F1 2019 Rate The Sims: Community Edition | F1 2019

F1 2019 The Game (Codemasters)

Paul Jeffrey

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We are looking to crown the 'RaceDepartment Community Favourite' racing game - get your votes in now for our next game on the list... F1 2019!

Our dear RaceDepartment community. You folks are the most mighty fans of sim racing, often displaying an immense amount of understanding and depth of knowledge when it comes to our favourite hobby.

With sim racing and eSports in such a wonderful boom period of late. Gamers looking to have some fun with their virtual racing machines have never before had such a wide and robust variety of software to enjoy.

Now occasionally I've been in a position to rate new racing titles that have come my way, and almost every time I've received a wide variety of folks agreeing, or strongly disagreeing with my own opinions.

Opinions are great, but sometimes the opinion of one person, with their own likes and dislikes taken into account, can often give a bit of a skewed picture (intentional or not) to the greater cause in which said person is trying to explain.

As such, rather than doing one myself, and in the spirit of engaging some interesting community discussion, I thought it could be fun to let our own community rate each of the key sim racing / racing games available today.

As always with these things, please do try and respect each other and their opinions, and let's try to see if we can give a fun, but fair shake of the stick to each of the games included in this poll.

For transparency, I'm going to be featuring the following racing games over the next weeks:


F1 2019 Rate the Sims.jpg


I'm going to launch the article each Monday evening, and keep the poll running for a full week until the next new article is pushed live. So get your votes in quick!

Once I've completed the full list of games, I'll publish a final results feature, and we can award the winning developer the lofty title of 'RaceDepartment Community Favourite'!


Have fun, stay sensible and let the voting commence!
 
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I stopped buying awhile ago as well, but they put up 2 days for free on Steam last week, so thought the hell I'm game for a laugh, and yep I did for awhile..same mess of bugs from Codies since day one..
Just out of curiosity, Gopher, what bugs did you experience? I haven't played it that much as others, basically after several years, I tried only 2019. What issues I should be aware of?
 
I don't understand the development cycle of CodeMasters between Dirt, F1 xxxx and Grid xxxx. But it seems they're different teams and that's disappointing to say the least. Very arcade vibe to it, but that doesn't meen it's lots of fun. I've had lots of fun with all CodeMaster games (including the egg one that I can't remember what it was called right now) but please @CodeMasters, there are some things you should fix:

1.- "Simulator" possibility
2.- All that rubbish with UDP ports, etc gives lots of problems. Can't you use a simpler solution like iracing, etc
3.- If Dirt has a wonderful support for VR; why doesn't F1?
4.- Physics/FFB should feel "the same level of realism" over all games
 
Gave it a 5 (tried it for the free weekend as well)...It does a great job in capturing the F1 vibe, but beyond that, I can't give it much as a SIM (which is what this whole RD series is called). The FFB and physics doesn't feel quite right to me compared to all the other sims and some of the tracks are almost comically inaccurate (Spa in particular had me dying with laughter). Combine that with refusal to add VR, Triple support and, worse of all, mouse support (!!) to the PC versions...I can't give it any higher.
 
I have bought every one since 2010. I didn't play most of them because I just didn't have the time. I recently retired. I also have ACC, AC, rFactor2, PC2. I recently bought a DD wheel base and I can honestly say F1 2019 is very good. The feel of it on the DD is way better than AC or PC2. I don't do online stuff because that exposes me to other people's driving habits. It has good visuals, very good career possibilities, the feel of the car is great. The sound is pretty good.
It isn't a resource hog, even though I have a 2080ti and I9 9900k. I still believe the visuals could be clearer, but maybe it's my old eyes.

I really don't care about modding. I care more about the actual driving. I rate F1 2019 right behind rfactor2 and ACC in terms of the feel of the car when driving it.
 
As a complete package, it beats anything out there. People can discuss physics naunces all they want, but in an objective manner, F1 2019 delivers massively and consistently in every front, even on that one.

It simulates the being an F1 driver almost perfectly, and the ambiance and vibe reminds us the good old GP games.

Just the lack of some options like mouse support, or VR, and some outdated tracks, stops if from getting a full on 10.
 
So, I'm already on record as saying "not a sim", but as a counter point to that, look how many things F1 2019 does out of the box that people pine for in "proper sims". Night racing, weather, damage, full ruleset, full series (circuits + cars, even a feeder series now).

It's possible that we as a community (self included) have gotten a bit too narrow in our definition of "sim". A lot of it seems to be focused on FFB quality. FFB is surely important and good or bad can certainly make or break a game...but the philosophical question I'm trying to raise is "can a game with 'adequate' FFB still be great?". I voted "10", so my answer is yes.

Another angle: would I love to see a F1 game that's a "proper sim"? Good grief, yes! Me and probably 98% of this forum would be release day purchasers of that. But the reality is, the only F1 game anyone is going to get for the foreseeable future is from Codies. Codies wants to sell a trillion copies, mostly to gamepad jockeys. Maybe I'm getting old and soft, but the fact that Codies has put in the effort to make their last few F1 titles with "adequate" FFB is a major win for us in the sim racing community. Given the constraints, it's hard to imagine Codies delivering a better experience to the sim-minded than F1 2019 (hence, my 10 rating). We can get in on the fun even if we still dream of the return to the days of old where we did have proper F1 sims.
 
I am enjoying F1 2018 for what it is, but since it does not have VR, my interest and enjoyment is very limited. It is a shame because I can see the fun potential.
With half decent VR implementation and if at least as fun to drive as F1 2018, F1 2019 would be a solid 8 for me.
Why a big house like Codemaster cannot muster VR when even LFS does a stellar job at it is one of those SIM mystery that is beyond my grasp.
So in conclusion, no VR, probable no Buy if it is not dirt cheap and extremely low score on the vote as it is almost useless to me.
2019, wake up and smell the coffee!;) better luck next year.
 
8 for me.

It's the best recent release in the series and a great recreation of current F1, but I do deduct a couple of points for it being the latest in a series whose core seems to have stagnated.

ACC version 1.0 to version 1.1 has arguably been more of an evolution than F1 2018 to F1 2019, and the former was a series of free updates. So where do we draw the line between free updates and full price new titles?

F2 was a nice addition this year, but I can't help feel that they kept the number of races in the F2 series short so that for F1 2020 they can add the bullet point of "Full F2 Season" on their adverts. And given that the same developer added VR to DiRT Rally 2.0 this year, that could be another feature they're holding back to ensure they can sell units in subsequent years.
I though since the latest update you can race the full F2 season
 
Overpriced, PLUS DLC's - so that's why I aswell as others haven't bought it - after half a year, please don't charge full price anymore. Free weekend was nice, but confirmed that i won't pay more than 20-25 bucks every year.

Negatives:
FFB and rotation with the G29 wheel had some weird delay for me (it's synced in F1 2017 but some milliseconds delay in 2019), also could not tune down the "street bumps" giving my wheel mad kicks without losing the countersteer effects on the road. Also the FFB settings menu sliders from older titles are inverted in the wheel part? WUT?

Plus since YEARS the tracks have BUGS like BUMPS (suzuka last corner) in places where there is no bump in real life nor any other title that could have access to laserscanning...
Non-Intuitive Camera settings (you need a frickin converter for FOV... AC has a perfect distance/width/angle app for triples, the math is not that hard)
Random Lags and framedrops in a race
No Mouse menus that you can even lock yourself out by making wrong binds? i mean _what_in_the_world?
AI bugs since ages (e.g. AI has exactly ZERO SC/VSC delta variation, almost no survival instinct)

...don't get me started... and that with an evolutionary title in a proprietary game engine that somehow could support VR but not F1?

Obviously it's only masters of code.
 
A 7 will be just enough, which is the highest score i would ever give to a Codies F1 game. They're all bland and simplistic. Physics have become better over the years, graphics too, but it's still basically the same damn game since 2010. It's been 9 years....they could at least have introduced more features like a more progressive career leading into F1, or some team management feature. It's too much of a cookie cutter for me.
 
It gets an 8 from me. Reasons:

It does a very good job of making you feel like you're in an F1 race. The AI is pretty damned convincing, and actually really races each other. I'm tempted to say that it's probably the best AI in the business at the moment.

Why no higher than an 8?

It's basically a re-skin of F1 2018, which in itself was a re-skin of 2017. Sure there are some changes but nowhere near enough to warrant a new full price release.

No VR. If the Codies can manage VR on both DR 1 and DR 2 then I can't see why they can't on the F1 series.

Long standing issues with series still remain, like the safety car for instance.

As for the "is it a sim?" question, then I lie on the "it's a sim" side. Mainly because racing the AI is believable, but also because the handling is reasonably convincing. If I was to consider the handling alone then I'd probably say its a sim-lite, but even so it's not a million miles away from the 2017 Ferrari in Assetto Corsa (Hell, how would I know anyway - I've never driven an F1 car). However taking the package as a whole then it's very definitely into sim territory IMO.
 
5/10

+ Good content
+ Very decent career mode

- Codemasters typical simcade flawed and sploitable gameplay
- There is no turning back after experiencing iRacing, Reiza and Kunos open wheels

The game is too "realistic" to be played casually and too "arcade" to incentive me to proper get into.

F1 is a trick category to do videogames about. If you go real, only a very small audience will be able to play... if you go full arcade the game could be too silly to be enjoyed. I think that Codemasters almost get there. It's not a bad game... it's clearly an evolution from F1 2018 and much better than 2017 and before... but one can't openwheel on AC, AMS or iRacing and go simcade. One can't do the AC/AMS GP Legends mod and go simcade. Simcade is not the way, only a deceit.

PS: Or one can go Ayrton Senna's Super Monaco GP or one of SETA's F1 Grand Prix for SNES... those are arcade F1s that desert to be played until today.
 

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