SkyRex

EL CONDOR FTW, ARGENTINA! Deformable surfaces? Tyre choice? Very nice indeed!No snow though? But with at least 3 more rally locations confirmed for dlc, maybe it'll be there?  And where exactly is this USA rally, please not Michigan again... maybe some rockies? And VR? ...VR? So many questions... Some more screenshots please

The weight and tarmac physics rather like D4 please. Tarmac feels so much better in D4 and in DR Finland always felt like driving on the moon with those unrealistic far jumps everywhere (even for finland) and at every small ditch.But the loose Grip feeling and oversteer rather like DR, yes.Both physics weren't perfect. (But still better than all rally competitors)And if this is again a long time supported title (unlike D4), with DLC and updates, I have trust in CM to deliver fine-tuned driving physics, be it over time. The thing I'm most interested for tommorow, apart from if it is a DR2 (if at least by core hardcore  concept),  is how they decided on YourStage. Will we get an improved YourStage, hand-crafted stages, or a mix of both? How would a new YourStage work in detail? How many unique stage-km are there per location? Oh, and now, VR support from launch?

It had random rocks 100% sure. Those big grey ones. You might see only one per stage or most times none at all. But they were there, CM even confirmed that back then.

I finally got my hands on a good but affordable VR headset for sim-racing (a Samsung Odyssey, actually quite hard to get in europe)And I dusted off the bytes from Dirt Rally, to give it a go. Let's start with the negatives: you really feel, that it was more of a tag-on (PC) feature back then. I need to convert from WMR to SteamVR, then using REVIVE to get it into a Oculus stream (for Oculus Home) and a Revive-injected drt.exe to make it all run. So there are two conversion steps and 4 Software tools involved to play DR on a WMR-Headset.Additionally there is no adjustment of the FOV in VR and absolutely zero HUD-options (would like a timer and a gear number...). And there is no rear interior modelled in the cars. turning around breaks immersion immediatly. But oh sweet hell, there is no going back from VR now. Even with the drawbacks, you have a much better judgement of the car your sitting in and how close you can throw it to that roadedge. From now on all sims require VR for me personally. It is actually that much of a game-changer! (I am completely immune to motion-sickness from it though, so no offense to those who are unfortunately not) Therefor I have to extend my wishlist by an important point: CM, whatever is cooking, I hope it comes with convenient VR from the get-go. SteamVR support would do, as it seems to emerge as the cross-platform middle-ground. Something like the implementation from PCARS 2, thats done really well.And VR is even more useful for loose surface driving than for circuits. The sense of speed is amazing, if the roads are really narrow. And it feels incredibly natural to just turn your head to look out the side window, whenever the car breaks completely loose, which in turn makes catching oversteer much easier and natural. By the way, what d'ya all think of the new rally? Seemed to me, turkey is much like greece was, back in the day. Very very tough and rocky. And it got nice scenery right at the sea there in marmaris. Can't say the same about the current politics and their dictator president, but I really like this new Rally Turkey.

Codies is definitely up to some new rally game/sim, so I think it's time for some wishlisting/suggesting! If your all estimates of a Q1 '19 release are anywhere near accurate, I will assume that location choice and top-tier-car licensing is already pretty close to being wrapped up. (#hoping Argentina or Azores and Germany with the Vineyards instead of Baumholder) So I won't dive further into this. Instead let's focus on other areas: Damage System:Rather go into D4's direction instead of DR. If you drive a clean stage the car should still be in pretty good shape visually AND mechanically (unlike DiRT Rally) FIA R4/R2 & National Leagues:I hope you keep the '15 STI and Evo X for R4-Class. But maybe consider expanding it a little with other competitive cars, like older Evos/Subis. And I would even like one more class below R4, like similar to the official R2, but consisting much more of cars, you often see in amateur leagues on a national level: GT86/BRZ, Impreza 2.0R, Golf II, Fiesta Mk6, Audi A3/S3, Volvo 240... Tires and Weather:Keep the spare-tire choice (take none for lighter car, take one for repair possibility)If the weather is more or less static, actual tire choice is irrelevant, cause the best choice would always be obvious. But if there is dynamic weather (between stages without service OR even changing on stage), maybe consider tire choice. ..but not a high priority tbh One-Try MP:Some System for Asynchronous MP Rallies, to ensure (if it was setup) that everyone can only try a stage once. I believe D4 did this quite well already, just a few cases of abuse are left to squish. Danger and Hard-Mode:If you haven't decided to do real-world stages, design your stages dangerous. IMHO the most satisfaction is earned, when you master a particular difficult section of a track with absolute precision and on the very edge. D4 was quite lacking in these moments, DR had quite some places like this: think about that 6th-gear part in greece, downhill. Or the sideway jumps in finland. Or the highspeed narrow bits of Hamra/Sweden. What was desperatly missing was narrow tarmac (Vineyard Germany. Or Corsica) And D4 had almost none of these bits. Also consider a Hard-Mode for the career. So that price-money is low. You rather have to reach certain goals of your sponsors to really earn money. But at the same time you'd have to almost rebuy your car (in repair costs), if you total it. Giving you that nerve-wrecking edge of going full flat- to progress faster with more money, while risking the time of a whole season if you make a costly mistake. Especially in amateur series, even going that far, that a game-over would in theory be possible. Thoughts?

Was there ever a WRC game without every location? If not, it could be assumed that the license requires you to feature all rallies of the calendar. And following that, we might be able to keep an eye out for codemasters field-trips to confirm/deny the WRC possibility. From the 2018 Calendar there are some rallies, of which we know they've been there and collected data in the past: Monte, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Wales, Spain, Australia. And the ones, they never visited AFAIK: Mexico, Corsica, Argentina, Portugal, Sardegna, Turkey. So if they appear in one of the latter, the chances for the license are high. Another possibilty might be releasing a first game with the 7 former rallies and adding the missing six for 2019. Or as a DLC in 2019. If the license doesn't require a full release every year that is. P.S.: I would like to add a wish @Codemasters, @ChristinaMc : Whatever the next rally-title will be, in case you might return to the two-base-stages approach from DiRT Rally, please consider to model two different stages and not the same just cut in half. especially if the rally has a distinctive variety in itself. Examples: Germany: Not 2 long stages on Panzerplatte. Instead rather only one on Panzerplatte and another in Moselland (Vineyards in the Mosel-Valley) Argentina: One El Condor (or at least the narrow part of it) and another down in the wet areas with more sandy and higher speed driving. Spain: One full asphalt stage, one mixed (mostly gravel) stage. you get the idea. If you continue with YourStage I already gave several suggestions for improvement in the past

I just hope it also brews VR news before the Vive Pro arrives. Currently judging that that will probably be my entry point to finally get into VR and if D4 doesn't support that by then... Well it's probably Pcars2 and back to DR until a proper DR-successor arrives... And where's Argentina or some other heavy gravel location? :( D4 is honestly a stellar simulation for RX and I still think YourStage is better as whole rallies, although a single stage by itself is inferior to the ones in DR. I could also understand an abandoning of DR from a business-pointofview. But the not-knowing if there will be more or not, is meh...

Sure it`s fun in a black box. But for those who had tremendous fun with Dirt Rally, it`s predecessor, there was a certain expectation which wasn`t fully delivered on. I would wish for a rally simulator, which captures the motorsport as real as possible, while still being fun. Like, I have to admit, Pcars2 managed to do for track-motorsport. Many hoped D4 would be that and there are steps in the right direction (drive to marshal, team management, damage improvement, the general "idea" of yourstage...) but also noticebly step-backs from DR and that`s the real thing people are upset about (some physics problem related to grip, the repetitiveness of yourstage, ...) And the general lack of post-launch support compared to what the community was used to with DR. For me, D4 is after all still superior to DR, due to better tarmac, better weight-physics, better  cars, but it isn`t what I hoped for. So I hoped that it would be crafted to that post-launch, as many others did, but so far nothing. I got my moneys worth with well over 100h played but I won`t get close to DRs 350h. What I hoped for was generally a DiRT Rally with fixed weight physics, realistic damage, more cars, more locations, longer stages and more immersion (like driving to marshall), all deliverd in good working VR. And by now my hopes are fading on D4 becoming that.  So why are many frustrated here? Because Codemasters is after all this still the best when it comes to offroad. So the hopes for the perfect offroad sim lay mainly on them currently. I`m all for competition but it looks bad elsewhere. Milestone? Pffhh... sounds are killing any immersion. Kylotonn? Nice stages, bad physics resolution and no VR. Even now DR is way ahead to them. And that`s already all. Literally no other competition. It`s arguably a niche market.. So hopes go to CM and so does frustration. Maybe SMS does actually split the franchise and make a Rally Sim, i think that could be equal competition for once.

how you feel about wrc makers is the exact same for me and pcars crew.if you only knew the **** they pulled you wouldn't buy their games.they may seem to have changed but thats the media for you.absolute ******* Kunos are the makers of AC, not WRC, that would be Kyloton

The Review from ISR claimed that the epic stages included some of the smaller ones. EDIT: watching the posted video of all stages, you also see, that some stages are repeated in the epic ones.

CM, listen up, might have a great idea for future YourStage: Generating might be the best way to mold the road itself, since it creates the actual road-mesh and believable nature of the road (like necesary terrain-molding for roads, you can´t just draw a gravel texture over terrain), but the actual character of a track most of the time requires creativity you can`t achieve automated (unless training high level neural networks). So how about something like this: Additionally to making the tiles smaller, best would be half-corner-tile-size, how about when generating a strip of road, show way more details with zoom options, surface type and so on in the preview picture. And offer the ability to the player to lock-down a specific stretch of road he likes and just re-generate the rest. This way you'd keep the simple nature of the generator, while giving the audience much more power in creating a stage that looks how they want it. After having generated the layout they want, you could offer to Auto-prop it with roadside objects or to manual-prop: For the latter you'd actually load up the generated stage, but with no props at all, all freely available to be placed anywhere. There the player can let go with creativity placing fences, houses, trees, Haystacks, barriers, spectators, banners, fires, Hinkelsteine, Trucks, cars, guardrails, logpiles, flags, etc. with road-placed props being actively included in pacenotes ("chicane", "caution"). This could allow to create stages with character and journey by the users and still keep the ease of the generator. Saving a custom stage wouldn't need more than currently, plus the number, type and location of the props. Don't know what the limit for consoles is in savegame size, but you could simply allow consoles to have only a few custom stages locally and the rest in cloud-save to circumvent this? Hope I expressed what I mean somewhat understandable. Just a(nother) suggestion to consider for follow-up rally-sim-game ;)

Seen some more footage and yes, it's definitely a very low let's call it Road-Resolution. Even on Asphalt like Corsica or Germany there are a lot of sharp edges, which could explain, why the cars are shown with way to high ride-height and to soft springs for an asphalt event. Otherwise they might be to uncontrollable. But still, damn good Stage-Design in WRC 7 across the board. Everything looks and feels like the appropriate location and every stage feels dynamic with ever changing surroundings and challenges (apart from the crappy road). Maybe the crappy Road-Resolution is also part of what allows them to create so much stage content in one year. Does anyone know how big Kyloton is? Is it bigger in staff than CM? I probably won't get it, since my current goal is to find a great Rally Sim with VR, to have a good enough reason to get VR. And WRC7 won't do VR, it`s already been confirmed. Speaking of VR, anyone seen those M$ mixed reality headsets? On paper they look perfect, higher res than Oculus/Vive and with Onboard-Tracking instead of external sensors, so it'd be easy to switch between Race-VR and for example Flight-VR. And tracking calc shall also be done on the device itself, leaving all PC capacity for smooth 90Hz rendering only. Sounds promising, but I don't like M$ and it's policies some of the time. probably best to wait for some reviews. Thoughts?

Sounds alright. It's just a visual illusion, the quattro is actually quite a small car:

stuff that sprang to mind: Community Selected Extra Tiles Clubs Stages Earth Tyres Corner Stones Entry Tourque Mixup of Central European Summer Time

Finally figured out why all WRC7 videos look so utterly un-natural to me: First, I have to admit, WRC 7 looks to be way way better than I expected. Narrow stages, that are very long and seemingly a great overall stage-design, which captures the journey of going through a changing environment. The graphics of the cars and stages also look "good-enough" and even the physics look somewhat resembling a kind of real car so far. But: Sound and Co-Pilot are meh, as well as that "dampening" camera movements. But most disturbing, I found out now, is the road surface to me. In above video it becomes obvious, that there are very harsh 'digital`transitions on the road. Not only the texture makes line-edge-line-edge instead of smooth curves, but the road does as well and in three dimensions. The bumps and dips aren't smooth but harsh, clearly visible in the car movements. It seems like the surface is modelled with way to big triangles/polygons. Almost as if they just used one modelling resolution for the track surface and the surroundings combined. Normally you'd save triangles in the surroundings, since you don't need the precise fidelity there, and you'd increase the triangle-resolution drastically the closer you are to objects you are actually physically interacting with. In driving sims this is most importantly the surface you're driving on. As it is there in WRC 7, it`s just like driving in the PS2-era or like old RBR...  To me this totally breaks immersion. Roads are not build with absolute flat concrete plates stitched together, especially gravel roads. For those confused about what the heck I'm on about: This is how it should generally be to be resource efficient and precise: This is how it looks like WRC 7 models it: And this is the physical precision I would wish for in an offroad simulation:

I did finally finish the career and since leagues aren't here yet, and I only did Pro Tour for the achievement as it feels kinda dull, I tried the World Record hunting again. And I discovered something new (for me): For the stages in the Leaderboards the conditions are locked into place, change conditions and you get no Leaderboards. BUT, car classes are not, at all. So I used this opportunity to grab myself a sweet World Record with my i20 R5 on a long stage from the Historic Legends Series ;P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8jRYluZa-0 Since I'm just posting it and I also had like 3-4 way too wide corners on that run, I doubt that this record will stand for long. But at least I can say I had one for some time. (Although I did manage Nr. 5 with only 1 sec to go on one of the Triple Crown stages, maybe I should work on that instead...) But damn Codies, point being here, the drying-road setting looks and feels absolutely amazing. It's the absolute frickin best this game can look and sadly it's locked onto certain stages. Pleaaase consider unlocking this drying-road weather setting for the locations where it is possible to encounter (Wales, Australia, USA) I would love to generate some stages with it. Anyway, I'll be unable to drive for the next 3 weeks, cause my rig is not in reach, so I hope this threads finds back some of it's old fire to make it more fun taking looks into the forums again. 

I watched the first season and was, for the most part, very disappointed. I hope season 2 will be an improvement, the inclusion of a 037 is a step in the right direction! Yeah, GT lost some of the TG flair, it really felt a bit americanized, but maybe they've learned for season 2. Also watched the new TG, which also wasn't as good as the old, but they seem to learn and focus more on Rory and Chris (H. not Evans), who might really make TG their own now. What I really miss are those specials though. Anyone seen the TG North Pole, Patagonia, Birma, River Nile or Botswana Specials ? Those were the days

I'm amazed people get even bother getting hyped over a WRC game in this day and age. Well it shows, that despite all it's flaws, D4 still seems to be the best you can get for Sim-Rallying right now. Or DR if you value acurate stages over limited number. By the way I wondered: Is the stage length limitation of the current engine coming from like a RAM-limit of not being able to load more than currently possible for the stages? Or is it due to a 32Bit Float precision limiting the necessary precision after a certain distance, therefor requiring a 64bit float engine rewrite? If it's the latter, wouldn't it be possible to do 20-30km stages by just forcing yourstage to turn around at the area-edge and swiriling around in a confined area ? Would be pretty unrealistic on large-scale, but driving wise it could allow real-life stage-lengths

Not the one with the insane jump-chain, but I finallz found my iconic Finland stage. It's very fast most of the time and amazingly it's a max-length stage (14km) in Wales and has like >90% Forest! Only beginning and end and one 500m stretch in the middle are moorlands. Maybe I'll use the insane jump stage too though... If you've got 7 min and nothing better to do, might give this a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boz7ygsjBZM

Yesterday I got the last achievement by winning the historic legends series (need those clubs now!), and encountered a little bug: The podium-scene showed the 4-fielded star for winning in fearless-difficulty, but the menu-screen only shows the 3-fielded trophy instead. I checked back and it was the same with some other championships in historic class (I know I did them in fearless) . Not that it really matters or breaks anything, but it's propably intended to show correctly. By the way, in the process of curating a finland stage, found one that has sadly a lot of open fields, but one really really fast jumpy section through the woods with an insane final jump. If you nail it it's crazy fast, if you screw up slightly the chance of terminal damage is high:

What? So you are back at what we had in all the rally games before. Known stages for everyone, all the time? I am sorry, but that is completely against what the generator is all about. Sure, anyone can use the generator to get some nice preferred stages and go hotlapping. But for an online league, it is vital to go with unknown generated stages. Yes, we all know the tiles somehow, but there is still quite a difference between completely knowing a stage and just knowing the sections but without knowing the sequence. And in addition to that, there are still some differences in some tiles. For instance, the sharp hairpin in australia which flows into a T-intersection. Usually it follows the bend, but sometimes the stage continuous into the opposite direction which would be otherwise blocked with barricades. So you still have to listen and can't just hotlap every new generated stage. Think you misunderstood me. I plan on curating a subset number of stages for a subset of locations. maybe 2-3 out of 7 will be curated ones, to set the immersive vibe of that event, the rest will be generated on the fly. I'm one of the ambassadors myself that Yourstage is better than fixed stages. My desire to curate some soley rises from the limitations of Yourstage, mainly in Wales and Michigan (and partly Sweden)

The point is, that in our planned D4RC league the plan is to double-use the locations. And while some are easy to generate in different styles (eg. forest and plains) like Spain and Australia, others almost have the same stage feeling most of the time. I'm thinking of curating some "iconic" stages, mainly for Michigan/Poland and Wales/Finland to get a more distinct driving experience. I plan on locking those in place too, so after the first season every participant will be on the same page with what is known and what will be generated for everyone every season. And I found out the curating process is really long if you aim for stuff like fast, all forest, 15km Wales for Finland or for a narrow, lots of fields, but still super fast michigan for Poland.

The fact clubs take so long is really disturbing in my eyes... Either they are intended to be much much much much more than just leagues or something is seriously holding the development considering the Racenet-code had a base already from DR. I thought the biggest problem was bringing Yourstage into a Web-Interface?? @KickUp By the way, will clubs allow the leader/founder/whatever to use their own saved stages for leagues or will the club-stages be seperated? So is there any reason in curating some stages already or is this all wasted time? And have the buisness people made decisions already on the road ahead? (Maybe hints if you can't speak clearly?) Will D4 recieve some further support after clubs (VR-Update, Argentina-DLC, Rally-PhysicsV2, etc.) or has the revenue not been up to expectation, so we're looking more at like a new game in 2-4 years instead of big D4 building?

Can the same tile really vary in elevation? If you reverse it sure, but I'm pretty sure the tile will always be the same elevation? Not every tile, but I've seen some corners go uphill once and downhill second, no reverse, same direction of corner. I might be wrong sure, could also be there are just some tiles, that are like inverse-tiles of other tiles. But it "felt" like elevation-variattion.

I still think YourStage is definately the right direction. Don't go back to just replicate stages from real life. The locations are iconic, not all the stages and not knowing the stage is part of rallying. CM should instead refine YourStage to a point, where you don't feel so much as of now, that you drive a generated stage. Maybe they should go more procedural and away from the "Tiles" concept. Just starting with a location, without any roads and lay in the roads completely dynamic. Yourstage can alreay vary in height, same tiles can be level, uphill or downhill, just how the stage needs it. So you could start with much smaller pieces of surface, like 1m of road and mold them together dynamically up and down. Once the road is laid into the environment, a second generation process could start to create the roadside. Dynamically placing fences, houses, puddles, spectators, guardrails, significant trees, bushes, logpiles, trucks, cars, etc.   It already does this at some places, but the size of the tiles is to big, so they feel repetitive. Right now it's probably easier for the algorithm to find a road as it has a subset of tiles that all fit together in a believable way and can just pick one at random.  If much smaller roadpieces all fit together, they can no longer be put together randomly, as it would end up in a super-messy spaghetti-road, so refining such a believable road-construction-algorithm is probably the difficult part here