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EA Sports WRC: PC/PS5/Xbox Series X/S - DF Tech Review - An Engine Change for Better or Worse?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ส.ค. 2024
- With its move to Unreal Engine 4, developer Codemasters once again diversifies its use of engines across its racing titles. EA Sports WRC is an excellent rally experience backed by the team's own handling model and physics - and yet something is amiss. The move away from its own EGO engine - as still used in the F1 series - has meant a sacrifice to both image quality and frame-rates on PS5 and Series X. And even PC appears to be facing issues on Unreal Engine, with shader compilation stutters.
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00:00 Introduction
03:56 Dirt Rally 2.0 Recap and Engine Comparison
06:47 PS5 vs Xbox Series X/S Comparison
09:01 PC vs Xbox Series X Comparison
10:23 Console Frame-Rate Tests
12:56 PC Performance Test
14:31 Verdict
How after several years and a generational upgrade developers manage to create a game that not only looks worse but runs way worse than their previous products is simply amazing. The "longer stages" were not worth it if the price is terrible performance and early last-gen visuals.
i was more disappointed by the fact that dozens of early reviewers here on YT said that the game is 'super-wow next-gen looks and feels amazing' - such a prepaid bs by EA
Yes, game graphics are "meh" by today standards, decision to go with UE4 is clearly bad. The rear view mirror quality trash, they should have just not included it, looks like you looking at a game from the 90s when you look at it.
I think the crew is not the same, that's my guess.
Disagree, longer stages and the stage design makes this game superior to DR 2.0
@@test1ngthew4tersI always treat the early impressions with caution. I saw a few where people were not saying a word about how games looks or the performance but we’re praising more content in comparison to vanilla DR2.0
I played 5h trial of WRC and compared it to DR2.0 on XSX. Tarmac, gravel, snow with the same car in both.
To me while maybe some aspects of the handling on tarmac were changed overall impression was that I prefer DR2.0
For people who have not played Dirt Rally 2.0 or use subscription for I would recommend add it to wish list (possibly complete edition) and wait for sale. Sadly car games are often delisted within 4 to 6 years.
I believe Grid 2019 soon will be delisted.
The 2019 game looks way more visually pleasing. Can't imagine anyone on the team thinking this was an absolute win. That engine transition must have been painful.
Drive club from 2014 on ps3 or 4 was better looking this is a disgrace
@@martinmccloskey4206 PS4, yes. Very few racing games look as good as Drive Club.
And this game looks so blurry on consoles. All those "next-gen" games upscaling from 720p-1080p, how are people supposed to enjoy this on big 4K TVs? I feel like PS4 Pro and Xbox One X offered better 4K image quality than the new consoles. The cross-gen period was good, but now it's a disaster.
@@martinmccloskey4206Driveclub wasn't on ps3
@@THU31 Hell it looks blurry even on pc
So… a next gen game with worse visuals than last gen.
Impressive
And worse performance
That's the latest Forza Motorsport in a nutshell.
@@MiguelRodriguez-lp9et No way?
So PS3's version remains the winner?
@@sonyx5332absolutely. Even WRC 4, a 9 year old rally game despite reviewed mediocre on MetaCritic, still has a little better graphics than EA SPORTS WRC.
The lack of shader pre-compilation in Unreal Engine games is inexcusable these days. This issue has persisted for years and other developers have been able to put in pre-compilation. This shouldn't be an thing anymore.
At this point I just don't buy games made in unreal engine anymore. It's like the old days where the "made in unity" logo meant low quality.
At least Unity games can be modded fairly easily to fix issues. Good luck with Unreal Engine unless a breakthrough happens with Blueprints (Which most developers using the engine end up using mostly), or unless you mess around with assembly code modifications.
Yeah, most games with the Unreal Engine logo are a red flag nowadays.@@wile123456
Just don't play on PC anymore.
I don't play any UE4 games, this solves it for me :)
Not really an option anymore considering you'd still get screwed, if not moreso by doing that. Barely used my PS4 or Switch and ended up selling them. Have a PS5, and I barely even use it. lol. Go bot somewhere else. @@marrow94
I always prefer when companies develop their own engine. It always has a unique feeling. In general I dont really like unreal engine games. Not all, but some.
I know what you mean with the unique feeling. Looking at this footage it "feels" like driving a fast vehicle in Squad.🤷♂
UE is the games look awful to me. I don't see what game company would choose to use it when the can make their. I guess it's a financial thing.
@@zonzore How does it looks awful?
Why? It's just an engine.
Sadly you probably didn't look at the good UE games then. From both realistic to even creativiely artistically, some even mimic the looks of other game engines given the engine flexibility. Either way the majority really dont actually takes advantage of it and just stick with mostly default settings (which may be explain either the lack of experience, vision or an understanding of the tools). The best games tends to try more than what the engine could offer, even custom features make certain games stand out more. That also means why every single unreal engine games have varying takes on how to deal with this traversal/shader stutter. It would have been better if the engine itself handle it by itself the best like some other engines, but sadly that is not going to be the case.
@@zonzore
EA WRC is clearly not a finished game.
I love the gameplay but the screen tearing on the ps is unforgivable. I’m shocked and saddened, I loved the ego engines superb visuals and lighting. It’s one car on a stage, hardly demanding. I hope they can improve it soon as it looks like an average ps4 game to be honest.
The screen tearing is the same on the Xbox SeriesX....
Have one of you tried running it with vrr support on a capable tv? I can't see any tearing with my ps5 / oled setup. Framerate seems very stable. Maybe vrr helps. It shouldn't be an excuse for the poor quality at launch, but for me it's enjoyable driving.
13:30, the on screen racing instruction matches the frame-rate graph.
On PC, reducing the reflection quality setting makes a drastic difference in performance, and doesn't make much of a visual difference at all
the game uses UE planar reflections for some god awful reason.
If you don't know what that is, it's basically just rendering the whole screen again from the perspective of the reflection and then putting that on the surface.
It's overly expensive and pretty much a waste of resources
@@bearwynn really? LOL! that's embarrassing!
Right, so Dirt 2.0 is still the better looking and performing game.
* EA Sports WRC
Stage design in EA WRC is miles better
@@HK-er7wfHow about original DR?
No it's not. The original DR is better
@@nimbydimby they're much shorter stages and way less technical, just look at Japan in EA WRC
Only thing I'd go back to DR1 is for Pikes Peak
Big downgrade from the inhouse Codemasters engine. The engineers who came from evolution did so much nice work on that with the onrush engine. Now the rally game got that fake and too clean UE look where materials are too glowy unless Lumen or Raytracing is used. The codemasters engine were much better at creating a photorealism and flat realistic colour pallete.
Edit: after watching the performance segment it's actually quite a terrible switch. Lower resolution with no visual gain as well as performance drops. The ego engine has always been well optimized but now performance is hampered by the infinite layers of UE boilerplate code and dependencies.
I personally really dislike the ‘switch to UE’ trend, so many beautiful engines and tech disappearing now 🥲
Lumen isn't even a feature in UE4, what are you on about?
Would you say the same thing about the visuals in The Mandalorian? They were also shot on UE4.5.
Material shaders, ie.. things that look "glowy", are something you fix with a PBR pipeline, not brute force light simulation, and certainly not by writing an entirely new game engine. Ray tracing is useless without PBR materials and PBR materials often render the need for RT minimal at best.
Lumen is actually garbage in my experience. The sample rate is so low that you can see horrible shimmering in anything in shadow, as if the denoiser was removing fireflies 1 inch in diameter. I'd much rather have voxel-based global illumination than lumen. Like the type of SVGI implementation that Ubisoft had in Ghost Recon Wildlands was absolute 10/10 and still has a more grounded appearance than most full RTGI pipelines, with none of the performance cost.
and drops on PS5 and XSX :D
Wow! Talk about being confidently incorrect!
@@oozly9291yet you couldn't be bothered to mention what I'm incorrect about
Having an opinion is far better than calling everyone else incorrect while providing zero value to a discussion.
As I mentioned in another article related to this game, it is incredibly baffling that they spent so much time on Unreal for worse results instead of further refining the mastercraft that is the EGO Engine.
The shader compilation hitching, in a Rally game, is unforgivable. One hitch, at the wrong time, can ruin a whole stage times. What were Codemasters thinking ?
Seriously, just give us a proper follow-up to Dirt Rally 2.0, that game is still your own benchmark for rally games.
I'll wait to see if this game ever gets VR support. I absolutely loved the dirt rally games, they were the best possible thing you could play in VR
How much better are they in VR than in 2D?
@@cube2foxtotally different game
@@cube2foxwell its miles above surprisingly.
Unreal engines have vr support internally, at least the long awaited vr mod from that modder would work
I can’t imagine how disorienting it would be to experience stutters and whatnot in vr… yikes
The stuttering on PC is really dismaying. From your footage we see like average 30% or less CPU utilization on the main core, then it's like 50-60 % GPU utilization and the stutters are massive. I loved Dirt Rally 2.0 and played like 200h, also played lots of WRC 8. I'm sad to say I'm staying off this one due to the stutter issues. Also, that camera judder thing is bizarre.
Maybe a memory bandwidth issue or something like that. Or poor scheduling.
They don't bother optimizing an already incapable engine. Unreal was never meant for racing games. @@KneppaH
Hi everyone! I was expecting someone to mention the fact that some periferals don't work as they used in Dirt 2.0
I.e., in Dirt 2.0 (and previous games) the thrustmaster TH8A can usually be directly connected as a stand-alone periferal to the Ps5 in order to be used as a handbrake! That's no longer the case!
What it means for players with a similar setup to mine is that we need to buy the TSS sparco handbrake (~300€) or use a button on the wheel for the handbrake.
This feels like they pushing sales of the TSS and forgetting that the TH8A was also sold as a handbrake!
I know there are a lot of hardcore rally fans, and i am also a rally fan myself, and i like a variety or short and long(er) stages. But trading so many advantages, or rather well working systems, for "just" longer stages without other meaningful improvements kind of results in just a net loss from my perspective. With the shader comp stutter problem..it was probably not worth it. As a testbead for future games though it might make more sense maybe. And why not just put a shader comp step in front of the game.. maybe even via the option menu? I dont understand modern game development.. and while thats ment slightly sarcastic, i really dont: Do Local develepment enviroments always have a shader cache so the devs dont realize how it looks after a fresh install?
Youre 100% right. Man.. this is not it. I got a copy. Yes it control’s basically similar to DR2.0 but… man. Visually, performance wise even stylistically and sonically. No comparison. No the audio is not superior in this game. It sounds flat.
It is nice they have done this, i think lots of people were interested in performance/graphics analysis of this game on different platforms
On PS5 those "hitches" happen mostly on Clubs game mode. After patches other game modes are better than before.
🤣🤣
@@HCIbnthose hitches are rarely happening.
@@HCIbnwhat’s so funny? , this is happening on all consoles 🤷♂️
@@amnril not on PC it doesn’t but I do own an PS5
Why aren't shaders pre-compiled and pre-loaded instead of being created and applied on the fly? I presume it's due to juggling system resources from moment to moment, but regardless, it (along with tearing) is something we really shouldn't have to put up with in 2023.
1:20,we finally get to see samir's face.
Codematers and EA also own the Madness engine. One that Reiza Studios made work exceptionally well with Automobilista 2.
And also used in Project cars 1 and 2 if im not mistaken
@@rawsnake It was indeed,, and PC3 and the unnamed racing title that was closed down when Codemasters bought them out. Reiza studios made better use of the engine. But I think that's down to dedication and the love of developing a sim that's not tied to investors and sponsors all wanting a quick return on their investment.
Another example, where a developer ditched their own sophisticated engine for Unreal Engine and all basic aesthetics and mechanics get lost.
it's impressive that even on pc this game looks like an early older generation game😂
Gaming looked way better prior to FSR/DLSS, every developer putting out 720-1080p native games relying on image reconstruction to get them to “dynamic” 4k only to have a blurry mess complete with shimmering and artifacts all over the place and still runs like garbage. Games used to look so crisp now they all look soft
Some are OK but many newer UE powered games on consoles looks like watching TH-cam in 480p. And the fact that many games now has a washed out look doesn't help either.
GRID has aged really, REALLY well.
If you're thinking you were looking at the original 2008 one, that's not it. - That one does hold up in a way, but the 2019 one was shown here. - So of course it "aged" well as it barely had any time to do so. - Games from around 2019 mostly look "new", cause it's just not that far off tech-wise.
Uf.. Hoped for a brief PC "High vs Ultra" preset comparison at some point, given that there are 2-3 settings that absolutely *SLAY the CPU.*
That's more of an Alex video so it might be coming in the future.
I know everyone at DF are big proponents of TAA, but TAA in a racing game is almost always an awful idea. Nothing wrong with the option, but it will always be a lot less detailed and artifact prone when every frame is completely different to the last.
Same with upscaling.
@@deathtrooper2048when it's done extremely well, like DLSS, it can be worth the performance increase if you're on a low end system, but it should NEVER be forced.
Clarity is much more important than graphics tech in a game like this
@@existentialselkath1264 when the game has dogshit graphics are from 2015s no temporal or upscaling effects are acceptable mate. those are only acceptable for the ray traced stuff with high quality visuals on story games like in alan wake 2. they don't work in racing games or competitive games.
Forza Horizon 5 was an aliasing and pixel crawl filled mess that looked absolutely awful at 1440p and especially 1080p. When they added TAA it was a gigantic upgrade over any MSAA setting. TAA _absolutely_ belongs in a racing game. Modern TAA is significantly better than what you think TAA is in your mind. 1080p with TAA looked gorgeous in Forza Horizon 5, and even better with DLSS when that was added.
@@existentialselkath1264I agree, and it's awesome how iRacing is MSAA focused. It has its downsides but it's crystal clear.
Someone made a great point that many Dirt Rally 2.0 tracks have a tunnel vision aesthetic.
Trees obscure most the surrounding locale which isn't the case in WRC, which has much grander vistas and open sightlines.
Yeah but when the "much grander vistas and open sightlines." just looks potatoe T_T
@@cutefacejay6703 it's not super impressive but hardly that bad lmao
@@cutefacejay6703 EA WRC is recreating real life stages as faithfully as they can, while DR2's stages were entirely fictional. With this design direction they don't have the same kind of leeway they had in DR2 that enabled great visuals without murdering performance. You could say that Codemasters obtaining the WRC license has been both a blessing and a curse. If they hadn't done that we would have DR3 with most likely much better stage visuals, but we also wouldn't have any of the actual WRC cars or stages.
I really like how dust and particles stay around longer. It makes it look much more realistic however everything else was downgraded which is unfortunate
EA: "Here's a good idea boys, let's ditch our own engine and any plans to upgrade it and use a last gen engine to, wait for it, make our game worse than the last in the series"
Codies: " But..."
EA: "Shh, we own you and this is cheaper for us"
Dirt 2 all they way. That game silky smooth and at least on gravel is sublime to play. Even the small details like spectators camera flash going off as you drift round-the-corner elevates above this latest effort.
and the random crashed competitor off the course with smoke / flagger in Dirt 2 has been dropped from WRC
Heck DR2.0 runs on the Steam deck at a locked 60 looking nice.
@@cutefacejay6703 Honestly Dirt Rally and Dirt Rally 2.0 are some of the best running and looking games ive played on deck ever. The opimisation codemasters had done with their own engine was jaw dropping.
What about for the older consoles like the PS3? which one would you recommend the most? I already bought Dirt Rally 1 & 2 on the PS5.
@@sonyx5332colin mcrae dirt 2 was the best ever on ps3 ( I have all the dirt games /racing games)
I can’t wait to pay another 70 bucks for UE5 update to 10 year old games
Using UE 4.0 aka stutter engine for a racing game...genius...
This has to be ue 5. They said wrong on video. Not sure if that helps on that stutter though. edit: Seems like codemasters hid the truth. Everyone expected its UE 5 untill few weeks ago or something when it was pre-released
@@SamiJuntunen1 Nope, it's UE4.
@@SamiJuntunen1It's an interesting one, they never really seemed to have confirmed which version of UE they have been using, and pre-release everything pointed at it being UE5. But it seems that post-release people looked at the game data and they found it's UE4. 😅
@@hompnomp8553 What the... Yeah all info less then month ago said UE5. But you are correct Its UE4 but still released on current gen only and no 120fps mode etc.
The ONE thing you need to get right in a racing/rally game is smooth, consistent performance. I for one will forgive a dated graphics engine for the sake of this - and an interesting career mode is a bonus. I still regularly play driving games that are knocking on two decades old for this reason.
No point in showing wires in games if it running at a low resolution, we will always see that fizzle issue.
As we've been saying, games nowadays are looking worse than last gen while demanding much more hardware power
Becsapták a játékosokat az új generációs konzolok megvételének erőltetésével! Sok ps 5 játék néz ki rosszabbul mint a ps 4 pro konzolokon.
That's just not true? Sure some games does but they are outlier. You didn't name any game for a reason.
@@alexandrebelair4360 I exaggerated a bit because I'm angry! ps5 wrc 10, Snowrunner ps5, and now this EA game rally. I bought all of them, but I am absolutely not satisfied with the sight. It's not good that many ps5 games are ps4 quality or not even that.
Always so good to hear Tom doing a video. He's easy to listen to and leaves no stone unturned.
Indeed, same for Richard & John.
The craftmanship of the text is pretty obvious, comes across he studied the art.
I just wanted a 120hz mode on Series X/Ps5 like with the F1 series using the EGO-engine. Very disappointing.
It’s a shame that not only did Kylotonn lose the licence for WRC games, but the people who took the torch didn’t seem to finish developing the game.
I love Codemasters, but selling to EA was a MASSIVE mistake.
At least Generations was stable, PC had no pop in and had stages longer than 20km! EA just payed more to FIA.
It's a freaking rally game and doesn't use any form of RT, everything in the world but your own car is static and there's even dynamic resolution. Yet it still drops frames....something went really wrong in development.
That render latency on pc @ 60fps is concerning, around 20ms?! Yikes
Nothing like a review from Thomas to brighten my day : )
I really hope they fix this game and it will not end up broken and forgotten like most other UE4 titles. I deeply dislike the basic UE4 look but I will consider buying the game if and when they fix the performance issues.
Game runs well on my AMD PC and is quite fun, DR 2 still looks better though.
Great work, Tom! 🙂👍
I like his style of delivery too, I wish he covered more stuff
As a Codemasters rally game fan since the old McRae games, and many many hours in on Rally 2.0, the game looks significantly better. It's hard to see in these videos, and yeah it's not a huge jump, but it feels a lot more immersive and grand, the longer courses are fantastic. The game needs more tweaking, I'm annoyed my old 1080 RTX doesn't run it as well as I'd like, but I love it. I mainly play on PS5, since my PC is outdated.
8 months later, I would say this is now my preferred Rally game even above Dirt Rally 2.0. Its force feedback on a direct drive wheel is the most realistic I have experienced on a sim rig, iracing and AC/ACC included. No lag or stutters now on my RTX4090 after the patches especially with shaders compilation. I usually play it on a 5120x1440 240Hz monitor but the VR experience on the Quest 3 is also very good, perhaps just behind GT7 on PSVR2. Well done and thank you, Codemasters - and I certainly look forward to the next iteration.
Operation Flashpoint 2 was on Ego Engine and that game had 100+ KM of land to travel so I call their excuse to use UE4 a very bad one.
My guess is that all the talented OG programers left the studio and the new devs just don't know how to use anything other than Unreal Engine and yet they still failled at that.
The Old Codemasters would never release a game in this state.
Or can we imput this mess to EA ?
I've been following the Dirt Rally /2.0's development back in the day, and the Ego engine was definitely limiting the amount of stages they could model in the game. That is the very reason why in Dirt 4 they tried to go with procedural stage generation, which flopped badly compared to hand-made stages.
I think changing engines part way through production hurt them. Personally on my xbox series s, on a 22 inch 1080p screen, it looks fine, after the big update before xmas the frame drops are gone, theres still occasional screen tearing. It plays really well though. I loved dirt rally 2.0 but it had a stylised look from the ego engine that covered some sins. EA WRC has a more realistic look. Honestly though I went in with expectations that the series s version wouldnt look like the promo videos and im happy with how it handles and performs.
The hitches were there on Series X at launch, but went away after a patch
Most of Codemasters's offerings have been stellar, but I guess that streak couldn't last forever.
Is it only me or did you just forget to mention:
- unrendered sky on series X 9:24 (center of the series X screen)
- severe ghosting on consoles
???
I think this shows, once again, that unreal engine is only "easy" to develop for to a point. After that point, it becomes a nightmare, near impossible, to optimize for any system. This happens on console and PC, and has been going on for over a decade. I'm kind of getting tired of these terrible Unreal engine games. There were issues from UE3 that bled into 4 and now 5.
One of the benefits of the engine switch is that restarting stage now takes milliseconds, though.
It took like a second in dirt rally 2
Unreal stutter is... Unreal
Randomly up at 1AM Australian time sick and unable to sleep, then up pops a DF video, bless you guys haha ^_^
I miss the independent Codemasters
Look at all that red and green, just in time for the holidays!
Nice work guys! But man, youtube compression in this one is egregiously bad.
At what point do we stop calling games new gen? The consoles came out in 2020, its almost 2024
This is an interesting one. As much as i prefer the physics of the Kylotonn's WRC series over Dirt Rally, i could never get their engine to run smoothly at above 60fps, or work with freesync/gsync. This problem seemingly persisted throughout all their titles including WRC Generations.
I was curious about Codemasters potentially trying to replicate WRC gameplay using their better optimized engine, but it turns out we are getting something else entirely.
You prefer the physics in the Kylotonn games?? Are you insane?
Dude if you prefer the fake physics of dirt over the wrc series physics there’s something wrong with you.
@@neoplayz1141 hahahaha
@@deckard2014 no comeback only a laugh? Sounds like an L for you
I mean, I know TH-cam comment sections are the depths of humanity but how anyone can play both games on a wheel and say that the old WRC games have better physics is just beyond me.
How are the DualSense haptics for this game? WRC 8/9/Generations had seriously incredible haptics.
Xbox series x user here been gutted since I ore ordered still suffering screen tear and frame drops weeks later
A big step down from dirt rally 2.0 and even dirt rally
Okay, I understand the desire to change the engine to better achieve larger tracks, and I understand that Unreal is a very attractive option, but why on earth did they decide on the now decade-old Unreal 4 engine? Why would you ever do that when UE5 is available, and its Nanite and Lumen features would make everything look so much better?
because UE5 doesn't work good on the actual consoles, you just have to look at the games developed with UE5 that have come out so far, resolutions of 720p upcaled to 4k with terrible FSR and still not stable 60fps.
If it runs like this in UE4, imagine how it would run in UE5.
It's really odd to watch a DF video singing the praises of native rendering. Good on Tom! 👍👍
For those who didn't bought dirt rally 2.0 yet (me included) do buy it before EA remove it from stores in the near future
Has EA in the name, no money from me.
Thanks for the review
Unreal Engine and his famous stutter compilation!!
It's undeniably unfinished, but I think long-term the engine change will be worth it. The EGO engine just hit its limit; short stages and graphically limited. This clearly needed another half year of development.
Dude Dirt Rally 2 looks and runs so much better!! Who cares about a bit longer tracks when the game can't even handle the first corner? Also, most of the gamers won't even try out all the tracks, let alone interested in driving for hours on the same track. I bet the average buyer will invest 5-10 hours tops in the game and that's it. The rest won't bother cause they own DR2, and the other rest will just refund it earlier.
Yep, the avg Joe here just cares about visuals
The stage design is incredible and there are multiple 20+km stages which makes this the better rally game
@@zeus1117 An older game runs better, you don't say. Joking aside, I never said it was perfect. But the average person? People either like Rally or don't. Neither WRC or Dirt is going to change that.
More like a year tbh. They still have to implement a quality VR mode as well.
Playing EA WRC makes me appreciate what Kylotonn* with WRC Generations. I really thought they would nail it and they dropped the ball.
*Kylotonn is the developer.
@@michaelmonstar4276 ty
Patch 1.3 helped PS5 quite a bit, it was really rough at release. It's a blast to play with a good wheel and rig despite it's visual issues.
ahuh, how is it in vr2?
Why don't you guys just play the excellent Dirt Rally 2.0? It looks and runs even better than this.
Stages are infinitely better on this game
@@zeus1117 At this point rally fans have played DR2.0 to a point where all the stages are as memorised as the tracks in the F1 series. getting another 17 countries of really well designed rally stages trumps the visuals and even the occasional stutters.
@@zeus1117 I’ve personally played it out, WRC is refreshing and the stages and handling is a welcome change.
This is truly sad...can't help but to think this is the EA effect and pushing them to be more efficient with UE4. Efficiency is the kryptonite of artistry.
This game is a mess. Even on a 4090. 60hz limit, ghosting in both TAA and DLSS, shader caching stutter, no DLAA, and in town sections frame rate drops to 40s.
Such a shame to see a decline in quality like this. I remember when games from the same developer got better and better looking throughout a generation of consoles.
The Ego engine is fantastic, i call bullshit on their reason of "longer tracks" for switching to UE4, and i bet there was behind the scenes shenanigans going on that forced the change.
There's no calling bullshit, since the EGO limitations in terms of stage length have already been addressed shortly after DiRT Rally 2.0 release (and before being acquired by EA). People who wre heavily involved in playing DR 2.0 already knew this and accepted that changing the engine will be required, since we are the same community that wanted longer stages.
I smell EA. My guess is that EA wanted them to save money and ditch developing the ego engine, and teaching new hires about it. Same thing that happened to Criterion's RenderWare.
I'm willing to bet the switch to UE4 had far more to do with the fact that Unreal Engine would make it a lot easier to do yearly releases of the WRC game, while also probably making those yearly releases much cheaper to develop.
Their stated justification for switching to Unreal Engine was too simplistic and didnt really make sense for the reason that they claimed. It would 100% have been possible to add in basic environmental/world streaming tech into the EGO engine if they really wanted to add longer stages into the game while still using the engine the other Dirt Rally games were based on.
Also, if that was the only reason were going to do that, you would have thought they would at least do the necessary programming and implement proper shader compilation to remove the shader compilation and traversal stutters which still plague the game. The stuttering isn't a guaranteed issue with unreal engine. It's the result of them implementing larger environments in UE4 in the most low effort way possible.
The real reason that they likely went with UE engine is that most developers already know how to use it, it would be easier to on-board new staff. Most importantly, it would make it much easier/cheaper to turn the EA WRC game into videogame that they can release a new version of every single year. While not having to spend anywhere near the same money and time on doing the engine upgrades in the future. As those would be handled by Epic Games and the tools/engine upgrades for the EGO engine are probably all focused on the F1 games. Meaning the devs would have to do a whole separate branch of the EGO engine for the Dirt Rally games. Which at that point ends up being about as much work as just treating it like a brand new project under EA, porting what they can from Dirt Rally 2.0 and building a platform which they can develop from more sustainably in the long-run.
With the EGO engine they would need to maintain a whole other branch of the EGO engine specifically for Rally games that has different tools and everything to the one for the F1 games. And they would basically be stuck with it from them on. Because they would never have the time to switch engines between yearly releases. While with Unreal Engine, all the implementation of major graphical upgrades and new engine tech is handled by Epic Games, and they could fairly easily make a sequel to this game that looks much better, and adds new graphical features by just upgrading to Unreal Engine 5 and implementing some of the graphical features which UE5 has already added on an engine level.
All they have to do is to make a DR2.0 with Oficial Cars and Tracks ... How hard is this ? UE4 what are they thinking?
The TAA ghosting is easily the biggest deal breaker for me.
I can't believe that there are racing games with lower than 60fps, stutter and screen tearing in 2023. In currentgen consoles.
Unbelievable really...
WRC generations had the same issues for me where the physics engine was locked to fps, so a locked 60 fps didn't work right, had to turn off vsync or it felt laggy... but then screen tearing. What a mess. Unreal engine stutters are garbage, what a crap engine.
It’s always sad to see a dev give up their own engines for Unreal.
nice ghosting on those windshields lol
Hi Tom. I know you don't normally include PC results for you reviews but it's nice to see!
Some constructive feedback related to PC benchmarks would be:
- Please turn off VSync during benchmarks
- Please test with all settings on low and low resolution to force a CPU bottleneck
On my own machine with a 7950X and 4090, I noticed WRC is super heavy on the CPU compared to Rally 2.0. On Rally 2 I can get native 4k 120Hz locked on Ultra, and on WRC, I'm CPU limited pretty hard to 70-90fps when on 4k DLSS Quality with Ultra settings (with very similar graphics results from each engine). WRC has my 4090 at about 70% utilization during CPU limits. I also noticed that there are frametime spikes in the region above 60fps for me personally. So If I leave the framerate unlocked, I'll see stutters occur that don't cross typically cross the 16.67ms boundary, but are sharp within the 10ms - 15ms range. Despite being able play the game above 60fps, I still have to lock the framerate to 60 to remove those stutters.
Hopefully that's helpful info, and hope to see more light PC coverage when you cover games in the future!
And if someone from Codemasters happens to read this, I think the driving physics and core of the game is superb. I keep playing it despite the performance woes. Please keep up the work to patch those!
Thank you! I'll bear this in mind. Mostly it came down to time constraints to get it all in one, but absolutely agreed an unlocked FPS test is useful too. Next time!
DLSS at Quality with sharpnes at 50-80 looks better than at Native resolution with enabled AA, because this AA make picture very blurry. Sadly there's no DLAA mode yet. At ultra settings graphics is very good. Sadly many people don't know that you can change track degradation option for custom chapionships. Without track degradation surfaces look too flat.
4070Ti at 1440p, DLSS at Quality, almost all settings at ultra (except car reflections. shadows, mirrors) - 100-130 fps, almost no stutters after 1.3 patch
Aside from the visuals, the game is super fun to play. The trial version is available on Game Pass and EA Play on PS5.
12:56 LOL. This CPU utilisation. Single thread bound.
Yeah, I noticed that too, not really pushing much of anything with the CPU.
I don't really care, cause we're halfway of getting Codemasters "EA Sportsified", with the F1 already having been an annual affair, which EA surely liked the look of and thus purchased Codemasters, which probably made them put Codemasters on the WRC-franchise, which will likely become an annual thing as well. - And the fact that they moved to Unreal Engine just adds to the homogenization of this industry.
Once upon a time , back in the days, in the cracking scene, when a random guy asked "why is _Clive Barker's Jericho_ not cracked by now?"
That one dude that couldn't resist: "That's the reason why they got called *CODEMASTERS*"
✝...the power of christ compels you! 😂
I recently bought this ea wrc and I was using controller lol struggled like mad until I got the race wheel pedals and gear shifter now I absolutely love it, this was upload 7 months ago all bugs are fixed now I've had no frame drops screen tare etc , great game at a bargain price 11 or 12 £ I think it was , any rally or driving game enthusiast buy it you will not regret it.
VRR for the consoles not mentioned? Well within even the PS5 VRR window. Would be nice to know how much that helps the feel of the game in those moments as well.
I have ps5 and vrr supported tv, and for my experience it doesn’t help at all (
@@stepankulikov6011 doesn't ps5 games need a patch to make vrr work properly? On XSX is should just work though and support lower range too.
@@vandammage1747 yes, something like that
Is that music that you use from worms ? I have always thought about that but I have never been sure 😅
I remember you used to use it very frequently in your old videos.
It should be well known by this point the Unreal Engine is unsuitable for racing games. Assetto Corsa's following entry Competizione moved to Unreal Engine and in my eyes it was worth the switch as it had way more visual features like rain and details than before for roughly the same performance impact. However the developers decided to move back to their own in-house engine for Assetto Corsa 2. That is saying quite a lot about the internal state of the engine.
Unreal is primarily a 3D third person engine. I am not sure why they did this decision, probably upper management decisions or some long term gambling that the engine will improve for following titles. Maybe just a practical decision, because most developers work with that engine and the old guard of Codemasters left.
Soo it's a downgrade.
Those insane stutters for collisions and water is so unacceptable. I had the game on trial and angrily un-installed it after crashing from a stutter. I'm a veteran of iRacing and this was absolute dog****.
No reason why developers are not using unreal engine 5. More they use it the more gets unlock within that engine.
Imagine switching TO Unreal Engine 4, the worst engine ever created…
Perhaps they fired engine team, seeing as they switched two games series away from Ego engine.
I wonder how/whether EA was involved in engine decision.
hanks for the video, very insightful! Have you noticed that the game is only making use of a couple of those 5700X cores? It would be interesting to see some CPU analysis of this game as I feel like it is causing many problems and GPU bottlenecks in many scenarios and PC setups.
hey