F1 2018

[jztemple2]

I picked this up on release. I've been following F1 for almost fifty years(!) so I manage to talk myself into getting every new year's release, just like a football fan getting Madden year after year. I'm pretty sucky at racing, but so much of this game is about managing the car systems, tire management, dealing with contracts and the press, that there's a lot to enjoy even if I'm hopeless behind the wheel, err controller.

[tjg_marantz]

That's your first problem. Get a wheel

[jztemple2]

That's your first problem. Get a wheel

I've considered it, but I don't play very many racing games and not for that often, so the wheel seems like an expense I can't justify. Also, having used a controller for so long I'm actually pretty good with it.

One thing I'm doing with F1 2018 is that unlike previous editions where I ran races at 25% of the real world length, for this game I'm doing the full lap count. That means races between 90 and 120 minutes long. I'm half way through the Australian GP right now and I'm finding that between fuel, tire and ERS (Energy Recovery System) management it's a pretty enjoyable experience. I do have to pause occasionally because my left thumb gets numb, but that's not a big deal.

[tjg_marantz]

Enjoy! I'm going to get the game after my wheel comes back from the shop.

[jztemple2]

Enjoy! I'm going to get the game after my wheel comes back from the shop.

Got any suggestion for an inexpensive, sort of introductory wheel/pedal set? I might get one after all, but I don't want to drop a lot of dough on something I might only use for one game.

[tjg_marantz]

I've got the g29 so I'm guessing that's a bit too high.

Check this article.

https://www.bestproducts.com/tech/gadge ... ing-wheel/

[Mr Bismarck]

[jztemple2]

Any chance you have the name of that device or who makes it? It actually looks pretty useful

[Mr Bismarck]

You can make it yourself if you have a 3D printer.

Files are here.

[Chaz]

My wife and I are only three seasons into being F1 fans, but we're really in now, and this is really tempting. Rob's review over at Waypoint made it sound great. However, I don't think I can justify a wheel, and suspect I'd get overwhelmed with the systems and generally not knowing how to do performance driving.

What I might do is see if I can manage to get my old 360 wheel working via my wireless dongle. I've heard you can get that to work, but the force feedback won't, which is a bummer.

[jztemple2]

I just completed Bahrain, race two of the 2018 season in the game. I'm doing everything full length, meaning all three practices, ninety, ninety and sixty minutes long (although I speed up the clock if I don't need to be on track). Also the regular three session qualifying and the full length race. I'm using most of the real world rules, except that I use auto shift and pit entry and exit assist. I am running with no traction control or ABS-like assists, which surprisingly isn't as hard as I thought it would be. I guess I'm just getting used to driving an F1 car

The game is built to support controllers. I'm using an old X360 one and I've been pleasantly surprised to find I don't need to tweak any settings to use it effectively. And as I mentioned, I've been racing using controllers for about 15 years (joysticks before that) so I'm really pretty good with them, old age and calendar-like reflexes allowed for

One issue I've found is that when I reload the game after a mid-session save, I've twice had the game call a full caution with safety car deployed when I loaded the save. I should mention that the safety car setting is an option, you can opt to not have it at all. I think this might be a bug, but I'm accepting the situation, rationalizing that maybe a camel wandered onto the track

I really enjoyed this last race. Even though I'm running the full 57 laps, I was busy every lap with not only driving, but trying to conserve my tires, managing fuel usage, monitoring and adjusting how much energy I'm harvesting and deploying to the ERS (Energy Recovery System), watching out for back markers and trying to avoid getting passed.

Towards the end I had a ding-dong battle with Kimi Räikkönen. He was closing up on me just as I had pretty much depleted my energy store (the battery) so he got past me. I changed my ERS setting to harvest more energy, kept close and made a pass in a DRS zone. I pulled away for a couple of laps while watching the battery drain down again, then adjusted the ERS to keep some energy in the battery while switching my fuel program to Lean since I was going to be short a bit. As he closed back up near the end of the race I had managed to get a positive fuel use indication, so I switched the fuel program to Standard, turned up the ERS usage and kept just barely in front of him till the checkered flag

[tjg_marantz]

Good job!

[Octavious]

I had fun with this last year even though I didn't play it much so I grabbed this from Greenmangaming which has it 20% off. Was just testing each track and damn I need a lot of practice. What I'm going to do is play the career and when I get to a track I will just time trial the crap out of it until I get decent at it. Right now I'm on Australia which is the first track in the career. I have a total mental block on the second to last turn which is a sharp left. I either fly in too fast or go in way too slow.

I need to dig out my trackir as the game supports it. I haven't used it in forever so now I have to track down all the pieces. Hopefully I still have them. The controller support to mean seems great. I'm not feeling like I can't be smooth around the track and even the sharp turns don't seem like an issue. I'm sure I could be more consistent with a wheel, but I don't have the room or the patience to set it up each time I want to play.

[tjg_marantz]

Build a racing cockpit LoL

[Octavious]

Right I’ll get on that straight away! I’m absolutely loving this game so far. It’s the first time that I’m really diving into the career mode and I’ve knocked off the first two races of the season. Only assist I’m using is braking in low. With the gamepad I found locked the brakes too hard to manage for now. Ai at 50 aka wussy mode and I finished 11th and 7th. So much fun. Might be my goty if I can gradually get up to a proper race pace. There’s so many flipping tracks to learn that it will take a while.

[tjg_marantz]

Cool beans!