EA Sports WRC, the first rally game made by Codemasters with the official WRC license, is set to debut tomorrow on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X, priced at $49.99 on all platforms.
EA Sports WRC is also the first Codemasters game to ditch the studio’s long-standing EGO Engine in favor of Epic’s Unreal Engine 5. We discussed that and other tech-related topics, such as the upcoming VR mode and the possibility of adding NVIDIA DLSS 3 and AMD FSR 3 for even better frame rates, in a brief chat with Senior Creative Director Ross Gowing.
Having switched to Unreal Engine 5 for EA Sports WRC, what was your impression of Epic’s popular game development technology compared to the one you were used to?
The Unreal Engine has provided a whole host of tools and workflows to our content creation teams and is what has enabled us to build the enormous 30km routes and a total of more than 600km of unique stages across the entire game.
The Ego engine had served us well for so long, but we had reached the limits of what we were able to achieve in terms of scale. Epic have been a fantastic partner for us, and their support has been key in building a game of this size and quality.
Does your game support Lumen and/or Nanite? If not, are you planning to switch them on after launch?
We don’t support Lumen or Nanite and currently have no plans to add them after launch.
Does EA SPORTS WRC support ray tracing features? If not, could they be added with a patch?
We don’t support Ray Tracing and currently have no plans to add it in a patch.
You’ve shared the game’s official system requirements, but they didn’t come with any indications of the resolution, settings preset, and frame rate they’d be able to provide. Could you be a little more specific?
The game detects your PC’s performance on boot and adjusts the graphics settings accordingly to attempt to hit 60FPS. This can be further tuned for your specific setup by adjusting any of the 27 GFX settings. The resolution is selectable from the GFX menu, along with various upsampling, upscaling, and filter options. We also include 5 presets that cover pre-chosen groups of settings that we think will help players quickly find a setting that gives them smooth gameplay.
You’ve confirmed the availability of NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR. Can you share more on which version will be supported? Is there any chance to see DLSS 3 and FSR 3?
We currently support DLSS 3.1.0a and FSR 2.2.1, and as part of our VR work, we will assess if updates for DLSS and FSR are feasible for WRC.
Can you talk a little bit about the upcoming VR mode? What kind of sacrifices will have to be made to bring EA SPORTS WRC to VR?
VR has always been a must for us, but this technology comes with implementation challenges. Adding VR is computationally expensive and requires a higher framerate. This is why we’re taking time to focus on optimizing for VR to bring the best experience possible to this platform. We will have to make some sacrifices to achieve this, but we’re working hard to minimize these.
Will console players have different graphics modes at their disposal? Can you share the frame rate and resolution targets for each platform and confirm whether you’re using AMD FSR 2 on consoles, too?
PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are essentially equivalent to the High preset on PC, and Xbox Series S has a few settings lowered to Medium or Low. The PS5 and XBSX have an output resolution of 4K, with XBSS outputting at 1440p. Some parts of the game use different or dynamic resolutions for optimization purposes. We target 60 FPS on all platforms.
Are you going to take advantage of the DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers/haptic feedback? If so, is it going to be available on PC or PS5 only?
The gameplay team has done an incredible job with the DualSense controller’s haptic feedback systems so that players can really feel how the car behaves across all the different surfaces in the game. This is available for PS5.
Thank you for your time.
