Post your initial impressions here

Agreed. Off-track bumps and bangs totally over the top, like you were dropped in a rock quarry without a seat cushion.

 

My biggest grip with FR3.5 is the sound.

This is how they sound (fast forward to 1:10):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B-0uTv3A0Q

 

Classic mistake. You change not one thing at a time but two. Now you assume it's the game that's bad. Did you consider that it might be the Fanatec that needs tweaking. (I'm speaking from experience here.)

 

Hear! Hear! (Or, as they say on the Interwebs, "Here! Here!")

 

+1

 

+1 tire temps decidedly odd

 

+1 (Hey, I know you, Christopher Snow!)

 

Ditto.

 

+1

 

+1

 

The same. Just joined this joyous cluster...um...band of brothers.

 

Hooray for ISI! (And so say...virtually...all of us)

My first drive was in the 1960s F3. My first observation: the F3's yaw dynamics are way out of proportion with the F3's mass. The real F3's were about 1200 lbs. The rF2 F3 here behaves as if it weighs at least twice as much. (And I don't think the drivers sat that bolt-upright since Bernd Rosemeyer.)

Vintage Spa is good, but those old roads were not so flat as that; they had quite a lot of camber (high crowns).

Can we adjust the FOV in the mirrors, please? Those old 1960s boats had tiny mirrors a long ways away from the Mk 1A1 eyeball.

And can a brother get a little more wheel lock? By the time I got the steering where it feels right (rate, sensitivity, range, FFB "multi," etc.) I was out of steering lock at Monaco with it set at 27. I could easily use 30 or 35. IOW, at Macau or Pau I prolly couldn't do a lap without making 3-point turns at the hairpins.

The menu architecture is HORRIBLE! Important choices look like they're grayed out, the arrows are hard to hit (no, I'm at the default rez), there's one screen with nothing but HUGE geometric shapes and no clear choice to click, selecting a car or a track means shuffling through a deck of Tarot cards (what's going to happen when I have hundreds of tracks and dozens of mods?), the colors look like those of a 1954 table radio and the graphics look like they were sketched by 4th graders with crayons, there are too many type faces (some too big, many too small) and too many mouse clicks, you have to mouse from one side of the screen to the other to accomplish anything, it suffers mightily from an abundance of illogical choices (like clicking on the right arrow to make the gear chart shift left (and the gear chart inexplicably disappears altogether when you aren't loitering over it with the mouse), or having the caster box on one side of the page higher/lower than on the other side (the caster choices should be on the previous page) and making the tire temps, which are an indispensable part of any setup process, so small as to be practically illegible.

Why reinvent the wheel? The setup menu (at least) was pretty good in rF1. Why not just clean it up (making it look more modern instead of more moderne) and leave the basic structure/layout alone?

And why do we need four separate menus just to launch the game?

The sound (what little there is of it, squeezing through my Klipsches like the last drab of toothpaste from a spent tube) is screechy...like a DOS rendition of "Pole Position," circa 1983. But, like the graphics, the fps, the FFB, the online prediction algorithms, und so weiter, it will be resolved as the game wends its merry way through this beta process.

Greatness lies ahead!

See you at the races.

 

Overall for the most part I love it!!! Other than some minor bugs with graphics flicker with a mirror and choppy frame rate on mills it's great. On spa with the road wear there is a lot of FFB so much I'm worried it will damage my wheel but I do like it the 60's open wheelers FFB at Spa are awesome effects but just worried about the strength don't know whether to call it wheel shake or jolt magnitude but it's very strong. Also I for one would like the ability to downshift to Neutral and Reverse with a sequential shifter and not have to map a button for these functions!!!!

 

really

 

Some more interesting feedback against the graphics whiners, of which I guess I am one;

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here but as we are fans of "simulation"!!!
We are running wheels with belt driven engines providing great force feedback, separate shifters and handbrakes, load cell driven pedal sets, separate shift light indicator and gear indicator LED displays, buttkickers for engine vibration effects, triple screens, not to mention the simrigs all this stuff is mounted too. Sure not all of us may have the above combo but that doesn't take away from the argument, as simmers we want to get as close as possible to reality and what we see in front of our eyes are a BIG part of this.

So you take your hobby to that extent and then should happily compromise looking at dated gfx on a new major title in your simracing collection, sorry but I think some of us reserve the right to express their disappointment.

 

I understand, but I don't really think they're "dated". ISI have chosen to use the high power of today's graphics cards to add features to the game (rain, dynamic shadows, animations) rather than gloss and glitz. I approve. I was astonished that my FPS hardly wavered during a weather-changing lap at Spa, through areas with few TSOs or many. To me, that makes for a more enjoyable game than being able to see the dimples in the paint on a car. When ISI can add even better rendering without compromising the frame rate, I'll be as happy as anyone.

And related to Steve Smith's presence in this thread: welcome! Those of you who have not read "Four Wheel Drift" (included as a bonus in GPL's original box, now available online) should do so immediately. The lore and information contained therein is as useful and valid today as it was decades ago when GPL was a baby.

 

I've only tested the Megane so far and my impression is good.
I think the FFB is very detailed and gives good feedback when there is grip and when there isn't. I can feel the load on the tires through the corners and as soon as the car starts to slide and loose grip, it is felt through the forces.

I never driven a real sports car on a race track but somehow when there's an understeer through hairpins at Malasia the ffb gets very light and that is a surprise for me, I always thought there would be some heavy resistance in the ffb, and rfactor 1 with realfeel didn't feel like that...
This light force under understeer reminds me of Need For Speed Shift 2 by "Electronic Arts" but the difference is rF2 doesn't have any input lag and the steering is really precise and immediate. I know, Shift 2 considered as an arcade game but now with rF2 I begin to understand why devs of shift 2 claimed they have the most advanced physics engine in that period of time...

Finally, I like the physics and ffb with the Megane but it is definitely not as easy to drive as it was in rF1. It is something I will have to get used to.

I like the graphics, there are reflections in the cockpit and outside the car. There's a heat affect behind the car and the new hands inside the cockpit is a plus. The track textures seem more detailed and together with animated people brings life to racing. I like the menu and customization options, I can't wait for the mods that will take advantage of the new platform.

With my Intel i7 920 and gtx560ti, the beta is very demanding on the pc and that is something I hope ISI will optimize in the future...

Haven't raced online yet so not much to be said on that.

 

I can understand this point if you are refering to your wheel getting a good beating from OTT FFB, but in terms of reality, going over curbs and going off track in a real car is a very, very uncomfortable and teeth shattering experience.

A number of times I have found my tail bone in agony after hitting a curb too hard!

But I understand that the ffb has some issues on certain wheels.

 

Had a good session with scorz last night but i am really crap at this game. im lucky enough if i can do just one flawless lap!

the megans have a huge learning curve for me anyway. breaking is difficult. can only tap the breaks very lightly or else the car spins out of control.

i love the tyre physics. its second to none. when i started the race my tyres were cold and diddnt have much grip on the road but after a few laps it got better. Also, whenever i go on the gravel and come back onto the rack i can feel and hear the mud from my tyres! Never never seen that in a racing game before!

After the race with Scorz, i did some laps on the old F3 car around Monaco and Jesus, the graphics are night and day compared to the track we was playing on Scorz earlier on(was in the malasia track?)

The graphics on Monaco were at least forza 4 standard mate as i set the time to start at 5am and made the day cycle fast and it looked great!

Lads, try a race down Monaco for some nice eye candy

This game is great

 

Just don't understand WHY I don't see type of tires for my opponents on track???
Is it so hard to send ONE extra byte to telling tires type (wet\dry, soft\hard) ???
It's easy, very easy. Just send it once at exit from garage and each time after pit-stop. But it make possibility to see opponent's tires. C'mon! Do it.

Looking in rF2_car_modding_tires.pdf and don't see any way to make different "tire wall" to different tires type (Black\Red for IndyCar, White\Yellow\Red for F1). Maybe I just miss something and it is possible. But if not - it's just a epic fail. I'm talking NOT about "update" as it was in rF1, where I can set one type for whole event. I'm talking about real tires changes (texture change) during pit-stop or garage menu.