An Interview With David Greco, Former Codemasters F1 Handling Designer

[marioho]

An Interview With David Greco, Former Codemasters F1 Handling Designer

An Interview With David Greco, Former Codemasters F1 Handling Designer at RSC sim racing museum and news source.

racesimcentral.net

For those curious on how cars go vroom vroooom, the book he mentions (Race Car Vehicle Dynamics by Milliken) is highly recommended everywhere and very approachable!
That one and Adrian Newey's book rank high on my personal list – obviously for very different reasons.


Greco goes on detail about his professional career, and even provides some light insight on what's to come in F1 23.

Those that follow this franchise for a while now probably know that, however troublesome the post-release of F1 22 came to be, there were substancial changes proposed for the physics, specially the tyre model (load sensitivity going from 4 to 12 data points, for instance) and aerodynamics (different lift-to-drag ratios for different wet surfaces like front wing, underfloor and rear wing).

Barring a complete overhaul of the game engine, you don't get major changes like these every day on a yearly. It's unfortunate we couldn't see it fully blossom with Greco at the helm in F1 22.

I don't have high hopes for the franchise in the short to medium term though. I don't see how their annualized release model can fit the necessary changes these games need. F1 22's handling is a testament for how bad it can go when you don't have room and time to iterate on new features, and I don't see how other aspects of the game could do better under those same constraints. Career mode, My Team, and online are stale for how long now? I'd guess it's been 2-3 full blown $60 games without beefy improvements – or, even more telling, bug fixing and balance tweaks.

 

[RACECAR]

I've said this before elsewhere, but I really feel the "Yearly Release" model is just a stupid concept for Licensed Sports games particularly because of the fact that you are more or less playing the same game 9 times out of 10 with only maybe a roster change here or there. The fact that these games ALWAYS come out with bugs on release just further proves how poor of a concept it is and the more I've learned about game development, the more this feels so unnecessarily constrictive in terms of building an actual solid game.