DiRT 4 DiRT 4 Updated on all Platforms

[Paul Jeffrey]

Codemasters have released a considerable update to DiRT 4 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.. now including significant Club improvements!

The new build release has been a long time in the making for DiRT 4, thankfully Codemasters have finally deployed the new update into the wilds, with both console and PC players having access to a considerable download that no only includes a number of fixes and improvements, but at long last the much awaited improvement to 'Club' functionality, adding much of the DiRT Rally league features and a selection of new and improved online goodies...

Confirmed by the latest DiRT Roadbook release from Codemasters, the new build across both console and PC adds plenty of new functionality around the way you play the title online, details of which have been quoted directly from Codemasters below:

1/ Clubs are now multiplatform

As with our Community event leaderboards, we’ve expanded our multiplatform functionality out to our Clubs! That means that whatever you’re playing on will no longer restrict you from joining the Club of your dreams or playing a Championship against your mates on different machines. For us, this is one of the coolest new additions to the game. Now with Clubs, everyone can play one another – and that’s a beautiful thing.

2/ Clubs are compatible with Your Stage

Yup – now you can set up an entirely unique championship, with never-been-seen-before tracks to level the playing field! As well as having full access to the career stages, RX and Landrush circuits, you’ll be able to run Your Stage events too. You’ll also have the delightful ‘Randomise’ button, which will build you a completely adhoc event – just so you can keep it fresh, unpredictable and a little bit mixed up.

3/ Points are scaled depending on the amount of people participating

Now, this one is something we’re really proud of. A lot of users with DiRT Rally’s leagues found that the point distribution was unfair; that if thousands of players were in a league, only a handful would get points. So we’ve taken on board your feedback, and come up with a scaling system for more fairly allocating points. This means that every place counts – and you can have just as thrilling fight for 80th place as you can have for 1st.

Update Change Log

• Improvements to AI in all disciplines
• Brutal AI difficulty is no longer tied to Fearless preset
• Tuning setups can now be used with lower skill rated teams
• Updated driver support for Thrustmaster devices – this adds support for the T500 (PS4 only)
• Added new support for Thrustmaster TS-XW
• Added new support for Thrustmaster Sparco R383
  
• Async improvements and updated Sponsors
  
• Fixed engine audio not playing in broadcast mode from multiplayer lobby
  
• Refinements and numerous bug fixes for Rallycross audio
  
• Fixed crash that occurred using Party invites (PS4 only)
  
• Prevented Welcome Event deadstate (PC only)
• Pro Tour vehicles should not start with damage
• Community Events show time of day when loading
• Rallycross ghosting no longer gets triggered when completing a lap close to another player
  
• Screen Space Reflections added (PC and PS4 Pro only)
  
• Improved reflection rendering (PS4 Pro only)
  
• Lobby countdown reinstated (PC only)
  
• Disabling external cameras no longer forces camera back to head cam
  
• Option to reset controls to default added
  
• Improved stability

In addition to the above, the following changes from PC version 1.06 are now included on console:

• Bug fixes and refinements to improve the quality across all written languages.
• Improved anti-cheat detection for Joyride leaderboards.
• Fearless difficulty modified so it allows all types of manual gears.
• Improved system for storing and re-uploading Community Event times when RaceNet is unavailable.
• Staff contracts now reduce at their expected rate in Pro Tour and Jam Session.
• Pro Tour scoring is now more consistent.
• ‘Up and Up’ achievement/trophy will now unlock when you get promoted to any tier in Pro Tour.

Crash Fixes

• Improved stability across the game.

General Fixes

• Fixed car wheels and suspension popping in the Service Area.
• Fixed Mailbox specific issues.
• Fixed an issue that caused some Community Events results to become invalidated.
• Fixed an issue with Delta Daily results

DiRT 4 is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Check out the DiRT 4 sub forum to get yourself involved with the DiRTy community and discuss this excellent new rally title from Codemasters. If DiRT 4 doesn't tickle your fancy then fear not, we also have a sub forum for the awesome DiRT Rally games for you to enjoy and interact within!

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Happy to see Clubs finally arrive to the game? Pleased with the new build update? What are your first impressions of the new update? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[Arrowheadrock]

I haven't bought it because no VR ( I do use Dirt Rally). Will it come?

 

[ShredatorFIN]

Still nothing about the crap rally physics.
Seems like time to bury all hope of this becoming relevant rally sim

 

[Leynad777]

Still nothing about the crap rally physics.
Seems like time to bury all hope of this becoming relevant rally sim

There's not much wrong about the Rally-physics and just armchair racers think it should be more a Drift-game like Dirt Rally. But the stages are better in Dirt Rally and Your Stage should just be an addition to the handmade career-stages.

 

[MoerasGrizzly]

Dirt 4 is a lot more realistic in it's rallying then Dirt Rally was: It simulates far better the weight that these cars have, it simulates far better the aerodynamics that these cars have, the tarmac stages feel like driving Assetto Corsa, and it's Rallycross physics are best in class.

What people argue about when they say that Dirt 4 is "unrealistic" is that they've come to expect the super slidy and weightless cars that Dirt Rally had, whilst the cars in Dirt 4 are both better simulated and come with default setups that are very stable. You can totally make the car slide more if you want to, it just takes a bit more effort this time around. They've said during the launch event what their difficulties on this front were.

Still, although this update was a long time coming, I don't find the clubs update all that exciting: Running a league in Dirt Rally was a lot of fun but since not as many people play Dirt 4 as they did with Dirt Rally it's a bit of a moot exercise. Even if the Dirt 4 clubs lets you score poitns based on how many people have entered the championship rather then just the top 10, which is neat! But I feel in a lot of ways they've dropped the ball on multiplayer: If you want to play the matchmade multiplayer you end up with rally stages again which aren't as fun in direct multiplayer as they are in the async events, whilst the outstanding Rallycross and the quite fun Landrush modes do without a competitive multiplayer setting which is a huge miss. Codemasters could learn from iRacing in that regard.

 

[VirtuaIceMan]

I think PC vs Xbox vs PS4 is a rare thing indeed. Doesn't Sony usually not allow this?

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

There's not much wrong about the Rally-physics and just armchair racers think it should be more a Drift-game like Dirt Rally. But the stages are better in Dirt Rally and Your Stage should just be an addition to the handmade career-stages.

Thing is, the 4WD cars, doesn't behave like you expect 4WD cars to behave on loose surface, even when the car gets it wheels spinning, it doesn't behave like you'd expect. It is too FWD, regardless of setup options.

Dirt 4 is a lot more realistic in it's rallying then Dirt Rally was: It simulates far better the weight that these cars have, it simulates far better the aerodynamics that these cars have, the tarmac stages feel like driving Assetto Corsa, and it's Rallycross physics are best in class.

What people argue about when they say that Dirt 4 is "unrealistic" is that they've come to expect the super slidy and weightless cars that Dirt Rally had, whilst the cars in Dirt 4 are both better simulated and come with default setups that are very stable. You can totally make the car slide more if you want to, it just takes a bit more effort this time around. They've said during the launch event what their difficulties on this front were.

There are no doubt that the cars behaves more correct when it comes to jumps, crests. But it doesn't change that it is a major issue with rally cars that are not FWD.

It's a bit ironic listening to what Paul says in that "I don't want people to feel like we've done this, and we're just gonna hide and run away form it. This is not what we are about, we are about listening to our fans and trying to deliver what they want us to do".
When it's been a complete silence and stonewalling from them over many months.

 

[ShredatorFIN]

There's not much wrong about the Rally-physics and just armchair racers think it should be more a Drift-game like Dirt Rally. But the stages are better in Dirt Rally and Your Stage should just be an addition to the handmade career-stages.

Armchair racers lol... if you think the D4 rally physics are good or realistic, you're delusional.

Rally game should be "drift game". Being fast on loose surface involves going sideways, steering with throttle just as much as with the wheel. Which isn't possible in this "rally" game

Check at 1:20 what Billy Strange says about D4 physics in comparison to past Dirt games and WRC7:

Billy isn't really "armchair racer" he's former IRL winged sprint car racer. Knows about loose surface handling probably more than 99.9% of simracers.

 

[ShredatorFIN]

Pretty lame to just press Disagree with no arguments. Opinions without arguments are worth

Well, keep enjoying Turd 4 I guess, but if you think it has realistic handling or good physics, it's funny you consider yourself simracer Or maybe you don't, but it doesn't have even fun arcade physics

Anyone with half of brain realizes the way on-throttle oversteer and sliding works is not realistic at all. "But Codies said it's more advanced!!11" "HAVE YOU DREIVEN REAL RALY CAR THEN HURR DURR"

 

[Case_]

You can totally make the car slide more if you want to, it just takes a bit more effort this time around.

Please make a video of a car actually powersliding realistically (emphasis on the "power" part) or doing a donut in the rally portion of the game, ideally including your wheel/pedal inputs as well, so we could all learn how to do these things in D4 properly. Ever since the release of the game, I've been asking people who claim "it just takes a bit more effort this time around" (or "you just don't know how to drive" or "you don't know how to set your car up properly") to do this for the community. So far, out of I'd say at least two dozens people I've asked, no-one was able to deliver.

Here's an inspiration for you of what I'd love to see replicated in-game:

 

[69Harder]

Still nothing about the crap rally physics.
Seems like time to bury all hope of this becoming relevant rally sim

I wouldn't expect to much from the masters of hype & arcade !
If you want a really nice rally experience go for WRC 7 !

 

[MoerasGrizzly]

Here's an inspiration for you of what I'd love to see replicated in-game:

Good call, I'll go see if I won't have to eat my words.

 

[LuMue]

Please make a video of a car actually powersliding realistically (emphasis on the "power" part) or doing a donut in the rally portion of the game, ideally including your wheel/pedal inputs as well, so we could all learn how to do these things in D4 properly. Ever since the release of the game, I've been asking people who claim "it just takes a bit more effort this time around" (or "you just don't know how to drive" or "you don't know how to set your car up properly") to do this for the community. So far, out of I'd say at least two dozens people I've asked, no-one was able to deliver.

Here's an inspiration for you of what I'd love to see replicated in-game:

Ok Martin, maybe it's time that you show us a video where you do all these things in DR...

 

[MoerasGrizzly]

Good call, I'll go see if I won't have to eat my words.

I made a video!

 

[MoerasGrizzly]

The Vid:

Right, so: Weight transfer is super important - and probably too important - in getting your drifts in. If you apply handbrake you can powerslide trough corners quite well but it's hard to pull off, and for that vid I did give myself some toe-in (the Escort has none by default) and some rear rollbar (the escort has none by default). I'll concede my point to @Martin Fiala. I defnitely can't drift the thing like Block does.

I could do donuts easily though! I could make a video of that but my driving is sloppy as is and this is embarassing already

 

[Case_]

Ok Martin, maybe it's time that you show us a video where you do all these things in DR...

I don't see how that's relevant, plus you can already find videos like that on the internet and in fact even here, but to be honest, I might actually humor you when I have time. I have an idea for a video along those lines and I've kinda sorta already started working on it.

 

[MoerasGrizzly]

 

[Case_]

The Vid:

Right, so: Weight transfer is super important - and probably too important - in getting your drifts in. If you apply handbrake you can powerslide trough corners quite well but it's hard to pull off, and for that vid I did give myself some toe-in (the Escort has none by default) and some rear rollbar (the escort has none by default). I'll concede my point to @Martin Fiala. I defnitely can't drift the thing like Block does.

I could do donuts easily though! I could make a video of that but my driving is sloppy as is and this is embarassing already

I appreciate the effort, most wouldn't even try. But the problem is already apparent from the video and I think it would be even more apparent if you could include your pedal/wheel inputs. I've done runs exactly like this in the Mk 2 (in fact I've done quite a few just a few days ago because someone on Reddit came up with the supposedly "correct" car tuning to make the car behave properly, so I was curious), and it just feels completely wrong. You can indeed get the car sideways, that's not the issue, but mostly just through lift-off oversteer (and the car has a nasty tendency to suddenly snap on you, like most cars in D4). If you step on the throttle to actually start powersliding and not just sliding, it just feels as if the front wheels pull you out of the slide, as if you're driving a front-biased AWD or even FWD car. Aiding the oversteer by applying more throttle to make the rear wheels spin and keeping the car sideways through the turn, steering it with the throttle, is almost impossible to do, unlike what you see in the real world footage and unlike what you can do in the rallycross portion of the game or in other games. It's quite apparent when you watch the front wheels here - you spend very little time on the opposite lock, because there is no need for it. You either get the rear end loose, apply a fairly small amount of opposite lock and smash the throttle and the car almost instantly straightens itself, or, if you don't step on the throttle quick enough, you very quickly lose the slide, the car snaps on you and you end up facing backwards.

But still, honestly, thank you for trying. I really do appreciate that.

 

[MoerasGrizzly]

unlike what you can do in the rallycross portion of the game

This is perhaps the key thing, becuase the rallycross portion of this game is SO GOOOOOOD

 

[Thomas Lambaerts]

This is perhaps the key thing, becuase the rallycross portion of this game is SO GOOOOOOD

I wonder how dirt 4 RX holds up to iracing RX because i have watched ytbigz do some races. He seems to hardly use the loud pedal in corners to slide around them. From on stream it looks like iracing RX slides to much. Can't confirm though, i am not on iracing.