Review: Race Pro
My Impressions - "Chunx"

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Cars

Race Pro offers a nice variety of cars, and one thing that no other console racer has — a realistic looking cockpit view! Take a look at this screenshow (opens a new window) that presents the various cockpit views available in Race Pro. Lots of nice features windshield wipers and rain effects on the windshield. The cars look great inside and out, and a wide variety of racing car types are offered, from near-stock street cars to amateur racers, GT racers and open wheel cars. For those not familiar with the story, SimBin’s reasoning for offering locked content is to force newcomers to learn the physics engine on slower cars before gaining access to the faster (and potentially more frustrating) cars. That said, I don’t agree with the reasoning, because the locked content also restricts someone already comfortable with racing simulation physics (folks like us call that frustration a “challenge”). I personally found the damage model to be pretty good, although a bit forgiving. Minor damage that isn’t visible to the driver does have an effect on the aero package and slightly hurts lap times — enough to become uncompetitive in online races. More significant damage really can make the car impossible to drive anywhere but back to the pits. Overall Race Pro offers a nice array of cars, but one thing I miss already in this console simulation is the ability to apply mods and third party add-ons such as those available to rFactor and GTR2. The ability to apply the work of mod teams in the form of new car skins, new cars and add-on tracks will ultimately limit the replayability of any racing sim, no matter how much content is initially provided.

One thing we’ve all seen in recent times is just how darn good some console titles look on the big screen. Lack of anti-aliasing aside, the advent of large screen LCD TVs and High Def Xbox 360s have raised the quality and look of many console titles to on par with or better than gaming PCs.One look at Call of Duty 4 or Forza Motorsport 2 in high def will convince just about anyone that console games can look stunning. Race Pro fills a middle ground: It looks less pretty than the best console racing games, but better than your average PC racing sim — if only just barely.The graphics at times can look a little too vivid, or even a bit harsh. In 1080i, on-vehicle shadows look like a flickering mesh rather than a shadow and some on-track graphics also flicker at times. If this is a graphics compromise to divert more processor power to the physics engine, then I am all for that. But I suspect it’s more a case of SimBin’s first effort at a console title, and perhaps it can be rectified in a patch or taken as a lesson learned for improvement in their next racing title. Either way, while Race Pro won’t win any beauty contests, it doesn’t detract from gameplay.

It’s pretty common knowledge that the complex game code of hard core simulation titles can stress even the most capable CPUs. Race Pro keeps up with its PC counterparts in this department as well. The combination of physics and graphics load imposed by Race Pro certainly does put the Xbox 360 to task. I noticed a drop in frame rates during some races with a half dozen or so of AI out in front of me. Things got a tad choppy, possibly with frame rates in the low 30s or high 20s, but only on occasion and only at the start of a race. In a way, these frame rate dips made me feel like I was driving a CPU-hogging PC sim instead of a console title. Is that a good thing for SimBin? I think not, but with the Xbox 360’s fixed CPU, RAM and Video hardware, it is what it is and indicates either inefficient coding or the limits of console system performance, or both.

Typical of all SimBin products, the sounds are spot-on and really bring the game to life. I especially liked the tire noise audio, which really conveyed what was going on with the tires better than the MS Xbox 360 FFB wheel ever could — but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Force Feedback Controller

The wheel is by far the best way to control a racing sim, especially a realistic simulation. A steering wheel and pedals are how a real vehicle is controlled, and this method offers the most precise control of tire slip angles as well as engine and brake inputs. For that reason, Race Pro feels more intuitive and more precise with a racing wheel vice a game pad. You might get away with driving other console racing games with a game pad, but if you want to be competitive in Race Pro, a wheel is a must-have item for all but a few special people. I am not one of those special few, so for this review I purchased a wheel controller purpose-built for the Xbox 360 – the Microsoft Xbox 360 Force Feedback wheel. The choice seemed obvious, as modern PC racing sims make effective use of force feedback code to help convey the tires’ grip status, and Microsoft won’t allow any other vendors access to the Xbox 360’s force feedback code, which makes their wheel the "only show in town" when it comes to FFB (I hope no one was too surprised by the revelation that Microsoft withheld game code to make their product unique in the marketplace).

Unfortunately, I quickly learned that the Xbox 360 FFB wheel isn’t up to the task of controlling a racing simulation.

The MS wheel has a weak and inaccurate centering spring effect which is not adjustable to the user’s tastes. In addition, there’s little change in mechanical resistance to let you feel when the wheel is on-center. The overall effect feels a tad ‘off’, and when you deflect the wheel to the right and let go, the wheel re-centers to a position slightly left of center, and vice versa when deflected to the left. This contributes to a significant vagueness in a player’s ability to point the car where he wants it to go. For the most part, driving cars down the straightaway in Race Pro feels more like you’re piloting a yacht through choppy harbor waters than a race car with pin-accurate steering.

I’m not one for hyperbole, but to be honest the Xbox 360 FF wheel is a poor excuse for a sim racing wheel, and any comparison to a Logitech or Fanatec FFB wheels would only bring embarrassment to the MS product. With almost no on-center feel and weak, inconsistent self-centering, your Race Pro car will unexpectedly wander all over the track like you’ve had a few drinks too many. It’s truly sad for SimBin that the single biggest drawback to playing Race Pro is not only the critical interface between player and physics engine, but also something possibly outside of their control (with the exception of their detailed controller settings GUI). It quickly made me realize one more key reason that simulations (vice games) have not been done for the Xbox 360 before — lack of precise control. It may be the MS wheel, or simply the limitations of the console to transmit and receive control information at a high data rate. Whatever the reason, the MS wheel doesn’t allow for accurate car placement on the track. If you’ve spent years driving racing sims on a PC with controllers such as the Logitech Momo or G25, you’ll be shocked at how unwittingly spoiled you’ve become, taking controller response and precision for granted. I’ve never driven anything but PC racing sims, using Logitech products since 2002.  After awhile you start taking the precision and accuracy of that game control combination — game, DirectX, wheel — as a given. A few laps in Race Pro with the Xbox 360 Force Feedback wheel will give any race sim veteran a newfound appreciation for PC controllers and DirectX. I can’t help but wonder if SimBin was also taken off-guard by this substantial limitation to console racing wheel precision during Race Pro’s development?

No doubt in an effort to maximize controller performance and make the most of a bad product, SimBin gives the player an entire page of in-game options devoted to tweaking the wheel’s response curves, but alas not a single bit of explanation in the manual of how to set it up for optimal response. SimBin would have done well to have a MS Xbox 360-specific wheel profile (or two or three) to serve as a jumping-off point for players to find their own best setup, but that simply isn’t the case here. I spent several days just turning practice laps simply trying to find a good balance of controller precision versus responsiveness. I don’t think I ever found one, which makes me suspect that all the best intentions of bringing a racing sim to the console might be for naught if the controller code or available controller products are not up to the demands of a simulation.

One last tip: Don’t put the Xbox 360 Force Feedback wheel in your lap; rather clamp it to a table or desk as you’ll need all the stability and precision you can get. In the mean time, perhaps MS will someday relax their greedy grip on their console’s FFB code and let a more talented or motivated manufacturer make a better product for the Xbox 360. If Logitech can produce three high-quality FFB wheels for the Sony Playstation 2 and 3, then surely some manufacturer out there can accomplish the same for the Xbox 360 if given the chance.

Chunx’ Controller Settings for Race Pro

Go To Physics / Garage Setup >

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