How real do you want your simulator to be?

I'm all for realism, trophy girls, champagne, big money contracts. Bring it on!

 

I agree with these.
But 100% realism would be too much.
Sweating in the gym, no alcohol, taking care what you eat, early sleep, must perform stress, we don't want those

 

Yes definitely though simracing already dodged plenty of beer bottles that I did not drink lol

Speaking of stress, I want the driving/racing experience on the limit that stresses you in a way which makes you very concentrated and zoned, but rewards with great experience. Because that's how Imo all cars should be. I want to feel value of keeping car steady at great speeds. Just simply as realistic handling as possible.

Secondary realistic graphics. Good artist work, realistic colours, textures, lighting...

Third is the sound, if not simulated greatly, then at least good samples for ext and it.

Fourth good replay cameras, because it is lovely to appreciate physics by observing externally.

Fifth is the career simulation, where you should obey to rules, get penalties for crashing and rewards for good positions.

 

It's an important question, and hopefully S397 have worked out what they're aiming for long-term.

As part of a 'realistic' F1 league that ran for 10 years through rF1 and rF2, we found that there's generally a limit to what people are willing to endure in a fun hobby (on average). We always ran "100%" damage and full length races, parc ferme with qual-worn tyres when it worked in rF1, and dabbled with custom weather and safety car rules (like cars unlapping themselves) in rF2.

With damage specifically, we tried to make it pretty hardcore. Front wing detach impulse around or even less than half of the CTDP values, honestly about as low as we could manage while still having some regard for online variation (two players can have different experiences of the same incident, and by that I mean physics-wise - not just the inevitable difference in opinions ). Wheels fell off with fairly low impact collisions (relative to many mods), engines died with decent wall hits, brake and engine wear were knife edge and had to be managed (early downshifts? Good luck with that...). The group we had were all up for that challenge, and as much as tempers sometimes got frayed when a race got ended at T1 after 2 weeks of build-up and practice (no restarts! ever!) with some resultant politics in the team owners association meetings, in hindsight it was all part of the experience.

Something you don't get with offline racing, or regular online racing (like a race every 1-2 hours, or a mass of other servers you can join immediately), is the adrenaline rush when this is your only chance to get it right, and the next race is 2 weeks away.


Now for the limits. Everyone wants wet weather until nearly everyone slides off a wet track. Doing times 15-20 secs slower than normal and people complain about unrealistically little grip, while real life races can have cars doing times 20-30s slower. I turned up the braking difficulty while feeling especially cruel (I mean, aiming for ultimate realism..) and found - judging by the backlash - that as much as we were all pretty keen, the majority of the drivers weren't interested in making braking a critical part of their driving, or wanted to try and change long-formed braking-foot-habits.

Had complaints about track limit abuse, so spent a whole season being 100% strict with race and grid penalties for infractions. Got some 'feedback' from that too.

In early rF2 days we were anticipating variable wind, variable track temp with sun, better variable weather. I'm one of the 5-10% who would have embraced it; the rest I think wouldn't have enjoyed coming off the track while "doing the same thing as last lap" (something I heard several times even in rF1 - which says something about expectations and perception).


What I personally want, in addition to all the above being properly fleshed out (proper weekend formats, proper weather progression, weather between sessions accounted for, etc etc etc), is to experience virtually what I would experience if I were to physically go to a track up the road right now and do some laps. Of course the physics, the feedback, and all that (that obviously takes some investment to get to a good level, that next level motion rig looks intriguing). But on top of that, I want my garage adjustments to mirror what I could really do with the car. If there's information I should have to base my changes on, I want that information. If I can physically look at my tyres after a long run and gauge (literally!) tyre wear and balance, I want to be able to to do that in a sim.

Offline I probably don't care so much for damage simulation. Graphical damage has little interest for me, though I guess it looks cool so why not. But online, on a server configured appropriately and everyone willing, if I hit an aggressive kerb hard and do some suspension damage, or nudge a wall and do some damage, absolutely hobble my car performance by keeping some of that damage on there (poor geometry, lost aero, damaged exhaust, whatever). If I want to fix it then stop me driving until it's fixed. Crash in qual? Looks like I'm out.

The reason I'm not into offline racing is that after years of online racing, and high stakes at that (well, medium stakes, no financial element), nothing offline has the same drama to it. I want to push to my limits in qualifying (or, indeed, races) knowing that if I muck it up there are going to be consequences - and it's the same for everyone.


Of course it's not real life, so we can always jump on less serious servers or do some practice offline too, and that's the joy of doing it virtually

 

Yes. Yes and yes! But i prio physic handelig and fps over graphics and effects.
I would LOVE! a implemented way to earn ingame currency. And learning part of behind the scene of racing. Etc.
Racing to be able to buy your fav car. Or even lose it could be rly intresting for sure. I would say thats been a rly good online system. Where u can actely wreak and lose your car. Way better system thene..... thats for sure! Inn a perfect world it would be rly fun have it as close to reality as posible. With maby custom settings for what u want or not. But hard to grasp how hard that is to impiment. As for now am super happy with how rfactor 2 is reality wise.

Small campaign could be cool i guess.)

 

This departs from topic about simulator realism. You have that in games/simcades like GT6. For me simulator is all about driving realism, while other features are nice to have, but shouldn't distract developers from simulation aspect too much.

 

Yeah, in real life they get everything for free, costs are an arcade thing totally non realistic
rofl

 

A friend of mine uses a helmet in the cockpit, and if he has an accident his wife gives him a host.
This is realism.

 

I thought we are talking about simulators not racing career manager. In flight sims (i.e. FSX) you don't have these aspects, only pure flight simulation. Only in combat sims (DCS, Falcon BMS) you have some "career" aspects, mission planner etc.

 

If you include costs it's also simulation.
I mean if you wanna call something "gaming" or arcade at least use some proper arguments. If a sim was good enough to attract people and the developer included costs (virtual obviously) and proper damage you wouldn't even need a safety rating for online, ppl would try to drive more carefully by themselves it may not be an important feature but to say this would "go away from simulation aspect" is pure bs

 

You don't agree GT6 is simcade? I played it a lot and for me it's much more a game than "Real driving simulator". I'm just saying for me things like in-game currency, buying, upgrading cars belongs more to games instead of "pure" sims. Surely I wouldn't like to grind through lower class cars for weeks/months to be able to race F1 cars.

OK proper damage would be great, but again, if it would be at a cost of having subpar physics/handling, then I'd definitely prefer to leave current damage model. Again, there are other games that specialise in it. But I'm probably in the minority.

I played in some public lobbies in AC with full damage and it didn't help much. But I agree realistic damage would work more in clubs/league events.

But I wasn't referring to damage model in this case.

 

Your argument here is flawed. GT6 having currency and being 'simcade' doesn't mean currency isn't sim. You're making a leap that isn't logical.

 

If it is all about driving simulation then race rules are not needed, right?

 

Looks like if I say "ABC" you understand "XYZ³".
Waste of time.

Edit: ahhh it's avenger... if I had paid attention to the name wouldn't even do the first post. Disregard the previous conversation

We wouldn't even need damage
funny once a dev said "you are not supposed to do this so we wont work on this feature", dont remember now about what was (something off track if I remember right), almost sure it was ISI

 

It was something like : when I crash a barrier at 200 Km/h the car bounce unrealistically.

 

But how many sims have it? I don't know of any. I didn't say having currency would make it a game. Maybe it's a matter of semantic. It's a "gamish" feature. Earning in-game currency and buying and upgrading cars usually appeals to a different audience. It doesn't mean there's no overlap. Anyway what I really want to say driving/racing simulator should be focused on simulating driving/racing. But everyone is entitled to have different opinion.

 

I think it's getting too personal . Don't get hooked on my nickname, it's origin is different than you think.

If you're referring to my opinion, then read more carefully what I said .

 

What next XP in sims. .?

Nah thanks

First do the sim part correct eh

 

It's not about the nickname, once again proving my point. Nuff said.

 

I thought that was exactly about it