F1 24 preview: How EA Sports Dynamic Handling makes racing more realistic

F1 24 / EA Sports

EA Sports and Codemasters hosted their annual Formula 1 game reveal event last week and took the opportunity to showcase the full set of features we can expect from this year’s F1 24. Co-hosts of the event were senior creative director Lee Mather and senior game designer and vehicle handling lead Casey Ringley.

It’s peculiar how Ringley joined the games industry. He has a mechanical engineering background, and when he first began to show interest in gaming, it was through F1 2002 mods.

With him fully on board, Codemasters took advantage of that background, working on EA Sports Dynamic Handling. It’s a set of cool features that aim to provide an even deeper driving model. “This is the culmination of several significant updates to the series,” says Lee Mather.

Suspension kinematics is at the top of the list of F1 24’s new changes and tweaks. “These will give the car that real feel of weight transfer. They’ll give you the feeling of loading through the tire, and the adjustments that the player will make to the setup will also have a more significant impact on how the car feels.”

F1 24 / EA Sports

An improved tire model makes it so that “both the wear modeling and the temperature modeling have changed significantly to bring it in line with what we see in the real sport.” An overhauled aerodynamic simulation will let players note “a difference with changes in the right height of the vehicle,” while tweaks to the chassis allow DRS to feel “more effective on certain cars over others.”

Power units have also seen “further upgrades” this year, especially in “how the harvesting takes place and the extra agency that the player has over those settings.” The idea behind this is creating tense moments where “you wanna have that battery to defend or to take the victory.”

The new model “simulates dynamic changes” at certain angles, for effects such as “anti-dive and anti-squat” you often hear talked about in F1 cars. The model includes “a realistic steering geometry and its effects on wheel loading. This provides a more realistic driving experience regarding the changes in the car’s balance as you go through the entry apex and exit of each corner.”

F1 24 / EA Sports

This allows for “more individual fine tuning” on suspension, “which is more in line with how the real cars work.” Particularly, the team remarks how we’ll have an impact on how stiff they’ll feel. Also, “chassis properties have been given a more realistic center of mass and moment-to-moment inertia.”

“You’ll notice the chassis respond more positively to your inputs as a driver, whether it’s feathering the brakes to trail brake into an apex or feeling the suspension squat and tires bite into the track as load shifts rearward under acceleration. These details make the car feel more alive and make the car work in concert with the player by providing useful feedback loops that exist in the real cars.”

The tire model features some of the biggest changes this year, according to Codemasters. That’s an area that has been touched upon many times over the years, and often with unsatisfying results. You just keep losing the rear of the car only because you’re on a certain turn in a certain track which is supposed to act like that.

“We’ve revamped it to provide more realistic slip curves, camera response, and contact patch loading through the entire range of vertical loading that a tire might see in its life,” says the team. “These changes, combined with a new thermal model, allow each player’s driving style to significantly influence tire performance and wear.”

F1 24 / EA Sports

“Rubber’s wear durability is strongly related to its temperature. So, our new tire wear model considers this and gives the player even more control over pit strategy. How they use their tires as the race progresses is expressed by the type of inputs they give through the steering wheel.” Behavior in the wet has also been “modified to give more control in low grip conditions and to add cooling effects from driving through wet areas of the track on aerodynamics.”

DRS is part of the equation. Its effects are now “more closely linked to the rear wing drag level, providing subtle differences from team to team.” Low and high downforce circuits also bring more differences between the teams, as you’d see in the real sport – Max Verstappen not included, that is.

“Williams is a strong example of this last year, with their outstanding performance at low downforce circuits. This year we’re seeing similar differences with Ferrari looking very efficient at high speeds. Or Red Bull and McLaren being rocket ships at mid-speed cornering. And those are the kind of differences you’ll be feeling in the cars this year.”

F1 24 / EA Sports

Engine braking has been “incorporated” into the power unit, leading to changes in how you harvest energy and handle your car when lifting off the throttle during the corner entry phase or right on straights. That’s already been touched upon in F1 23, and it was perhaps the biggest change last year.

ERS has been “overhauled for more realistic energy flows,” too. The team is aiming to add a strategic layer when harvesting energy before a pass or a push lap at the end of the race, so you can chase that fastest lap extra point. This is served by all modes being available in all the sessions, and improved differential helping with the adjustments “for changing track and race conditions.”

F1 24’s release date is slated for May 31 on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. You can get 3-day early access by pre-ordering F1 24’s Champions Edition. Stay tuned for more on the game over the next couple of weeks as we deep dive into Career mode and how tracks have changed this year.