Gaming Shift 2: Unleashed Review

what did you change?

 

Just got it today. Same as shift for the steering wheel I'm afraid (on default settings anyway).

Absolutely shocking as the menu presentation is awesome, steering wheel has nasty lag on it, also seems that when you oversteer, the FFB goes light (which it definately shouldn't), having to massively play around with the settings, but lets just say I can do a 1 hour race on F1 2010 without crashing. I currently cant get around the first turn on this, and thats in 2nd gear.

Hopefully somebody will come up with some actual steering settings that make this playable. Oh and menu navigation with just the steering wheel is good.. then you try to change the options, and I guarentee you'll go for the mouse Another game with controls aimed at console pads as a pose to proper steering wheels.

 

I'm on G27 btw.

 

I found it MUCH better than f1 2010 - f1 2010 is horrible to drive, it will randomly just oversteer without warning.

Im currently waiting for the patch to start working - its shocking that they've had to release one already but basically I cant get more than 15fps, no matter what settings I use. The patch is supposed to solve the performance issue but it wont install..

 

Just to elaborate further, its just wierd. I've not really changed the settings, and calmed down a bit, and took it easy for a few races, the steering just doesn't make sense. There is what feels like a big deadzone, about 5% maybe more in each direction, but after going round a bit more, its not infact a deadzone. For some reason, when the car starts to get unsettled, the FFB goes down, so you eventually start to fishtail down straights, and the FFB drops off, basically making this happen more.

Oversteer is wrong as well, I assume this measure has been put in to make drifting easier, but basically when you oversteer, the steering gets alot heaviler, making it easier to hold a slide, but if you're racing, it makes cancelling out the oversteer a nightmare, because once its straight, the FFB snaps back to being light again, which causes you to again, fishtail.

Last but least, the FFB itself is pants, its basically on to whatever setting you put it, and the only time it changes is when you hit curbs or grass, no feeling of understeer or front wheelspin at all.

Oh and remember the 5foot braking distance on Shift 1, now its 500ft, when he says break early, he means -really- early. And before you say it, yes its not a sim, but bloody hell, its not driving either.

Read a bit further into it, apparently changing Speed steering to 50% - 100% helps with the straight fishtailing. But general consensus on multiple forums is that steering wheel has nasty input lag, and terrible FFB on oversteer.
360 controller users on PC say its great and handles like forza. Joy \o/

 

Cheers Craig. It was on my list of "might try the demo at some point, but probably a lame duck", now it's on my "Buy it on Steam when the price is right" list.



sidenote: watching these G27 discussions with interest ... hope it all gets fixed by the time I play it!

 

done more races, its playable. But cannot agree with general steering wheel reviews all around, very floaty, terrible terrible input lag. If you're using a wheel and you don't think the lag is that bad, flick back and forth from "look behind" a bit, we're talking 300ms delay ish, you just have to be very very smooth.

The most unforgiving is the FFB, I can oversteer purposely on a turn, let go of the wheel, and it just stays where it is, no resistance at all (or sometimes it just goes heavy).

 

need to go into the settings and change the feedback and sensitivity. like i said it will feel better and closer to a rfactor feel but it will never feel the same though. turned my sensitivity up to max turned dead zone to zero as well.

 

Have you installed the patch?
If not, Id be interested to know if you can get it to install, and if so, what OS/specs you're running etc

 

not got any patch, gave up with it for tonight.

Jizwizard, I've had a massive play with the settings, even messed with the XML file as some people have recommended that. The settings don't have anything to do with the fact that the FFB is simply just wrong. Something to do with logitech drivers not doing friction and dampening at the sametime or something, I'm not sure.

There is a steering mod out already that gets rid of the lag and makes the cars a bit more responsive, but I have no idea if this makes online play a no-no or gets you banned, I'll wait and see. Still pretty damn dissapointed, intro and menu's are awesome, loaded up a race and just spent the next 4 minutes swearing as I tried to get what felt like the Nissan GT-R Blimp edition around the track lol.

 

I have the opportunity to play this at a friends house tonight.

It is shockingly bad with a steering wheel. You aren't connected at all, the whole thing feels like you're driving on ice. And I'm sad to say, that the Xbox controller isn't much better. I must be too used to driving real cars, because this is nothing like driving, even at a console level.

 

When I first got Dirt2 it was unplayable at default settings on the DFGT. Then I noticed in cockpit view the 200 degrees Logitech's setting made the wheel too twitchy. I then changed it to 540 degrees and now my cornering input is same as on screen. Hopefully NFS suffers from the same problem and nothing more.

 

tried 200, 360, 380, 540, 720 and 900 degree's of steering, I want to like this game, but it just suffers from terrible physics/steering lol

 

This game is very good, certainly addictive - I couldn't stop playing it last night due to constantly levelling up and getting new stuff - and an improvement over the first SHIFT in pretty much every area.

A few quibbles though:

1. Why does the menu text look so damn blurry? Was it designed for the Wii or something and upscaled? Seriously it looks that bad I thought I'd developed Cataracts (the in-game HUD and text look fine though). The first SHIFT didn't have this issue either.

2. What's with the weak shader-based anti-aliasing and distractingly flickery and low-res shadows on the track? They look rough and unfiltered yet I have Anisotropic Filtering set to 16x and the Clamped is set for in the driver's Global profiles. On one of the early races the side fences appeared to be flickering on and off as I drove past them!

3. Why does the game run fine at 60 fps 99% of the time for me with 83% GPU utilisation but has a bug which causes it to drop to 10-15 fps at times with 99% GPU Utilisation in the Photo mode, Garage or the odd race (Core i7-920 @ 3.2 GHz, GTX 580, Windows 7 SP1 64-bit)? Alt-Tabbing to the desktop and back fixes it but it's still annoying nevertheless.

The answers to 1 and 2 are probably: "It's a console-led multiformat game, that's why!" and 3 is probably a driver or game bug, right?

 

I'll wait for my preorder from Zavvi to come and let you know my DFGT custom settings. Should be able to apply to your G25/27.

Last night I tried Dirt 2 online multiplayer and was beaten badly. I dominated most of the offline challenge easily. I think its the clutch as people were getting of the line faster than I can. In offline mode I can at least start on par with other AI cars. I think I'll get a Clubsport pedals next to increase performance

On your question, it is more likely a bug. I noticed a trend now days where EA, launches a game, then patches it few times after launch. This is useful to deter pirate copies of the game which are stuck on one version of the game.

 

I didn't realise you could use a clutch in Dirt 2...

I'm very glad I didn't buy Shift 2 on the strength of BT's review, though I was very cautious as I hated Shift 1 with the G25 (and I didn't like Grid either - didn't like the feel). I'm glad to hear that is wasn't just me being rubbish with Shift 1, it's more like the wheel-game interaction letting it down, because I found it difficult to get around corners in that...

If this game (with a wheel) is like GT5 then I'd probably buy, but right now...

...nah.

 

theres a good post somewhere on TDU2 about steering wheels, basically its all to do with the linearity of the steering. Consoles have an inverse-linear relation (i think thats it?) so if you imagine a graph, it goes up very steeply and then drops off at the end, so in relation to steering, the first 20% of the movement relates to 70% of the steering lock, and then it drops off sharply, which is exactly how analogue pads on consoles work. Steering wheels simply want 1:1 linearity, we want the steering wheel to move exactly the same as the one on screen, without lag, and with sensible FFB.

Let us know how it goes on the DFGT, and try some silly steering as well, let me know how the FFB is, because thats the killer for me, just can't feel understeer at all, only get a reaction when i change gear or hit a curb

 

Will do. Hopefully will arrive tomorrow. If you want understeer, try Dirt2. Tons of understeer

Artanix, you might want to take a look at this:
http://insidesimracing.tv/forums/viewtopic.php?f=150&t=2573

Logitech racing wheel setup at insidesimracing.tv

 

change sensitivity

 

it should be waiting for me at home (ps3 version) if not it will arrive tomorrow. can't wait to play it. I have only few rival challenges left from shift 1 and GT5 isn't racer you want to play every day (or a bit drunk )