So I’ve been playing the PS5 update fairly solidly this week. It’s really impressive. Graphically there are times when the new lighting just blows me away.
Twilight, in the rain, with flares and godbeams reflecting off the wet road, bonnet and driver console really is visually impressive. All at 4k and rock solid buttery smooth 60fps too.
More impressive though, is the dualsense use. First, the sticks themselves seem to have more resistance which makes it easier to avoid overreacting to a potential spin. Second and more important imo, the haptics (both resistance in the triggers and the new high definition rumble) are absolute game changers for racing games.
It took me a couple of sessions to really appreciate how much detail I was getting. The left trigger, for example, gets harder to press the more badly you treat the brakes and you can feel the lock up points very easily once you get used to it, which means you lift off gently and trail brake before you really mess it up and go off on a hairpin or something.
The rumble actually has an incredible amount of subtle detail that took me a while to fully appreciate but now that I understand it, driving is every bit as intuitive as driving with a wheel.
I can feel the wheel spin and I can feel the point where traction is slowly increasing which means I can lift off just enough until I feel the grip come in and accelerate hard from there. If I’m under steering I can feel that information on the side of the pad related to the outside of the car.
So if I’m sliding out to the right on a left hander, then I can feel the rumble change from fairly central transitioning smoothly over to the right hand side and I can even feel the ruts in the road as I cross them to the outside of the corner with that information transitioning in the other direction.
Which in turn allows me to lift off the throttle gently, feel the grip coming back in and then accelerate with grip.
It even conveys different road surfaces incredibly well. Sweden with it’s snow has very muted road surface feedback (probably why I took a few sessions to understand how good it was) and then Finland has very granular fine detail rumble. Tarmac is different again and you can feel the difference between the different gravel rallies too.
This is one of the (absolutely terrifying) new Finland stages that they added for free recently. Every time you see me lift off sightly or wait to accelerate or modulate my braking is because I could feel it in my hands. I actually get more information through the pad now than I get with my wheel. That’s insane.
This is a recording I made because it was just so pretty in rainy twilight. There’s a few sections where the lighting changes and there are flares burning and it just looks ridiculously good.
Worth noting as well that my biggest gripes with the game seem to have been quietly fixed. It seems like the meteorologist isn’t just a twunt with a pine cone now, although I need to test further; and even better, puddles don’t immediately spin the car round. They need to be substantial to have a big impact now. Which itself makes the meteorologist less frustrating too.
Try and watch the vids in 4k if you can. Although that first video seems to be still processing and is currently only offering 360p 😲. Second video is fine though.