Impressions from the F1 2011 Community Day (09/09/11)

[VELOCIPEDE]

Impressions from the F1 2011 Community Day (09/09/11)

Hi all,

Sorry it's taken a little time to get this online. I will add more as I remember it. If you have any questions about what I've said feel free to post here and if it reminds me that I've forgotten any details I'll add them to this original post

I've also taken some questions from the forum over the last few days and tried to answer them here. I'll try and keep an eye out for more that I can answer and add responses here too.

So here is what I can recall from Friday, and some of my impressions from the amazing day

Q&A Questions:

Pitstops

• Differeing entrance and exit paths depending on how busy the pitlane is
  
• Full steering control up to and after pit limiter lines (including Abu Dabi tunnel etc)
  

Weather

• Weather patters specific for each circuit (I believe) which are properly simulated
  

Lighting

• Transitions on Abu Dabhi were not seen (for me), they don't occur in 20% races or less (I'm not sure on the distance required for them to be enabled - we only did 20% on this circuit). Hotel looks awesome.
  

In game experience:

Handling

• Wet is HARD with all assists off.
  
• Real improvement in drying line visibility - very important to stay on the right part of the track this year. In India I qualified on pole (in the dieing seconds of quali!) and started on inters. Collosal pile up at turn 1 put me back to 7-10th (ish). I went until lap 7 then pitted (wtih no drying line visible) and gambled for full wets, on my outlap, what starts emerge? - the drying line ! Was on the wrong tires from laps 8 - 12 and loosing between 2-6 seconds a lap simply because I was struggling on the drying track with my full wets.
  

Safety Car

• Once deployed you can go full racing speed (or so it seemed) to catch the train (which can take a while if you are a way behind)
  
• Overall opinion from me is that CM nailed the SC time on track perfectly. Restarts are exciting and going to make for some increadible moments between close online competitors.
  

Quotes and Questions from the Forum:

Force Feedback

Quote:

Originally Posted by SonOfMaw

Well I guess the general question for FFB is whether it helped you understand what the car was doing. Could you "feel" the car's rear end loosing grip? Could you get a sense of the grip of the track through the wheel?

I'm not used to 2010 (and/or 2011) on the XBOX and the XBOX wheels, however on the official MS wireless racing wheel while it felt light (more a reflection on the wheel than the game I think) I was able to feel the car start to slide which really helped fight the oversteer.

On the PC, the G27 on the DBOX felt incredible compared to my G27 on F1 2010 at home. How much of the improved "feeling" came from the wheel alone is very hard to pinpoint - the DBOX is an assault on your senses and I don't doubt that both consciously/subconsciously my head was gaining valuable info on what the car was doing through the DBOX movement. So it's really very hard to say how, overall the G27 feels in comparison.

Penalty System - I couldn't have said it better than LoftyMan, so here's a quote from him regarding penalties:

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoftyMan

The races were run on realistic. Penalties have been improved but I did receive one in quali after I spun. I was completely off the track and facing the wrong way. I punched the accelerator to spin round and got a penalty for dangerous driving. Knowone else voiced any dissatisfaction at penalties so on the whole I think we are going to have a much better race in mp.

Good example is if you pass someone by corner cutting and give the place back, nothing will happen as the penalty system will see this. On the other side, if you are 10/15 metres back from a car and shoot straight over a chicane to pass, you will almost certainly get a straight penalty.

Patches

From what I've heard from the dev team (both in public videos and during one to one chats with them myself) it seems as though the team are really trying hard for better post patch support this time round which can only be good news. There is no *official* word or *official* mention of a patch at this stage before the game has even hit the shelves of course, but Lee was taking copious notes throughout the day on issues that had arisen. I also learned that Q&A didn't stop testing when the game went gold and I got a very strong sense that there was already some form of patch work underway for an update shortly after release. [Again, none of this is officially confirmed.]

Hope some of this is useful - and I will try and add to it as I recall more.