Le Mans Ultimate

chipwich · February 20, 2024, 3:57am

It’s a damn good time to be a sim enthusiast. Phantoms, Porsches, Chinooks, and BMWs, oh my!

With less than 24 hrs before the early access release of LMU, I thought that it might be time to launch a dedicated topic for one of 2024’s most anticipated titles. I’m really looking forward to driving it side by side the AMS2 Endurance Pack for a comparison of their physics modeling, art, tracks, and features. With the 12 Hrs of Sebring less than a month away, the timing is perfect.

One caveat though. I’m afraid that the much beloved, and occasionally cursed, Assetto Corsa may not be long for my hard drive. As beautifully modeled as those Gigabytes of RSS payware add-ons are, it’s time to let the great grandfather of modern driving simulations out to pasture. Tough love. I haven’t booted it in about a half a year it seems. And when I do, I’m reminded that most of the VR budget went to Assetto Corsa Competizione.

Let the rolling reveal begin…

TeTeT · February 20, 2024, 5:30am

Being used to rFactor 2 I expect no surprises from LMU Or maybe I do? We’ll see in 7 hours !

Harry_Bumcrack · February 20, 2024, 7:28am

It is already the 20th for me… has been for 18.5 hours.

Damn International Date Line

However, extra chores done today (and I’m cooking dinner) so I get a ‘leave pass’ from OIC Home Command tomorrow

Magnum50 · February 20, 2024, 2:33pm

Gamepad Racing’s 1st look… just a 15 min quick show if interested, self-deletes in 7 days.

What’s in it and how it races.

chipwich · February 20, 2024, 3:39pm

I was prepared to write a quick take, but since it it’s not a VR title, never mind that RF2 is, it’s going back on the shelf, and probably the shop.

TeTeT · February 20, 2024, 6:27pm

Spend a few minutes in it. Friends warned me that the menu is extremely laggy and it seems to be a triple screen problem - you need to enable vsync or otherwise the menu will be extremly unresponsive.

After setting up controls I went to Le Mans for a Single Player test race, but I was alone on track. I looked around for the number of AI car setting, but I could not find anything. Somewhat unnerved I joined an online session. Or rather, I tried. With the standard servers, 5 or 6 practice sessions were available and all were full and I was bounced to the menu. Next I switched to Multiplayer Events and there is Le Mans with some sessions with space left. After a really long loading time I did a few laps at Le Mans, overtook an GTE with my LMP2 but ultimately threw the car away in the Porsche curves…

I re-visited Single Player mode again and picked Spa. Suddenly there were dozens of cars in the 3 classes competing, which was good fun.

With a somewhat older but still beefy system I got 100+ fps in multiplayer on Le Mans, which was nice. But in Single Player with the AI clogging my CPU I got only 50 - 150 fps in Spa and in Le Mans it went down to 35, which is a real slide show.

Graphics wise I went with ultra settings at 2560x1440 (RTX 3080ti), it looks pretty similar to rFactor 2, not nearly as pretty as AMS2. The i-9 9600 was only using a few cores, so there seems to be some potential for optimizations when it comes to racing the AI. Not sure how a start in Le Mans would look like right now…

The driving was nice, rFactor 2 style with good or better FF in the LMP2 I drove. I went with a 60% FF strength after I read some report on steam discussions that spikes can happen. It’s not a lot of fun when my DD2 goes full power

Cheers,
TeTeT

Harry_Bumcrack · February 20, 2024, 8:45pm

Downloading it now, once we have seen to the horses this morning I will have all day to form an opinion.

I’ll be sure to let y’all know.

Phantom88 · February 20, 2024, 9:19pm

Excellent….even though they’re not implementing VR in Early Release I’m still interested in immersion/playability?

weaponz248 · February 21, 2024, 1:49am

Well my first impression are I like it.

Load times are a bit long,

I had to change the steering rotation to match my wheels 900. If I left it on the by car setting it was way to twitchy.

Tyre warmth is huge.

First 2 laps at Spa were slow, but once the tyres warmed up i picked up 4 seconds. Factor in some seat time as well, but tyres played a roll.

Will be enjoy this going forward.

Also i cant find a replay mode…

I also found out I cant drive the Cadillac…

Harry_Bumcrack · February 21, 2024, 3:00am

It is early access, and IMHO that means I am paying to be a beta tester but I am really liking it and haven’t experienced any show stopping bugs or crashes - yet.

I also haven’t touched online play yet and probably never will, because ping… & so far, only in the Hypercars (Ferrari & Porsche) and GTE (Porsche), at Spa because:

a. I love that track
b. The only other track that I ‘know’ as well is Monza.
c. I didn’t want to get distracted having to learn a new track.
d. I really love that track

Like @TeTeT I had an empty track with the GT Porsche, but once I loaded up the LMDH it was a ‘full grid’, so yeah I have no idea what’s going on there?

However, with my Potato of a graphics card at 1080 and recommended settings, it looks heaps better than AMS2. I haven’t used a FPS counter yet, but framerate is nice and stable.

FF. Hard to tell with my ageing G27. There isn’t a huge amount of difference between this, AC and SnowRunner TBH. But LMU ‘feels’ better than AMS2?

And, @weaponz248 beat me to it… I was going to type almost exactly what he said about the wheel rotation and tyres.

I did a back-to-back test with the Porsche from the AMS2 Endurance Pack and even though I found the LMU car more of a ‘handful’ I was turning in remakably similar lap times and I’m now kinda regretting buying the endurance pack.

The only other thing I would add is the Sound. Nailed it.

Especially as the tyres shed all the gravel from the trap you just drove through and pulling out of the garage in the Porsche on the electric motor only and then the engine firing to life… OMG, let me say that the missus was lucky that she ‘wasn’t in the mood’.

Oh yeah, I can’t drive the Ferrari and that stupid bus stop chicane gets me every time… even more so than La Source!

Harry_Bumcrack · February 21, 2024, 5:15am

Capture

LOL, like that’s a surprise

weaponz248 · February 21, 2024, 9:57am

I think I may have figured that out, not sure…but under event setting the car classes are all off by default. It looks like you have to select them before going to the race.

It should look like this

You can click on each of the 3 classes to disable or enable them. The above picture has all three enabled

Harry_Bumcrack · February 21, 2024, 10:15am

Could be it. But too busy trying to improve my lap times

Phantom88 · February 21, 2024, 8:17pm

This popped up on my feed…not sure if it’s of any use since I don’t yet have the sim

Chaz · February 23, 2024, 1:04am

So far, so good. It definitely is Early Access (fancy marketing for BETA ). I enjoy how it drives. Clunky menu and interface. FFB is strong. Had to dial it down in-game. Sebring’s Moon-like crater surface just about broke my hands!

Thanks @Phantom88 for the video. Gave the replay and free cam features a go with a gamepad. But the implementation and execution definitely need some cleaning up.

Online race. Started 9th and finished P3! Cold tires hurt many folks early on. Held off a hard charging 4th. And the only Yankee in the race.

Chaz · February 23, 2024, 1:39pm

Something I learned is the WEC cars do not allow ABS per regulations. Just traction control. I was wondering why I could not adjust ABS. GT3 cars (ACC GT World Challenge, AMS2, iRacing etc)… have ABS per regulations.

However, you can adjust ABS to Low or High in the gameplay Assists menu. I’m somewhat of a heavy/late braker and found myself locking up in the early laps. Once I switched to low ABS, my lap times were more consistent and dramatically improved. I don’t know if the assists are allowed for online play as I discovered this after my online race.

chipwich · February 24, 2024, 11:09pm

If anyone feels brave, beta version of CrewChief that works with LMU.

Has anyone got TrackIR working?

Chaz · February 26, 2024, 2:41am

Downloaded the beta, but then rethought it and read the forums. Seems most folks were having issues. Some even reported getting corrupt LMU installs and not being to launch it without a complete reinstall. So I shelved it for now.

To follow up on my previous post regarding ABS- in the Assists menu, ABS can be set to low or high for online races. Not sure if that is intended or an oversight during Early Access as it defeats the realism of no ABS in WEC cars.

Post race report from Friday. It was a fixed setup race at Fuji. 16 minutes. Sat on pole and was stoked. Got off to a great start and was out ahead by 1.5 seconds for several laps. 2nd place slowly reeled me in, but could not get by me. The joys (and frustrations) of fixed setup. However, he (Jarno) raced me clean the entire race. With our soft tires fading, I couldn’t stick the very last turn on the last lap going into the long straight. Jarno stuck his nose inside and it was a drag race to the finish.

And he beat me by 0.03. I led all laps, but the most important one. I sat there in disbelief, grinning but shaking my head. Seriously?! But damn, was that a fun race.

chipwich · February 26, 2024, 3:10pm

Wow, what a race! I can imagine there was much celebration along pit wall by your opponent’s team and on their radio! Do you think that he got a little tow exiting the last turn? I’m not sure how you could have better defended it, given the same car and setup.

I bit the bullet and purchased a “small” 27" 1440 monitor for testing non VR sims. LMU seems to run pretty well on high settings, and other than some delays in the UI, not had many isues. In fact CrewChief beta was spot on. LMU isn’t supported by Fanalab yet, but the Fanatec forum’s recommended rF2 FFB settings felt pretty good IMHO. As most of the reviewers noted, the tires do take a long time to warm but have dramatically improved grip when up to temp. It could be two thumbs up with VR or head tracker support. Snap views are so November 2005.

At least AMS2 is knocking it out of the park recently with content and mods.

Chaz · February 26, 2024, 10:30pm

I was driving in my mirror the last lap doing everything to keep him behind me. As you are aware, Fuji’s last turn is a sharp climbing right hand turn to the long straight. I couldn’t make it stick with the worn tires and had to lift a bit. He made it stick and got alongside me. From there he just had the extra acceleration out of the corner.

I remember when 27" was huge… like 10-15 years ago. I haven’t really fiddled with my FFB in LMU. Mostly stock. Just dialed down the strength a bit. I use my MOZA profile from iRacing and I feel at home. Have you driven Sebring in LMU yet? That last turn is insane through the FFB. Nearly broke my hands. Other parts of the track are quite rough. I know Sebring is a rough track so it’s not a surprise. It’s just the amount of FFB is much higher than expected.

Yep. I’m glad I got their Paddock Membership. I think it’s been well worth it and Reiza doesn’t seem to be letting up on the content. They have always communicated very well with their audience and appear to have a very clear roadmap.