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EA Sports WRC - Official Launch Trailer - Out Oct. 31st for XB/PS5/PC for preorders

Buggy Loop

Member

Key Fixes​



  • Added support for Unreal PSO Caching (shader pre-compiling) to address and reduce the amount of shader stuttering experienced on PC.
  • Made several improvements to framerate in key areas of gameplay on all platforms.
  • Made a number of graphical fixes and improvements across the game on all platforms.
  • Resolved multiple issues that would cause the game to crash or soft lock during gameplay on all platforms.
  • EA SPORTS™ WRC can now be launched on Steam Deck.

Hopefully a huge improvement
 

Buggy Loop

Member
There’s no shader comp so not sure what that’s all about

Do you see 1.2 or 1.3 version? Some peoples are reporting the patch bugged out. Might want to verify integrity of files if on PC.

There's supposed to be a pre-shader comp at the start.

Installing the patch right now so I might report in a few minutes on it.
 
Do you see 1.2 or 1.3 version? Some peoples are reporting the patch bugged out. Might want to verify integrity of files if on PC.

There's supposed to be a pre-shader comp at the start.

Installing the patch right now so I might report in a few minutes on it.

Installed the patch earlier, took almost half an hour, and shows v1.2 on the menu. If I repair/verify the files it does nothing. There's no shader compilation so I guess the patch has bugged out for me. Worst part about it is I now have stutter that I didn't really have before :messenger_expressionless:
 

M.W.

Member
There is no shader comp.

There are still stutters though, not sure those will ever go away.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
Apparently they picked dynamic shader compile rather than the pre-compile at start. Loading times to stage seem to be longer so that might be the extra work for shader comp.

I notice less stutters. Not gone, but less.
 

TrebleShot

Member
Not really a brilliant patch, to be honest, perf still seems quite crap, 4090 still only hits 60 at 4k was expecting 120 based on the visuals etc.
 

sinnergy

Member
Apparently they picked dynamic shader compile rather than the pre-compile at start. Loading times to stage seem to be longer so that might be the extra work for shader comp.

I notice less stutters. Not gone, but less.
If they like , the can implement both .
 

hollams

Gold Member
I raced a couple of stages that I hadn't before the patch and I didn't notice any stuttering. I did have quite a bit of pop-in though on rocks and foliage that made it seem like it was hitching.
 

xrnzaaas

Member
So how's the current performance on the PS5? Some comments say it's improved, other that it's worse on the consoles especially on Mexico stages. I'm thinking about waiting with the patch install until a better one has been released.
 
Just picked up WRC generations for cheap instead. Lets see how this goes.

Its good for the price these days, plenty to do with the retro rally stuff & online events. I ended up back on WRC10 before this tho as Generations had some weird frame pacing issue for me. I could mitigate it by playing at 120fps, but then that meant DLSS performance which looks a bit naff on a 48" screen :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 

GHG

Member
Its good for the price these days, plenty to do with the retro rally stuff & online events. I ended up back on WRC10 before this tho as Generations had some weird frame pacing issue for me. I could mitigate it by playing at 120fps, but then that meant DLSS performance which looks a bit naff on a 48" screen :messenger_grinning_sweat:

Yeh, heard mixed things but I managed to find a deal on it from a keysite for $10 so worth a shot at that price. I really enjoyed WRC 9 and this is supposed to be an improvement on that, so provided I can get my wheel working well I should have a good enough time with it while codemasters fix this latest one up.

Also got F1 23 on sale on steam so I'm set for a while in terms of singleplayer focused racing.
 
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Buggy Loop

Member
Ok

Guys

Best mode was hidden or not obvious in this game. It's quick play.

This is the review, the only one that I'm aware of that mentionned the drastic difference :



Go and put track degradation to max, NOW. The track degradation is basically the system they made where if you're in the last drivers to drive the stage, the AI before you basically scrapped / deformed it. The shape changes. The geometry changes. It's a LOT more difficult and the feedback even with a controller is good.

The problem that most reviewers clearly showcased is that they probably made the game too easy and likely finished in the top 3 or 5 most of the time right? If not plain #1 100% of the time with low AI difficulty. So when you're first to run, basically you have pristine track.

Its a game changer in quick play to always have it at its worst.

I did a few runs to see for myself.

See how deformed everything is? Even hairpins can be massively grooved down at the corner, the back of my car is basically hitting it and you see the groove of the drivers digging in at the exit.

hggcsAY.jpg
CN23T9L.jpg
ptqsZIX.jpg
LAtQTqA.jpg
Eq2LmK4.jpg
 

Buggy Loop

Member
Make a quick play → Create Rally

Make this stage :

Portugal
Baiao - Route #01 - 30.3 km
Weather Cloudy (Snow)
Time of Day - Dusk

In the championship setting, put track degradation to maximum

Pick the racing class you want

Is it not amazing? I had a blast tonight trying to improve my time on that stage. Freaking incredible feeling too with the dusk and snow around the track. From the 30.3 km, you start with dusk and almost finish at night.

Gladiator GIF


I think you can populate a quick play multiplayer and share with everyone (?). I'll look into this during the weekend.

I feel you can basically make a template to your own liking and it can quickly become GOAT rally.
 

ahtlas7

Member
I’m enjoying the game. Guess I got lucky because my 3080 runs smoothly 4k60, 90% of the time at max setting. I do have long loading screens especially for using Samsung SSD’s. pre compilation?
It’s not outstanding graphically but is sufficient for conveying speed.
My ancient logitech wheel isn’t supported native but still works great. It does a great job feeding back the road to my hand.
For the price it scratches that rally itch.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
Looks close enough i have to say


Wow yea.

The stages are the star of the show and to me, makes this close to GOAT rally. There's a few tweaks remaining like stutters, pop-ins and some effects such as rain, etc, but the foundation is stellar. Physics & stages, that's mainly what I need to have fun in a rally game. When peoples are still playing Richard Burn Rally after over 15 years, it's not for the graphics clearly.

I just hope they support the game massively. But out of the gate, it's very fun, WAY better than Dirt Rally 2 vanilla, which was dry bone because they sold a bazillion DLCs.

Checked his channel and there's more



 

Buggy Loop

Member
I feel like something is bugged since the patch for controllers and tarmac. Either my controller is crapping out of its become uncontrollable. I did mediterranea races a lot in the past week, even with freaking RWD cars! Plenty of WRC junior and Rally 2 & 4 cars in those tarmac races. I actually for once found tarmac stages fun!

But it's all fucked now. It seems to control as I expect a few times and then SUPER oversteer, the kind almost to make an hairpin turn and i smash in the wall or off the fucking cliff.

Anyone else?
 

amigastar

Member
I feel like something is bugged since the patch for controllers and tarmac. Either my controller is crapping out of its become uncontrollable. I did mediterranea races a lot in the past week, even with freaking RWD cars! Plenty of WRC junior and Rally 2 & 4 cars in those tarmac races. I actually for once found tarmac stages fun!

But it's all fucked now. It seems to control as I expect a few times and then SUPER oversteer, the kind almost to make an hairpin turn and i smash in the wall or off the fucking cliff.

Anyone else?
Are you playing with a controller or wheel? If controller i really recommend a cheap wheel.
 

Kruza

Member
As a user of a controller (Xbox Elite Series version 2), I found it critical to desensitize steering input by lowering Steering Sensitivity setting to 40 and raising Steering Linearity setting to 8. Then I slightly increased Deadzone of steering stick to 24. Doing these things have helped reduce the sudden twitch inputs I had seen whenever I slightly move left stick left or right while playing under default controller settings. The values of my current Steering Sensitivity, Steering Linearity and Deadzone setting can differ for you depending on your driving style.

WRC's Moments mode keeps delivering the goods! I continue to see one new Moment added to this hub each day. And these Moment events have been varied, and are actually better overall than DiRT Rally 2.0 daily challenge events for me! I do, however, still miss the charm and urgency of the "one shot only" nature that's most associated with the uniqueness of Rally racing though.
 
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After my trial ended on series X I installed dirt rally 2 and I'm amazed how much better it looks.
I know graphics aren't everything but If u would've told me this was,an Xbox 360 game I wouldve believed u
 

Buggy Loop

Member
After my trial ended on series X I installed dirt rally 2 and I'm amazed how much better it looks.
I know graphics aren't everything but If u would've told me this was,an Xbox 360 game I wouldve believed u

I don't know how it looks on consoles, since FSR is making a pixel soup out of everything and there's missing effects such as mud and dirt on cars, but I don't agree on that for PC. As an overall package I think it's better.

Sure, some on-going issues with
  • pop-ins
  • mirrors look like crap (but I don't use them)
  • Stop signs made of freaking titanium
  • Physics for barriers being non existent
  • Foliage clipping or no interaction
  • Time trials are generally ugly, it's noon sun or midnight and they have pristine tracks
  • Playing with the quick play or just playing extensively the career will sometimes make stages look ahead of DR2, imo.
  • Rain effects

But there's something in WRC about the sense of scale that they nailed better than DR2. DR2 feels like the stage is arcadey by comparison even if the cars themselves had good physics. Even the background in DR2 is comical sometimes, such as Monte Carlo. The mountains with copy pasted pine trees and the heavy fog is jarring. They're hiding the fact that their engine couldn't allow massive maps.



Such as :

RPdNul3.jpg


Hard to explain... the stages feel more grounded to reality, in almost every sense, wether it's the design of it or even how the houses are placed or the effects of distance far away, on top of the fact that ~35km stages trounces anything length wise that was in DR2.

Or maybe I put too many hours in DR2 and I'm just fed up with the way it looked haha.



See that mountain at the beginning of the stage? We're going to DRIVE there! And that's a small stage. When you go in ~30ish km stages, you sometimes do multiples of them.

To me this is more impressive than a few shader effects that, while i wouldn't spit on improvements, they don't really matter for the driving experience.
 
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Hard to explain... the stages feel more grounded to reality, in almost every sense, wether it's the design of it or even how the houses are placed or the effects of distance far away, on top of the fact that ~35km stages trounces anything length wise that was in DR2.

Or maybe I put too many hours in DR2 and I'm just fed up with the way it looked haha.



See that mountain at the beginning of the stage? We're going to DRIVE there! And that's a small stage. When you go in ~30ish km stages, you sometimes do multiples of them.

To me this is more impressive than a few shader effects that, while i wouldn't spit on improvements, they don't really matter for the driving experience.


I get what you mean with that. Reminds me of Codemasters CMR vs Evolution Studios WRC games on PS2. Sure the CMR games had better trackside detail, but the WRC games had a sense of scale they couldn't match. No doubt helped by the crazy WRC draw distances back then (several kilometres), and satellite data used for environments, as you end up rallying along a mountain road you seen in the distance about 10 minutes before. WRC felt like you was rallying through an environment as opposed to on a track, which was a great trade-off to me for the better trackside detail in CMR.
 

ahtlas7

Member
Graphics are a draw back for sure but they’re still good enough to convince me of speed and create nail biting moments on those mountain side hair pin turns.
Speaking of hair pin, does anyone else feel the co-driver calls are a bit late sometimes? I have occasionally blasted through the turns simply because the call came after the turn.

Controller sadly. But the thing is that it was fine at version 1.2
it’s a different game with a wheel. I have the old Logitech Driving Force PS4/PC and while not natively supported it works great so maybe a used one can be found cheap.
 

amigastar

Member
Graphics are a draw back for sure but they’re still good enough to convince me of speed and create nail biting moments on those mountain side hair pin turns.
Speaking of hair pin, does anyone else feel the co-driver calls are a bit late sometimes? I have occasionally blasted through the turns simply because the call came after the turn.


it’s a different game with a wheel. I have the old Logitech Driving Force PS4/PC and while not natively supported it works great so maybe a used one can be found cheap.
Do you have the DF GT or Pro, because i have two and the GT is definitely the better one.
This one is better
logitech-driving-force-gt-pc-15957.jpg
 

amigastar

Member
That‘s the one I have. It’s seeming no longer supported by Logitech.
Congratulations, it's a good wheel (specially compared to the Pro) and indestructible. It still works with modern games also.
Of course there are better wheels but for it's price the GT is good.
 
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Enjoying WRC in short bursts on my PC, more so now they've fixed most (but unfortunately not all) of the shader compilation stutter but I'm still disappointed in the graphics overall, which still have ugly pop in of foliage and trees (despite using Engine INI tweaks to push out the draw distance and attempt to fix the LOD issues), some weird lighting at night on the road surfaces and a soft washed out look to the image despite using native DLAA at 1440p on higher than Ultra preset settings (Shadows set to Ultra rather than High). The game also has some weird bugs such as low-res shadows across the back of the cars in the external views and an amusing one where the car literally knocks down the Marshall at the end of the race then jerks back as the game realises that it has allowed me to drive too far forward!!!

It's fun to play for sure but I think I still prefer WRC Generations visually and DiRT 2.0 for the gameplay. I personally wish that the developers had stuck with the in-house Ego engine instead of Unreal Engine 4.
 
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Buggy Loop

Member
Managed to tweak my controller and settings to go back to where it was pre-patch. Apparently even with assists off in patch 1.2, they were on as a bug and since 1.3 patched I was so puzzled by the difference with controller it was fucking with my mind, not having changed the settings per say on my end.

Anyway, career is bugged, as you gain 100% benefactor rating, the end of races where you gain a rating will just crash to desktop :messenger_face_steam:
 
What timing, son is looking to invest in a driving peripheral setup, so far pointing him to a secondhand logitech rig. Would be solid with a Codemasters rally game...
 

Cattlyst

Member
Anyone noticed any improvements with screen tearing and stuttering on Series X since the latest updates? I really want to buy this but I’m holding off until it plays noticeably better than the trial version
 

Kruza

Member
A heads-up notice: A 2.85 GB file is being updated to WRC as I type this message. Possibly another patch here?

I'm still seeing new Moments added to the hub daily! 👍

I've seen fewer occurrences of stutter as of late. But... they're still present, if rare. Maybe this new file addresses this problem?

Anyway, I have to admit that the overall graphics of WRC are starting to impress me even more now that I've seen more variety of stages during various times of the day. Some stages are even looking flat out incredible at times!
 
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Buggy Loop

Member
Patch says it had a lot of performance target improvements such, again, shader compilation, but peoples on reddit are claiming they don't notice anything inherently different as of now.

I ain't too mad about the performance as of now honestly, I've seen game releases in much worse states on PC. Hopefully they don't drop the support.
 
EA app version is now 1.3 after a patch the other day, about time :messenger_grinning_sweat:

Patch says it had a lot of performance target improvements such, again, shader compilation, but peoples on reddit are claiming they don't notice anything inherently different as of now.

I ain't too mad about the performance as of now honestly, I've seen game releases in much worse states on PC. Hopefully they don't drop the support.

Only had a few big stutters before, now it's pretty much perfect. Happy enough with performance myself as it's usually running at like 80-100 fps, just a shame CPU & GPU utilisation never seems to top out to maybe get it to 120 with a little DLSS help
 
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Kruza

Member
Wow... the Career mode in WRC is exceptional! I finished my rookie season that had me competing in WRC2 division where I drove the Skoda Fabia RS. Plus I competed in the Historic RWD championship series where I drove the Renault 5 Turbo, along with a few FWD Extreme series events where I drove the Vauxhall Astra Rally car. I also participated in a few trial events that earned various parts upgrades. Over the year I had to finish several events without the assistance of my team's overworked engineers who I thought needed waaaay too much rest. At the end of Season 1 I was offered a choice of signing one of the two new contracts offered to me. It was a no-brainer decision for me to pick the contract that presented the chance to compete in the premier WRC division!

Now I am currently in the summer months of my second season of career, and my first season in premier WRC series. Things are going very well here as I drive the Hyundai i20 N hybrid rally car. However, I found out that I have to begin directing my attention to other aspects of my team that doesn't involve me driving a rally car. Why? Because the secondary objectives in my current contract requires me to win team championship events in WRC2 division. This means I have to set aside a week to add staff talent (teammates and/or engineers), reserve another week to expand team garage, then clear out yet another week to buy a second Skoda Fabia RS WRC2 car that's the same as mine! So I had to basically dedicate a whole month to get this mess in order! I eventually got myself and teammates ready to compete in WRC2 division with two Skoda Fabia RSs while still remaining within budget. But it was unfortunate for me that I recognized these contractual details too late -- remember that I'm now in the summer months of this season. So I unfortunately had to temporarily ditch my dreams of driving a Group B car in a championship series of events on hold and immediately sell off the Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 I had bought earlier this season. *sigh*
 
I've been to trying to love EA Sports WRC but I always come away with a sense of disappointment and an urge to play WRC Generations instead and having been replaying the older game have come to realise that, yes, it is a much better game with richer, more detailed graphics, far less pop in and visual bugs and a physics model that feels, to me anyway, more realistic with cars that are heavier but still control in a believable way. EA Sports WRC for me has a bizarre bug where I sometimes lose control of the car of a split second and either crash or almost crash. Not sure what is causing this but since the stutters in the PC version aren't 100% fixed then I suspect that it is due to that. Of course, WRC Generations has no stuttering at all; I played a 17 minute Portuguese stage last night and there wasn't one single framerate stutter. It was an absolute joy compared with EA Sports WRC.

EA Sports WRC will go down as Codemasters most disappointing racing game in years for me. I think the game needed another 6-12 months development and a switch to a better engine but not necessarily Unreal Engine 5. It's a shame that EA couldn't licence the engine used by WRC Generations because it is actually pretty good and on maxed out settings there was hardly any noticeable LOD issues or jarring pop in, unlike EA Sports WRC.
 

Kruza

Member
Heads-up notice:

Two status update messages appeared when I turned on WRC several hours ago. These messages both mention that the upcoming version 1.4.0 patch for WRC will release on December 14.

To summarize the posts... All custom vehicle setups will be wiped out, and all custom controller setups will be reset to default settings once this version 1.4.0 patch releases. So these update messages were sent now to give people enough time to record all of their custom values and settings in both areas.
 
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