F1 2010 F1 2010 - Arcade or Simulation?

F1 2010 The Game (Codemasters)
Xose has strange ideas about what constitutes an arcade game, though sadly he is not alone. He is refering to the Anthony Davidson remarks in the Autosport review where he says many racing games are too difficult to drive.

The difference between an arcade and a simulation is that in an arcade game, you forget about the real life aspects that can require too much time, knowledge, practice or dedication in benefit of the pure fun, while in a simulation the aim is not the fun, is to recreate the real life as much as possible, and fun is a consequence of enjoying that kind of activity.

I was into civil/military flight simulations for many years, and I quit because it was taking me too much time to study, train and develop my skills. Believe me, Flight Simulator is not "fun", is like work, fly hours following procedures and instructions with no "excitement" at all... if you don't enjoy knowing you are actually flying like you would do in a real plane (FS hours are valid as flight hours if done under a certain parameters).

So when he says "a simple touch can ruin all your race and that is not good" he's justifying the arcade mentality, because in real life and in simracing (not with enough intensity though) is like that, you touch a car in front of you and you loose your wing and your race. I could see in F1 2010 video that you can play squash with your car to overtake without trouble. Also talking about setups, they make a big difference in real life and in simracing, but Davidson finds it "boring"... sorry but if it exists has to be simulated if you want to create a sim.

He also talks about some sims being "too dificult" to drive... if they are too difficult, they are not exactly sims, as a sim has to be "as difficult", but I was not talking about that, I was talking about some real life variables he seems happy to drop to make the game "fun".

Maybe I misunderstood something, because I don't see why my ideas are "strange" when are the universally accepted definition of arcade/simulation.

Cya!
 
So when he says "a simple touch can ruin all your race and that is not good" he's justifying the arcade mentality, because in real life and in simracing (not with enough intensity though) is like that, you touch a car in front of you and you loose your wing and your race. I could see in F1 2010 video that you can play squash with your car to overtake without trouble. Also talking about setups, they make a big difference in real life and in simracing, but Davidson finds it "boring"... sorry but if it exists has to be simulated if you want to create a sim.

He also talks about some sims being "too dificult" to drive... if they are too difficult, they are not exactly sims, as a sim has to be "as difficult", but I was not talking about that, I was talking about some real life variables he seems happy to drop to make the game "fun".

Maybe I misunderstood something, because I don't see why my ideas are "strange" when are the universally accepted definition of arcade/simulation.

Cya!

It's been said on record by numerous people from drivers to RE's in F1 that they don't tweak the car setup very much. On average they can get something like .400 out of setup tweaks. Everything we've seen in videos are either people playing at conventions, or official videos that cut away just as ares are about to make contact. To say it's not a sim because you can't adjust the camber .01 degrees, or because the cars are a bit more forgiving...boggles my mind some of you sim elitists, boggles my mind :p

All I have to say is that CM had SEVERAL drivers involved with F1 2010, not just Ant Davidson. Each team in F1 signed off on their cars and FOM has the final say on everything. This is likely as close as we're going to get an a true F1 experience aside from the team simulators and being an actual F1 driver.

EDIT: Also, just in case some of you are blind, Burnout Paradise is arcade, and GT5 is simulation. If F1 is 80% sim. where does that put it? To each their own but I'd rather focus on laying down some consistent laps than tweaking the setup for 5 hours only to nail a perfect lap once...
 
It's been said on record by numerous people from drivers to RE's in F1 that they don't tweak the car setup very much. On average they can get something like .400 out of setup tweaks.

Which is a huge difference in F1.

I think you missunderstood what they mean when they say that. They don't tweak the setup they have for that precise track too much, but they collect and incredible ammount of data from the car, thet build special components for some tracks, and they study several hours on how to win 0.1 seconds, because that is what makes the difference in F1.

Everything we've seen in videos are either people playing at conventions, or official videos that cut away just as ares are about to make contact. To say it's not a sim because you can't adjust the camber .01 degrees, or because the cars are a bit more forgiving...boggles my mind some of you sim elitists, boggles my mind :p

Nobody said that.

In the autosport review video you could see a car (a Red Bull) colliding with at least 3 cars when overtaking them in the first 2 corners of a race without any damage or problem.

If you have to adjust the camber on .5 or even 1 degrees, but you can adjust the camber, it's a sim. If you just can't adjust your car, is not a sim.

But an Arcade game is not a "bad" game or a "scam", is just another concept, some people enjoy it, some don't, but that doesn't make it better or worse so no reason to be offended.

All I have to say is that CM had SEVERAL drivers involved with F1 2010, not just Ant Davidson. Each team in F1 signed off on their cars and FOM has the final say on everything. This is likely as close as we're going to get an a true F1 experience aside from the team simulators and being an actual F1 driver.
All that is very good, but again it depends on what were they trying to create. I can involve the teams and the F1 drivers to create a good console F1 game, all depends on what they focus on.

EDIT: Also, just in case some of you are blind, Burnout Paradise is arcade, and GT5 is simulation. If F1 is 80% sim. where does that put it? To each their own but I'd rather focus on laying down some consistent laps than tweaking the setup for 5 hours only to nail a perfect lap once...
If it's 80% sim, then it's a sim, but not having setups, allowing hard contact, and focusing on graphics IMHO doesn't make it a sim, but of course we have to wait to the release date. Until now, it doesn't look like that to me, and I don't think I should be blind to disagree on that.

Cya!.
 
Well i am the first that would love F1 2010 to be a true sim with all the aids disabled but from what we know and from the interviews the actual game creator gave probably it would be just another "press full throttle and steer left/right without fear of crashing damage as the car would still continue going...heheh )
Cars withstand ridiculous amount of damage if you watch a couple of videos on youtube.....And from what we know you cannot setup your car...And you cannot even steer left/right when going to pitstops.....i am not making this up.....

On the contrary the graphics almost reach photorealistic status check the video below ! I though for a moment i was watching a real video !!!
 
I think it was in one of the developer diaries that they showed how the car setup can be adjusted and to be honest it is all that different to the setup tweaks available on something like GTR2. There are two ways to set the car up in the game, a quick setup using sliders to adjust downforce, balance etc (which i may point out is very similar to the one found in wait for it... rfactor!) and a more advance one much closer to what you would expect from a "sim" game.

I believe the point Ant Davidson was making regarding setup was that he didn't want the game to be all about figuring out the perfect setup and tweaking the car for hours on end, but rather it should be about what you do on the track. So while a good setup will help you and may gain you a little time it is not the deal breaker it so easily becomes in some mods on rfactor. I think it is a fair point as most of us don't have the time or motivation to go through loads of data searching for the missing piece to make the car perfect. And even if we do i'm sure at times we all wish at times we could just go out on track and race instead!

From what i have seen the options for car setup are going to be ample for 90% of the players and still leave scope for more serious players to tweak and find time that way if they wish. I will admit to being a little less satisfied with the damage engine, i would like the game to have the option to implement realistic damage that punishes mistakes and contact because that is an important part of F1, alongside settings for lower damage if some people find they are constantly loosing their front wings!

From what i have seen in the many videos the handling looked pretty solid, for sure its not going to be a full on sim as they need to reach a large audience with the game, but it is not as arcade as Grid was. And the graphics look superb, far better than anything we have on our sims. Hopefully rfactor2 or Gtr3 will come closer as our sims are pretty old now.
 
I can imagine that a simracer race engineer will miss the setup options, but I won't, tbh I would love to just jump in a car and race, with more or less realistic handling (can't have totally realistic as my wheel doesn't allow that sadly), nice physics, nice graphics, nice sound, and competitive fair people who I can go side by side for 3-4 corners and fight to the death until the end of the race online!
 
Sims are actually harder to drive than a real car - the sim makers always forget that you usually (unless you're rich) have no feel in the car - what I call 'arse' :)

In a real race car (yes, I've raced hatchbacks for my sins) you can FEEL the car letting go on a corner and correct before it loses grip. You can feel the change from wet to damp to dry track, you can feel the braking and acceleration and without those physical cues I find it MUCH harder to drive the car.

A simulation that cannot give you that feel, yet makes the car behave exactly like the real race car in all other aspects, is not actually a simulation - it is masquerading as one to people who know no better. The manufacturer telling you "Oh - spend £5,000 and learn to weld, you can make something that fixes our sim" seems pathetic, doesn't it?

In the absence of physical body cues, I would suggest some sort of on-screen display to show you traction, weight shift in the car under acceleration/deceleration, etc., but the problem then is - your eyes are having to work three times as hard as they should because you are getting no 'arse' :D
 
If it's 80% sim, then it's a sim, but not having setups, allowing hard contact, and focusing on graphics IMHO doesn't make it a sim, but of course we have to wait to the release date. Until now, it doesn't look like that to me, and I don't think I should be blind to disagree on that.

Cya!.

You CAN adjust setups though. And as for damage, did Autosport confirm what the damage setting was in the video?
 
Hi Guys,

here an interview with Adrian Sutil and an German Xbox online magazine which had a F1 2010 race against each other.

XboxFront: Hallo Adrian, Gratulation zum Sieg. Bist du auch privat Videospieler, oder ist das hier ein reiner PR-Auftritt?

Adrian Sutil: In diesem Fall handelt es sich natürlich um eine PR-Geschichte, aber Zuhause spiele ich schon regelmäßig, besonders online am PC. Meistens GTR, ein super Spiel, das mir wegen des hohen Simulationsgrads viel Spaß macht.

XboxFront: Und wie gefällt dir F1 2010? Würdest du es eher unter die Kategorie Arcade oder Simulation einordnen?

Adrian Sutil: Das Spiel macht auf jeden Fall Spaß, wobei ich es eher als Arcade-Spiel sehe, da es sich doch wesentlich anders anfühlt, wenn man in einem echten Formel 1 Wagen sitzt, wo die Reaktion auf Lenkbewegungen wesentlich direkter ist. Bei F1 2010 gibt es eine minimale Verzögerung.

XboxFront: Wann hast du denn angefangen Videogames zu spielen, und was war das erste Rennspiel, bzw. das erste Formel 1-Spiel das du gezockt hast?

Adrian Sutil: Wann genau das war weiß ich nicht mehr, aber ich kann mich daran erinnern, meine erste Rennspielerfahrung mit Toca World Touring Cars auf der PlayStation gemacht zu haben. Das war für damalige Verhältnisse ein klasse Spiel. Ich glaube es gab sogar ein integriertes Schadensmodell. Grand Prix 3 war dann auf dem PC das erste Formel 1 Spiel, das ich gespielt habe.

XboxFront: Vielen Dank für das Interview und das tolle Rennen, und viel Erfolg noch für die laufende und alle kommenden Saisons in der echten Formel 1!


Adrian said, that F1 2010 makes a lot of fun. But is more a Arcade game. He is a big fan of GTR.


Adrian said that he would categorize F1 2010 more to the Arcade games.
 
I believe the point Ant Davidson was making regarding setup was that he didn't want the game to be all about figuring out the perfect setup and tweaking the car for hours on end, but rather it should be about what you do on the track. So while a good setup will help you and may gain you a little time it is not the deal breaker it so easily becomes in some mods on rfactor. I think it is a fair point as most of us don't have the time or motivation to go through loads of data searching for the missing piece to make the car perfect. And even if we do i'm sure at times we all wish at times we could just go out on track and race instead!

I agree with this quite a bit actually since their main purpose was to put you in the shoes of an F1 driver, not the entire F1 team. As a driver for a top team, you need to be aware of what tweaks will suit your style, but you have the advantage of having world class engineers monitoring and gathering the data for you. This type of system sets you up in the same way - You are expected to get on the track and perform. The motec/perfected setup can be left for their 'Live the Life of an Engineer' game mode =)
 

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