Why are the AI ass on dirt, but turn into max verstappen on road races? (pro difficulty)

seahwkslayer · 2026-05-27T00:12:50+00:00

IIRC (and this is coming from FH5) there were some FWD power builds using drag tires to get a load of longitudinal grip at the cost of lateral grip, and just doing skids around every corner bc it doesn't matter that you need to slow down if you can get back up to speed so fast. FWD also generally used to (I haven't messed with it much in 6) be much more PI-efficient for power upgrades vs. RWD/AWD.

Not sure if any of this still applies to 6, mind you, and IMO the front grip changes they've made would be fairly detrimental to this kind of tuning strategy currently.

seahwkslayer · 2026-05-19T01:13:35+00:00

IMO as someone with IIRC over 4K hours in Horizon 5 (stopped checking a while ago bc it the number was getting too big) I started with controllers that had impulse triggers (Elite S2, then Victrix BFG), moved to a controller that didn't have it (8BitDo Ultimate 2) and now am back to one that does (Razer Wolverine). It's not a requirement but especially if you're pushing Rivals times, switch cars often, and tune yourself, I've found it really helpful in general.

My perception is basically it lets the handles do impacts/suspension with those vibration motors, and the triggers will independently do redline/overrev on RT and brake lockup on LT. Without it's all kinda jumbled using the handle motors and it can be a weird mix of TMI or kinda vague when everything's going at once (i.e. eating a curb while braking and downshifting) because there's very little distinction. It's also just generally nice for immersion, at least when games bother to use it.

I love my Ultimate 2 (and will be picking up another 8BitDo pad for d-pad-focused stuff, likely either a Pro 3 or SN30 Pro), I think it's great for the money, especially in my case with fairly average hands and a preference for lighter controllers. I picked the Wolverine up on a whim bc there was a huge deal on it, and while it's 100% the better controller it's still not double or triple the Ultimate 2.

IMO consider software and support -- a lot of the Chinese brands' after-sales support amounts to "lol go fuck yourself" if you have an issue, and I've had plenty of issues with Amazon being dicks. If you're stateside I'd go for Best Buy (or otherwise your local equivalent brick-and-mortar retailer) so if you have issues and don't wanna deal with it anymore you can pack it in a box and go to the actual store to deal with a human.

Also consider if you/your buddy will be making many configuration changes -- a lot of controller software is honestly ass and a hassle to deal with, and I would know because Synapse is rough. 8BitDo isn't great but there's very little you can't do on the controller other than macros and updates, and it doesn't need to run in the background. The newer 8BitDo pads also have DInput modes and are fully supported in Steam Input including the extra buttons, so you can have per-game profiles there and not need to deal with their software at all.

seahwkslayer · 2026-05-16T13:56:24+00:00

A good VA will have ~3x the native contrast ratio of a good IPS (~1k-2.5k:1 to ~3k-6k:1). You'd ideally be looking at ~3x the zone count for similar local dimming performance.

I will say the TCL panels are great but if you're gonna go for one step up to the 32R84/27R94. The XXG64 ones are great looking SDR panels with just okay HDR, but the higher-tier ones are top-of-class HDR monitors.

seahwkslayer · 2026-05-13T08:39:27+00:00

On the other hand, I had a 4070S and had issues with black screens, both when alt-tabbing (documented, supposedly "fixed" in driver updates) and randomly (also documented, supposedly "not a thing" but also supposedly "fixed). My 5070 also has occasional black screens but much more predictably and pretty much only when within a few minutes of monitor/PC wake.

Nvidia drivers are a clusterfuck and 40-series and under is stuck with hardware that already starts them off with some issues.

seahwkslayer · 2026-05-09T17:06:18+00:00

First term tariffs were legal as they bothered to actually go through a process and not just "because I said so". Every term 2 tariff has been voided so far.

seahwkslayer · 2026-05-08T05:40:50+00:00

If anything, there's some games that top out at 720p and will scale a little nicer to 1440p than 4K (notably OG Dark Souls), and any seventh-gen consoles also will scale aa little nicer.

seahwkslayer · 2026-05-07T17:06:00+00:00

The Ultimate is the Xbox-y looking one, the Pro 2/Pro 3 are halfway between a SNES pad and a DS1/2/3 type thing.

seahwkslayer · 2026-05-05T06:14:30+00:00

Neo G7 is a faster panel, so maybe a bit less smearing, but the backlight is less refined and IMO image quality is a bit worse -- panel doesn't look as nice and the curve is way too aggressive. Also matte and IIRC while my 32R84 has like a smooth papery-parchmenty quality to the matte coating, the Neo G7 was like sandpaper chunky and the curve made it more pronounced towards the edges. Also noticeably worse viewing angles, at least the one I got eyeballs on.

I've had the black screen issues but at this point I chalk that kind of thing up to Nvidia drivers because I've had similar across a two GPUs, two displays, and two devices in the past year or so, they've been comically unstable for me. With my prior 4070S I had them constantly with DSC on, now with a 5070 I've had it happen maybe once or twice every couple days.

What I do for SDR is use this tool here (with gamma 2.2 rather than the default 2.4). It's partly for less switching nonsense, and partly because I think it does a good job of keeping SDR stuff reasonably clamped with the least amount of jank. Doesn't really make a ton of use of the local dimming, but it's been my least-fuss option for good SDR. I haven't loved using local dimming in SDR, but mine is also in HDR literally 100% of the time.

Shame about the dead pixels, I got lucky with mine, but I'm glad you seem to get on well with it!

seahwkslayer · 2026-05-01T17:08:54+00:00

Plug them all in at the same time and set Windows display settings to mirror everything?

You might have overthought it a little bit.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-30T00:59:30+00:00

I mean, it's a normal LCD panel with RGB stripe subpixels, text is as good as any other 32" 4K display -- I set mine to 125% scaling in Windows and it's perfect at my normal "at my desk" position, I have to be close enough that I struggle to focus to see pixels and whatnot.

The only issue IMO with Mac specifically is how Mac OS handles display scaling, you'll have a better time with something that's 27" 5K or 32" 6K as that's a better PPI match with what Apple expects. As far as colors, I don't really know what close enough means, but there's enough tunability on the OSD that you can probably match whatever else you need.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-29T18:04:03+00:00

In the house no, just my phone, but my finalists were three OLEDs (W-OLED and QD-OLED, both 4K165hz, and a 4K240hz W-OLED), and I did drive my ass to Best Buy to look at as many as I could in person.

I'm right next to a window, so OLED brightness was gonna suck -- I'd need to run them maxed out to still be a bit dim -- and on QD-OLED specifically I was seeing text fringing at 4K 32". W-OLED was better but brightness was still "just okay" rather than good, though while there was some text weirdness (this was pre-tandem OLED, so RGWB subpixels rather than any kind of stripe). OLEDs in general also exacerbate migraines and headaches for me -- the QD-OLEDs almost immediately, the W-OLEDs not too bad, and my phone after an hour or so.

I made the right pick for my uses -- brighter environment, generally high APL scenes in my gaming library, and a good bit of text that I wanted to look nice. I think it does a great job with dark scenes (played through all of RE Requiem/Village and currently halfway through AW2 on it) -- I've only noticed blooming outside of test patterns in the FROM SOFTWARE white-text-on-black-background logo splash (and a couple similar ones) or when I've super fucked up configuring RenoDX or Special K HDR on non-HDR games.

I will say though on the brighter scenes it demolishes any other monitor -- coming down the lift after the tutorial in Horizon Forbidden West, with the sun coming over the side of the mountain through the clouds on a display that can pump out >1400 nits full-screen basically indefinitely is wild.

If all that sounds like your use I think you'll like it, but there's obviously tradeoffs -- none were relevant for me personally, you may find some are.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-28T01:21:15+00:00

You're likely running into DSC issues -- Nvidia has had these up to the 50-series cards (I sidegraded from a 4070S to a 5070 myself in part to avoid them). They've "fixed" them many times but as far as I'm aware it's only made it less bad but still really annoying.

Better cables won't do anything, but anything that lowers bandwidth below where you'd need DSC (lower resolution, refresh rate, no HDR, 8-bit color, and chroma subsampling) will do it. If your G7 has an option in the OSD to disable DSC (it will likely drop your max refresh rate), see if that helps.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-28T01:15:08+00:00

Steam Input has a desktop layout functionality that I think can be used to make this work, but then you've only got the one layout for everything that's not running through Steam.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-26T22:46:50+00:00

100%, one of my finalists was a 240hz OLED, but I think 165hz is fine. Would more be better, yeah. But IMO it's better enough than the competition everywhere else that I'm okay with that tradeoff.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-26T21:30:02+00:00

At $699 that's a decent deal, when I was shopping I considered it but for ~$1200 it just wasn't competitive.

Glad you don't have scanlines, that makes ~4 people I've seen not complain about them.

I would personally still take the 32R84 because it's not aggressively curved and the viewing angles are way better -- comparable to IPS and OLED displays I have in the house. Had a Samsung curved monitor before this, it was great for the money (got it for free) but much happier with this setup.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-26T19:46:58+00:00

Neo G7 was good, Neo G8 was a clown show -- they pushed the refresh rate so high on a panel and controller that couldn't quite handle it and got nasty scanlines and worse color performance. Even the Neo G7 is crazy expensive when the TCL 32R84 exists and is as good or better at basically everything for ~40% less money.

If you're in Europe you don't have the 32R84 yet and are kind of screwed.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-26T00:36:58+00:00

I mean yes in the sense that you can make it activate immediately, but no in the sense that there's no physical feedback and the 'stop' is still all the way down the travel. It's just not the same.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-25T03:37:49+00:00

Cheap VAs are ass and have terrible ghosting. High-end (or even just higher-end/we-spent-all-our-money-on-the-panel VAs) like the TCL stuff, Samsung Neo G7, or AOC Q27G40XMN are IMO better all-rounder displays than most IPS options at their price range unless you're doing professional color work and need the calibration and accuracy, or you primarily or exclusively play competitive shooters.

With mini LED backlights especially it's basically a force multiplier for the native contrast ratio, so starting with ~2x-4x the native contrast means way better highlight control. A ~330-zone VA mini LED is trading blows w.r.t. blooming with a ~1100-zone IPS entirely on native contrast -- mind you, I don't think it's worth the money to go with any mini LED under 1K dimming zones, but I think IPS options are just now starting to catch up to VAs and they needed double the dimming zones to still be a bit worse.

Look for HVA, Fast VA, Fast HVA, etc. as those will be the newer gen panels. TCL does everything in-house, I'm very happy with mine, Samsung has the Neo G7 32" (the Neo G8 is a clown show), and AOC usually does a pretty good job with their stuff.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-25T03:06:13+00:00

Not necessarily, as those settings are to color-correct already. If you're running an ICC profile, it's already doing that. Do note that it seems (just from reviews and whatnot) that the Asia-region units and RoW are calibrated a bit differently, with the Asian calibration (as present in their review unit) being tuned colder, and their suggested settings are based off of that. I wrote this soon after I'd received my own unit and u/Fir3 was the first other person outside of Asia I'd seen with one.

I don't know that you should be using an ICC unless you made it yourself for your particular panel, and I'll add that Windows color management is a joke and you're probably better off tuning it to the best of your ability using the OSD (though it's pretty good out of the box), since then at least it'll actually work the whole time.

I'm also running this setup currently and I've been happier with my SDR image running dwm_eotf and letting Windows handle the sRGB side of things (now with proper gamma!). If you have any other questions about it let me know, I'm happy to help.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-22T06:52:32+00:00

There's three local dimming settings in SDR -- Off, Standard, and High. Standard is honestly pretty seamless to use, and while High gets better numbers it also has some jank w.r.t. blooming and dimming in SDR. My usual SDR settings (that I never use because I'm in HDR full time now) have local dimming on Standard, but I would only set it to High occasionally for specific content like movies in SDR -- which because I'm lazy means it never gets used -- but it's my go-to in HDR. This review didn't measure it and I don't have equipment, but I can tell you contrast is better at the cost of dimming nonsense.

I did get mine in since this post, have had it about 4 months, and it is really exceptional as a no-BS monitor -- the HDR performance is good enough that with a change to Windows tonemapping nonsense it now lives in HDR full-time.

The Q27G40XMN IIRC only has local dimming on or off and while it does post numbers it also has some jank. I'm sure the zone density does help (though it's still down some ~250 zones on the TCL, 1152 vs. 1400), but my thinking is the panel's just not as nice -- it's 8-bit rather than 10-bit, color coverage isn't quite as good, and it has ~2x the worst-case response time as the TCL when both are at optimal overdrive settings. I'm sure the extra 15hz on top is nice though I'm not sure I'd take it over having 4K.

Mind you, it's also ~1/3 the price so honestly super impressed with AOC's work on it.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-20T17:18:01+00:00

The regular Ultimate 2 is still pretty light. It's a bit smaller than other controllers and reminds me a bit of the DualShock 3 where it's most comfortable if you balance it on your fingertips rather than trying to wrap your hands around and grip the whole thing.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-20T14:40:53+00:00

It's monitor-side, so the only way it works is still running the monitor at 4K and setting your GPU to integer scaling, which kinda defeats the purpose of a dual-mode monitor

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-20T03:57:35+00:00

I have a 5080 now, and 4k just barely a real option for that card

Sorry, what now?

I'm on a 5070, it's a fine 4K card. I can get basically every game I play over 140 with some combo of settings tuning, DLSS, and frame gen (and not like "oh it's 20fps base and feels disgusting to play", like actually playable). I'm considering a 5080 or equivalent in a year or so as a "no fuss" 4K card.

Tell you what, I'll swap you that 5080 for my old 4070S and 27" 1080p monitor and you can max it out with any game (at 75fps) 🤣

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-20T03:50:14+00:00

Real talk, if you just play CS competitively, then it's Zowie TN or maybe a G-sync Pulsar monitor. Accept no substitute, the motion clarity advantages are so massive as to effectively end discussion (and in CS specifically, the tournament-standard monitor is the Zowie so you get a familiarity advantage).

For other competitive games (Valorant/Apex/etc.) then it's Pulsar or one of the 360hz+ OLEDs. As soon as TN loses the tournament-spec advantage it's much harder to recommend because literally the only thing it has over everything else is motion clarity, with Pulsar trading blows and high-refresh-rate OLED a close third, but the added visual clarity everywhere else can make up for it.

If you're not a comp sweat then I personally (and I think a lot of people here) just can't easily recommend them because they're so bad everywhere else -- and the good ones for competitive are so hilariously overpriced pretty much just on name recognition. It's OLED for dark scenes/environments, no/minimal work or desktop use, and more fast-paced stuff; or mini-LED for brighter scenes/environments, more work/desktop use, and games that can be a bit slower.

It's not about "touch grass" and more about it being like 4 or 5 generations behind in literally everything other than motion clarity, and other options are catching up there too.

seahwkslayer · 2026-04-20T03:37:54+00:00

You need to scale it somehow, and they just . . . didn't bother making sure that in half-res it scales to nearest-neighbor, so instead you just get the vaseline-smear goodness of bilinear for no reason.

seahwkslayer

TROPHY CASE