VR Targeted For “End of April” In EA SPORTS WRC

Wolfzz · Apr 4, 2024

EA Sports has released the new patch v1.7 for its WRC. As you can read from the complete changelog , the update brings with it some new features, but above all several improvements and bugfixes.
The developers also confirmed on social media that the long-awaited patch to bring the VR mode to the PC version of the game will be released at the end of April.

tennenbaum · Apr 4, 2024

I love VR. Great it's coming! Reason for me to buy the game.

Ole Marius Myrvold · Apr 4, 2024

Fleskebacon said:
Agreed, the stages are generally very good and plentiful. Except the winter stages in Sweden/Norway. The snow banks are hard as rock, which is totally off. The same as in DR2. In the real world, snow banks are generally soft, and will pull the car into them if you touch them with the nose. So I reckon this is a deliberate choice, to dumb down the experience, as this can be very frustrating. But that's the way snow banks work, so... I would prefer them frustratingly soft, like in real life, rather than rock solid.

The snowbanks in DR1!

Marc Collins · Apr 4, 2024

I'm surprised they are making good progress with VR yet can't figure-out how to deal with the lighting exposure issues that make many stages a washed-out, overly bright experience for many combos of hardware and settings. It relates to the auto-exposure feature (that isn't needed, but cannot be turned off or asdjusted even with .ini files).

I'd also appreciate water splash physics where the water does not have the consistency of thick mud or wet cement. That was reported before Day 1, yet remains unaddressed. It can't be that hard to fix, can it?

Eckhart von Glan · Apr 4, 2024

Ole Marius Myrvold said:
The snowbanks in DR1!

ah, you beat me to it. I never plowed into a real snowbank in real life, but you Northerners were enthusing about an update that provided "real" snowbanks for the first time ever. Let's face it, even in RBR they were said not to be very convincing.

Ole Marius Myrvold · Apr 4, 2024

Eckhart von Glan said:
Let's face it, even in RBR they were said not to be very convincing.

Neither the original or the ones RSF have chosen to use feels convincing. The DR1 ones however. That was amazing.

davehenrie · Apr 4, 2024

Eckhart von Glan said:
ah, you beat me to it. I never plowed into a real snowbank in real life, but you Northerners were enthusing about an update that provided "real" snowbanks for the first time ever. Let's face it, even in RBR they were said not to be very convincing.

lol SNOW banks are not always nice soft fluffy pillows. You slide off the road into a berm pushed up by the snowplow and there is a good chance your entire front corner will be wrinkled, if not mangled.

FireWithin · Apr 5, 2024

A 20 something gig update and no VR ? What did they added ???

Fleskebacon · Apr 5, 2024

Ole Marius Myrvold said:
Neither the original or the ones RSF have chosen to use feels convincing. The DR1 ones however. That was amazing.

Then it was most likely the DR1 snow banks I remembered so fondly. Perhaps time to fire it back up and have a go at it.

It's been many years since I hooked into a snow bank in real life, but I will remember the feeling forever..

Marc Collins · Apr 5, 2024

davehenrie said:
lol SNOW banks are not always nice soft fluffy pillows. You slide off the road into a berm pushed up by the snowplow and there is a good chance your entire front corner will be wrinkled, if not mangled.

This. The consistency varies a lot depending on amount of recent snowfall, temperatures, ploughing techniques and how long ago it was ploughed, etc., etc. Very difficult to do dynamically in a sim.

But, what of all the new controller bugs and performance issues that are reported after 1.7 update?? It seems it will take many years to have a stable, properly working game at this rate.

Leynad777 · Apr 5, 2024

davehenrie said:
lol SNOW banks are not always nice soft fluffy pillows. You slide off the road into a berm pushed up by the snowplow and there is a good chance your entire front corner will be wrinkled, if not mangled.

The snowbanks in WRC definitely feel more like concrete than snow and by comparing real footage I also think, that the real grip with those studded tyres should be better. There are 1:1 stages in WRC and I couldn't go flat through some corners the real WRC2 did. I guess they reduced the grip, so that sim-racing-'experts' don't call it simcade for being realistic.

roadyroad · Apr 6, 2024

Marc Collins said:
I'm surprised they are making good progress with VR yet can't figure-out how to deal with the lighting exposure issues that make many stages a washed-out, overly bright experience for many combos of hardware and settings. It relates to the auto-exposure feature (that isn't needed, but cannot be turned off or asdjusted even with .ini files).

It i don't play the game, so I watched a few onboard videos on different stages and it seems related to artistic choices, too much bloom and contrast ; not to mention the color balance which makes some stages looking like late 2000 games, with yellow or brown filter. I have no experience with the game, but a wrong autoexposure would lead to huge lightning changez every few seconds at such speeds, it would be atrocious, it doesn't seem the case here. But you play the game, I don't.

Marc Collins said:
But, what of all the new controller bugs and performance issues that are reported after 1.7 update?? It seems it will take many years to have a stable, properly working game at this rate.

What amazes me is how many players have been writting there on OT for months that the game have been running perfectly well, a smooth experience, and the proof is in this changelog that optimization is far from being great. A lot of work is expexted with this patch, which are good news, but it just shows how unreliable players are when giving information on OT. I don't see the point of that, it is really childsh and disrespectful. Interesting to learn about these issues introduced with last patch, but that's part of... early access.

Anyway, all of this is positive for EA WRC users and proof that the game needed at least other 6 months of development. It was an early access priced between an official early access game and a full game, this is where Ibhave mixed feelings about these business practrices. Ea has plenty of money (or the capacity to borrow it) to finance the game without needing to make you give your hard earned cash. In that case, payers (because remember they on't own the game) have been financing these further crucial developments as free bankers, not charging interests, and they are hostages of EA's will to fullfill its promises.

In reality though, payers are not even financing the game, they are just financing a few reporting ratios, like the average working capital / turnover, which just shows how much money has to be spent to generate 1€ (chose.your money) of turnover. You will understand that postponing a game's lainch 6 months later is going to heavily increase that ratio during 6 months. These are 2 bad quarters for the company's performance. If the game's launch is not postponed, sales are made, cash enters earlier, there is less need for cash to generate the turnover. At the end of the year, as this is an average ratio on the whole year or the project (which I hope is followed independantly, because it is easy to make up figures with a project split in 2 years), sales and costs will be the same, and the ratio will be the same in both cases. But each month, each quarter, the ratio is much better in one case than the other : the one when players pay for unfinished products obviously. So basically, when dealkng with such big cmpanies, this is what the hype and our lack of patience is used to : to improve a few ratios in a few cells in a reporting, to please a CEO who will proudly show these figures to his shareholders ; absolutely not to make or improve a game, this is as simple as this.

A bit long there but I think better informed players are better consumers. I'll keep an eye on the game, but I'm pretty sure WRC 25 will not.be far away when this game is finished...

VR Targeted For “End of April” In EA SPORTS WRC

Season 4 and Patch 1.7 Landing 4th April​

EA SPORTS Version 1.7.0 Update Changelog​

New Content​

New Features​

Key Fixes​

Crash Fixes​

Audio​

Career​

Cars​

Graphics & Performance​

Input Devices​

Livery Editor​

Locations​

Quick Play​

UDP & Telemetry​

User Interface & HUD​

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Season 4 and Patch 1.7 Landing 4th April

EA SPORTS Version 1.7.0 Update Changelog

New Content

New Features

Key Fixes

Crash Fixes

Audio

Career

Cars

Graphics & Performance

Input Devices

Livery Editor

Locations

Quick Play

UDP & Telemetry

User Interface & HUD