Tame the Mountain: TT Isle of Man Launches March 6 on Consoles

Sidecars ! May 2018 !

 

I did a 22'12" on Snaefell on a BMW S1000RR. No idea how bad that is, but it included at least 15 probably mostly fatal crashes. I had some good 3-4 minute stretches with no incidents and then frequently several blunders in a row.

Some initial impressions from a few time trials.

- The sense of speed in helmet cam is tremendous. Puts many pure arcade racers to shame.
- The 60 km Snaefell mountain track puts just about every other racing game track to shame (though I suspect large sections of it would be a lot less fun in cars instead of bikes).
- I like the handling. Not sure if it's better than Ride 2 but certainly not less enjoyable. Less twitchy and with more rear end stability than the DriveClub bikes, and more "comfortable" to ride (which may or may not be a good thing). After doing my first Snaefell ride on semi-pro I have switched to custom ridestyle with all aids at low (might turn anti-wheelie back up to medium), manual gears and only combined brakes.
- Sound seems pretty good. Roaring bikes and nice wind noise in some locations (I've turned engine sound down a bit relative to wind and environment). It's late at night so I don't want to wake up my neighbours with a loud sound test now.
- Nice visuals on a standard PS4. They are not technically up to the standards of higher profile games, in terms of models and textures they may be no better than a Milestone game, but foliage just seems much more dense and real and the lighting engine is pretty good. Shown off well by having three different times of day to choose from.

I've turned off the racing line (kept the corner indicators on) and most of the HUD and it's a really nice, fun and fast game. Won't have time to see all the other additional tracks tonight, but most of them are very short anyway so might not see so much use from me.

Edit: Corner markers seem bugged, missing in some races/time trials. And I might have to up my driving aids a bit for the superbikes - getting thrown off at medium speeds accelerating uphill and locking wheels under braking and slamming into walls. My previous test with low driving aids was for the 600 cc sportbikes .

 

How Cool hopefully to sit in the side car and watch the replay.

It is good to read all the positive comments too, I am also really enjoying the game so far. It is really nice to have this sense of speed and new long track. (I will get round it all with out falling off one day )

 

Gonna have to get a gaming pc i think...

 

Try playing a 60 frames per second game, like GTsport , record it with the ps4 video recorder, then watch it back, and cringe at the sheer horrible jerkyness of 30 frames...I bought an external 60 frames recorder because the ps4 cannot record gameplay at 60, I was well miffed the pro cannot either..

 

It would be hilarious if they make that a co-op mode, with your wingman in the sidecar shifting his weight around.

 

Some questions about multiplayer to anyone who can help.
How populated is it?
Dedicated servers or peer to peer?
Any sort of region filtering or just players from all corners of the globe?
How is bike/track selection handled?
And basically how good is it?

Cheers and thanks to anyone who can help.

 

I can tell the difference during gameplay but in nearly all cases a steady 30 fps is "smooth enough" for my eyes. That's the case with TT as it was with DriveClub and most other 30 fps console racers - about the only one I've had problems with in that regard was that rally game a year or two ago named after some driver who was not Colin McRae. I got dizzy on some of the tight tracks and it seemed to stem not solely from the track laylouts.

 

Lucky the persons who doesnt perceive the difference between 60fps vs 30fps gameplay, sad for the (small?) rest of the world LOL
60fps should be the minimum and fixed framerate on every console game.
Its not only about the eye hurting quality its also the high input lag resulting from the low framerate. GTA5 on console is like playing drunk, and so it is on every 30fps game. Input lag and bad quality while movement.

 

Considering the massive popularity of the consoles it's obviously not a deal breaker for most people. Those who need 60 fps in every game will need a gaming PC, because it's safe to say that most developers are likely to continue choosing visual fidelity at 30 fps over pared back visuals (comparatively) at 60 fps on consoles. The PS4 Pro and XBox One X are probably only an exception at the moment because they have versions of the same games, with the next proper console generation I imagine we'll be back at a graphics boost at 30 fps.

Regarding input lag, as far as I'm aware input delay is not tied to framerate in all games, particularly racing games?

 

Chaps i purchased the game on Xbox and it's damn good in my opinion. Yes it has a learning curve but once it clicks it's brilliant. The sense of speed is like nothing i have never felt before in any game I've played. I've played all motorbike games from moto gps, super bikes to ride 1 & 2 and i don't think they compare to the rush you get from IOM. Personally i did not like ride 1 or 2 even with the huge selection of bikes, it just didn't feel right. I also don't think it's right to compare the games.

Sitting on a 600cc yam R6 motorbike, engine screaming going flat out down the straights around IOM is unreal. I found myself feeling scared at times so god knows how they do that in real life.

While some may say that there isn't a huge selection of bikes, in modern racing there isn't a wide variety of manufactures and i like that the game is as true to life as possible. The sound of the bikes is very good and the wind effect certainly adds to the sense of speed.

They'v announced side cars are coming so i'm hoping they will also add older historic bikes at some point.

I have no idea how long it will take to learn the full IOM track but i will give it ago. I'll be happy when i can do a full lap without falling off but i don't see that being anytime soon!!.

I haven't tried online yet but i will at some point.

I haven't noticed any slowdowns while running the game but i am running it on an Xbox X which is enhanced, i cant comment on the PS4 pro as i didn't get it on that system.

Overall im well happy that i brought the game as i can see myself putting a lot of hours into it.

 

I think the planned inclusion of sidecars has just sold this to me.

 

This would be great .

 

If you blink for a second on PC , you miss 60 frames

if you blink for a second on PS4, you miss 30 frames

if you blink for a second IRL on the TT, you miss 75.99 meters.

I'm safe with the PS4 version! getting it now!

 

You know what i`m just going to buy it i think, ive wanted it for ages and ages, ok its not 60 frames, oh well i can re sell it if i dont like it..

 

Anyone else having a problem getting the ghost to disappear? It's mapped to my up d-pad button, but it doesn't do anything.

 

I've been playing the game pretty extensively since yesterday and have been enjoying it immensely overall.

It took me a while until I found a setup that worked for me though. Currently running ABS on medium, anti-wheelie and traction control on low, brakes are combined and manual gearing. Riding with all aids off just felt weird, unpredictable and frustrating.

• Framerate on the OG PS4 seem to hold up well enough with some exceptions, such as the crucial Bray Hill section on the IoM. It's a pretty solid 30fps otherwise.
• Physics are anything between trash, acceptable and great arcade fun depending on what aids you use
• Career mode is pretty lacklustre and bare bones
• Graphics, sounds, lighting are all surprisingly good
• The fictional tracks are damn great and a lot of fun
• No photo mode....aaaaaarrrrgh

​

My PSN ID is zoliRX if anyone wants to race online.

 

More opinions from me. Since this seems to be turning out to be the best - or at least the most fun - motorcycle game I've ever played (Tourist Trophy was so long ago that I can't really say if it would still hold up).

I didn't think I would particularly care for most of the nine shorter tracks - particularly the three that are very short at only 2.5 to 3.1 km - but I pretty much love all of them (the 2.5 km docks/town track is the weakest, but not bad).
Track layout is mostly good to great, and just as important to me they just feel much more alive than most tracks in particularly sim or semi-sim racers with (despite maybe not holding up 100% to scrutiny in still shots) beautiful countryside landscapes and villages, and different lighting and cloud formations depending on the three times of the day you can choose.

I still enjoy the crash cameras - even after countless dozens of crashes. The brief rag doll cutscenes can be pretty hilarious at times, the funniest I've seen so far was the camera pointing backwards and staying just in front the bike as it slid along the ground, while the rider in the background slammed into a road sign and fell down like something out of a roadrunner cartoon .

I'm not qualified to talk about driving physics. Definitely doesn't feel like a pure arcade racer to me (aside from the immense sense of speed in helmet cam), more like something between DriveClub bikes (which I loved as well) and Ride 2 (which I kinda, sorta enjoyed a little bit).

So I'm pretty much thoroughly satisfied with anything but the very limited bike selection, but of the ones that are included I very much enjoy so far around half of them (others have trickier handling and I haven't bothered much with them yet).

Now I think I'll get started on the career mode.

 

Needs a true helmet cam. But behind rider looks like the standard fare.

 

So there is a helmet cam. Show pic, please.

 

That would be awesome in GT!

 

No helmet outline or muffled sound, but I can't say I miss that. Let's call it dash cam view.

However I have no idea why most YouTube videos mostly show off the game with third person camera. Severely takes away from the mad sense of speed and tilting view. Dash cam is the only way to play this game in my opinion.

 

" If you’re playing your games at 30 FPS then the amount of time your display is sitting on one frame is 33.3 milliseconds. This means that when you move your mouse to aim at a target, it will take at least 33.3 milliseconds before you even start to see the cursor move. This delay is halved to 16.65ms at 60 FPS and so on. Of course this is without considering other factors such as networking latency (in multiplayer games) and monitor response time which can add additional latency. " from here : http://www.technologyx.com/featured/understanding-frame-rate-look-truth-behind-30v60-fps/

Dont get me wrong, im not try to make this TT game bad.
It's only because of 30fps in a racing game, which is a no go criteria.

 

I"ve not had a chance to play it yet as my mates choked with the cold who was gonna give us a shot. He says handling is between DC Bikes & Ride 2. He's a keen biker & is really enjoying the game. It's a challenge & not too easy. Wouldn't say it was better than Ride 2 but said he was maybe having more fun with it so far. Tracks & graphics are meant to be great. He's on PS4. Solid 30 fps doesn't matter too much like it didn't in DC Bikes. Sensation of speed is excellent he claims. I'll hopefully pick it up next week myself.

Main criticism of the game seems to be relative lack of content compared to the likes of Ride 2. Hopefully they'll continue to support the game & add more stuff to it.

 

That quote doesn't sound right to me.. the refresh rate isn't linked to input - all other things being equal - if your display is due to refresh in 5ms time, and you've just moved the mouse, you will see that happen on the next refresh (i.e. in 5ms time), if it refreshed 1ms ago, then yeah - you'll have to wait, at most 32ms, where with 60fps you'd only have to wait 15ms. But the way that article is written makes is sound as though it takes 33ms from any action to display it. I'm not expert, but that doesn't sound like how it works.

 

In a game, the output only changes when the GPU pushes a frame out of the buffer. That is your framerate. Sometimes it's a complete frame, sometimes it contains information from two successive frames (tearing) - the latter only when the game is late delivering its frames to the display. The display's response time is only a measure of how quickly the hardware pixels can change output. The screen cannot display info it has not yet been given.

That means anything that is supposed to respond to player input won't register any changes until the frame is updated on the display.

To get to the point you brought up, the input is usually only polled at the framerate, i.e. it is sampled at the point of frame setup, and never looked at again until the next frame. Then you have to wait for the scene to be drawn and put to the display. So by the time you get to see any change, your input could well have changed as well, but the game cannot keep restarting the drawing process every time the input changes between its frame output targets, else you'd never see anything useful. Of course, it's worth wondering precisely why your input would have changed (in any meaningful way) when you have not been presented with any new information (on the screen) since the last frame.

Sometimes games resample the input later in the frame, depending on where in the drawing process it is, or at several intervals during a frame, to get a better idea of what the player expects, and to "feed forward" that info to the next frame - this can reduce apparent (or sometimes actual) latency.


EDIT: Sometimes, the game logic is "threaded" separately from the graphics, and it could easily be the case that the current frame is actually being drawn based on the last frame's physics, AI, general game "state machine" etc. output, adding a whole extra game tick of delay to certain aspects of what you see.


VR stuff has required a real close look at this kind of thing, and there are even technologies developed to warp finished frames to better match the latest input (i.e. head position) which may have changed since the frame was first begun to be drawn. This could have useful applications in general, in terms of reducing perceived latency and improving the sense of connectedness, outside of VR.

 

That makes sense. I'd assumed that input sampling and calculation of 'mechanical' stuff in the environment would be done at a set speed... with the graphical output not being directly linked. This was under the assumption that things that make a complex physics engine, and things that make for a complex rendering process aren't the same things.

FWIW, on topic, so far I've not been finding the FPS of this game to be much of a problem. Could do with 4K on a bigger TV to help make out things in the distance, for me.

 

In most sims it was long (long) ago discovered that "decoupling" the physics from the renderer was extremely beneficial to the overall fidelity, simply because higher-frequency and phase-related information is better preserved between steps in the actual simulation. I.e., you want fast physics simulation to get objects to land where they're supposed to land, but generally graphics can't keep up, so you have to draw the results at a slower rate.

The trouble comes when you decide precisely when to sample the physics to draw something for the player to enjoy. Sound is a great crutch there, since you can update the output parameters of sound almost as quickly as you calculate said output (i.e. per audio "block", typically in the region of a millisecond or two) - but most games sample the audio controls at graphics rate... Exceptions in "sim"-racing-land include GT, iRacing (and its predecessors) and LFS - I expect recent Codemasters games also decouple the audio from the graphics, too. Decoupled audio is hugely beneficial in VR, incidentally, since the soundscape moves with your head, regardless of what the display is doing.


Also on topic:
Regarding framerate in the game, it's likely the apparently damped nature of the controls is reducing the impact of any latency issues caused by the "low" framerate, i.e. they thought about the full input-output cycle, which is promising. Then again, it might also explain a dependency on rider aids if you can't react to e.g. slides quickly enough.

A big part of FoV selection is making out important landmarks in the distance, e.g. apexes, braking points etc. Is there an option for that?

 

Thanks for the technical explanations.

On this last point, I don't think there is an FOV adjustment, at least I've not noticed one on the PS4 version. Visual cues will come with familiarity of the circuit, but the nature of the circuit means trackside furniture isn't as reliable as it is with 'proper' circuit racing... when you have a very long section of leafy bushes, and nothing else, it's tricky to pick out a specific one as a marker, especially at high speed.

I've actually been studying the real circuit in Google Earth. The visual cues that really don't seem to register in game, stick in the memory more when I've looked at the real location. Especially pubs... for some reason.

Having said that, I've still only completed about 7 laps of the full course and my tendency to err on the side of wide open throttle means I crash a lot, and am therefore still in the 22 minute range But I really enjoy the experience of learning a new circuit.