Thanks to the site update I realized there could be improvements in some areas, hear me out.
Because some glitches are PC only, a separation needs to exist, but there are no runs at all in the Console category. There are active console runners but I suspect they've been accidentally ostracized by this separation. So why not revise levels to have one category for normal runs and a secondary category for runs that use glitches? Not only would this allow console players to compete directly with PC players, it would also allow PC players to do runs without glitches and remain competitive. All platforms would be effectively identical. Glitch runs would have to be found and moved manually, but there aren't that many so it shouldn't be too much effort (I think the Hurrah Pass respawn is the only one currently, barring the yet-unused LA respawn). Not sure what the categories would be named, restricted/unrestricted, glitchless/glitched? Mods can decide.
There's the small matter of what constitutes a glitch, like how the huge Peninsula Run cut isn't technically an OOB glitch and wall riding/wall bouncing is technically part of the game's physics and not a glitch. Personally, I'd ignore those and use the glitch category for respawns, true OOBs and other glitches exclusive to one platform, but once again it's for the mods to decide. Anything would work as long as the rules are clear.
Also, if it wasn't obvious from the title, this is entirely separate from full game categories. Those play more of a role due to loads and VO skips along with the PC only respawn glitches. I guess it could be switched to LRT and have a similar separation to the above, but that'd mean recalculating times and putting significant effort in, so I won't advocate for it.
Anyway. Thoughts?
The only problem i can think of in merging console and PC times in one category is graphics. On PC grass can be fully turned off and it gives a big advantage because all bumps and small cuts become visible. This can definitely be dealt with, but i thought i should mention it here.
Another thing is FPS difference. Codemasters F1 games (22 and prior) are known to process car physics differently depending on the FPS. Of course, they run on much newer version of the EGO engine, but we have no certain proof that this bug doesn't affect older games like DiRT2 or DiRT 3. I have both PC and PS3 versions of the game, so i might test it in the future. Just a speculation on my part.
Lowered graphics are less of an issue since we get infinite attempts to navigate the bumps in time trials. If the geometry changed or physical obstacles were removed by lowering the settings it'd be a different story, but I don't think that's the case here.
The FPS thing might be true. I looked through some debugging symbols for the game it seems like you can test it the same way as in the the video. There's no in-game cap but the FPS can be locked with RivaTuner. However, if lower FPS is really found to be advantageous then PC players can lock the game to 30 FPS and it becomes much less of a problem. Either way, having a separate category for it is overkill.
Guess this is dead in the water for now, but FWIW I went ahead and tested whether FPS changes behaviour in the same way shown in the video. TLDR: it doesn't.
Using RivaTuner to switch between 30 and 144 FPS caps, there was no difference in any tested area. Even Tamdaght's very bump-heavy section saw no changes at all. If replays work the same in Dirt 2 as they do in modern EGO games (and based on my reverse engineering, they do), this means framerate has no impact on physics.
If this isn't convincing enough, you can try recording a macro for further testing, but I attempted it and the game ate all the inputs. So unless someone is able to produce clear, reproducible evidence to the contrary, we should go with the results of the replay testing and assume the framerate doesn't change anything.
We are working on this matter but it takes more time than we anticipated.
