Now THIS is a great summary of OUR user experience

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Kevin Karas, Jul 6, 2021.

  1. RDG

    RDG Registered

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    At risk of asking too much: this should not be information you only find out after visiting the forums. A basic function of a UI is to communicate things like this to the end user. A small "*" after the text with a ( * Requires a restart) at the bottom would've sufficed.

    FYI: I reinstalled after an hour because I was watching onboard with the Glickenhaus on YouTube and listening to radio Le Mans and the itch came back hard. Fortunately the settings were still present so I didn't have to setup my wheel again and it still had Le Mans in the P217 against a field of GTE/LMP2 cars present, so that was somewhat nice. I remember last time enjoying the RSR-19 in AMS2, so on a whim I decide to change the car to the RSR and hit race. Big mistake, as the field was now comprised of only RSR-19s (why does it do that...), also the RSR interior is in real need of a facelift. It looks nothing like the '17 RSR in iRacing or AC, but that's another topic. Exit session, revert to P217 and reset the opponents. I was running out of time, so I skipped qualifying and went into the race right away. Had a decent start, decided to take it easy in the first laps to get used to the sim again. After one lap, full course yellow, and after 2 full laps behind the safety car I decide to call it quits for the day. I forgot about the flag rules setting...

    So yes, in a nutshell: despite the new UI, the fresh install experience is really not great. I'm going to reinstall ACC and AMS2 tonight and see how that will go, but I have a feeling that'll be relatively smooth sailing compared to rF2's experience. Such a shame as rF2 has the best Le Mans experience out of any sim on the market.
     
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  2. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    The bug should be gone by now, should have been gone within.. oh, I don't know, a week? But here we are.

    As I said, I hear ya. I'm not defending anything here, just giving info. That's what most troubleshooting on here is - it's not giving basic game instructions, it's finding out what obscure thing has gone wrong and the known steps to fix it.
     
  3. RDG

    RDG Registered

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    I'm not sure what the bug exactly is, but it seemed a bit weird to me that the default setting for the audio was set to 1. I mean, the experience is really bad with the audio set to that and I'm sure even the lowest end computer could run a setting as low as 4 without hampering the experience like that.
     
  4. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    The bug is it randomly changing to 1, generally from a default of 64. It's been happening for a while now. Shouldn't be happening, shouldn't be something that needs to be known by a user.
     
  5. RDG

    RDG Registered

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    Ok, that explains. I thought it was part of the default new user experience, which it shouldn't be. That's actually a relieve.
     
  6. davehenrie

    davehenrie Registered

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    The bug isn't that the default setting of the audio is 1. The bug is that whatever setting you have, it is being changed to 1 when the game boots. As Lazza stated, this bug has been known for several weeks and you'd think they would have squashed it by now.(especially when the 3 prong development process is supposed to PREVENT bugs such as this occurring in the the default version of the UI. 64 is the max setting for the number of sounds and several users here have recommended you change your setting to 64 and then reboot. 64 does not seem to impact most systems these days. FYI @RDG, the UI can't be expected to notify a user of the need to reboot when the UI isn't aware of the problem. This is just something users here found out on our own.
     
  7. r00b Driver

    r00b Driver Registered

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    Love that story!

    But, and I'm not being a dick or anything, but, if you uninstalled rF2 you'll have to do all of that over again next time!!

    I remember fannying about with rF2 for months, yes months, before things started to *click*.

    Anyway, good read, much love !
     
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  8. Kelju_K

    Kelju_K Registered

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    :D
    best comment ever!
     
  9. Kelju_K

    Kelju_K Registered

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    For me personally, all this tinkering is not that much of a turn off. I usually have to fight the urge to tinker something (when everything is already working), and i usually fail at that, to my own demise :D

    BUT for someone starting from scratch with this game, oh my! What an horrible experience, and the only motivation to continue all that hassle, is propably the fact that you already used 2 hours for it, and can't get your money back anymore. hahaha!

    Even for someone like you, who already knows what he's doing, after just being on brake from the game, that was totally unacceptable amount of trouble. There simply is no way around it.

    That said, i would have NEVER started the "lets try rFactor 2 again" -project with limited time. I think that was your first mistake, hehe. (sry, im an idiot!)

    I would have prepared my self mentally for the process, for 2 weeks in advance, made sure that i have total privacy, and empty to do list in other ares of my life. Not even joking here.

    THAT should be THE disclaimer when installing rFactor 2 for the first time :D (ok, joking again).

    Anyway, hope to see you back in the game at some point. when it works, it still pretty good game ;)
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2021
  10. Binny

    Binny Guest

    So what i can get from this is dont recommend rf2, dont buy it if you do get refund before 2hrs & if you have taken a break from rf2 get ready to have a mental breakdown or have 2 weeks up your sleeve without interruptions and you will be fine. Great endorsement for the game but from what i'm reading and hearing this is not far off, most ppl saying its not user friendly not easy to navigate. Still with all this i'm still here smart or crazy i dont know. LOL
     
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  11. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    It's 75% off right now on steam and I still wouldn't advise casual friends to get it.

    I couldn't honestly speak to anyone and guarantee anything but a great driving feel in a track-day format - if you're happy to drive around by yourself and drive against the clock, it won't disappoint. Prepare to spend hours setting it up right. Prepare to occasionally have an issue that may take hours to resolve.

    AI races, multiplayer, running actual series, any sort of safety car involvement - some of it will work, sometimes it'll all come together and be a great experience, but I wouldn't put them on a list of features and say yeah, you'll get all that if you buy rF2.

    But if I know the person is the right type to enjoy that core experience, and isn't a complete PC novice (or I'm willing to lend a hand when it'll inevitably be necessay), it's easy to recommend - with conditions.
     
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  12. RDG

    RDG Registered

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    I ended up driving a nice 2,4 hours of Le Mans yesterday, it is still the best Le Mans experience on the market. It is just a shame that you need to tinker so much to get that experience. I had the audio bug twice where the audio sources were reset to 1 (setting it back to 64 and restarting the game fixed that), I had FFB not working after the formation lap once (restarting the race helped), for some reason the Le Mans setup was not forced for the Ligier and Oreca and editing this of course reset the opponents to just my car and I had one crash to desktop while applying MSAA settings in game.

    Other than that, it was fine once I got on the track. I also ended up using OpenComposite instead of SteamVR because the performance difference is insane. I could not get a stable framerate using SteamVR unless I turned off post processing, set MSAA to x2 and set the rest of the graphics to medium. Using OpenComposite I can set everything to ultra and MSAA to x4 and still get perfectly good frame rates.

    I mean, rF2 is a great sim for WEC racing, I just wish they'd:
    1. Give the RSR, M8, Oreca 07 and Vantage the same attention they gave the 488, C8 and P217 as those cars are really not great to look at in VR.
    2. Keep bug squashing.
     
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  13. Kevin Karas

    Kevin Karas Registered

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    True. Driving a GTE, LMP2 field on Le Mans really shows the potential of rF2. I love to do that from time to time, but said problems turn me off every single time :D Let's see what the upcoming Le Mans 24h game of MSG might give us
     
  14. Kevin Karas

    Kevin Karas Registered

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  15. mantasisg

    mantasisg Registered

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    Yesterday I saw an interesting quote, apparently by Einstein (as always). He said: Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05004-4

    Now the question should be how much and in what way rF2 could be simplified without surrendering on its flexibility, features and end experience ?

    Everyone is smart these days to say that rF2 is this and that, as well as speaking about other simulators. But at the end of the day, how much of those people has ever suggested some reasonably precise reasoning ? And how much of that has become just a meme, which people repeat like parrots ? Sometimes it is truth, and in some other times things people say are just related to image of a thing, which may have not as much in common with reality.

    P.S. I never had any problem setting things up in rF2, but in certain situations it is not as mobile and comfortable as I guess it could possibly be.
     
  16. Seven Smiles

    Seven Smiles Registered

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    The tinkering is a turn off for me but even worse is that having spent hours tinkering, when I come back to the game after a break the tinkering I had no longer works and I have to start all over again before I get a vaguely acceptable experience in VR. This is not just rF2 but other games break less easily. It's got to the point that I don't try to use OpenComposite or openvr_fsr, I just wind down the details in the game to the minimum in the hope that I can run the game with a reasonable frame rate without too much tinkering. It still ends up that by the time I've got things running in a reasonable manner I'm too frustrated to want to bother to race. My "fault" for not playing rF2 every day I suppose :rolleyes:
     
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  17. Kevin Karas

    Kevin Karas Registered

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    Well, VERY simple answer. Just look at other simulators which do most things waaay better, sometimes with even more options. The above twitter post just says it all. There have been tons of suggestions for improving the new UI for example. I could give you instant 10 suggestions which include simple things like layout optimizations (so no hard things to do). All already have been said and communicated ALOT. Its not like there are no suggested ways to make it better.
     
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  18. mantasisg

    mantasisg Registered

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    @Kevin Karas Very simple, and simpler than it should be.

    It is not like I have not been criticizing rF2 UI, and some things related. I am persona non grata in rF2 discord.

    The problem is that some of those things are as clear as it can be for everybody. And some of those things are going to be inevitable complications because those options exist in the first place, and while they may require extra tinkering they increase flexibility of whole experience. But all of that is unclear till we begin speaking about precise elements. rF2 is indeed at fault that many of the problems has not been danced around. More over, while new UI brought some nice touches, S397 has miraculously managed to achieve even worse UI experience, increased weights of all items by requiring tons of new PNG images, it loads longer, more clicks... it is not better than old UI. There surely was tons of good suggestions about how to make rF2 better, I have no idea why developers simply does not even move a finger on various issues, as some of them seems like all they require is minutes of work. Nobody can understand whats going on, except developers themselves.

    As for problems to launch rF2 in the first place ? Sorry, but I don't remember having much. It also has been easy to setup controllers, setup buttons, never had too much problems with any options, other than accidently activating some of driving helps by pressing some F[1;..;12] button and not realizing it for a while, having some worse graphics because not deleting cbash and shaders when it should have been done... rF2 is certainly better than any other sim, or is at the level of iRacing by having good FFB right out of the box without having stupidly much unnecessary FFB tweaking options.
     
  19. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    @mantasisg the questions posted on this forum and the rF2 discord - let alone all the other places people might go to first/instead - are a pretty good indicator.

    You mention shaders and cbash very casually there. Do you really think that should be a thing a user needs to do?

    OT but you brought it up - stop making yourself a discord martyr. You had an issue/incident with other users there, and weren't the worst in that regard either.
     
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  20. mantasisg

    mantasisg Registered

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    I definitely think it shouldn't have to be done by users. I did it because I saw member of these forums mentioning it. I did it once, still don't know why exactly these files go bad, and also I don't know if I should do it again.
     

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