Ok first impressions after an hour or so of gameplay on PS5.
First up, well done iRacing, out of the gates with no tweaking, it feels great on a controller. Not easy to do and not easy for a NASCAR game.
I went straight in on the hard preset which sets driving assist and wall assist to zero with 15% stability control. Normal controller preset (there's 2 preset controller setting configs, normal and precision and then a custom one to tweak linearity, dead zones etc manually) and jumped into an ARCA Chevy on Charlotte.
Felt natural pretty much instantly, it gives you the confidence to build up and start attacking the track, in fact it put me right back into iRacing in terms of how to drive Charlotte, even after 10 years. Did qualifying, put it 13th (AI set to 97 on the hard preset) did the race, just 7 laps. Again more positivity, AI are fun to race with, they are aware of your car, they race you, they take multiple lines, they race eachother and it's intense. Finished P7.
Next up I jumped straight up to Cup series, Chicago street with Jimmie Johnson. Again the circuit shines with iracings precision laser scanning really giving the circuit life, Chicago is incredibly bumpy and the cup car felt twitchy but not in a bad uncontrollable way, just a, keep on your toes kind of way. AI weren't quite as good here but still fun to race with, started P40 and finished P17 over a 5 lap race.
I'll take this moment to mention the visuals. On the whole it looks absolutely fine. The circuits look fantastic as you would expect given where they have come from, same with the car models. It's just a little rough around the edges, noticed the odd frame drop here and there, it's a typical Unreal engine racing game but with a bit more polish close to the camera. Only visual setting in the menus is Vsync.
Then I took an Xfinity series race on Darlington, a personal favourite from my iRacing days. Again the logic of how to run the circuit is still there, risk the high line against the wall or keep it lower. Loads of fun again and reminded me why I loved Darlington in iracing. Had another fun race, starting P9 and finishing P9 after a rollercoaster of a race. Saw AI make a few mistakes, getting wide into the wall and spinning out.
Sound wise it's brilliant, each car sounds meaty, the AI cars around you sound excellent, good feedback from tyre audio and the sound in replays is also very good.
Final race I tried was a truck series race on Bristol speedway, what a hoot, just loads of fun, again enjoyable racing experience with the AI, had some really good battles over the 18 laps. Witnessed the AI taking multiple lines again (example below), racing hard, just very good in this regard. And even on the short track it felt great on the controller, not too twitchy, superb.
Lastly I had a look at the paint booth. Some cool stuff in there, plenty of schemes, numbers, surprising amount of sponsors as well. Will be able to make some good liveries. I've thrown in a screenshot of a quick one I came up with.
So far, so very good.
), we can even inject VR support.
