Digital Displacement

As seen at SimHQ, a mod has just been released at NoGrip that enables you to tweak the force-feedback effects on your wheel like you might tweak your suspension settings. The mod adds a new tab to your options menu, pictured above, that has sliders for things like jolt magnitude and rumble strip vibration, among a number of others.

If your wheel just isn’t satisfying you any longer, perhaps this mod will add a little spice to your relationship.

No, not an Xtreme interview, but an interview about Techland’s Xpand Rally Xtreme has been posted up at SimRacingWorld. As seen at Blackhole Motorsports, Product Manager Adrian Ciszewski fields a series of questions about the game:

Richard Burn’s Rally is considered by many to be the greatest Rally Sim of all time - have you played this title and how does XRX compare or differ to it?

Naturally we know Richard Burn’s Rally… some of us are avid fans! We don’t want to make comparisons with RBRA, because it’s very much geared towards hardcore simulation fans. The idea we had was to have a more arcade style of play, while retaining the simulation element at a similar level. The physics in both cases are different from what we had in Xpand Rally.

As far as the simulation mode is concerned, we’ve increased the complexity of the physics simulation system. We think the overall effect is much more impressive. Comparing the game to Richard Burn’s Rally… I think that even if someone made a 100% true to life rally sim, people would still go defending RBR and saying it’s better, so there’s not much point in that.

If you’re interested in the game and you missed it earlier, a demo is available.

It seems the adrenalin 4u team is up to something interesting for an rFactor mod. As seen at Blackhole Motorsports, the team is working on a set of rFactor add-ons called GP 4U and GT 4U. The selling point of this mod or mods is that you’ll be able to modify and tweak the included cars to your heart’s desire. Here’s what their site has to say:

That means you’re given a car, and a stock of carparts including engines, gearboxes, wings, flaps, sidepods, diffusers, rims, airboxes…etc, and you can build-up your own car or chose the parts that will best fit the track you want to race on.

To make things easier if you don’t feel comfortable with creating your own car, each car type ships with several upgrade packages that are designed to fit various racing series levels.

ALL PART CHANGES will affect the physics and thus, car behaviour, depending on which spareparts you install.
Allowing to change almost everything on the car is linked to a yet unseen damage model; actually, cars models are built like real-life ones: you have a carbon monocoque or chassis on which parts are fitted, and all these parts will break away during a crash, resulting in the most realistic damage model so far.

Maybe the most interesting part, is that we’ll setup online racing series based on the above-mentioned upgrade packages, and the best drivers will be awarded prizes, including computers, computer parts or gaming devices, from our commercial partners, or also money.

Virtual and online racing is on its way to take a new dimension, but ‘amateur-time’ is over: our physics models are tested and validated by some of the best known racing drivers in the world.

It’s an interesting concept, but exactly how they’ll manage to enable racers who aren’t familiar with 3-D rendering to get in there and tweak the models remains to be seen. Unfortunately we have no info at all regarding a release date or anything, so for now enjoy the picture above, and head on over to their site to enjoy a few more, including one with a rather vacant looking CG model posing next to one of the (fully assembled) GP cars.

Remember those screenshots we posted yesterday? Turns out they were cropped. Today we bring the full, unadulterated ones that are in some super-wide aspect ratio (1093×273!?) that won’t fit on even a 16:9 HDTV without some rather uncomfortably large black bars running along the top and bottom. Again, the game was announced for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC, and should hit sometime in the Fall to Winter time of this year.

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Yes, folks, it doesn’t get much cheaper than that. As seen at Blue’s News, RACE: The WTCC Game will be available for free via Valve’s digital distribution system, Steam, starting tomorrow. Your free trial will run through a rather ambiguous period ending “Sunday afternoon.” After that the game will go for $29.99, a pretty good deal, with an extra 10% off if you buy within 7 days. You can read the full skinny at Steam News.

IGN has managed to line up a set of screenshots of Sega Rally Revo, announced nearly a year ago for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. These screens come from the PS3 version and are supposedly “indicative” of what the final release will look like. The looks are good, of course, but more importantly we see a number of staples of the series depicted, namely power-sliding, lots of mud, and of course the helicopter that’s swooped overhead in the last corner of the safari-style course in previous versions of the game.

Look for more information throughout the summer on this one, with an anticipated release this fall.

Thanks to wotter for the heads up

It doesn’t get much better than watching Senna at Interlagos, and that’s what this video delivers. This upcoming rFactor mod will feature the 1992 F1 season, when the Senna and Mansell battle was at its prime. The mod is just a work in progress at this point, but this should be a fine addition to the host of other classic F1 mods out there. You can read more about it at rFactor Central.

As seen at rFactor Central, the above video shows off an upcoming cup mod featuring the Super Clio, a little 1,500 lb (680 kg) 230 hp version of the French boy-racer favorite. As should be expected with these cup mods, fun handling and close racing should be the result. You can read more and see some more screens at rFactor Central.

Say what you like about GTR 2’s new physics tweaks when compared to the original, but you wouldn’t think of it as a game particularly well suited to the sport (art?) of drifting. SoundMan on the Race Sim Central forums is out to show otherwise with a series of drift videos, the above being the most recent. It shows a Ferrari, Morgan, and Lamborghini drifting around Brno, featuring great style, great tire smoke, and massive slip angles.

You can check out the rest of SoundMan’s videos at YouTube.

Yanden from the MRK Modding Group, the folks working on the Initial D Mod for rFactor have shared a few new images of cars still in the render phase. The above Silvia is depicted, as well as a bumperless and interiorless Honda S2000. While he’s still not promising a firm date of release, the team is planning to release a demo of the mod “within the next month or two.”

You can read more about the mod at our earlier post on the subject.