Colin McRae:Dirt

I find these settings to be best with a controller:

steering deadzone: 5%
steering saturation: 100%
steering linearity: 0
 
Last edited:
Did you notice how you can push the barriers on to the other portion of the track in the Super Special, but then when you come back around the wall magically reforms itself?

O and my best time for the baja buggies was 1.08.03...the world record :mrgreen:
 
i managed 1.08.07 which was the WR according to my xbox lol.
 
hahah awsome 1.06.08 on the buggies!
 
Good job man! I think the buggies are a blast. They seem to handle the best.
 
Just played it and...

it looks incredible
but handles like crap
 
The more I play the demo, the more I like it. At first, I thought the handling was crap, but after tweaking with the settings, it handles very smoothly. I smashed Colin McRae's time on the crossover event by 7 seconds, but I'm sure others can do better :)
 
At first, I thought the handling was crap, but after tweaking with the settings, it handles very smoothly.

Where the hell do you tweak the settings?

I'm addicted to the Subaru in Germany track :lol:
 
You go into Options >> Control Setup and then push over to the right a couple times at the top until you get to Advanced Controls. They're kind of hidden.

If you use a gamepad (such as an Xbox control) try these settings:

steering deadzone: 5%
steering saturation: 100%
steering linearity: 0

BTW, I love the German track as well. What's your best time?

I have to say the buggies are my favorite though :)
 
Last edited:
For those who have mentioned that the handling could use some work, don't worry because you'll be able to really tweak it in the full version. Check it out:

Suspension stiffness
This obviously sets up how hard the car's springs are. In general these should be increased and decreased in proportion to each other, unless the car lacks an anti-roll bar at one or other end. an overall stiffer car will have more grip on smooth surfaces because it will roll less. it will lose grip on uneven surfaces, though as the tyres wuill find it harder to maintain contact.

Ride height (overall)

how high the car is from the road. or to put it another way, how much movement you want to allow the suspension to have. stiffer cars can run lower, and soft cars require a higher ride height to avoid grounding and hitting the bump-stops. really this setting and suspension stiffness go hand-in-hand.

Final Drive ratio
Basically this wants to be set as low as can be done without the car hitting the Rev Limiter in the top gear - this maximises the available acceleration.

Brake Bias
This affects the understeer/oversteer balance under braking. having this set towards the front will give you a stable car under braking which will tend to go in a straight line. moving this towards the rear will increase instability making the car easier to provoke into oversteer

Central Diff Torque Split
This essentially acts like Brake Bias, but for power- set this forwards for stability and understeer, and to the rear for power oversteer.

Downforce
The most fundamental tradeoff - straightline speed against speed in the turns. Low downforce will give you a fast car that won;t have much grip - high downforce gives you a grippy car that may be sluggish on straight sections.

Anti-Roll Bars (front / rear)
ARBs are the primary tool for tweaking the car's balance in the turns. They act like the main suspension stiffness, but only come into play when the left and right wheels at each end of the car want to be at different heights relative to the body.
As a general rule, a stiffer ARB at a given end will cause that end to have less grip- or rather will make it more likely that it will run out of grip first.
So a car with a soft front end, with a hard back end will tend to oversteer, and a hard front end with a soft back end will tend to understeer.

ARB settings are often used to correct the natural handling balance of different drivetrains bacuse they are a very powerful tool.
The soft front/hard back is common in Front-wheel-drive cars bacuse of the natural tenency they would have otherwise to understeer. you can see this in action if you look at pics of hot hatches and FWD touring cars being driven hard where you can see them "cocking a leg" and lifting the inside rear wheel in the air.
Similarly, powerful rear-wheel drive cars tend to run with a stiff front ARB and soft at the rear.
 
You go into Options >> Control Setup and then push over to the right a couple times at the top until you get to Advanced Controls. They're kind of hidden.

No such settings, perhaps its the PC version only?

I also think my complaint isn't so much with the actual handling, but the force feedback. The lack of vibration is what I think makes it feel like the car is floating along, rather than connected to the road.
 
Last edited:
BTW, I love the German track as well. What's your best time?

Just did a 2:20:41 8)

Once I moved the controls around my times came down A LOT.

Right now I have the right analog stick for gas/brake and the right trigger for the handbrake, its my perfect setup.
 
Been playing this game some more and man I need a new PC. Even at like the lowest settings, it's still not smooth. :(

*curses AGP*
 
No such settings, perhaps its the PC version only?

I also think my complaint isn't so much with the actual handling, but the force feedback. The lack of vibration is what I think makes it feel like the car is floating along, rather than connected to the road.

Yeah, people are adjusting the advanced controls on their 360's, check here:
http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?t=187324

Also, the vibration works fine for me on the PC with my Xbox controller.

Been playing this game some more and man I need a new PC. Even at like the lowest settings, it's still not smooth. [User Posted Image]

*curses AGP*

Yeah bro, it's a VERY demanding game. Even with a Core 2 Duo and a fairly sweet video card (7900), it really pushes the hardware to the limits. I have everything on Ultra, except motion blur off and shadows on medium (to make things a bit smoother) and it looks stunningly amazing.

I thought the blurry HDR was a bit much, so I used this mod to disable it:
http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2630174&postcount=7

It makes everything look sharper and it boosts your framerate too, so you may want to try it. You may need to boost the gamma a bit as it's not as bright afterwards. In the full version, hopefully there will be an in-between setting as some of the HDR looks good, but it's a bit overdone in my opinion.
 
My PC is coming up on 3 years old IIRC. P4 3GHz, 2 gigs of RAM, 6800 GT OC. :(
 
i have to have all the graphics set to low or off, and i'm using an overclocked 512Mb 7900 :( i really pushed the card to it's limits and still didn't get a smooth game. anyway there's too much of a gap between you turning the wheel and the car turning, it's impossible to drive.

i'm sure my card should work better than this though. maybe it's just something else slowing it down
 
jeffy, those people adjusting their settings are only using the wheel

there really aren't any settings to adjust other than which buttons to use
 
just downloaded the 360 demo, and it's much better. really easy to drive compared to the PC version and the frame rate is better ;)

i might not be able to hear the PC version anyway now i've fitted a high speed fan... it's quite loud
 
i have to have all the graphics set to low or off, and i'm using an overclocked 512Mb 7900 :( i really pushed the card to it's limits and still didn't get a smooth game. anyway there's too much of a gap between you turning the wheel and the car turning, it's impossible to drive.

i'm sure my card should work better than this though. maybe it's just something else slowing it down

That sucks dude :( Mine runs great: I have a BFG 256MB 7900GS (factory overclocked) and the game runs very smooth with most settings on Ultra.

jeffy, those people adjusting their settings are only using the wheel

there really aren't any settings to adjust other than which buttons to use

That sucks too. I guess the PC version has some extra features, like advanced controls and replays.
 
I guess the PC version has some extra features, like advanced controls and replays.

Crap we do get screwed :lol:

just downloaded the 360 demo, and it's much better. really easy to drive compared to the PC version and the frame rate is better ;)

I actually noticed a bit of a lag in certain sections, but then again before the demo starts it does say "This demo does not represent final game quality." :lol:
 
Top