Now the two elements that were the most impressive were really elements focused on the realism of the cars. During an event, you can switch on a HUD display that gives you real-time feedback on your cars performance. These meters include Your brake and tire temperatures, tire contact, torque, power, gear ratio, gearbox RPM, ride height and more. You can literally watch your stats changed based on your performance and how youve tuned your vehicle. And tuning is the next element thats truly been given an overhaul.
Whereas the original Shift gave you a few categories with a single adjustment meter for each, Shift 2 gives you Advanced Tuning which is broken into eight categories, all with multiple tweaks available in each. You can tinker with your tires and brakes, alignment, stance, differential, aerodynamics, springs, damper and drivetrain. Alongside tuning, you can also immediately test out your new configurations on a track with your new real-time HUD to see exactly how your changes are affecting your vehicle. This live testing workflow will allow for minute changes to be readily apparent in a statistical form. Then depending on the track type or series, you can save various builds to use on different races like street and ovals in order to change tactics on the fly. Every car in the game is available to tune, so you can really customize your experience from the ground up.
The AI has also been rebuilt from the predecessor. Instead of rubber-banding the other drivers up or down depending on how you performed the last race, its a more gradual process. Producer Jesse Abney says its less about [the] immediate handicap, more about letting the game adaptively adjust to you. On this note the game literally tracks your career and slowly adjusts up and down to stay in line with your driving prowess. But at the same time the AI will remain unpredictable and evolve within every race. Youll see other drivers missing brake points, blocking you and generally driving erratically if youve been bumping them or messing with them along the way. As you progress through your career, the AI is programmed to slide up or down up to thirty percent to better compete with the player.