Agree! However, late 70's even more so (personal preference).
If you are reading here (looking at you VRC, RSS, URD), make us all a FULL and FAITHFULL 1978 F1 mod please.
You RSS already handed us a splendid Lotus 79 (okay, added with 3rd party skins, that is).
Surely, this may take considerable time and effort, but in the end....cash-cow and surely happy customers/users/racers :-)
Speaking of RSS Formula 79; Has someone out there any idea to sort of 'lower' the driver in monocoque? Andretti is a rather short fellow, but his helmet is simply to high to be correct. Would be awesome to see this corrected. I myself do not know how to fix this, but perhaps some dedicated soul here might? If not doable, so be it. Thanks anyway and you all have a great day.
RSS
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Real
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I'm not much of a modder but the problem I faced with modding SD 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1988 cars was that if you decrease those vintage F1 cars' traction to realistic levels and try to achieve somewhat realistic lap times of the era, they didn't
1) stay on the tracks.
2) became completely uncompetitive even at ai 100 driver levels
No matter what kind of adjustments I did, they didn't communicate very well with the Rainmaker 1988 track pack fastlanes (which I mainly used). Lesser traction meant both crash mayhems and super slow ai performance.
So I had to make their tyres qualifying compounds and remove everything else. That way they became fast and competitive. I tried to compensate that by decreasing cars' turbo values and having lower top speeds to get the lap times at somewhat realistic.
Now people complained on my Youtube channel that "they have unrealistic traction" on the corners. Yes, but that was the only way to make these seasons playable, keep the AI cars on tracks and keep them competitive... with my skills... and with the SD base cars (we all know they're garbage)
AC has many issues. And then you can have issues with each and every track separately. It wasn't an easy task to make the cars perform without mayhem with the whole 16 race schedule. At least for a guy who has zero interest (or little skill) modding the cars.
Also having the cockpit adjustable turbo (yes first turbos came in 1977 season, Renault) makes the races way too easy as the AI is way too stupid to use it properly. So in reality that works like a DRS button and you can easily win all the races. I removed that too.
So based on my experiences those vintage F1 seasons (pre 1990) are compromised in many ways. I managed to make them competitive and playable. Even enjoyed a lot playing them through. Are they great or realistic? Absolutely not. 1990-2009'ish is the only period where AC limitations allow us to have good F1 seasons.
It's just too much work, took too much of my time. I think (objectively) that the seasons 1990 (RSS), 1991 (ASR), 1992 (ASR), 1993 (ASR), 1998, 2002, 2004 (created this around Kunos F2004), 2005 and 2007 are extremely good. CIM 2008 too, I haven't completed a full season yet though. I carefully picked the best stuff from everywhere and collected them together. 1998 is probably the most perfect because of SHI/Thockard amazing tracks.
I'm quite happy with the 1998 TV graphics I made too. For us that are old enough to remember the Mika vs. Michael battles I think this season is one of the finest F1 stuff AC has to offer.
But even those have the Monaco issue occasionally. Unexpected traffic jams and all that. It's frustrating when those happen. Fortunately they're just occasional when you have good base cars.
I would love to play a well composed 1978 season too if it's possible.
Anything past DRS era, Codemasters F1 2020 and F1 2021 are just utterly superior. In fact they are amazing F1 games, imho most perfect SIMS ever made (sure their FFB is not great but that doesn't change the facts that they are SIMS, pretty much
perfected everything and have amazing ai).
Again AC is way too limited to have proper modern F1 seasons as it's simply missing most of the modern F1 rules and those apps and iron wire adjustments is just too much. Individual races and hotlapping for sure, it's perfect for that and nothing beats the actual AC driving/physics. But for me the biggest attraction has always been the full seasons and AC simply has way too many limitations to create a decent modern F1 season (AI, rules, mandatory tyre compound stuff etc). Creating vintage seasons have those mentioned issues too, just different.
My 2c.