Awesome game but only if you do this

[nigelnire]

I bought Shift 2 Unleashed yesterday and my first thought was “Lovely Graphics shame about the driving” I was also disappointed with performance I’ve a good setup Asus 7770 over clocked, Quad core ,8 G ram. It was running ok with one car on track but in a race here was a serious drop in FPS my rating at this time for the game on steam 5/10 I wanted a refund lol
Ok heres what I did I searched online for the advanced set up for controllers “Dead zone” and the like and I applied it for my own controller. Next and heres the interesting bit ,I have EA “Origin “ its a Steam like appliance. I do have my EA profile for it but only have Fifa 13 and Battlefield 3 on it. When you install Shift 2 you get a code so I opened Origin went to “Redeem product code” and entered the code I could then install Shift2 on Origin with no charge so I did that and deleted the Steam version. I went into it and started racing ,Get this !! no drop in FPS when racing in fact it ran really smooth and the handing from the new controller setting was great, a totally different game, new rating 9/10 It looks really good way better than PS3 or Xbox 360.
Hope this helps someone I agree its crap until you sort it out but its worth doing research into controller settings. Every controller is different so search for yours and experiment.

[JimClarke]

I can confirm the above. by all means buy it on Steam, but the Origin VERSION is more stable then the Steam one . Maybe someone can give details as to why, but it deff works better for me.

I have also installed the UCP mod from NoGripracing, this is worth doing though it may take 45 mions to complete teh unpack etc. (make sure you read the readme!)

Worth it though, Ive been playing this since release and this mod has breathed new life into a great game that was criminally bereft of patches. (its basically the 1.3 patch that never was).

Gte it here http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/showthread.php?t=287425

[Raiden_chino]

@Erich, do you still play?
Me and another player are doing some races online using the UCP mod. It will be awesome if we get a couple more racers to play from time to time.

[JimClarke]

Hey Rogue, I am indeed still playing...but Im having some graphical issues I want to fix.

Its the old 'Aliasing' issue. I had this fixed on my last install on a differnt GPU, but Ive got it on my new machine...horrible white shimmering outline around cars and very bad jaggies in the distance...

Like I say I had this issue fixed before just from in game settings, but I have since tried forcing AA driver side and still no luck..

Getting superb FPS and the game is stable with the UCP....its just this shimmering and distant aliasing ruining the experience...thinking quite hard atm about getting on the Project CARS beta to be honest.....since its the true sequel to S2U.

Anyway, Im still working on the issue, hopefully something will click, going to roll back to an older driver this evening to see if I can get any joy.

Ill message you here or something if I can get a good result...I look at my old screenshots on steam (Im on Origin version now) and just thinking 'why doesnt it look that good on my much better PC now?' I know for sure I didnt even use max settings n my old PC, tried my old config .XML...still no good...aliasing simply not functioning on all surfaces and not properly working on shadows either, which have a nasty shimmering edge to them...

annoying!

If I get it fixed Im for sure up for some 'real' racing! (although i find the AI in this game great its always better to race humans)

[Raiden_chino]

Hi!
Project CARS is unfortunately not taking new bakers for now : c I wanted to buy it too to get access to the betas, but is not possible at the moment.

About Shift 2, yeah, AA is a mess. I also get a weird white shadow on the left portion of the screen if I try to force AA. In the end, I kept the game AA at High and added FXAA using an injector. It's not 100% jaggie free on pictures, but ingame it does the job.

Here are a few pictures (warning: 1,5 MB each one). I also modified the contrast and saturation of the game, so it may look different.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21651954/Screenshot284355.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21651954/Screenshot239308.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21651954/Screenshot186277.png

FXAA blurs the image a little bit. Some people don't like it, but I like the soft look it gives.
Still the white aura around some portions of the cars is still there:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21651954/Screenshot234792.png

The game is at the highest graphics setting, except for motion blur.

It has to do with the engine. Project CARS has the same issue (uses a new version of the same engine of Shift 2) if you look at the Community galleries, yo will spot the white pixels in a few pictures.

[JimClarke]

Yep I got the 'white blob' issue while forcing high levels of AA driver side.

Im trying the 'Enhance App setting' right now, work through FXAA and a couple of others while keeping it maxed ingame. Ive actually just about got it in a good state (I am being very picky : D) and got a better result actually by deleting the S2U profile from control panel (using NV inspector) because the DEFAULT nvidia settings has a couple of funky option settings....removing this (thus its runnign rfom teh default desktop mode) seems to have improved the shadows in particular.

Really the very worst thing is on cars that have a lot of chrome, give this strange black and white line, round windows and on the bumpers or exhausts that is quite offputting...

Now I look hard at my screenies from S2U I think I had these same issues but for whatever reason didnt notice them as much...I think Im pretty close to being done with settings and just keeping it all maxed out ingame and jsut try some of the enhance options.

Concerning CARS, yes forgot about that, they are under investigation, not that they did anything wrong, but the offer of returns from investement are under investigation was the last thing I heard. I hope it deosnt kill the game anyway.

Wish I had got CARS when a few of my mates did nigh on a year ago!

[JimClarke]

I just saw this

http://www.virtualr.net/project-cars-goes-steam

That will probably be my way in, buy it on Steam when it finally comes out : D

[Raiden_chino]

Oh great! I was wondering ig pCARS would use Steam or not. I was going to buy it either way, I prefer Steam, but for CARS I didn't mind making the exception.