access versions. As soon as the sim is officially released then the physics engine should be locked down and set in stone, unless there is a glaring problem with it. That way everybody has a consistent baseline. Anything you can do today will be repeatable 2 years down the line.
Then again I welcome all the physics improvements that occur during the supported lifetime of the product.
So, I guess I’m on the fence. Where do you stand?
