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EA Sports, F1 Challenge 99-02: “Le quattro stagioni”
A ‘First Impressions’ Review – by Rousseau
NB. F1 Challenge was reviewed using a MOMO force wheel, Super High Rate Physics & Advanced Tyre Modelling enabled, and only low traction control on.
Introduction
In some musicological circles, Vivaldi is regarded as little more than a conman, an opportunist and a charlatan who wrote one (reasonable) concerto – Le quattro stagioni – and simply duplicated it five-hundred-and-twelve times. I mean, think about it. In 1725, there were no radios, no MTV, no CDs, in fact surprising as it may seem, not even gramophones had been invented, so it would have taken many months, if not years, for a work to be performed in all of the important salons and courts of Europe. And anyway, who’d notice whether an old work was being passed off as a new one? By the time Vivaldi’s ‘new’ work appeared, everyone would have forgotten about the ‘old’ one, and thus he was easily able to fool his audiences into believing that the ‘old’ work – with a few crafty tweaks and flourishes for effect – was a brand new masterpiece. Despite the decidedly ugly rumours, ISI is not like Vivaldi and, although their new work is about Four rather famous Seasons (99-02), F1 Challenge is not merely F12002 with a few crafty tweaks and flourishes for effect. My task, however, in the next 2,500 words is to decide whether I think it is a masterpiece or a waste of code.
F1 Challenge is, sadly, the last in the line of F1 simulations from EA, and unless Geoff Crammond (well I did have to mention his name in vain at least once) delivers the fifth instalment of his massively overrated Grand Prix series any time this decade (highly unlikely), I can’t see any other developers stepping up to pay Bernie Ecclestone the eye-poppingly expensive fees required to purchase the licence to print him even more money. Yes, Ubisoft are messing around with an F1RC replacement without licenses, but after the fiasco with their promised patch which never materialised, I doubt many people will bother to hand over good money to be kicked in the gonads again. So the harsh and rapidly approaching reality is that the future for heavy duty F1 simulations on the PC is looking bloody grim.
Physics and vehicle dynamics: ‘The big corners and the slow corners’.
‘The Big Corners’
The difference in car behaviour between F12002 and F1 Challenge could not be starker, and it is one that hits you hardest (literally) in and through the big corners – Eau Rouge, Blanchimont, 130R, Acque Minerale, the RTL curve. Where once you could go through flat, now you lift, change down or even brake. Where once you could nonchalantly throw the car into a fast sweeper and let the exaggerated levels of high speed grip take you around unscathed, now you must be precise, ultra-smooth, and damned cautious. As I came barrelling down the hill from La Source in the 2002 Ferrari for my first ever lap, I was thinking to myself, “ok, let’s see if all the talk about new tyre and aero models lives up to the hype”. I was, of course, about to tackle Eau Rouge head-on and flat out in seventh gear. 190 mph on entry, turn-in was crisp – nothing too surprising – but then, into the compression the arse-end of the Ferrari started to overtake the front and I became a passenger careering towards an accident of monumental proportions. In fact, it was the type of accident that Jacques Villeneuve would no doubt have been justifiably proud.
Ok, so I admit it. Second time through Eau Rouge I chickened-out and lifted in 7th. But the remarkable thing was that although I was going about 20mph slower than before, I could still feel the rear end go light and all the way through the corner the car felt unsettled, on the verge of letting go and spitting me into the wall. Blanchimont is now as hairy as a gorilla’s armpit; if you take it flat you will scrub speed all the way through it and the car will feel like it’s balancing on a perilously sharp knife edge – particularly if your line is not perfect. 130R flat? Err… no way Josй. It’s a big lift or a change down. Acque Minerale is now treacherous and if you get it wrong it’ll test the structural integrity of the monocoque; go in too fast and you’ll experience deceleration trauma as you plant yourself into the tyres. And the RTL curve? Well, put simply, it has questionable parentage. Remember Montoya’s heroic save there in 2001? Well, take too much speed into it and the skid marks won’t only be on the track. So does all this point to the fact that there’s just less high-speed grip than before? Well, just like all the women you’ve ever known, it’s not that straightforward. Keep reading and stop trying to second-guess me.
‘The Slow Corners’
F12000, F12001 and F12002 all suffered from what many perceived as a lack of low speed grip. Understeer plagued the first two instalments of the series, and though F12002 remedied the worst excesses, plough-on understeer was still there. Sure, turn-in understeer was replicated rather well (unlike some games I could mention), but it was the car behaviour through the apexes of the 30mph hairpins that exposed the serious flaws in the physics model.
Well the good news is that F1 Challenge represents a quantum leap forward from previous iterations. To be sure, the car will still wash wide of the apex if too much speed is carried into the corners, but – and this but, fellas, is of the crucial variety – it grips and grips and grips and then, and only then, slowly begins to break away into progressive understeer. Scrub off just enough speed and the front begins to grip again. Magic. The point is that you can feel this happening though the wheel, you can sense you’re about to cross the fine line that separates grip from understeer and a subtle lift or feather of the throttle is all it takes to bring the nose back in line. Delicious.
What’s happening in the big corners and the slow corners is that you feel as though there is rubber between you and the track surface; at long last we have a sim that actually fools the most sceptical sim racer into thinking that there are four rubber tyres making contact with the virtual circuit. You owe this all to the new tyre model. Enjoy this moment guys, it will, I fear, be the only time in your lives that you’ll be glad you can feel the rubber.
‘Making the Brake’
Monza. Hockenheim. Canada. Each of these circuits gives the brakes a Tyson-like pounding; brake wear and overheating is a huge problem for F1 teams running there. But excessive brake temperature, disc and pad wear will be the last thing on your mind when you hit the anchors from 340kph at the 100 metre board or as late as you dare to. Likelihood is that you’ll lock up, spin and bend some Armco. Braking is not easy any more; you have to be progressive, ready at all times to release a locked wheel and be prepared to steer your way out of the slide that you have just gotten yourself into. Yes the brakes are massively powerful, but you will need great skill and feel to stop effectively. Each wheel can now lock up independently – this is visually represented – and this means that brake balance and setup is all important. It will take you many, many laps to get used to braking from high speed, and it will take you hundreds more to perfect the technique. Get it right, and the braking feels superb: so natural, progressive and with tons of feel. As in GTR2002, brake temperature becomes important and this, as well as engine oil and water temperature, can be displayed on the steering wheel in real time. Brakes now overheat and will fail if provoked. You have been warned.
Throttle Control – You’ll need it
What I want you to do now, is go to your bathroom, find some weighing scales and weigh your right foot. I’ll give you 3 minutes. ……… Right, you done yet? Good. If your right foot weighs any more than a feather (1-3 grams), forget it, it’s too heavy. Give up and go and play Sid Meier’s Golf. So you reckon I’m exaggerating? Well, I can tell you that you will need to exercise extreme restraint with your right foot. Get on the power too early coming out of a corner and you’ll be sideways. Lift-off too abruptly as you go into a corner and you’ll be sideways. Traction control set to ‘low’ will not compensate for your ineptitude. You’ll need to be sooooo damn smoooooth, so subtle and hyper-precise with your inputs just to keep the car on the island lap after lap, let alone be competitive.
If you’re careful, through fast sweepers you can balance the car and adjust the line. But get carried away, impatient or heavy footed, and she’ll step out of line or, worse still, book you a stretcher on the next helicopter ride to the medical centre. This doesn’t mean that you can’t carry momentum into and out of the corners, simply that you will have to get out of all the bad habits you have picked up with other sims.
Setups and hotlappers
I’ve got bad news for you fellas. For all you lovers of obscene angles of negative camber and other unrealistic setup values, F1 Challenge has got you rumbled. Major revisions to the way the physics model calculates setup parameters means that grip no longer equals off-the-scale camber angles. Setups are hyper-sensitive to minute changes; take a click or two or rear wing off, and you’ll notice a big difference in cornering and braking. Too much messing about with suspension geometry will mean serious degradation of grip. Should sort out the racers from the hotlappers.
Wet Weather
No other sim I have played thus far in my long and illustrious career has such believable wet weather vehicle dynamics. To put it bluntly, now there is a point to running in wet weather. No longer do you get the sense that you are driving on ice or that the developers have simply reduced the grip level without thinking carefully about how this will feel to the simracer. Sure, grip is reduced compared to dry conditions, but the point is there is lots of grip to be had if your setup is right and you are running with the right kind of boots on. Tyre choice is absolutely crucial if you are to have any hope of bringing the car back to the pits in one piece.
Go out on a wet track on ‘slicks’ and the first surprise is that you can actually drive. You can’t push hard and the traction control only helps you so far, but the transition from grip to no grip is relatively progressive and you can feel exactly what is happening through the wheel at all times. On intermediate tyres, grip improves significantly and if you’re very careful you can maintain a reasonable pace; push your luck too far though and you’ll live to regret it. On full wets grip increases again, braking is better and turn-in understeer kept more in check. As the track dries, full wets become a liability and simply overheat.
The choice between taking ‘inters’ or braving ‘slicks’ is a tricky call to make now. In a full race at Silverstone after my first pit I decided to opt for slicks as a drying line was beginning to emerge in several places. At first, I was finding Becketts tricky and having to back right off and change down a couple of gear through Bridge. The guys on ‘inters’ were whipping me. But as the track dried, grip improved and I found that I began to catch them and I was able to brake just a little later and hang to an extra 10mph through Becketts.
Put simply, driving in the wet feels amazing.
Eye Candy and Ear Candy
Graphics
In terms of the graphics engine, the good news is that F1 Challenge runs as smoothly as F12002 on my machine. I’m getting similar frame-rates and no s-s-s-tut-t-er-i-ing whatever.
The skies are, put simply, works of art. Track textures look very convincing too and the trackside objects have had a major overhaul. But, and this is not necessarily a criticism, you could be forgiven for thinking that you’re looking at F12002.
Wet weather representation is a little better, but not especially convincing. Still, I rather be convinced by the driving dynamics, than by tin-foil reflections, choppy frame-rates, a single cockpit design, and a laughable physics model.
The car-modelling – sourced commercially partly from EMAC – is of a very high quality. Clearly great care was taken to model the changes across four seasons and the result is excellent.
Sound
Full marks to Hudson. The internal engine sounds are simply stunning. Loop-points are in 99.9% of cases undetectable, and the subtle variation in the note as the engine revs build is sensational, especially when you consider that ISI’s sound engine is not the best or the most flexible out there. Each car now has an individual sonic character and the traction control effect is particularly impressive as you stamp on the throttle out of the slow corners. External sounds are not quite as accomplished as the interior ones; they sound a little distant or remote. But this is a very small criticism and reflects the fact that useable external F1 samples are very hard to come by. Overall, I have to say, these are the best sounds in any driving game to date.
Racing off and online
AI
Well, two words describe F1Challenge’s AI: much improved. Off the grid they seem to get up to racing speed much more quickly and you will find it more difficult to blast past the field and take the lead into the first corner now. There is more good news also: AI recognise blue flags – even in practise and qualifying sessions – and they move over to let you through. As in F12002, you can go wheel to wheel in the corners and overall seem to represent a greater challenge than before.
Net code
Haven’t tested this much yet so I cannot report a definitive verdict here. However, I have had long conversations with the guys who beta-tested the net code for ISI and they talk about full grids being possible with a T1; 10+ with ADSL. Time will tell whether this is really possible – particularly on an intercontinental scale, but from what I have seen ISI has listened to the community and turned one of the most disappointing aspects of the F1 series around.
Tracks
Still not the most accurate models, but big improvements have been made in many areas. The changes to layout of Monza, Nurburgring and other circuits across the four seasons has been well-modelled and are well represented. Not perfect, but getting pretty damn close. Shame there’s not going to be an F12003.
Overall
Damned impressive I have to say. This could have been a total disaster for EA and ISI, but instead they have created what, on initial inspection, appears to be a masterpiece. F1 Challenge 99-02 takes F1 simulation to another level.
Full review and scores to follow soon.
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А насчёт передач... Я заметил что на Феррари и МакЛарене вроде бы они их сейчас не переключают, а вот на Минарди и Джордане чего-то там тыкают на торможениях. Точнее не знаю. Со слов Попова, еще до легализации автоматических коробок допускался автоматический дауншифт, правда по нажатию кнопки.
Ой не могу! 
