I traded fps for beauty (nvidia inspector) to make these shots on my good ol' Nvidia GTX9800... enjoy!

My beloved Porsche:





My red devil EvoX

Man that looks way nicer than SHift 2 running on my machine. But I did the opposite, traded beauty for FPS.

Edit reason: shiny red X'es gone :-)

Wow, that's a shiny Porsche! Is it arcadey or semi-realistic?

Definitely more sim than arcade... I would say between GT5 and Iracing when everything runs well (once you ruled out some problem with the handling and Force feddback...)

Hog, yes, I didn't had the time to race yesterday so I tweaked Nvidia Inspector for maximum graphic awesomeness ( but ingame between 5 and 8 fps!! ) and loaded some replays I did... then carefully used the photomode to my taste... Normally to have a fluid game on my computer, I don't have any AA on!

Gorgeous pics, I may have to do something similar as I hate the jaggies in my screenshots on the settings needed for normal racing.

Looking good, but it still looks a little animated, like Test Drive or something. Much better than it is on my system though. When do we get a patch?! I check the official forums from time to time and see nothing about it.
Shift 1 modded: great physics, great graphics and 60+ fps all at the same time! LOL The game format in 2 is much better though, and Autolog is very cool--although I'm always at the bottom. LOL
I hope they can fix this thing soon and unlock whatever it is that hold back the appearance and performance.

Gorgeous, gorgeous pictures. Crappy, crappy arcade racer.

If you bought into the marketing and expected a hardcore sim or if you don't have the h/w to run it I can see being disappointed but for me since neither apply, I actually think its a good *arcade* racer, at least on PC with mods it's lots of fun, similar to GT5 on PS3.

Frankly, I'm really fed up with this Arcade bashing... Shift2 is not Iracing, but it's far from Hot Pursuit too, and it is more than enough for me: you do an error, you are punished, you don't break or you take an apex too late and too quick, you are punished, the cars are not all easy to drive when you push them on their limits (which is really believable; try to push your compact on the limits of her behavior...)... Shift with mod was also pretty good, only the career was really arcade... Shift 2 is a DECENT SIMULATOR once you rule out the handling and the FF. Enough of these "arcade crap", Shift 2 IS NOT AN ARCADE GAME! period. (or your definition of simulation is so limited and elitist that you must be miserable...)

I don't think much of GT5. I don't like console racers and Shift/Shift2 are basically console racers ported straight to the PC "as is." I admit my bias. I'm not hiding it. I have all the leading consoles in my house (for my teenagers), and I've rented console racing games to try them out. Basically they suck IN COMPARISON to PC racing sims. Just my opinion.

SHar82: You CAN'T rule out the handling and the FF and then consider Shift games to be sims. The handling is what makes a sim a sim.

my bad english, what I wanted to say it that yes, unfortunately you have to work a little to make handling and FF working, but when you have done, the game really shines and the FF is really informative and gives a lot of feedback... and the handling is now on my computer sharp as a knife and without any imput lag... which make ALL the difference!

I call these games fun, screw the terminology. iRacing is the top racing sim, but it was dull and no SP.
If all I have in Shift 1 & 2 is the Nordschleife to turn lap after lap in various cars, I say it's a winner. I have more fun just doing that than I have in most racers, other than the Simbin titles.

IMHO I think Shift2 with dinput8.dll lag removal mod and taking the time to tweak the default soft suspension car setups, has better sim handling and feel than rFactor (with RealFeel mod) or GTL and it is definitely in the same realm sim handing wise as GTR2, GTREvo for me, but with much better car variety, AI and immersive racing action feel than any of those PC sims.

I say that as a long time PC simmer who has spent many happy hours with those titles before I moved on primarily to iRacing, though I still revisit rFactor Enduracers mod with Realfeel from time to time.

Plainsman, I'm not sure if your negative Shift2 comments are based on first hand experience from owning Shift2 or just Shift1 plus reading some of the initial disappointments of people like me who bought it but hadn't discovered the lag removing mods yet, but I think if you enjoy any of the above mentioned gMotor PC sims and either don't own Shift2, or haven't tried Shift2 with mods and tweaking the default soft car setups, then you may want to reserve your harsh judgement/criticism until you try it for yourself, maybe once it drops down in price so it's not such a big gamble or money investment.

I'm guessing based on the sims you say you enjoy (which some iRacers I know would also bash and say are not particularly hardcore PC sims either) that you might turn out to enjoy this one more than you think, the main sim features missing are practice/qualifying sessions but otherwise there is a lot of sim racing feel, features and handling hiding in Shift2 IMHO, and now that there is a 100% savegame mod out too, the career unlocking shouldn't even be a big deal for PC simmers.

Kludger, would your first sentence also stand for a realism modded Shift1?

If you have a link to the savegame I'd love that.

As far as comparing 'sim grades' I can only say that I uninstalled GTL yesterday because I found it simple too punishing without a prober expensive FF wheel.
Shift1 still punishes any error, going off the line, braking late... but at least it has much more visual and audio feedback which really helps if you only have a 180* Rumble Type wheel.

I like my racers to be easy to drive, but hard to drive well on the edge. Seems both Shift titles do that well.

Yeah I would say that Shift1 modded with the Sharp mod 6.01 is close at least physics wise and graphics wise especially with Overhaul mod, I think the things where Shift2 improves over Shift1 and GTREvo etc is in the racing immersion, i.e. sane AI (which I seem to be able to race closely with as long as I give them room), the more informational force feedback that turns running over curbs into more of a car control challenge, cockpit and car animations that make the cars feel more alive, as well as a broader car, track and career event selection as well as dusk and night racing.

Don't get me wrong, Shift1 and GTREvo are still fun titles in their own right, but I just wanted to make sure that those bashing Shift2 as somehow inferior from a PC Sim perspective to those titles know that there is a good PC sim hidden underneath Shift2, I only wish they had included the event generation features for practice and qualifying sessions which most of us PC simmers notice as missing features, I suspect those got left out since console racers don't expect them.

As far as mods to unlock cars and trainers to max out the money, there are a few of them available at the usual places (Nogrip and RaceDepartment) and it seems like new mods everyday, so plenty of options.

It's really simple to unlock a lot of thing (and CASH) in a very short period of time.... unlike GT5. No need to really use these cheating derivatives IMHO unless you want ALL the cars...

To all with limited internet bandwith, here a little slideshow of my screenshots:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolas_grignon/sets/72157626476385804/show/

The crying shame is that in the quick race files for Shift1, and I guess still for Shift2, there are sessions, values and other bits saying "qualyfing" or "start from pit". Either they removed it or couldn't finish it in time.