Rfactor 2 future: Should we (or just I) be worried?

One way to establish how close or how far a SIM is from mimicking reality, for me, is to drive a road car on a track that mimick a real road. I am using a road car because I have experience with those and although I have done a few track days on race track, the bulk of my experience is spirited driving on real roads. I cannot judge an open wheeler very well, I never drove one. But if a SIM can do a road car on a road track, then it is much more likely to do the other as well.
Driving is not hard, going fast is hard and requires concentration, work and perseverance.
The question is not are the cars in RF2 harder or easier to drive, the question is are they becoming more realistic.
The answer will be in the rate of adoption, most people driving in SIM have a good idea what driving feels like.
I sincerely hope for the sake of RF2 that this is where Studio 397 is going instead of catering of a small group of people addicted to special effect FFB and challenging car to drive for the sake of excitement.

 

Think a hardcore sim but with UI options of using aids
like traction control / reduced damage etc is the best way to go

Steering towards simcade is becoming like many other titles thus loosing individuality as there's less hardcore sims on the market

Dumbing things down would be a massive mistake as long term usability is lost as any enjoyment is short lived

 

Kunos sold AC to 505 for 5M€... short lived... but good lived... so probably a tempting way.

 

No l said 'l 'prefer it harder , realistic or not .

 

Please don't panic! They are just updating so cars can drive different but with realism always on mind...

 

A sim should have a breadth of cars, catering for different skill levels. If you enjoy being tested, pick a car with the characteristics that speak to you. If you're new to sim racing, pick a car with lower HP, traction control and ABS.
The sim can still be realistic and doesn't have to make it more or less difficult to cater for preference. The challenge though is, this is still just being simulated, so what does realistic really mean? I think the only way is to have a real driver compare the simulated car to the real thing.

 

No panic... but the Reiza move is a statement (by Reiza)! Niels numbers, then Renato "fun/sells" reality.

 

Race cars nowadays are made for people with money, not skills (except for a few series like F1, but even there you have this happening). Even drivers have been asking for years to have less downforce and more power.
Imagine customer cars like GT and LMP where you must have bronze drivers.
Nobody wants cars being totaled, it costs too much and in the end not even the manufacturer will profit as it end up causing teams to retire. Just my 2 cents.

 

The fact is that in the real world, nobody think that harder equal more realistic.. Engineers that build cars try their best to make their car safer, more predictable, more controllable. Joy of driving or racing in today world is no more :" look mà, I'm still alive!" , but more :" ahh I took that car to its limit and almost lost it here and there, but I still managed to be the faster today".
Do you want to experience harder cars? Take Howstons to one of those death trap track they should be raced onto. And of course, when Howstons will be updated, they will be "easier" to drive, but not because some teenager is eager to feel he drives like a champ when in reality is a chimp, but because technical improvement in the sim (CPM,chassis flex and so on) will give to the simulated car more depth and more realism, allowing us to drive them better. This is not cheating, is improving.

 

And don't tell me that simulators fanboy is too niche market to allow people to live out of it, there is plenty of flight simulations out there, and most of them can be used ONLY after reading thick manuals.. one for each craft simulated. If there are people willing to read all those pages just to fire an engine start (a 15 minutes procedure on some of them) , how can you think that people are too dumb or lazy to sit behind a wheel and simply drive/race on what they hope is the best simulation they can afford?
I see a lot of self entitlement in this stance :" look how hard is this sim, and I manage it".
I know this attitude because it's the same that led me to choose Falcon 4.0 back in the days as my preferred sim : "this sim come with several pages of keystrokes? the manual is 1 inch thick?" Then this is what I want to master... and I did.
But one thing is simulating equipment function and instrument and flight procedures, where harder is simply a consequence of more accurate representation of reality, one thing is vehicle handling... a real F16 could be flown by a child, otherwise a pilot would not be able to use all the complex equipment it carry onboard. Should be a F16 simulator hard to fly to be more realistic? Offcourse not.

 

Re.Flight sims

I use DCS world P-51, downloaded the complete original flight manual from the 1940's & read the lot!
tricky plane to master,
very very enjoyable read and simulated flight experience, my pal is now doing same

 

Full on realism is the only way for rf2 to deferentiatte them rf2 from every other racing game.
I've heard it said many times that people would be very surprised how easy race cars are to drive,the hard part comes when trying to drive on the edge 100% of the time,and that's what separates the greats from the goods.
Offering realistic with driver aids is definitely the way to go,you cater for everyone then

 

Chris, seeing as you are here, can you comment on the current state of the tyre model for the historic cars? We never seem to get any updates on it. Will the CPM and chassis flex ever be added?

 

Not at all.
Please do take a little bit more time to read through this thread.
I'm pleased to see that quite a few people, whether they agree with me or not, at least get my point.

 

I hadn't thought of flight simulators. Oh why did you have to bring up flight simulators as if I don't spend enough time in my race car cockpit now, which I'm sure could be an airplane cockpit pretty easily!

Frig!!

Ok... I'm all right now!

What is the best flight simulator and yoke??

Back to topic. I drive hwy tractor trailers known as super B's here in Canada. 63,500kg. What makes a sim real is two main things for me. Sensitivity of the wheel and sense of speed. Sense of speed is what rF2 does the best. I find myself slowing too much for corners at times with rF2 while I have the opposite in AC. rF2 has no need for caned effects.

I am amazed how sensitive a real car really is. (This is what I like about Pcars. Very low latency.) Even the hwy tractor I'm driving now with nearly one million km's (she got some play) is how sensitive it still is. If I move my wheel even one degree because I have reached for my coffee I'm in the rumble strips. I have to constantly aim straight down the road the same way I have to do with rF2. I don't know of any other sim that I have to do that with?

A sim needs to scare and shock you somehow. I find myself losing interest if there is not enough road and sensitivity in the wheel. Sound is a big part of the formula as well.

 

Just to add 2c.
Licensing motec is a very good sign about where we are heading to IMO.

 

That was my concern too: https://forum.studio-397.com/index....st-in-dx11-rf2-coming-from.55440/#post-891147

But, with all respect possible saying this, i don´t think the 397 guy would give you a completely honest answer. Even mainstream games sell their stuff as "most realistic thing ever" and use some data to prove an use statements from ex-drivers, actual drivers, engineers... to sell their games

Btw, i can do some laps in FISI2012 with one hand on the wheel only and smoking (not good laps, but still...)


I like think this guy opinion on reddit explain better my feelings about modern f1:
whatthefat 79 pontos80 pontos81 pontos 1 ano ago (37 filhos)

In the current cars, with such huge torque and no traction control, it would be virtually impossible unless they trundled around very slowly in 8th gear. The slightest mis-step on the throttle would mean a spin. Any attempt to go much faster than that would be hampered by brake and tyre temperatures falling much too low, and the driver having no idea how to correctly use the brakes anyway -- i.e., applying huge amounts of pedal pressure, while also being extremely careful to avoid locking them in a car with no ABS.

On top of all that, the average person would not have the upper body or neck strength to sustain more than a few laps at anything approaching racing speed. Within a few laps they would be slumping over. Even professional racing drivers who are not accustomed to F1-level g-forces usually struggle to do more than about 10 laps before it becomes a big problem.

 

I'm set up entirely for driving simulation

But my setup works fantastically with flight too but I only really defect to flight on the odd occasion
I remove the QR steering wheel
& I have an attachment for my hotass flight controller stick just at front low on my seat

Flight with motion + vibration + VR is brill , just like car simulation is

Ps I had a real life flight lesson just to compare flight sim vs real life
-just as I have a few times with track days etc

 

Top Gear over dramatized that episode. They have to sell a show so they have to make it look as dramatic as possible. If you search online there is plenty of videos of "normal" people who get to drive formula 1 cars and they are OK. Paid track days, formula 1 experiences and the like. Obviously they are not going to be able to drive 70 laps at full speed, but it is nowhere near as bad as Top Gear makes it look.

https://www.lrs-formula.com/en/

https://www.agsformule1.com/en/driving-courses/formula1/

http://www.rajamakiracing.com/en/

https://www.puresport.net/us/f1-driving-experience

https://racing-school.co.uk/product-category/cars/formula-1-car/

 

I don´t think these rental f1´s are the same thing; Anyway...