General Videogame Thread

[Mr Kobayashi]

Having devoted myself to iRacing for the last 10 months and spent far far more than I would like to admit on my sim rig, I’m a few days off finishing 4th in the world (around 25,000 took part) in the formula I mainly race in for this season.

It may only be a video game (racing sim) but I’ve never finished so high in anything, however niche. I’ve tried showing off to the wife about it but she really couldn’t give a fuck.

The cool thing is that I’ve raced against Norris, Verstappen and Alonso over the past few months and am now fairly good mates on Discord with several current F2 and F3 drivers as we’re in the same E Sports team.

It's good but...

 

[lee_wsm]

Having devoted myself to iRacing for the last 10 months and spent far far more than I would like to admit on my sim rig, I’m a few days off finishing 4th in the world (around 25,000 took part) in the formula I mainly race in for this season.

It may only be a video game (racing sim) but I’ve never finished so high in anything, however niche. I’ve tried showing off to the wife about it but she really couldn’t give a fuck.

The cool thing is that I’ve raced against Norris, Verstappen and Alonso over the past few months and am now fairly good mates on Discord with several current F2 and F3 drivers as we’re in the same E Sports team.

What’s Iracing like I may try it even though I’m crap at racing. Just upgraded my self with a Csl dd and the McLaren gt3 rim alongside Logitech pro pedals

 

[ultimateharold]

What’s Iracing like I may try it even though I’m crap at racing. Just upgraded my self with a Csl dd and the McLaren gt3 rim alongside Logitech pro pedals

I just got the same a few weeks back thankfully they dropped the price right on the payday I was going to buy it on anyway, so spent the extra on a couple of dashboards and mods. On Forza 3/4 I had a few top 100 or top 1% times but with a wheel it's a different beast. Loving it though, I'm playing ACC at the moment, still nowhere near online ready but it's a good workout.

Good work @SWP's back are there any videos?

 

[Blue Maverick]

A Modder has already done DLSS support.

I'm 5 hours of gameplay. In usual Bethesda style I've got as far as meeting Sarah and then buggered off to explore with her. We are in love and have eloped. In my head.

Cleared out "spoiler" on IO and then had a look at Earth. What a barren place. I also annoyed the pirate dude so he hates me. Probably.

Bit fiddly in places but there's a lot going on, guns, suits, helmets etc etc. Way to many cut scenes, I want to take off myself please.

Enjoying it so far. No bugs yet, loads fine, great fps indoors, drops under 100 outdoors which is still all good.

Seen a video of how to hijack ships but be careful if you kill the crew and they aren’t baddies your companions will fuck off!

 

[SWP's back]

What’s Iracing like I may try it even though I’m crap at racing. Just upgraded my self with a Csl dd and the McLaren gt3 rim alongside Logitech pro pedals

iRacing is the only place to be if you’re bored of AI and want to race against real people as it’s a 99% online game (one can run AI races but people only really do it to practice).

Unlike the F1 games, ACC or any of the GT games, iRacing have nailed the rating and license system and people that intentionally drive like dicks never progress and/or just get banned. So whilst there are always the odd hiccup along the way, the racing is a lot more clean and less toxic than any other racing game or driving sim. It’s the only one about that has so many real world drivers on it, including half of the current F1 grid.

It’s not cheap at £10 per month (when you also have to buy the odd car and track on top once you’re out of Rookies) but it’s a lot cheaper than following City or playing golf.

You’ve got a decent set up so give it a go. I started with an office chair and T-150 wheel and T3PA pedals and have upgraded twice, now I’ve got Simagic Alpha-U wheel base, FX-Pro wheel rim and P2000 load cells on my rig. I also race in VR as I find I’m quicker using that than monitors.

 

[SWP's back]

The people playing Starfield, did you preorder to be playing to already? Steam showing it being unlocked in two days.

 

[lee_wsm]

iRacing is the only place to be if you’re bored of AI and want to race against real people as it’s a 99% online game (one can run AI races but people only really do it to practice).

Unlike the F1 games, ACC or any of the GT games, iRacing have nailed the rating and license system and people that intentionally drive like dicks never progress and/or just get banned. So whilst there are always the odd hiccup along the way, the racing is a lot more clean and less toxic than any other racing game or driving sim. It’s the only one about that has so many real world drivers on it, including half of the current F1 grid.

It’s not cheap at £10 per month (when you also have to buy the odd car and track on top once you’re out of Rookies) but it’s a lot cheaper than following City or playing golf.

You’ve got a decent set up so give it a go. I started with an office chair and T-150 wheel and T3PA pedals and have upgraded twice, now I’ve got Simagic Alpha-U wheel base, FX-Pro wheel rim and P2000 load cells on my rig. I also race in VR as I find I’m quicker using that than monitors.

£10 a month is doable

I’m running

Fanatec Csl dd 5nm with Fanatec McLaren gt3 v2
Logitech gt pro pedals
32 inch 4k monitor
Gt omega rig

So not the most basic but also not anything too special

 

[BimboBob]

The people playing Starfield, did you preorder to be playing to already? Steam showing it being unlocked in two days.

Yes mate, the premium version.

 

[SebastianBlue]

A Modder has already done DLSS support.

I'm 5 hours of gameplay. In usual Bethesda style I've got as far as meeting Sarah and then buggered off to explore with her. We are in love and have eloped. In my head.

Cleared out "spoiler" on IO and then had a look at Earth. What a barren place. I also annoyed the pirate dude so he hates me. Probably.

Bit fiddly in places but there's a lot going on, guns, suits, helmets etc etc. Way to many cut scenes, I want to take off myself please.

Enjoying it so far. No bugs yet, loads fine, great fps indoors, drops under 100 outdoors which is still all good.

The modder released it (Starfield UpScaler for those that want to use it) after I posted.

Alas, it is more half DLSS, as although the graphics look slightly better, no one has found any performance boosts from it compared to normal native DLSS.

I installed it yesterday and played a bit and the biggest improvements seem to be occlusion rendering and the included ReShader helping with textures and pop-in. I am running on Ultra on a 3050ti (8 GB), performance overclock, high TP SSD, with Starfield realtime thread priority on my i5-12500H (16 GB DDR5), and am seeing solid 45 FPS, with drop down to 30 FPS in places, and 60 FPS when in non-taxing interiors. I may drop it to High and 67% Resolution Render (which becomes 50% Performance Balance when using the DLSS mod) to see if I can get a consistent 60 FPS.

It is definitely a Bethesda game in that it isn’t optimised well (Creation engine makes that very difficult), made worse by their exclusive deal with AMD, which doesn’t make much sense for their market, given ~75% of those playing Starfield will be on Nvidia GPUs and native DLSS3.5 would work wonders for game performance.

Still, better than nothing, I suppose.

 

[SebastianBlue]

Took a random jaunt to an orbiting space station somewhere that had been completely decimated by aliens….they’d killed every fucker and left some of the bits strewn around in bloody piles…….nearly shit my pants when I opened one of the doors deep inside the facility and an alien horde charged me and my companion…..massive alien style shootout ensued…

some great and funny moments so far….enjoying much more now than the first few hours game play…

edit: I would add that the jet pack is getting much better at upgrade level 3 and you can also gets mods that help immensely too…

It definitely gets much better once you upgrade booster, unlock a few other quality of life improvements, and progress in the main quest a bit.

I actually think they made a mistake by not making the boosters available to every player from the off, and just making them upgradable via levelling. One of the top “things you should know” for the game across reviewers is to invest your first leveled skill point in to boosters (with many reviewers saying they realised half way through their first player through they are essential to get the most out of the game), which tells you it probably shouldn’t require that, as skill points should only be required of abilities based on player build strategy/preference, not essential abilities to make the game fun (or playable in some cases).

But, apart from that main criticism, I am definitely liking it the more I play. I do still wish they had made space exploration more engaging and less like navigating Excel worksheets, but I suppose getting it to work in the Creation engine at all is a minor miracle.

Similar to your experience, I just completed the first mission to join the UC Vanguard and I won’t describe it so as to avoid spoiling for others, but if you do it at night it will definitely get the adrenaline going (especially, I imagine, if you don’t have an assassin build like mine).

Looking forward to progressing more in that main story, as I have been mostly running side quests exploring New Atlantis, which are generally very good, which is a Bethesda trademark.