WRC

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What is WRC FIA World Rally Championship 5-10 & Generations?

These are the official WRC games that spanned 2015-2022 before EA acquired the WRC license (rights have since reverted back). They were developed by KT Racing (formerly Kylotonn), now owned by Nacon (formerly Bigben Interactive).

The WRC Generations launch trailer will give you some idea of what all the games are like:

WRC 5-10 launch trailers:

Quality of WRC on PC

  • Quality seems to peak with WRC 10
  • While 10 and Generations may be technically better games, they appear to have been released on PC in subpar states and didn't reach the same level of optimizaton
  • WRC 5 is a very acceptable racing experience but graphically and handling-wise you can tell it's a 1.0
  • WRC 6 was the blue print for the series. It improved upon and fixed everything in WRC 5 and really starts to look like what WRC would become under Nacon.
  • WRC 7 started the new generation and improved graphics and perfected gameplay
    • Between 7 and 8 is when they released V-Rally 4 in partnership with Sony and what Sony was able to get out of them is really impressive and shows in the improvements to WRC 8 and 9
  • WRC 8-9-10 seem to be where they really hit their stride and continued to improve
    • But note WRC 10 requires DirectX 11 not 12 on PC to perform smoothly
  • WRC Generations provides the annual update but doesn't really expand or improve on the game's core positives and, regrettably, introduces some poor optimization that really harms the experience

Performance

Framerate and Frametime Problems

  • Use in-game vsync and RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS) to limit the framerate of Nacon WRC 5-10-Generations for smoother FPS and frametimes
    • Known Issue: WRC 5 doesn't like RTSS and won't get past a blank white screen. Use NVIDIA Control Panel to limit framerate, instead.
  • This resulted in dramatically improved frametimes for me when limiting to 60 even though I could push 165+ fps when not limited
  • The WRC games seem to have a problem managing their own FPS resulting in unsteady framerates and unsteady frametimes causing stuttering
  • These problems occur even when hard-limited by Vsync, and presumably VRR, Gsync/FreeSync, Adaptive Sync, etc. but vsync + RTSS or NVIDIA Control Panel limiting fixes this.
  • It seems this problem is common to the KT Engine games which the WRC, V-Rally 4, and Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown games use

Tips and Tricks

You can plan multiple days ahead in the career calendar

  • In career mode, you can plan multiple days ahead
  • I wanted to do an Extreme Conditions event but knew I also needed to do a Maintenance event before the next Rally: When I checked, I realized I could do Maintenance day on the second day. So I planned the two days out like that. If I hadn't planned ahead, I would've entered the next rally with a low form car, more susceptible to damage.

Repair Priority

  • You can make better use of your repair time by being judicious about your priorities
  • This can help if you have serious damage and need to get a reasonably driveable car in the next stage
  • I find you don't need to always repair to 100%, 90% is fine, even 80% will probably do most of the time
  • Repair Priorities:
    1. Suspension - Can drastically effect handling and steering higher priority than Steering itself
    2. Steering - Usually not damaged too much but it is important to have good steering nonetheless
    3. Brakes - Brake damage usually feels like longer braking distances make this one an important one to repair
    4. Aero - This can effect your stability and handling
    5. Engine - You need an engine generating decent power before the transmission/turbo can do their jobs so the engine is more important among these
    6. Transmission - Deliver the engine power to the wheels
    7. Turbo - Even a dead turbo won't stop your engine generating power so it's not as high priority
    8. Bumper - Bumper helps protect other components (engine, lights, etc.) but avoid hitting things and you'll be fine
    9. Body - This seems to be things like the door that won't close, maybe it helps protect key components, not sure, that's why it's down here

Use a Thumbstick Extender on a Controller for Finer Control

Lower Field of View (FOV) will make cockpit driving much easier

  • Reducing FOV in the cockpit will allow you to see more of the road directly ahead of you and allow you more time to anticipate corners and how you will approach them

Trivia

The Test Area is a much larger area than you might think

  • All the Nacon/Kylotonn WRC games have a test area, but at least in WRC 9 and later it's almost an entire map itself
  • While you can't drive off-road, you can drive all the roads present and all of them are interconnected in one way or another
  • There is at least one lookout point where you can look across the whole valley and it's impressive
  • You can even find your way to specific Training Event areas within the map, itself, and drive them
  • These open world-like areas were best exemplified in V-Rally 4 and would eventually be maxxed out in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown as entire worlds

Gotchas

New Teams/Cars In Career Mode Will Forget Your Camera Settings

  • Remember to re-set your camera settings when moving to news teams and new cars as they will be reset otherwise
  • This might apply outside career mode, too, I'm not sure

Known Issues

WRC 5 Incompatible With RivaTuner Statistics Server

  • tl;dr Add WRC 5 profile to RTSS and set Detection Level to None
  • WRC 5 will launch and freeze on a blank white screen if RTSS is running
  • Related to multiplayer/esport anticheat software(?)
  • To limit framerate, use NVIDIA Control Panel

Troubleshooting

WRC 10 Washed-out, Over-saturated, or Mis-colored Graphics

  • Try changing to DirectX 11 from 12, or vice versa, using the in-game video options (you will have to restart the game after changing it)
  • Hard to explain, but the graphics look washed out in some scenarios. Oddly, WRC 8 had this issue while WRC 9 did not. I got used to WRC 8 and completed a season, so it's not that bad, but to see it again in WRC 10 is frustrating.

WRC Generations Performance on PC

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