After months of waiting, endurance enthusiasts can finally get their hands on Le Mans Ultimate. This new title by Studio 397, officially licensed by the WEC (World Endurance Championship), has been in Early Access since February 20, 2023. As a great admirer of endurance drivers and a hypercar addict, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the title right away! So does this new LMU live up to our expectations? Let’s find out.
If your force feedback does anything on the track, you need to check the “invert FFB” cursor in the in-game force feedback management menu. This is a setting valid for 90% of bases current (Fana/Simagic/Asetek etc.).
Don’t get hurt, be careful the first time you use it, lower the FFB of the game around 30% maximum force then slowly increase to the level you want to have in your daily steering wheel. This will help you avoid unpleasant surprises and injuries while you properly adjust your FFB feeling!
Hardware used for this Le Mans Ultimate test
| PC | Graphics card | Nvidia 4070Ti 12G |
| Memory | 32GB DDR5-4800 | |
| Processor | Intel Core i9-12900KF (and not 14900 as I said in Live, that’s the processor in my new PC being assembled…) | |
| Display | Screen | Ultrawide Samsung Odyssey G9, 49 inches |
| SimRacing hardware | Base Direct Drive | Asetek Invicta 27Nm |
| Steering wheel | Asetek Formula Forte with Dual Clutch paddles | |
| Pedalset | Asetek Invicta (yellow rubber, max brake pressure 63 bar) | |
| Chassis | SimLab P1X-Pro |
Menus and configurations
We don’t wait any longer and launch the game. After an intro cinematic, we go straight to the menu. We’re still in early access, so the options are spartan to say the least. You’ll find the Week End solo races, the Online mode with its daily and weekly races and special events. Then there are the settings that allow you to configure the beast.
Like any good simracer, of course, we’re going to take a look at the settings first. Time to assign the axes and buttons we’ll need to drive our cars. Configuration is quick and easy.
Adjusting force feedback
Pay particular attention to one point! In the Force feedback tab, LOWER the maximum force to around 30%. This will prevent you from injuring yourself as soon as you leave the pits due to an incorrect FFB configuration. Incidentally, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that in most cases on Le Mans Ultimate (as on its big brother rFactor 2), you’ll probably have to click on the “Reverse force feedback” box. Otherwise, your steering wheel will literally do the opposite of what it’s supposed to do on the track, and you’re REALLY at risk of injury.
As for the feel settings, they obviously depend on your tastes, your expectations and your Direct Drive base (or not). I’ll share with you the in-game settings I’ve made to give you some ideas:
| Steering resistance coefficient | 30% |
| Saturation of steering resistance | 20% |
| Collision level | 100% |
| Edge vibration level | 0% |
| Edge traction level | 150% |
| Border update threshold | 0.1 |
| Steering Torque Sensitivity | 100% |
| Use the constant force effect of the steering | No |
Vehicle and track content: we’re reliving WEC 2023.
In terms of content, there are no surprises (and that’s all to the good). We already have access to the vehicles, liveries and tracks of the WEC 2023 season:
| Category | Vehicle |
|---|---|
| Hypercars | Cadillac V-Series.R |
| Ferrari 499P | |
| Glickenhaus SCG 007 | |
| Peugeot 9X8 | |
| Porsche 963 | |
| Toyota GR010-Hybrid | |
| Vanwall Vandervell 680 | |
| LMP2 | Oreca 07 Gibson |
| GTE | Aston Martin Vantage AMR |
| Chevrolet Corvette C8.R | |
| Ferrari 488 GTE Evo | |
| Porsche 911 RSR-19 |
The circuits :
- Le Mans (Circuit de la Sarthe)
- Sebring
- Portimao
- Spa
- Monza
- Fuji
- Bahrain
At the moment, it’s hard to complain about the quantity of content: you can drive the 2023 season without worry, and keep your fingers crossed for the imminent arrival of older vehicles (perhaps as DLC?). But we can also look forward to the 2024 season when the time comes, as this year is full of changes in both categories and teams!
One small disappointment (to quibble) is that it would have been a real plus to be able to choose your driver from among the official WEC 2023 drivers, as Assetto Corsa Competizione has done. After all, this is a sports simulation, and I couldn’t see a Fifa without any official footballers and with “the Ball of the Year” as the main star.
Well, having said that, let’s get straight to the track… Well, after a loading time that leaves plenty of time for idleness and the publication of a photo novel.
Feeling on track
This is THE most important point. After all, especially for an early access racing simulation, what counts above all is the driving. So I spent a good hour configuring my force feedback and getting to grips with Le Mans Ultimate. And I have to say, once it’s properly configured, it really holds up! Very well indeed. The force feedback is reminiscent of rFactor 2, which is the most detailed and precise to date. On the other hand, sensations on vibrators seemed more “digital”, less natural than on rF2. I’ll have to push the settings further to form a definitive opinion on the subject.
As for vehicle physics and direct comparison with rFactor 2, I’ll give it a few more days before giving my feeling. But I’ll keep you informed on our Discord and of course on this article, very quickly.
Adjusting the brake for the Hypercar category
For the brake, the key component of any self-respecting simracing cockpit, I opted for an approach as close to the real thing as possible. I chose to install the Asetek Invicta pedalset, particularly relevant when it comes to reproducing Prototype and Formula 1 brakes. Then I set it up exactly as we had done a few months ago with Gustavo Menezes, former Peugeot Sport driver in the 9X8. As a reminder, Gustavo and I had spent two full days testing and adjusting pedalsets to replicate the real thing and find him his favorite pedalset.
See : Discovering Simagic, Asetek, Venym and Heusinkveld Hypercar setups with a real endurance racer
In concrete terms, I used the Yellow rubber from the Asetek rubber kit, the Long Brake Kit, a maximum brake pressure calibrated at 63bars and a slight “dead” travel of 2mm at the start of the brake movement. Finally, I apply an exponential braking curve on the RaceHub software.
Graphics: I’m still waiting
The trailers clearly had us drooling! And I had high hopes for the game’s graphics. My first experience on the 24 Hours of Le Mans track quickly turned me off. Aliasing literally crushes your retinas, while dynamic loading makes scenery elements appear in Playstation 1 mode (well, I’m exaggerating a bit, but not that much!).
To top it all off, the game freezes. And it freezes a lot on Le Mans. In solo with a few AIs, I had 3 to 4 freezes before I even got to the first chicane at Les Hunaudières. BUT, these massive problems were instantly eliminated as soon as I switched to shorter tracks. I’m thinking of Monza, for example, which gave me no visual or freeze problems at all.
The game has great potential, but I’m waiting for the patch before I really get to grips with it.
What about the weather and the AI?
Unfortunately, the conditions meant that I wasn’t able to enjoy a good gaming experience by modifying the weather conditions. In my case, if I wanted to drive in the rain, I instantly had a huge LAG input that made driving impossible, and the drop in FPS was such that I couldn’t even complete a full lap without going mad.
The same was true of the AIs who, unluckily for me, sometimes behaved on the verge of suicide, when they didn’t simply disappear before my very eyes, as if snatched up by an obscure force in the cloudy skies of Le Mans.
Le Mans Ultimate: I can’t wait.
Let’s not forget that Le Mans Ultimate is in early access, and that patches will obviously follow to stabilize the game on all aspects that are still lacking. But it’s clear that the potential is there! Vehicles, force feedback, sound, online events… Studio 397 has an interesting base to build on. Now we’re going to have to BUCH hard to raise this game to the level it deserves. And as a fan of WEC and rF2, that’s all the bad news I wish for it!
