"F1 2010???: The Formula 1 game made by F1 fanatics (Interview, Part 2)

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Here’s the second part of my interview with the men behind the new official Formula 1 game.

They explained how F1 Fanatic played a role in the creation of “F1 2010”, why Anthony Davidson told them “rFactor” isn’t realistic enough, and what they’ve got planned for “F1 2011”.

F1F: One of the things I noticed playing the game just now is how detailed the handling model is – for example, you can really feel the difference between the option and the prime tyre. A lot of work seems to have gone into that.

Steve Hood, senior game designer: It’s one of the things we were really eager to get it to differentiate ourselves from other racing games.

If you play a “Gran Turismo” or “Forza” people are doing those three-lap races where they’re kind of sprint events. But one of the things you always find in Formula 1 is that drivers have got different styles. We always use Hamilton and Button as a comparison.

Button always seems to maintain a really good pace throughout the race, he’s under the radar in many races and he picks up towards the end because he’s maintained his car. We want to do that in the game as well.

So, for example, you can pick the prime tyres at the start of the race when everybody’s going for options so you’ll be faster at the end. Trying to extract those cool things in Formula 1 and making a game-play element out of them is important.

If you know about Formula 1 and watch it on TV and you know about the difference between the tyres, you can create your own strategies and that can give you an advantage.

Paul Jeal, senior game producer: Lots of work has gone into tyres in terms of their temperature ranges. We’ve got a lot of data from Bridgestone on their grip value and their fall-off and their life.

I think we’ve probably made a little bit more of a difference between the options and the primes – because I was hoping their was going to be more of a difference in real life.

F1F: So there aren’t drivers doing race distances on soft tyres like Vettel did on Sunday?

PJ: Yeah, absolutely, doing the entire race is crazy!

It’s the same with the cars as well we spent a lot of time on the base model of the car handling to get that as good as possible. But then we want subtle differences between all the cars which is nice to get.

I think when Steve and Anthony [Davidson] were in one day driving at Monaco and they drove the Red Bull, and then the Lotus and the HRT, and there was about a five-and-a-half second difference between them. And that was really pleasing.

And the cars’ behaviour is slightly different. Some guys prefer the Red Bull, some guys prefer the McLaren, the Renault seems to have a really nice feel – it’s a good all-rounder.

SH: I really like the Force India, for example. When you know the different car strengths for the different circuits, that’s quite good online as well.

I was playing with some guys the other night and they were only running with the higher teams’ cars. But then one of them had to go in a Sauber and you could hear him moaning over the headset saying he couldn’t get the car to turn into the corner and how it was under-steering everywhere and he had to use the front wing flap to get it to turn in.

Stuff like that is cool. And you end up modifying your driving style to get the most out of a car.

F1F: How far have you been able to go with the damage model, and are you restricted by a need not to make the sport look unsafe?

SH: We certainly had grand plans for the damage model. I don’t think we’ve quite pulled it off with the first one.

It can be extremely complicated and extremely detailed. We’ve got the scope for doing that in 2011.

Certainly one of the things that we’re not allowed to do is promote the fact that the cars can be destroyed: say, gouging a hole in the side so you can see the radiator and go down to the shell of the car. We’re not really allowed to promote that.

Sometimes it’s a bit frustrating because people are interested in the damage model and we want to put all this stuff out there. But we haven’t developed it as much in 2010 as much as we would have liked to. So I think that’s certainly something we’re going to be building for 2011.

PJ: It’s quite a delicate conversation, actually. Around the time we went in to see them about it there’d been some wheels coming off and there’d been a death in one of the junior formulae [Henry Surtees in Formula Two]. It’s a quite difficult subject to approach.

And also you’ve got the fact that it is a game and you don’t want your rear wing to get smashed quite as easily as they do in real life because that’s race over.

One of the things we were working on which didn’t quite make it into this game was reliability gremlins creeping in – maybe you get stuck in gear, maybe you lose a cylinder and have to drive defensively.

We’ve still got that in terms tyre strategies and maybe you dial your revs down. The AI do it as well – so, say Hamilton’s got a 20-second lead, he’s going to ease off. Which makes it better from a gaming point of view because he’s not racing off into the sunset. But also it’s what he actually would do in real life to conserve his engine – until you get within ten seconds of him or so, then he’s going to speed up again.

SH: All the damage aspects feed back into the physics engine. For example if you damage a front wing endplate or something you’ll have slightly less front downforce.

I think the casual player won’t actually notice that. But if you’re really consistent and doing lap times within a couple of tenths of each other then you’ll notice that difference.

And it plays on your mind, you worry about it. You think “how far can I push it now” and “do I need to compensate by turning the front wing up?” That sounds massively geeky but I love it!

F1F: What kind of input has Anthony Davidson had – where has he stepped in and said “you need to change this”?

PJ: He’s been brilliant as far as I’m concerned. Not only is he a gamer – he plays racing games all the time – he’s driven the cars and many of the circuits.

He’s able to say to us “you know such-and-such that happens in this game, they’ve got that completely wrong, and everybody thinks that’s really hardcore”.

He helps up massively because when we’re working on something he can say “I can feel this happening in the car now” and we might say “oh, we didn’t think that would come through” and then we can tweak it further.

He’s a great person to bounce ideas off, he’ll come in every couple of weeks and point us in the right direction. When we asking “should it be as easy as this or as difficult as that?” we can get a definitive answer from him. We don’t have to constantly research things or make second guesses, we can just ask him.

SH: That’s the thing with the public perception with games like “rFactor” – because they’re hard to play, everyone perceives that it’s an accurate simulation.

But if you speak to Ant, the F1 cars in “rFactor” are more difficult to drive than they are in real life. So he was keen to help us get an authentic experience.

We would never have got to the level of car handling we’re at if it wasn’t for Ant. But the thing that excites me the most is that for a large part of this project a lot of the car handling stuff was being totally rewritten from Grid. So at that time we weren’t maximising Ant’s potential.

But now it’s all there and operational we’ve had great benefits since February or March where it’s started to come together. Ant would be in every other week, spending all day saying “change this, change that, do this, do that”, getting the set-up right, getting all those kinds of things.

We have to evolve everything forward for the next one [“F1 2011”] and then we can make some pretty big gains relatively easily next time because we won’t have to re-write huge modules.

F1F: One of the great things I noticed playing it just now, which I hadn’t experienced in an F1 game before, is how difficult it is to see where you’re going at Monaco.

SH: Yeah – with Monaco you have to get into this rhythm where you know what’s coming exactly where you are. Because otherwise you just don’t get the lap times.

You can see how the drivers have to lean on it around the track just to get a time out of it.

Very early on in one of the versions we had I remember Ant driving around using the cockpit view. There’s some little rumble strips against some of the barriers just to remind you you’re getting close to the barrier and he rode those on every lap – it’s really annoying, actually, that he was able to do that first time out!

PJ: He did a lot of work with us on developing the cockpit angles. In the end raised them marginally for game-play purposes because when you see how low they really are it’s hard to play like that.

On a lot of the stuff he would tell us “No, stuff doesn’t come at you as fast as that”. People’s perception is that at 215mph at Monza everything’s come at you like you’re in a rocketship. Even at Monaco now he still thinks it’s a fraction too fast.

SH: I certainly think that the drivers become accustomed to the speed and we wanted to get the player accustomed to the speed as well so they’ve got time to concentrate. They can think about what they’re going to do tactically, how the car is performing, what the other guy is doing, is the weather changing and so on.

I want them to be thinking about that so that you can play out these stories during the race. It’s not just about doing the qualifiyng laps in the race.

PJ: It’s about consistency, really.

One of the things I like about your website in particular is you do lap time comparisons. That helped us with the artificial intelligence.

I think it was Kimi Raikkonen I was looking at whose lap times at the start were just bang, bang, bang consistent right up until his pit stop.

We compared that with one of the rookies and he took maybe six or seven laps to get up to speed and in those few laps he lost 15 seconds or so.

We’ve seen Anthony play it, we’ve seen Lewis Hamilton, Adrian Sutil and Sebastien Buemi play it, and they just get in and they’re hypnotic with their rhythm. Ant did six or seven laps within a tenth of a second of each other around one track and you just watch them thinking “that’s it, we’ve got it”.

F1F: OK last question: the radio voice. Is it Rob Smedley?

PJ: No, it’s not…

F1F: Really? It sounds an awful lot like him.

SH: No but he does sound like him.

When we were looking at it we didn’t want to do TV style-commentary we wanted to do engineer-style commentary.

We wondered if we should do a Pat Symonds-type, quite technical voice [this is accompanied by an impressively authentic “OK, Fernando” delivered in Symond’s distinctive accent] or should we have someone’s who’s like your best mate – and we went for that.

F1F: But he doesn’t call you ‘baby’ at any point?

PJ: No, he doesn’t call you baby! We were dying to get something about the white visor in there but we decided against it.

F1 Fanatic will have a detailed, multi-format review of “F1 2010” early next week. In the meantime, please post any questions you have about the game in the comments and I’ll try to answer them there or in the review.

Read the first part of the interview here: "F1 2010???: The Formula 1 game made by F1 fanatics (Part 1)

Buy Formula 1 2010 for PS3
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Buy Formula 1 2010 for PC DVD

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“F1 2010” by Codemasters

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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154 comments on “"F1 2010???: The Formula 1 game made by F1 fanatics (Interview, Part 2)”

  1. Really looking forward to this. Particularly because of Ant’s input.

    Bitterly disappointed that yet another F1 game does not allow truly realistic damage. Not just fragile wings, but also the opportunity for real race ending crashes.

    I actually worked on Virtua Raving at Sega in Japan. We used to setup the arcade cabinets in networks of 16 and play full length 70 odd lap GPs (in our breaks of course).

    1. Oh you can definitely end your race with a crash, I can confirm that…

      1. Ha! I am sure. :)

        It’s just that it would be nice to have the possibility of Kubica or Webber style crashes (just referencing the ones freshest in my memory).

        Not looking for gore, or death and destruction.
        But for them to carry the realism all the way through the simulations dynamics. Both from minutiae (like graining, and bad gear shifts, broken but manageable car problems) up to cataclysmic events (like out braking your self and flipping because of contact with another car at speed).

        I am going to love this game anyway. It would just be nice to one day take the physics to the same level as the awesome eye-candy. Or at least have the option to do so, for fanatics!

        1. Well just maybe they are getting things like that into next years game :-)

          From what they say it sounds pretty good. Who would like knocking his front wing off at the first kerb on the first lap out?

      2. M just glad Codemasters took over formula 1. From the day I played Dallara Formula 3000 in “GRID”, which is made by Codemasters, I’ve been praying that Codemasters makes Formula 1! M just glad it’s finally happening. I still have it installed on my PC. I still try to beat my lap times in the F3 car on the SPA track! :-)

        1. I must admit, after playing GRID, and hearing that CodeMasters had this contract I was quietly excited. Despite the more arcadey feel of GRID you could tell the guys doing the game love racing.. even then.

          1. You’re joking, Grid was awful.. Pure arcade, not even a patch on the previous Codemasters Racedrive games. However, these guys seem to be able to talk the talk. Fingers crossed!

    2. This just shows how it can be done, using passionate people, working for a proven publisher and involve Ant Dav, we are so lucky to live in this day and age guys n girls!

  2. Sorry.. Qs:

    Would love to know just how much damage is possible.

    How tire degradation etc. affects handling and so on.

    Just how smart are the AI cars at the first corner? That was always pretty crap in the last PS3 version. Like going into a corner with 16 Sato’s (in their first year of F!).

    1. @ Stephen Northcott

      An example crash for you with some nice damage:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPR7nH9U3qQ

      1. I can handle that damage. F1 cars don’t break up like they used to anyway. Just look at Mark Webber’s crash in Valencia, the car was rock solid, it stayed together and hardly looked damaged.

        I’m really looking forward to playing this. There’s a guy in my studio who was at codies whilst this was in development and he is full of praise.

        The PS3 game I’ve been working for the last year and a half came out today, and this time next week F1 2010 comes out. Good times. :D

      2. Interesting – the tyres are wrong in that video. We’ve got the green band around the outer rim, not the white strip down the grooves because the tyres don’t use grooves anymore.

        1. i thought it’s the intermediates?

        2. wet weather tyres PM.

          Chris P, nice find, I like in the video that the McLaren gets wrecked and the back end of the Ferrari stays in one piece!, very realistic!

          1. I know they’re wet weather tyres. I also know that a white stripe like that is impossible on wet tyres because wet tyres have a tread designed to funnel water away from the surface of the tyre. They’re kind of in a criss-cross pattern; those are clearly 2009 tyres.

            And a review from EDGE magazine also clearly shows a Brawn BGP-001.

          2. Had to think back to Spa start there, with a bit of Monza mayhem from Lewis :-D

          3. No, PM is right. In 2010 the wet and the intermediates do not have any marking at all (although the center of the intermediates tend to shine when they’re wet). The only way to tell them apart is the the fact that the wets have more tread. the only tire with any markings at all is the softer of the 2 slicks.

            http://www.bridgestonemotorsport.com/Bridgestone/tyre-technology/formula1.html

            Maybe those shots of the Brawn and the striped wet tire are from the 2009 demo.

        3. it was a wet race. wet tyres have loads of grooves. but yeah it should have been green, not white.

          1. I’d say that’s more due to the video and the surrounding lights though.

          2. It’s not the wets, its intermediates that have the stripe in the middle between the profile.

        4. Surely, one tyre has a marking and the other doesn’t (full wet – intermediate)

          https://www.racefans.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/algu_toro_spaf_2010-1.jpg

        5. http://photos.gpupdate.net/newsnew/160979.jpg

          Green stripes on Vettel’s wet tyres. Spa 2010

      3. Cool! I can handle that.
        More than I expected to see.

        Thanks for the video. :)

      4. Awesome graphics, can’t wait for the game. Thanks for the link, but I’m worried that Hamilton running into the back of a Ferrari is getting to be commonplace! Hahahah!

    2. If u want to feel how awesome the game might be, Get a copy of GRID, and try out their Formula3!

  3. One of the things I like about your website in particular is you do lap time comparisons. That helped us with the artificial intelligence.

    There you go, Keith. You can say you helped develped F1 2010. Very awesome.

    1. Paul said before the interview he reads the site – I said he was just trying to get an extra point on the game score!

      1. I actually think it’s an incredible achievement on your part, Keith. I don’t know that much about programming software, but I do know that when it comes to games, artifical intelligence is one of the most difficult things to program. As an example, Grand Turismo 4 is one of the most in-depth racing simulators around, yet its artificial intelligence is of pretty low quality. Not because Polyphony Digital skimped on the build, but because it’s such a difficult thing to program. That the blog has provided all of the lap times for every race this year is no doubt an excellent starting point for Codemasters.

        1. The AI on GT is shocking – in the last versions, anyway. Hopefully they’ve sorted it for version 5. But it is more of a driving than a racing game.

          1. Codemasters have always been really good with their racing game AI, right from the TOCA Touring Car games in the mid-’90s. The AI and damage modelling in Race Driver: GRiD was absolutely brilliant, even if the car handelling was dialled-down and arcadey.

            Really looking forward to this game.

          2. good AI is not new however. Look at TOCA 2: touring cars from 1998, on single player if you move out to overtake, the car in front will also move out to defend.

            and there were also mistakes from the AI out of your field of sight. and this was more than a decade ago!

          3. and there were also mistakes from the AI out of your field of sight

            This is definitely in “F1 2010”.

        2. Yea, I agree. Props to Keith on the awesome site….and on getting us involved with the comments on the game!!

    2. Now demand your reward, Keith. You helped them, after all.

      1. Yeah Keith, even I think you shld demand your reward! :-D

  4. Have to sort something out between us and maybe have a series coinciding with next years season (bar India).

    Good rundown Keith

  5. Fantastic set of interviews Keith. Made me want the game even more! Even taken the day off on Friday next week to collect my pre-order from Asda!

  6. I’ve been to Singapore GP last year & compared to their computer renderings is almost exactly what I’ve seen from the real thing! (atmosphere, lighting, details…) Hope I can get a copy of this game – looks very promising to me. :)

  7. christopheraser
    17th September 2010, 9:46

    I doubt this game will get close to rfactor for realism. Codemasters do a good job of making arcade style racers like Grid and all the Racedriver games. I know rfactor is dated and lacks weather effects, but when your talking about the physics of how a race car works then rfactor has it in spades. For anyone thats seen Red Bull’s simulator, that is made using rfactor.

    I have pre ordered the game and hope that they get close to what rfactor offers from that perspective, but I am not holding my breath.

    1. For anyone thats seen Red Bull’s simulator, that is made using rfactor.

      I think you’ll find that’s just the ‘public’ simulator, which they show to the media and which appears in their race preview videos. They also have a ‘private’ simulator which they do their real development and testing work on, and I doubt that’s running rFactor!

      1. I know there’s a rFactor “pro” version (http://www.rfactor-pro.com/) which is supposedly more realistic.

        Surely teams aren’t using the “average joe” version, but I don’t exclude they’re using simulators customized upon rFactor Pro.

        Are you aware of any insider information about that, Keith?

      2. it might run fractor’s engine.

        1. I think it’s an evolution of the GRID engine. Certainly the flash back thing on the vid looks just the same. Hope so, as the racing on GRID was great.

      3. I think that I read that rFactor Pro is almost completely different from rFactor, but that they share a graphics engine, because graphics aren’t the important bit in that kind of high-end simulation and so they used it so they could save time and develop the underlying sim.
        Something like half of the F1 Grid use rFactor pro simulators now, so there’s obviously some serious power and customisability behind it.

      4. I should have siad rfactor pro. I am 90% sure that is what they are using.

    2. rFactor is a good engine for racing simulation. But it doesn’t mean that it’s a simulation close to reality as all F1 cars you drive are “mods” made by fans that have no F1 experience.

      The Red Bull simulator uses indeed Rfactor… but it’s made by an actual F1 team which works with real data collected on track, professionnal drivers.

      On the other hand, fans can make cars that “looks” like the real ones, but they cannot reproduce how the real cars react on the track.

      So yeah, I believe Steve Hood and Anthony Davidson when they say that rFactor F1 cars are not realistic

  8. Well I can’t wait to see your feeling on the game next week before I buy it. I wonder if they managed to solve the “first corner problem” realistically, it is always a bit of a difficulty for game developpers it seems (either a massive number of cars go out or they all stack up very nicely and slowly, and you can overtake 10 cars way too easily).

    Oh and a small question, sorry but i have to ask : are you paid for these reports etc… (apart from the free game version) ?

    1. are you paid for these reports etc… (apart from the free game version) ?

      Absolutely, totally, unequivocally not. I do not accept payment for any editorial content on F1 Fanatic.

      1. Sorry for the question, just had to ask really. (that’s me being all French for you). If ever you have an answer to the first part of my question, It’ll be great.

        1. If ever you have an answer to the first part of my question, It’ll be great.

          Keith hasn’t even reviewed the game yet, maybe that’ll be in his review.

          1. Well of course, the question is for the preview :)

      2. yeah what’s the first corner, first lap AI like?

    2. The only way Keith (or F1F) gets money from this is if you buy the game through the links on the website.
      That generates a percentage to support the editor!

      1. I tried that but it was only in the UK. Any USA links Keith? I am trying to get it through a like to help out, let me know.

        1. Not at the moment but I’ll look into it! Does it not work via this?:

          https://www.racefans.net/amazon

          1. Nope. Each country’s amazon site can ship to other countries for some items but your links don’t work for most stuff I need here. I could buy pressies for my UK relatives though…

            Mind you, I can’t find the PC version of F1 2010 on amazon.com anymore.

  9. Christian Biddon
    17th September 2010, 9:48

    I am thinking that we need to set up an F1 Fanatic championship. 1 for PC, Xbox and PS3. :-)

    Pre ordered this game 2 weeks ago on Steam and have now preloaded it. I can’t believe it is on my hard drive and I can’t play it for a week.

    1. There’s a thread for that here:

      F1F Users Gamertag Thread

  10. The only thing I wish you had talked about Kieth was hardware. A lot of us are planning to run this on our PC’s and you know those publicity shots are maxed out renders. I would honestly like to know what is a good median for running this before I buy it.

    1. I think you’re best off testing to find that sort of thing out rather than asking. I’m sure one of the PC websites does that. I will include details on the specification of the machine I test it on in the review.

      PS. ‘E’ before ‘I’ :-)

      1. Every time I spell your name I do that too…I catch it about 50% of the time….

    2. Visit http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/

      They already have test up for F1 2010. You can see if you meet the minimum specifications and the recommended requirements aswell. It’s obviously based on what they have from codemasters, and is likely not 100% accurate, but it’s a good way to get a general idea of how the game might run.

  11. can’t wait for it! already pre-loaded on steam, and i just got off my Playstation 1, i had Formula1 game on it. epic! :)
    Q: career mode, how does it work? we got to go through all practices? and qualifying: we qualify or its just automated/randomized?

    1. You can do full-on race weekends with all practice sessions and Q1/2/3. There’s also cut-down versions for the no-attention-span brigade.

  12. i dont think i’ve ever been more excited about a computer game before, i really like how they’ve made the cars handle and act differently.

  13. i wonder if for “f1 2011” they could have the 2010 season cars as well so u could do 2 seasons and in “f1 2012” have ’10 and ’11 cars etc?
    also, an F1Fanatic championship league would be awesome, maybe for the off-season?

    1. There’d probably be some licensing issues there but, in theory, I don’t see why they wouldn’t be able to do it. I mean, they’ve got the cars and drivers for this year, so surely they’re allowed to re use them in future games? A career mode with cars and teams that change would be awesome!

      1. That’s the great thing about graphics nowadays, apart from visual gimmicks like damage and weather I can’t see how else the graphics could be improved.

  14. I have to say that I pre ordered this game purely because it’s an F1 game – I expected to race a couple of seasons, tire of it and leave it sitting on my shelf until a few years later when I got the urge to recreate Alonso’s victorious 2010 campaign… ;)

    I have to say though that this sounds brilliant, they’ve put a lot of thought into everything rather than just making some cars faster than others and leaving it at that. That said I will miss the amusement of old F1 games though (Once while racing at Interlagos on F1 2002 Alex Yoong led Mark Webber home in a Minardi 1-2)

    Can’t wait for this to arrive!

  15. I WAS really excited about this game. Now not so much:

    “I don’t think we’ve quite pulled it off with the first one.”
    “We’ve got the scope for doing that in 2011.”
    “But we haven’t developed it as much in 2010 as much as we would have liked to.”
    “ certainly something we’re going to be building for 2011.”
    “we can tweak it further.”
    “We have to evolve everything forward for the next one”
    “I’m certainly not saying we’ve done that in out first iteration.”
    “We’re going to have to move our car handling forward”

    What is this, a BETA, or a fully developed game?
    Think I’ll just wait for next year when it’s done properly!.

    1. No, all they are saying is that they haven’t gotten it to the uber version that they want, considering that this is their first effort there are bound to be things that they need to change or improve.

      Remember that they had to build everything from scratch this time round, tracks, cars, etc… whereas next year, they will just be able to modify and so will have more time to develop better things

      1. Yeah, I’ll probably buy it anyway. Codemasters have always made the best racing games, TOCA, TOCA2, GRID etc. TOCA2 in the fog round Thruxton remains the most intense racing I’ve ever done on a console!

        1. toca2 around thruxton in the fog is intense, especially on expert mode.

          however thruxton in fog on split screen 2 player is rubbish. the visibility is like 10 meters. ha.

    2. You have to remember that they need to release one of these every year. Its not like other game developers who get between 3 and 10 years to develop a game.

      I play rFactor all the time and its interesting to hear from him that rfactor is harder to race than in real life. I just hope they have not dumbed down the game. I enjoy rfactor because I can change almost every single thing in the cars setup. There are around 30 different suspension settings you can play with for example. I hope this game dosnt just have “Soft, medium and hard”.

      The whole point of F1 is getting the setup right and we are never going to get it perfect if we only have a few settings to play with.

      I’m also sad to read that there is no mechanical failures.

      1. I’m gonna go on a limp here and say that this is due to the license. Presumably, teams and manifacturers don’t want their cars to break down in-game. Just like there are only 12 cars in MP (one of each team) so you can’t ram a teammate. Same with the pitstops that only require you to use the pitlimiter, brake and accelerate, so you can’t run over your pitcrew in GTA-style.

        1. From talking to them I got the impression that’s not the case and it’s something they want for future versions of the game.

          1. Regardless, this game is going to put my marriage seriously at risk ;-)

          2. All the better! Bernie-phobia got the better of me :D

          3. I hope they don’t put breakdowns in the game, or a future one. F1 2000 would sometimes just stop your race for no reason, telling you your engine broke down and it always felt like you’d been cheated. Games are supposed to be fun.

          4. @Chippie If implemented correctly breakdowns could be a good feature. For example:
            Say you sustain damage early in the race and without attention to the affected area (a pit stop), the damage could would propagate and potentially prove terminal ending your race.

            However, having a race result decided by…

            rand() % 24 + 1

            …is not my idea of fun. Although from the way the developers have accounted themselves in this interview, I think they will implement it correctly.

          5. Good point, and I could see how this could be applied to wings and tyres, even side-pod radiators (Thank you Vettel). However I’m thinking engine failure, like with Hamilton at Hungary, I’m sure a pit stop wouldn’t have fixed his problem. Perhaps a decent compromise would be where you suffer minor engine failure (Vettel-esque) which is difficult, but not race ending.

    3. What is this, a BETA, or a fully developed game?
      Think I’ll just wait for next year when it’s done properly!.

      It’s a fully-developed game and will doubtless be done to Codemasters’ usual exacting standards of quality. But they’ve clearly found that they could not include all of the features they had intended to add with the EGO Engine. There simply wasn’t enough space for it all. Codemasters are believed to have a new engine under development, one that F1 2011 will be able to use. Especially since most of the work in scripting AI and circuit data will already exist.

  16. Keith, Have you tried out the Ferrari Virtual Academy? How do the physics in F1 2010 compare?

  17. HOw advanced what the setup screen or options? What is just an option to say, “Give me more understeer” and hope the engineer gets it right? Or was it more advanced such as I can choose my own front or rear spring rates or fast and slow damper settings? Camber angles or toe? I’m talking really advanced stuff.

    I’m a hardcore sim racer and things of this nature really interest me. Thanks for the great interviews and I really can’t wait to see this visaully stunning game…or is it a sim? :P

    1. I believe I have seen screenshots of being able to select percentages on Camber angles and ride height etc… so it looks quite advanced in that respect rather than, as you say, the cave-man approach of “gimme some more”.

    2. If you, as a driver, can set all kinds of junk, it has nothing to to with a driving simulator.

      A driver does NOT play with camber percentages.

      I really hope that they’ve kept the setup to a minimum.

      Doing setup by giving feedback to the engineers would be super cool, though.

  18. I haven’t played racing games for a lot of years now… I’m way out of touch with the tech and hardware needed to play. Is this the one that I want to buy? What else do I need?

    Oh… I loved the question: “F1F: So there aren’t drivers doing race distances on soft tyres like Vettel did on Sunday?” Classic.

    Great interview and a lot of info offered by the games designers. I glad they actually follow F1.

  19. I would be interested to know some of the technology that has gone into the game. ie. which gaming engine is used, physics engine, sound etc. I can’t find any of that information online. The game looks and behaves great, so it would be interesting to find out if they developed their own gaming engine or any of the middleware. It is unique that such an ambitious game is released on so many different platforms at the same time.

    Otherwise a great interview.

    1. Nik, its called the EGO engine, it powers all Codemaster games.

      Physics will be Havok 2.5 or something like that, sound is done by the computer normally.

      1. ego 1.5 engine (updated from the last time it was used for DIRT2 – which in itself was an updated version to that used in DIRT and GRID) which is now fully directx 11 capable (unless you got a crappy console, in which case you’re limited to Directx9-standard graphics). Sound is not “done by the computer normally” it is using Ambisonics technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonics) and will be fully surround-sound capable and 3d-stereo surround capable (2 or more speakers or headphones etc).

        Havok has all but been wiped out after nvidia bought out Physx, but i believe physics will be limited to cpu-processed directx api’s only, maybe a physx profile, but only for nvidia card-owners.

        1. Cheers graigchq, I didn’t know about the sound thing, although I refute your claim of Havok being killed off.

          Its still very much alive and kicking and using spare cores when it can, and its much cheaper than Physx and more widely used because it can be implemented at a software scale.

          I think its because you have a high powered computer that you think its dead in the water.

          1. it’s not about what is dead or not, just about what is implemented by the developers. Most physics is either done by the CPU as part of the game physics or is now PhysX compatible, and can be done on a spare graphics card (officially Nvidia, but can be hacked to run on an ATI card if you try hard enough).

        2. Thanks for the answers! So EGO 1.5 is a mod of EGO 1 which was used in Dirt, but it is not DirectX 11 compatible? I think that means I will definitely be buying the PC version, and probably a new card to go with it as well.

          Any card recommendation from either of you? I will put a new post up in the forum advising others about this as well.

          Ambisonics is fantastic.

          Anyone have an idea of how big the dev team on F1’10 was?

          And will F1 go back to being an annual release? I noticed that EGO 2 is already under development for Dirt 3.

          1. graphics card?

            best bet is to read the “which card is best for the money” threads on TomsHardware. There they give you the “best buy” depending on how much money you have to throw at it.

            Personally, a G92-based caqrd would be fine, and you could pick up a 9800GT or similar on ebay for about £50-£60. Want to spend a bit more? brand new £130 gets you a 768MB GTX460, which is MORE than enough for any modern game and will do that speanky 1080P TV in the living room too without any fuss.

  20. Q:

    Will there be a mode akin to that of super Monaco gp on the sega megadrive where you can start in a lower team and work your way into a good one, in this incarnation or a future one?

    1. Yes, that’s basically the storyline of the career mode. I’m racing for Virgin at the moment.

  21. Been after this game ever since the first trailer was shown on the gaming websites and i really can’t wait to play this with my wheel, in a Ferrari, around spa-francorchamps and listening to “Nessun Dorma” :p

    Best price i’ve found so far is on Gameseek.co.uk at £29.85, would suggest getting it their quick before it sells out.

    1. gamertag:venso

      see you online.

  22. I am not sure of the scope of the online game.

    But if possible it might be fun to setup an f1fanatic race weekend. At Spa, of course! :)

    1. You can only have 12 players online but good idea with the race weekend.

      Maybe do a F1F season?

      1. Yeah. We could have a league. And take the podium winners through from each round to make up the next set of grids, culminating in a final at some point…

        Obviously it’s more work for Keith, and we’d have to coordinate races for people from different locations. And we’d all have to work together to make it work. But it would be rather awesome!

        Perhaps in the off season…

        1. And as for the prediction championship, I would lose badly…

        2. How would much lag do you think there will be between players in different countries and across oceans?

  23. Im massively excited as it looks superb from all the videos ive seen of it on youtube. If you dont allready know theres a couple of wicked vids on there of a wet race at Interlagos, a lap around Monaco and VVV gamers review of the game while driving Hockenheim in Merc. All look sensational.

    One thing though, possibly a slight critism.
    Keith – Anthony mentioned that he thought that in cockpit view things were aproaching a little too quickly at times. Ive watched a few vids and i can see what he means, only marginally though. It also looks as if you can carry a little bit to much speed through the corners giving the impression of mega traction. Do you find this an issue or is it just me being picky?

  24. Hope we can make our own Crash Helmet and use our own names when we create our own Profile/Driver. It will make us feel that were part of the game and more fun to play with. I dont want to play it as Hamilton, Button, Alonso, etc.

    1. You can create you’re own profile ie: Name, age, nationality etc, but I think I’m right in saying you can’t design a helmet, only choose from a range of pre-designed ones… I daresay there’ll be a wide selection though and you’ll find one or two you like ;)

      1. Yeh no helmet customisation… I think Ant Davidson’s is one of the options though

    2. If custom helmet designs are not in the game, it would be awesome to have helmet designs and styles from previous drivers (world champions especially) as unlockable items.

      1. Damon Hill’s!!! So awesome, so much history!!!

  25. Oh man! I can’t wait. Every time i read something about this game the anticipation gets stronger!

    Keith, do you know if ordering from Amazon guarantees delivery on day of release?

    1. I recommend Shopto they usually get it in a day early plus its £31 with free delivery

      Potential downside is they only post recorded so if you are out then you’ll have to pick it up

  26. Hehe, shouldnt yo be asking amazon that :)

  27. Do we know if all the cars will have equal performance in the multiplayer mode? We dont want it to be full of ferrari’s and mclarens, it would be nice if in online mode the lotus/virgin etc is the same speed?

  28. Is it possible to turn penalties off in career mode?

  29. i said i was going to wait, but i’ve caved in. looking forward to playing with my fellow fanatics. i’m on pc.

  30. Great interview. It is first one I heard developers mentioning rFactor – to this day I was sure they were afraid of this comparison.
    Now, all I need are recommended system reqs for PC (because minimum sys. reqs are telling me nothing, I need to know system requirements for highest settings so I will be able to judge if my PC can handle this game)

    1. Oh, stupid me, recommended system requirements are on Codemasters website.
      Now I know I will be buying this game :D

  31. Sounds amazing, can’t wait! Preordered from Adsa weeks and weeks ago because I know they always arrive on the day and in some cases they even arrive the day before! Here’s a few ideas for 2011 though while everyone else is at it.

    1 – Test tracks. As well as these time trial modes and quick races etc maybe it would be good to have an open practice session at tracks that aren’t on the calendar such as Portimao, Jerez etc. Not only would this give us free practice time and more tracks but the game license would include the test/reserve drivers and would make mid-season swaps possible like we have in HRT and Sauber this year.

    2 – Pedometer. This is an unusual one but a mate of mine plays a Pokemon game and it came with a pedometer. Whenever he goes for a walk or exercise, it registers his steps and then when he connects it back into the game, he gets XP for all the steps he’s taken. See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokéwalker#Pok.C3.A9walker
    This would work in F1 2011 as something like Driver Stamina points, whereas the more steps you take in real life the more stamina your driver will have in longer races and the less pace you will lose. Nice way of levelling up your driver and also getting some real life exercise on the go.

    Keith if you’ve still got the devs within listening distance would you fancy pitching these ideas for me? Haha! Excellent interview by the way, the questions you asked seemed to bypass the usual game review type material everyone else goes for and got to the heart of what all us F1 Fanatics on here really wanted to know about.

    1. As much as I encourage exercise, implementing it into a realistic racing game like that seems pretty silly. Driver endurance in a case like this is better earned through actually DOING it in the game. True you don’t exert as much energy as the real thing, but have you ever tried running a full length race?

  32. I think the thing about the game I am most looking forward to is the “Live the Life” section. Any information on that Keith?

  33. hi i want to know will codemasters the company that make the f1 game will they make a nintendo wii version in 2011 because f1 2009 on wii is absolutely no good its a really easy game.
    will wodemasters make a wii version if f1 2010/2011
    i hope codemasters make a wii version of the game in 2011
    will there be a safety car feature in the game.

    1. Got to agree, F1 2009 was one of the worst racing games I laid my hands on. I was really disappointed ! It can’t be all explained by the lack of calculus capacity from the wii : the game is also ugly and physics and difficulty are manageable on a small PC ! I really (really !) hope they do better with 2010 (it looks so anyway)

      1. tango codemasters are not going to make f1 2010 on wii
        it looks like f1 2009 is the onlygametheywil male for wii
        might need to get an xbox soon
        i agree with u bout the graphics and the physics
        i was able to use soft tire on silverstone when it was raining plus my laptimewasonly a second slower
        i cud go onfor hours on why f12009 isa rubbish game

  34. Will the audio be in different languages? Eg. in Italy, the engineer/commentator will speak in Italian?

  35. damn… I need to upgrade the processor only :D
    No problem on graphics card, RAM, sound and disk space

  36. Previous games like rFactor and F1 Challenge are very easy to be moded, so after some years we could enjoy playing every season since 74!
    Will this game be easy to mod or there will be a lot of technical things preventing that??

  37. Daykind im really looking forward to that aswell but im also looking forward to the press confrence bits and stuff like that

    1. I believe that the press conferences are in the Live the Life section.

  38. Ill obviously play as Sutil

    1. I bet you like the picture in the wet next to Schumacher then!

  39. Red Bull has a viral on their website about how Newey designed his dream F1 car for GT 5.

    Apparently Vettel took it around Suzuka and smashed the lap record by 20 seconds. Simulated of course :)

    http://www.redbullracing.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Article/GT5-to-star-Newey%E2%80%99s-dream-machine-021242903258723

    They are hiding the actual looks, but from the shadowy glimpse it looks more like a le Mans racer than an F1 car.

  40. Hi fellow fanatics.
    Anyone know what the best wheel and pedals to get for the ps3 version. I’ve had a look on eBay but I wanna know what you guys think before I buy.

    Please keep in mind I’m no millionaire. Lol

    1. Anything from Logitech should be enough. G25/G27 are the best from them, but if youre not a millionaire (like me:D) go for Driving Force GT – It was designed for PS3 and GT5 in mind (I am suing it on my PC and its great for rFactor and GTR2).

  41. Seems like they waited until Schumacher returns, the last edition was 2006. I sure hope the multiplayer is better than before!

  42. One thing I would say from watching gameplay videos on youtube, I really dislike the engineer voice. I would prefer something more authentic, like if you are driving for Ferrari your race engineer speaks to you with an Italian accent, or deep Yorkshire if you’re driving as Felipe “baby”..

    The Geordie “bezzy mate” voice is just cheesy imho. It makes me think of Big Brother. “Oh aye, and Alonso has been speeding in the Kitchen, big brother has called him to the diary room.”

    1. A bit strange when you think that the race engineer, while not the real Rob Smedley, was supposed to be inspired by him…

      Good point though, for the option to choose our race engineer’s voice, like what they had in DiRT2 for the navigator. I’d like to have a Phil Prue or Steve Hallam soundalike to tell me when to turn down my revs.

  43. what’s the size of the game ?

  44. Absolutely Fantastic Article, Keith!

    nothing better than seeing a Formula 1 game developed by true F1 Fanatics!

  45. WHAT?! No “baby”?!? I’m not buying a f1 game unless they call me baby at some point.

  46. I love the picture of him next to Schumacher

  47. Im counting down the days untill i get this game. I CANT WAIT

  48. What steering wheel would suggest, with paddles.??

    1. Depends on what platform you are on, but the best i have heard of is the Fanatec 911 wheel very expensive but should be very smooth. That is only for PC i think. For XBOX, its obviously the only one available the xbox 360 wheel. But both for PC and PS3 i will suggest a loghitec G27. It is very good. If you can live with a bit noisier wheel you could buy the G25, it is cheaper and you can get them used for nearly nothing, but a G27 is both smoother, has gear change light on the wheel it self, which is cool but not very useful but it also has an improved 6 speed manual gearbox if you don’t want to use the paddle shifters for stock car racing games. On the G25 the gear shifter could either be a manual sequential where you push the gearlever forward and it changes down and backwards to change up or a normal 6 speed manual. That function is not on the G27, but the 6 speed manual should be a lot better then the one on the G25. The break, gas and clutch pedal on the G27 is also improved so they are nicer to use and is better for heel and toe.
      Oh and the G27 also has 6 buttons on the wheel it self instead of 2 like on the G25.

      1. The Fanatec wheels work with the 360 and PS3 as well. They are very well regarded in the gaming industry, and if you look at any of VVVGamer’s videos on youtube or facebook you will see that he is using the Fanatec 911 set too.

        I’ve got the 360 wheel, and think a wheel will be an essential purchase for anyone wanting to take their F1 2010 experience to the next level.

        1. So it does work with the consoles as well? Well then that is the one to buy if you want to spend that on a wheel of cause. I just don’t like the xbox wheel because the pedals feels weird and there is no clutch pedal. Which of cause is useless if you play a F1 game, but i love to use the clutch and the 6 speed manual on my G25 when i play GT5P. But some people won’t use it anyway so then it wont matter really. But the wheel seize and shape is more F1’ish on the xbox wheel which is nice.

  49. are te tweaks to the Singapore Circuit there?

    1. Given they were announced after the game was finished, I doubt it! Will check later…

  50. Mr Keith.

    Quick one –

    You played with a controller.. ie not a steering wheel?

    If so how did you find it?

    Ta

  51. Just got my excited hand on a copy on PS3… cant wait to get playing!

    1. i meant “hands”… not that type of excitement

      1. first impressions.. awesome!

        its a lot ‘slower’ than i thought it would be.. as in the perception of speed.. most games are full on.. i like this..

        down point? takes about 10 minutes to actually start driving!

        but really loving it.. so far impressed with what codemasters have done..

        1. I like the sound of what you have just said. Slower is a plus point and 10 mins to start driving means there must be shed loads of stuff to do woohoo.

          Ive already turned down offers to go out Fri evening coz all i wanna do is buy this game and play it, how sad lol.

  52. The biggest question i have is…

    “Can u save during a race?”

    its really annoying if you want to go full race distance but cant due to time constraints. anyone know about this?

    1. Dont think you can save during a race.. but you can restart the race!

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