Test Drive Unlimited 2

After 4 hours with the game my main issue with it is that the graphics are a huge disappointment. And also it's the only game i've found (apart from 2033 until it got patched) that crashes my GTX470 after a while :/ Annoying.
Apart from that, i love it. I played the first TDU also.
 
WabeWalker said:
Actually, even David Kaemmer would tell you that Grand Prix Legends was best driven using... are you ready for it... the keyboard. If you wanted to post fast times, and not fly off the track every ten seconds, your best bet really was the keyboard.
Click to expand...

Playing GPL on a keyboard makes about as much sense as playing Dead Space 2 with my steering wheel. I think I did try that once though, just to see if I could have some quick GPL action without having to drag out a wheel every time. Yup, made about as much sense as the thought of playing DS2 with the wheel...

WabeWalker said:
Also, no, I didn't use the Xbox controller with GPL since when GPL was released there was no such thing as an Xbox.
Click to expand...

What does release date have to do with when you played it? GPL is still relevant today, people are still playing it, new tracks are still coming out.

I can't believe GPL was brought up by someone who not only hasn't touched it in probably a half-decade at least, but sounds like they used the keyboard. The gods are crying, the heavens are indeed crumbling...

Should have waited another year to admit that, then at least you could have blamed the resulting Armageddon to come on 2012...
 
Rossi~ said:
After 4 hours with the game my main issue with it is that the graphics are a huge disappointment. And also it's the only game i've found (apart from 2033 until it got patched) that crashes my GTX470 after a while :/ Annoying.
Apart from that, i love it. I played the first TDU also.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I realized right away the graphics aren't anything to write home about when I put everything to max and @ 2560x1600, my framerates were buttersmooth above 60...

That said, I do believe they are improved over TDU1...
 
m3ta1head said:
Hey, how much do you want for it? I regret selling my G25. I want another one so I can go back to Live for Speed. Also with rfactor2 and the next GTR (as well as a few other titles) on the way this year, I need to be prepared :D
Click to expand...

I could be wrong, but I think I heard now they're hard to find?

Not sure why anyone wants one. They still feel like a toy. A $300 today, but a toy nonetheless.

I remember buying it and my first impression was to continue saving my money for a real ~$1K+ setup with an even better cockpit. But I was only going to do that if I showed myself I would get really into it with my G25 first so I knew I wasn't about to blow more money.

Eh, I probably should just get rid of it sometime. If I ever got serious about those sims, I'd replace it anyway. I'd only get rid of it locally though, since it also has a nice made-and-meant-for-G25 cockpit, too.

Can you imagine if FPSers required you to spend $1K-$2K to really buy the equipment to play them right? (then again, the 3D and/or Eyefinity/Surround crowd may be reading this...)
 
Tolyngee said:
Yeah, I realized right away the graphics aren't anything to write home about when I put everything to max and @ 2560x1600, my framerates were buttersmooth above 60...

That said, I do believe they are improved over TDU1...
Click to expand...

I'm not lucky enough to play at that res :mad: , i'm at 1920x1200 everything very high and 4xAA, nice and smooth though :cool:
Yeah totally they are an improvement but it's been quite some time since TDU and yet the graphics haven't improved as much as they should. Though being cross platform that usually happens.
 
Not as good as I had hoped. Visuals are quite poor considering TDU was out in 2007 and this is 2011.

Works well with softTH so I have it at 5760x1600 and I get 80+ fps with all settings (yeah all 5 of them) at max.

Also, head turning slightly each time you move steering wheel becomes a pain in the ass......quite quickly :(
 
Tolyngee said:
I could be wrong, but I think I heard now they're hard to find?

Not sure why anyone wants one. They still feel like a toy. A $300 today, but a toy nonetheless.

I remember buying it and my first impression was to continue saving my money for a real ~$1K+ setup with an even better cockpit. But I was only going to do that if I showed myself I would get really into it with my G25 first so I knew I wasn't about to blow more money.

Eh, I probably should just get rid of it sometime. If I ever got serious about those sims, I'd replace it anyway. I'd only get rid of it locally though, since it also has a nice made-and-meant-for-G25 cockpit, too.

Can you imagine if FPSers required you to spend $1K-$2K to really buy the equipment to play them right? (then again, the 3D and/or Eyefinity/Surround crowd may be reading this...)
Click to expand...

I liked the G25-I bought mine for $180 a couple of years ago and I thought the wheel was pretty nice-the h shifter wasn't (loud and clunky) but it got the job done. I have also thought about going balls out with a full cockpit and high end gear but I just have too many expenses and expensive hobbies to justify it. I'd rather drop that kind of coin on my cars, several of which need some TLC :(
 
played it for about 15 minutes and then alt+f4'd out. The sound was buggy, the graphics were bad, and really I don't know what else to say.
 
Yowsa!

I just competed in my first off road race! I thought it was going to suck, but it was frickin' amazing! That actually felt better than Dirt - again, because of the weight. I was driving the Hummer and it really felt like I was driving a heavy vehicle.

Jesus, now I'm worried about them patching this thing. If they patch this and end up ruining it I'm going to be seriously pissed off.
 
Tolyngee said:
Playing GPL on a keyboard makes about as much sense as playing Dead Space 2 with my steering wheel.
Click to expand...

And the developers themselves played that way, tested that way, and posted the fastest lap times in the history of GPL that way. You need to read up some, before you post like that.
 
Rossi~ said:
I'm not lucky enough to play at that res :mad: , i'm at 1920x1200 everything very high and 4xAA, nice and smooth though :cool:
Click to expand...

You know, I went from a 37" 1080p monitor to playing at 30" 1600p, and it's not worth being mad or jealous about. I'm actually just too lazy to put my 37" back center, otherwise I'd already be back to playing on it. Bigger screen, less pixels so better framerate.

TBH - I have three monitors on my desk and GTX480SLI. I could put the 1080p monitor center and use my 30"ers @ 1080p also for some supposed sweet Surround goodness, but I've never bothered to even try it.

Yes, I am aware that I believe I am the only person on [H] with three monitors on their desk and Surround capable, but am not interested in even trying it...

(I even just bought a 42" 1080p monitor tonight from Amazon... Not sure which monitor may have to go...)
 
WabeWalker said:
And the developers themselves played that way, tested that way, and posted the fastest lap times in the history of GPL that way. You need to read up some, before you post like that.
Click to expand...

I actually just spent some time Googling that to see if I could find some evidence of your claim, and I did not. the main reason was there's always been bewilderment over why the ride heights on the cars was so wrong. Since Jackie Stewart himself tried out GPL, I'm sure at least by that time they had it pointed it out to them, so I always figured it was so the user could learn about the car and fully set it up for themselves.

Either way, I can't see a single reason why the ride height being so off would help a keyboarder anyway, but at least I gave you some benefit of the doubt and actually Googled for what you said.

I bought GPL back when it was released over a dozen years ago. I also bought an Act-Labs Force RS for it. Real GPLers bought wheels/pedals, that's what it was created and meant for!

GPL was not meant for the keyboard, it was meant for a wheel and pedals. Just because devs perhaps tested the sim as such means they wanted to make sure they didn't just outright alienate every user not willing to go buy wheels/pedals.

But posted the fastest laps in history? Grabbing a game like GPL and having all of the drivers aids obviously on to make it even halfway drivable on a keyboard is comparable to saying you've got the fastest speedrun on Dead Space 2 when you had God mode turned on. If you can't die, you can now do whatever you want without consequence or needing strategy. Of course you'd have the fastest speedrun!
 
Tolyngee said:
I actually just spent some time Googling that to see if I could find some evidence of your claim, and I did not. the main reason was there's always been bewilderment over why the ride heights on the cars was so wrong. Since Jackie Stewart himself tried out GPL, I'm sure at least by that time they had it pointed it out to them, so I always figured it was so the user could learn about the car and fully set it up for themselves.

Either way, I can't see a single reason why the ride height being so off would help a keyboarder anyway, but at least I gave you some benefit of the doubt and actually Googled for what you said.

I bought GPL back when it was released over a dozen years ago. I also bought an Act-Labs Force RS for it. Real GPLers bought wheels/pedals, that's what it was created and meant for!

GPL was not meant for the keyboard, it was meant for a wheel and pedals. Just because devs perhaps tested the sim as such means they wanted to make sure they didn't just outright alienate every user not willing to go buy wheels/pedals.

But posted the fastest laps in history? Grabbing a game like GPL and having all of the drivers aids obviously on to make it even halfway drivable on a keyboard is comparable to saying you've got the fastest speedrun on Dead Space 2 when you had God mode turned on. If you can't die, you can now do whatever you want without consequence or needing strategy. Of course you'd have the fastest speedrun!
Click to expand...

Um, I read it in a print magazine.

The writer watched David Kaemmer playing GPL, and, yes, he was using the keyboard, and yes he said that he only ever used a keyboard, and yes he said that the game was designed primarily with the keyboard in mind (the vast majority of people buying GPL in stores would not have had wheels).

And yes his lap times were through the roof. And yes the keyboard did function better than a wheel. Granted, the best setup was with a keyboard and pedals... I would go so far as to say the pedals were mandatory... but the keyboard functioned much better than any wheel ever did.

And, by the way, not everything can be Googled. Just because something didn't show up via a Google search doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

I'm not even sure what the argument is about anymore?
 
WabeWalker said:
Um, I read it in a print magazine.

The writer watched David Kaemmer playing GPL, and, yes, he was using the keyboard, and yes he said that he only ever used a keyboard, and yes he said that the game was designed primarily with the keyboard in mind (the vast majority of people buying GPL in stores would not have had wheels).

And yes his lap times were through the roof. And yes the keyboard did function better than a wheel. Granted, the best setup was with a keyboard and pedals... I would go so far as to say the pedals were mandatory... but the keyboard functioned much better than any wheel ever did.

And, by the way, not everything can be Googled. Just because something didn't show up via a Google search doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

I'm not even sure what the argument is about anymore?
Click to expand...

Sorry dude, you are just completely fricking off the mark with this. Wish we had a :LOL: smiley here. Whatever you read, it was NOT that GPL was designed with a keyboard in mind and that GPL was best played with one. I know you're going to fire back that you KNOW you read what you read, but you have to be remembering it wrong or thinking of a similar but different game.

Kaemmer is the the leading hardcore racing sim developer in the world. He has won Skip Barber racing championships and races other series in real life. Look at his latest endeavor, iracing.com. It's still the same underlying physics engine from GPL actually, just obviously modified and updated. Yeah... no one's using keyboard there, in fact - it isn't even allowed.
 
Im thoroughly enjoying this title. I can also agree with most of the nitpicking too, but i guess i wasnt expecting this title to not be without flaws, it is what it is.
 
I love this game. Its just so much fun simply cruising around. My framerate aint the best (25 in towns and maybe 30fps elsewhere) with everything set to max at 1920x1080 but turning everything to low only gives me 35fps tops which seems a bit wrong for a 460 when Just Cause 2 runs at 50-60fps.

However. I LOVE this game in 3D. I stick on my red/green glasses and it looks incredibly convincing. The framerate drops to ~20fps but you dont really notice. Still looks smooth. Game looks a bit shit in 2D. Game looks awesome in 3D.
 
Skirrow said:
However. I LOVE this game in 3D. I stick on my red/green glasses and it looks incredibly convincing. The framerate drops to ~20fps but you dont really notice. Still looks smooth. Game looks a bit shit in 2D. Game looks awesome in 3D.
Click to expand...

I have an issue with this "3D" nonsense. I've been playing 3D games since I was a teenager (34 now). If what you mean is stereoscopic vision (what nvidia call stereo 3D) then that's fine and you should say that......but it's a bit silly to state you enjoy games in 3D like it's something new when most home users have had 3D graphics cards for the best part of 20yrs.
 
THOMO said:
I have an issue with this "3D" nonsense. I've been playing 3D games since I was a teenager (34 now). If what you mean is stereoscopic vision (what nvidia call stereo 3D) then that's fine and you should say that......but it's a bit silly to state you enjoy games in 3D like it's something new when most home users have had 3D graphics cards for the best part of 20yrs.
Click to expand...

I'm fully aware that 3D accelerator cards have been around for years kiddo (35 here). But i was simply stating in a simplified way that the game looks better with the added depth than without.
 
THOMO said:
I have an issue with this "3D" nonsense. I've been playing 3D games since I was a teenager (34 now). If what you mean is stereoscopic vision (what nvidia call stereo 3D) then that's fine and you should say that......but it's a bit silly to state you enjoy games in 3D like it's something new when most home users have had 3D graphics cards for the best part of 20yrs.
Click to expand...

Pretty much everyone refers to stereo 3D as just 3D nowadays, so no point getting yourself worked up about it. Blame the TV manufacturers.
 
Are any of you guys having problems right now? Everytime I fire up the game, it tells me that the servers are down, try again later. This game was a total POS and waste of money. It is also one giant unoptimized mess.
 
amdgamer said:
Are any of you guys having problems right now? Everytime I fire up the game, it tells me that the servers are down, try again later. This game was a total POS and waste of money. It is also one giant unoptimized mess.
Click to expand...

Yep i'm getting the same... :mad:
 
Rossi~ said:
Yep i'm getting the same... :mad:
Click to expand...

I am honestly so sick of that crap. Either they need to fix the damn servers or just give us our money back. I bought this game on Steam late last night just to make sure i'd have it in time for a weekend without much going on for me.

Oh well, I guess i'll stop trying and go fire up the X360 so that I can work on Forza3 and Halo Reach some more......
 
I dont understand you guys. The game is fucking awesome I haven't had this much fun with a game in about 10 years^^

Maybe there are serious problems with windows 7 setups or something like that? Things will get ironed out with patches eventually.. At least dont completely skip this game, wait for a patch or something.. it's a lot of fun.

WabeWalker how does your control settings look like? I set deadzone and steering damping sliders all the way to the left, and steering sensitivity all the way to the right, works well for me.
 
Colonel Sanders said:
Sorry dude, you are just completely fricking off the mark with this. Wish we had a :LOL: smiley here. Whatever you read, it was NOT that GPL was designed with a keyboard in mind and that GPL was best played with one. I know you're going to fire back that you KNOW you read what you read, but you have to be remembering it wrong or thinking of a similar but different game.

Kaemmer is the the leading hardcore racing sim developer in the world. He has won Skip Barber racing championships and races other series in real life. Look at his latest endeavor, iracing.com. It's still the same underlying physics engine from GPL actually, just obviously modified and updated. Yeah... no one's using keyboard there, in fact - it isn't even allowed.
Click to expand...

I'm not. Kaemmer's setup for GPL was with a keyboard and pedal setup. GPL was released in the late 90's but began its life earlier than that. At the time development began Microsoft's force feedback racing wheel hadn't even been released. Logitech had a wheel but it was junk. GPL was absolutely designed with the keyboard in mind. This notion that everyone had racing wheels in the 90's is plain nuts.
 
hfk said:
I dont understand you guys. The game is fucking awesome I haven't had this much fun with a game in about 10 years^^

Maybe there are serious problems with windows 7 setups or something like that? Things will get ironed out with patches eventually.. At least dont completely skip this game, wait for a patch or something.. it's a lot of fun.

WabeWalker how does your control settings look like? I set deadzone and steering damping sliders all the way to the left, and steering sensitivity all the way to the right, works well for me.
Click to expand...

I'll try that - but the default settings worked just fine for me.

About the graphics. At first I wasn't impressed. But now I love the look of this game. When cruising along the freeway at dusk everything looks realistic - it's smooth. Titles such as Burnout Paradise just don't look like this. When I'm playing Burnout Paradise, visually I feel like I'm playing an arcade game. In TDU 2 it looks like a driving simulation.

Also, just after a rain shower, when the sun comes out - then TDU is undeniably beautiful.
 
m3ta1head said:
I am not able to run at very high, or even high settings on my laptop (see sig)-seems very unoptimized to me. I currently have it set to 1280x720 medium settings no AA, and it runs smoothly (45-50fps), but I should be able to play this game at max settings with my hardware.
Click to expand...

Don't QQ because your garbage card can't run this game. Whiners like you who expect everything to be maxed by their subpar systems are why we get a gimped Crysis 2.

m3ta1head said:
If you're a Forza 3 nut, this game does not even come close to replicating that driving experience. Not even close.

I drive cars competitively and I'm a bit of a driving sim enthusiast, so my standards may be higher than yours. To me the driving model feels totally unrealistic, especially in low grip situations. Also the higher end cars can be ridiculously difficult to control, they are very tail happy.
Click to expand...

It's hilarious that you troll for how sophisticated a driver you are while at the same time praising Forza 3, which skewed highly towards arcade handling. Gran Turismo I could see, although even that isn't full sim, but Forza? LOL.
 
WabeWalker said:
About the graphics. At first I wasn't impressed. But now I love the look of this game.
Click to expand...

I too may have been a little quick to slate it on the visual front. I upped the resolution to 6600x2010, turned off AA and dropped all sliders to high from very high. I'm getting around 35-65fps and its looking quite fine. I've only had a couple of short trys but I'm off for an hours freeride with a couple of Miller and an autochanger full of tunes so we'll see how it goes :)
 
Last edited:
anonmoniker said:
Don't QQ because your garbage card can't run this game. Whiners like you who expect everything to be maxed by their subpar systems are why we get a gimped Crysis 2.



It's hilarious that you troll for how sophisticated a driver you are while at the same time praising Forza 3, which skewed highly towards arcade handling. Gran Turismo I could see, although even that isn't full sim, but Forza? LOL.
Click to expand...

It's hilarious that you're twisting my words, not once did I praise forza 3 for having extremely realistic physics. Not only that, but you think GT has better driving physics than Forza? Stop hitting the crackpipe bro. Neither game is even close to being a full blown sim, they are just good fun to play lounging on the couch with a controller.

And my "garbage card" is actually running this game just fine now, thank you very much. 1920x1080, high environment, everything else on very high, no AA. Just needed to update to the latest 11.1 mobile catalyst.

Back to TDU2, I feel like the off roading feels a lot better than driving on roads-anyone agree? 4x4ing is an absolute riot in this game, and some of the dirt trails are very rally stage esque. I like to take out the Delta Integrale and pretend I'm Juha Kankkunen :cool:
 
THOMO said:
I too may have been a little quick to slate it on the visual front. I upped the resolution to 6600x2010, turned off AA and dropped all sliders to high from very high. I'm getting around 35-65fps and its looking quite fine. I've only had a couple of short trys but I'm off for an hours freeride with a couple of Miller and an autochanger full of tunes so we'll see how it goes :)
Click to expand...

During my first half hour with this title I was just disappointed by what I was seeing. Now I can't even understand why, because when I'm driving along the highway I'm thrilled by how realistic it looks. I'm really looking forward to seeing Hawaii again, although I have to say that this Ibizia place is pretty neat looking too.

I'm still in awe over how weighty the cars feel though. They feel fantastic to me. In the first game I felt like the cars were hovercrafts and that they didn't have wheels. These cars definitely feel like they have wheels. I'm holding off on saying it, but give me another couple of months with this and I might have to declare it a masterpiece.
 
Yeah I have to admit, I got the wrong first impression about this game. I completed the first few races last night so I could get to freeride mode without the GPS telling me to turn around :) I took a drive upto the northern-most tip of the island and back and I gotta say this game is growing on me bigtime.

One thing though.....I fired up a playlist of funky driving tracks in wmp but when I launch TDU2 it cuts out wmp and I had to endure radio areeba or whatever the station is called. I remember in TDU you could copy your own music tracks into the game folder and listen to them via the radio in-car, does anyone know if this is possible with TDU2, or indeed how to stop it overriding wmp?.
 
Last edited:
THOMO said:
Yeah I have to admit, I got the wrong first impression about this game. I completed the first few races last night so I could get to freeride mode without the GPS telling me to turn around :) I took a drive upto the northern-most tip of the island and back and I gotta say this game is growing on me bigtime.

One thing though.....I fired up a playlist of funky driving tracks in wmp but when I launch TDU2 it cuts out wmp and I had to endure radio areeba or whatever the station is called. I remember in TDU you could copy your own music tracks into the game folder and listen to them via the radio in-car, does anyone know if this is possible with TDU2, or indeed how to stop it overriding wmp?.
Click to expand...

People are speculating more radio stations could be DLC....anyhow, music runs fine using foobar2000 in the background. I enjoyed TDU1 radio stations much more than the two they give us here. One problem is kind of annoys me are the steep slopes and how your car just scrapes against it and some random corner curbs you can't go over and end up being a wall or something that stops you completely, but I guess it's the nature of the gameplay.
 
THOMO said:
Yeah I have to admit, I got the wrong first impression about this game. I completed the first few races last night so I could get to freeride mode without the GPS telling me to turn around :) I took a drive upto the northern-most tip of the island and back and I gotta say this game is growing on me bigtime.

One thing though.....I fired up a playlist of funky driving tracks in wmp but when I launch TDU2 it cuts out wmp and I had to endure radio areeba or whatever the station is called. I remember in TDU you could copy your own music tracks into the game folder and listen to them via the radio in-car, does anyone know if this is possible with TDU2, or indeed how to stop it overriding wmp?.
Click to expand...

I found the same. TDU2 seems to lower the volume of itself and in my case foobar2000 in windows to a 10% volume. I simply alt-tabbed out of TDU2 and used volume mixer to raise foobar back to 100%. OR I start TDU2 first then alt-tab out and start Foobar. Has the same effect but without having to mess with volume levels.
 
Yeah weird sound issue, no biggie though.

I ended up having to drop res down again as fps wasn't as playable as I'd initially thought. At 4280x1060 everything set to very high I'm seeing anywhere between 60-100fps and the game seems considerably smoother.

I spent a couple of hours touring garages last night with my shopping list :)

- AUDI

- VEYRON

- BLOODY MONSANTO :p
 
I've found a critical flaw with the game-you can't get rid of cars you win in duels. I've been stuck with ryans touareg and miamis mustang since the beginning of the game and they take up garage space for no reason at all. There's no way to sell the or scrap them!
 
m3ta1head said:
I've found a critical flaw with the game-you can't get rid of cars you win in duels. I've been stuck with ryans touareg and miamis mustang since the beginning of the game and they take up garage space for no reason at all. There's no way to sell the or scrap them!
Click to expand...

Really? I don't have the mustang anymore. That pink one? If I don't have it, then I must've sold it at some point.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top