Test Drive Unlimited 3 is officially being made :)

Nope, need to get my wheel setup again :( and/or buy a new one maybe as my nephews had a good go at trashing it one time they were over (spirited racing rather than malicious/careless).
 
Managed an hour or two:

Presentation - The visuals are underwhelming, looks ok in certain lighting conditions but dated the rest of the time. It's the same cheese as TDU 1/2 with the characters/story, in fact it's a little jarring when you load into the showroom and it just looks like TDU 2 down to the same lifeless NPCs. Hard to judge the audio as the number of cars is limited, the ones we have access to sound alright I guess, nothing amazing though. The map is alright, the city areas are just copy/paste grid though so very uninteresting to drive through.

Performance - Optimisation is terrible, 1080P at max settings (2080ti & 7800X3D) I can barely hit 60, doing a race gives big drops down, it doesn't even feel smooth at 60 either. Medium settings bumped it up to 70-90 but still doesn't feel right, low settings get me 100+ and the right feel, but it's potato graphics :cry:. DLSS does very little, there is frame generation listed there so that I might have to try the mod method and see if it works.

Driving - It feels pretty bad to me on a controller, the same loose floaty arcade feel from the worst handling cars in the old games. Everything has felt the same so far, really twitchy sharp movements as you begin to steer, which can go into long turns that almost feel on rails followed by the snap of oversteer into a drift that is inconsistent to tame. Sometimes counter steering and feathering the throttle works, other times you're kinda locked into a trajectory unless you come completely off the throttle. It doesn't help that there's zero feedback in terms of trigger/controller vibration, just a little rumble when you crash or bump into things, it just adds to the disconnected feeling of it all, I always feel like I'm overcorrecting or locking up the brakes without realising. I'm not wasting time setting up my wheel because I can't imagine it will feel good at all.

I also haven't been able to get into a race with real people, nor have I come across anybody in the open world other than just parked up afk. The AI is rubbish as it just drives like you aren't there and they don't seem to drive in the open world either. There's some basic performance upgrades for cars, but no tuning menu to fine tweak settings. You also have to pause the game to change driving modes/assists (I'm sure you could do that on the fly in the old games?).

I had low expectations based on the limited footage we were getting so I'm not overly surprised, still disappointed though because TDU 1/2 were good memories even if they were a bit flawed in places.
 
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Not even going to waste my time with the demo and the game will no doubt be a graveyard within a month.?

there's no saving this
 
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I gave it a go in the end. After not being able to find a way to skip the sign in, I created an account only for it to fail to reach the servers and say I can play this one time without signing in lol.

The driving physics feel pretty good for an arcadey game, sliding and drifting is a bit odd - the car is eager to go literally sideways more than lose traction or something.

I'm getting 45 to 60fps on High settings with FSR2 Quality at 1440P, on a 6800XT. I get bigger dips without FSR but FSR isn't exactly transformational performance wise; it's an extra 5 to 10fps. My 5800X3D seems to be getting used quite heavily too.

Came across a few bugs with no invert camera option I can find (either in first person or driving the car), traffic is happy to collide with walls and drive off the road. Or just stop when driving along fine. Found an interest bug where launching the camera mode deletes other traffic (even with Other Traffic turned on in the camera mode), and it doesn't immediately reappear when you close the camera. Useful for the high speed camera challenges as the camera mode remembers how fast you are going i.e. you can use it to despawn traffic in front of you before you crash lol.
 
These companies only know how to release absolute cash grabs with minimal effort.
look at the above screenshot it's like playstation 2 graphics with higher res and some AA

look the textures on that tower block.... embarrassing and the other 2 buildings in the far background? they look like projections onto the sky....


gs8JBUu.png

the building on the left literally has like 60% transparency ? I can see the part of the cloud thats behind the building.

Is that how things "fade out" in the relatively close looking distance?


every texture seems to have the flat cardboard console look like it's gran turismo or something.

GTAv probably even has better looking graphics? an 11 year old open world game, I remember when racing games always had the best looking graphics, because there's not a whole lot going on in the them.
 
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I wonder with game quality like this, and other recent letdows, is down to the companies or the skill of the team, it must be a let down for the teams if it's not their fault
 
I'd lol if the demo is a rough as a badger alpha version and not a almost done game demo slice. God help em if it goes on consoles too.

Hmm, found this, i dunno if it has been posted yet but could explain why looks so meh.

store.steampowered.com

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown - Free Demo: All you need to know. - Steam News

Interested in participating the TDUSC free demo? Read all the details on this article.
store.steampowered.com store.steampowered.com
 
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