Ian Bell | Straight4Games and Hyper-Realistic Screenshots

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Ian Bell is at it again. As has been announced, the Englishman's new studio will be developing racing games. And boy, if the tweets are no lies, whatever they have in their pipeline is some hyper-realistic stuff!

Straight4Games​

The new studio will not be called, as previously announced, MildlyAnnoyedStudios, but rather Straight4Games. This was announced in a Tweet that Ian Bell put out on his private Twitter account.

The programmer from Hertfordshire revealed the following logo to be used for the game development studio.
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The New Game Engine​

The studio's first job seemed to be working with a new engine. According to a previous tweet from Ian Bell, the used engine might be Unreal Engine 5, as he said:

Imagine RF2 physics, tweaked in an Unreal 5 world... I do. Dreams can come true.
- Ian Bell, Mar 31, 2022

The known detail is that this new engine, according to recent Tweets is capable of hyper-realistic renderings of car interiors, as seen in the following screenshots.

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According to answers in the original Tweet by Ian Bell, these screenshots are "100% in-engine".

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The first project of Straight4Games is said to be GTR Revival, a reimagining of the classic GTR games developed by SimBin and Ian Bell's own Blimey! Games.

What do you think of this news? What do you think of the screenshots? Let us know in the comments down below!
About author
Julian Strasser
Motorsports and Maker-stuff enthusiast. Part time jack-of-all-trades. Owner of tracc.eu, a sim racing-related service provider and its racing community.

Comments

I'm not his advocate, I'm an interested sim race fan that doesn't appreciate that a handful of selfish protesters are attempting to f*ck up what could be a very worthwhile sim for everyone else.
If they were as knowledgeable and worthy as they pretend to be they would be working in that industry and not here whinging
I dont know where you see anything "selfish"
You can disagree in a civilized way or not?
And as far as i can see, the negative voices here were not against the project but against or aimed at Ian Bell. And that is justified. Now you might not like it, but gotta live with it i guess. There are legit reasons to not be enthusiastic when hearing that Ian Bell announces (yet again) a new project. Does this mean we don't welcome a new simracing game using UE5? Of course not. But its really normal to not forget either.

Every game maker in the simracing space has their history and if and when they will announce new projects people will bring up the points that were not handled well in past projects and bring up also the mistakes made. Thats completely normal. If anything it shows passion and the fact that we indeed really really want a new next gen simracing game. As far as i am concerned there is for now officially only Rennsport in development, and unofficially AC2.
 
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As far as i am concerned there is for now officially only Rennsport in development, and unofficially AC2.
So we have names, screenshots and videos of the new GTR being developed. We have seen nothing from AC2, at all. Showing your bias there i suppose? :)
 
Got to love a bit of Ian bell hype! Looking forward to it, not too much recently on racing titles, gt7, AC, PC1 - that interest me anyway
 
Actually there are a bunch of cinematic cameras which you would know of if you actually were following AMS2, btw..
Well, about time (mouselook? movable camera?)

But AMS2 is nothing to do with Bell, now. And you're confirming the cameras were entirely absent from the product when Bell was in charge of it. If positioning a title as an esports platform --as they did for ProjCars-- that's a bit of an oversight, don't you think? And my point was ProjCars cared more about the shiny than all the things (such as cams) that actually leverage a sim into being really something.

Using AMS2 to defend Ian Bell/SMS isn't the win folks seem to imagine it is. Rather it's the reverse: look at all the work they have had to put in?
 
Well, about time (mouselook? movable camera?)

But AMS2 is nothing to do with Bell, now. And you're confirming the cameras were entirely absent from the product when Bell was in charge of it. If positioning a title as an esports platform --as they did for ProjCars-- that's a bit of an oversight, don't you think? And my point was ProjCars cared more about the shiny than all the things (such as cams) that actually leverage a sim into being really something.

Using AMS2 to defend Ian Bell/SMS isn't the win folks seem to imagine it is. Rather it's the reverse: look at all the work they have had to put in?
In terms of product AMS2 cannot be used to defend Ian Bell, but let's not forget that 90% of the potential Reiza has been extracting was already there waiting for someone patient enough to refine the rough diamond (which Reiza is doing while adding also some new features and which is the greatest guilt of mr Bell).
That rough diamond is the same ME most of the simracing community is sh.......g on day in day out and was created by Ian Bell btw.
 
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Premium
In terms of product AMS2 cannot be used to defend Ian Bell, but let's not forget that 90% of the potential Reiza has been extracting was already there waiting for someone patient enough to refine the rough diamond (which Reiza is doing while adding also some new features and which is the greatest guilt of mr Bell).
That rough diamond is the same ME most of the simracing community is sh.......g on day in day out and was created by Ian Bell btw.
It shows on one hand that ME is a great engine with very much potential, but on the other hand also how much work is necessary to make something acutally worth playing out of it.
 
Someone calling Madness Engine the best physics engine ever existed for sure is a funny joke. Reiza can't get past its bugs and glitches after so many years in work. AMS2 may be a good game from regular updates standpoint, but one can't deny you can feel the legacy of Project CARS while driving any car from AMS2 roster.

Project CARS has been everything a community wasn't advertising and nothing a community has been promising. By far the worst lie told since Fable's Molyneux...
 
Someone calling Madness Engine the best physics engine ever existed for sure is a funny joke. Reiza can't get past its bugs and glitches after so many years in work. AMS2 may be a good game from regular updates standpoint, but one can't deny you can feel the legacy of Project CARS while driving any car from AMS2 roster.

Project CARS has been everything a community wasn't advertising and nothing a community has been promising. By far the worst lie told since Fable's Molyneux...
Ah yes, the all mythical "physics". And you are qualified to judge this?...
 
Someone calling Madness Engine the best physics engine ever existed for sure is a funny joke. Reiza can't get past its bugs and glitches after so many years in work. AMS2 may be a good game from regular updates standpoint, but one can't deny you can feel the legacy of Project CARS while driving any car from AMS2 roster.

Project CARS has been everything a community wasn't advertising and nothing a community has been promising. By far the worst lie told since Fable's Molyneux...
Well the problem is most of the people are mixing the fact that the engine wasn't developed to its potential appropriately with the engine being s...t per se. Most of them don't have really deep knowledge of things to make this statement but it seems hate for Ian Bell and urban legends are enough for everyone to consider this as universal truth.

Reality is ME is the biggest collection of the most advanced physics models, however almost all of these models weren't properly tuned because it takes a lot of time and effort which SMS did not want to spend apparently.

How is Reiza working on fixing the bugs and the undeveloped potential different from iracing developing for 14 years their engine and still being full of shortcomings and physics place holders today (e.g. still today 14 years after release the most efficient way to save fuel is clutching the car on the straights)?
We could say the same for RF2 released almost 10 years ago (and still without an hybrid system and with physics that until a few months ago weren't affected by track temps and still today the way track temps affect the grip is a reduction/increase of global grip but nothing on the tires side and many other blatant issues) right?
How about RR, 10 years old as well and still lacking day/night, rain and a bunch of other things?
AC is 8 years old these days and has been abandoned long ago and is trying to emulate things that are in ME and other sims just because a few modders took care of it...
ACC is also already abandoned with many things just ignored despite the very "limited" coverage of cars/tracks rosters and the huge flow of money.
Why is negative judgement passed only on the lineage of ME simulators?
 
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let's not forget that 90% of the potential Reiza has been extracting was already there waiting for someone patient enough to refine the rough diamond

Rough, ok. I don't know about 90% but Gjon Camaj/ISI gets some (considerable) slice of it too?

Anyway, no matter, we shall see what happens. If people like ProjCars then fair enough. Likewise for whatever (if anything) comes next. Not liking it is legitimate too, as is concern over shiny-shiny trumping a serious consumer benefit. A proliferation of shiny junk doesn't really help anyone (except purveyors of shiny junk).
 

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