After the first announcement and confirmation of VR support on PC, the first 4 official cars that will be part of the garage of the next EA SPORTS WRC have been revealed with some screens. However, drift enthusiasts immediately asked themselves a question: why did the previous Dirt Rally 2.0 use Codemasters' proprietary Ego game engine, while the new title switched to Epic's Unreal Engine?
“We looked at different options and knew that when we got the WRC license we would have a lot of environments to create,” explained Game Designer and 2023 ERC3 European Rally Championship champion Jon Armstrong during a recent Electronic Arts presentation. "We really wanted to push the limits of stage length. Now we have very long stages. We have 30 kilometer long stages, which are super, super long. I think in a Rally1 car it takes more than 20 minutes to complete them."
This is a significant increase in size compared to the previous DiRT Rally 2.0 title, which managed a maximum stage length of around 13km, while recent WRC games from previous developers, KT Racing, clocked in at 26km in length. “That was one of the reasons we did this and streamlined the content creation pipeline,” Armstrong continued. “It was a challenge, but very rewarding. Everyone worked hard to make it happen, and now we're starting to see the results.”
The Unreal Engine has also been used successfully in other racing simulations, such as Assetto Corsa Competizione. Straight4 Studios' GTRevivial will also use Unreal technology in its upcoming simulator inspired by GTR 2, but also inserting elements of its own version of the Madness engine, used for the first time in Project CARS.
The doubts of the simulation fans, however, were not so much those regarding the graphics and aesthetics, but precisely the simulation side of driving the Unreal Engine. In fact, remember that the aforementioned Assetto Corsa Competizione required a period of Early Access and almost four years of physics updates to get to the point where it is now, and the developers Kunos Simulazioni have already announced that they will return to their own proprietary engine for the next Assetto Corsa 2 project.
The developers of EA Sports WRC, precisely to appease the anxieties of the fans, were quick to point out that, if the graphics use Unreal, the physics of the game comes from the previous DiRT Rally titles and has been perfected, updated and improved. “We were able to port the DiRT Rally 2.0 driving model into Unreal,” Armstrong explained. “Our focus was on building on what we had and improving the areas we wanted to improve. If you're a fan of DiRT Rally, this will feel completely natural to you. It will be a step forward and something you'll really enjoy.”
DiRT Rally certainly performed best on dirt roads, but less so on asphalt, so we hope for important steps forward in this sector, but it is already important to know that a simulative driving experience awaits us, although naturally there will be various aids for the drivers non-hardcore: “We've also made sure that there's good on boarding for new players to the series or new rally players. We have the assists that are back in DiRT Rally and also a couple of new assists. But the key part of the model is what we always did back in the DiRT Rally days, and we just tried to make it even better."
The link with Epic is however very close, given that EA SPORTS WRC will be available simultaneously on PC via the Epic Games Store, Steam and the EA App upon release, November 3, 2023, as was the case for F1 23. The game it will also be released on consoles, although only for the PlayStation 5 and the current generation Xbox Series At the moment we can certainly say that the premises are interesting...
“We looked at different options and knew that when we got the WRC license we would have a lot of environments to create,” explained Game Designer and 2023 ERC3 European Rally Championship champion Jon Armstrong during a recent Electronic Arts presentation. "We really wanted to push the limits of stage length. Now we have very long stages. We have 30 kilometer long stages, which are super, super long. I think in a Rally1 car it takes more than 20 minutes to complete them."
This is a significant increase in size compared to the previous DiRT Rally 2.0 title, which managed a maximum stage length of around 13km, while recent WRC games from previous developers, KT Racing, clocked in at 26km in length. “That was one of the reasons we did this and streamlined the content creation pipeline,” Armstrong continued. “It was a challenge, but very rewarding. Everyone worked hard to make it happen, and now we're starting to see the results.”
The Unreal Engine has also been used successfully in other racing simulations, such as Assetto Corsa Competizione. Straight4 Studios' GTRevivial will also use Unreal technology in its upcoming simulator inspired by GTR 2, but also inserting elements of its own version of the Madness engine, used for the first time in Project CARS.
The doubts of the simulation fans, however, were not so much those regarding the graphics and aesthetics, but precisely the simulation side of driving the Unreal Engine. In fact, remember that the aforementioned Assetto Corsa Competizione required a period of Early Access and almost four years of physics updates to get to the point where it is now, and the developers Kunos Simulazioni have already announced that they will return to their own proprietary engine for the next Assetto Corsa 2 project.
The developers of EA Sports WRC, precisely to appease the anxieties of the fans, were quick to point out that, if the graphics use Unreal, the physics of the game comes from the previous DiRT Rally titles and has been perfected, updated and improved. “We were able to port the DiRT Rally 2.0 driving model into Unreal,” Armstrong explained. “Our focus was on building on what we had and improving the areas we wanted to improve. If you're a fan of DiRT Rally, this will feel completely natural to you. It will be a step forward and something you'll really enjoy.”
DiRT Rally certainly performed best on dirt roads, but less so on asphalt, so we hope for important steps forward in this sector, but it is already important to know that a simulative driving experience awaits us, although naturally there will be various aids for the drivers non-hardcore: “We've also made sure that there's good on boarding for new players to the series or new rally players. We have the assists that are back in DiRT Rally and also a couple of new assists. But the key part of the model is what we always did back in the DiRT Rally days, and we just tried to make it even better."
The link with Epic is however very close, given that EA SPORTS WRC will be available simultaneously on PC via the Epic Games Store, Steam and the EA App upon release, November 3, 2023, as was the case for F1 23. The game it will also be released on consoles, although only for the PlayStation 5 and the current generation Xbox Series At the moment we can certainly say that the premises are interesting...
