I'm mainly an iRacer and coming from iRacing, I always know that every little detail in the track is accurately recreated from laser scan data. Of course, the downside is that iRacing is expensive as hell. I am trying other sims right now and I've joined an rF2 Indy league and greatly looking forward. The Indy side of iRacing are doing other things so it's made me look into rF2. I'm aware of rF1's extremely large library of mods and I've played a ton of rF1 back in the day. But since getting into iRacing, the accuracy of the tracks have become something that I want more and more from sims. rF2 seems similar in that there's not a ton of first party content that are from scans or real world data, but there's a lot of community content meant to fill the gap. I wanted to ask the wider rF2 community if they feel that the majority of community content is accurately recreated? Understandably this is just merely opinions and impressions as it'd be too time consuming to get perfect data over it. But based on your impressions how accurate are the rF2 community content to the real world content they are meant to simulate? Is it reasonably accurate? Or are the vast majority of the community content noticeably inaccurate and that's just something you'll have to learn to accept when playing rF2?
I will give you one recent example. We are starting to get a lot of BTCC content, soon all of the 2022 cars and some of the tracks Laser Scanned. One track we probably won't get, or at least not anytime soon, is Knockhill. Knockhill is a fun track, Knockhill is unique and I'm a fan of just about anything NOT a F1 Circuit so Knockhill is a great track to drive. If I maintain a "Laser Scanned Only" policy, I'll miss driving on that great circuit. rF2 has a growing list of Laser Scanned circuits, but there are gaps in just about every sector of world wide racing. You can stick to Laser Only Tracks, or you can enjoy a wide gamut of 3rd party tracks, many which are at least Lidar/Aerial scanned and some completely hand built. I choose the latter.
As a track creator from scratch I can tell you about the problems of not having lidar data. Getting the track is easy with geolocation but the heights, for example, are not accurate at all. Working this is difficult. All the work I have to do based on photos and videos, this means that you can never get very close to the real thing. I have to invent the terrain myself. All in all, the tracks are recognizable and drivers who have raced on them in person give them a good grade. Thanks to the creators we can enjoy circuits that otherwise would not be available, yes, with their errors and inaccuracies, but with extra content added to the official and paid ones. Ejemplo:
The good tracks are good, the bad... well, just skip them. Most tracks are reasonably accurate, particularly if they're conversions from other games (unless the game is from more than 15 years ago). Content made from scratch is typically accurate these days as it is usually made with data from aerial lidar scans, though it will often be lacking in details. For myself, I find it difficult to worry about accuracy for ovals (stay between the walls and don't hit the car in front of or beside you). Then there are historic tracks, like Riverside, where it is impossible to get any sort of scan. A good track map and aerial photo plus topographic map are helpful, but, yes, accuracy suffers. Are you going to skip using those tracks just because there is no scan?
It's a mixed bag. The S397 tracks are a definite step above the iRacing tracks in terms of detail and realism. Mainly things like curbs etc are the same as in real life while in iRacing sometimes they're not. Track surface can be a bit bland looking on a green track, but that's only because it doesn't have the canned skidmarks that iRacing paints on every track (sometimes in bizarre directions). But also the track side objects are far more detailed in rF2. Many tracks you start from the paddock and have to drive to pit lane. These same tracks in iRacing don't even have half of this stuff in the paddock, let alone let you drive through it. Like GUI said, there's all the AC tracks in the workshop that people have ported across. These have the same track detail as iRacing, but are a step below in shaders and trackside details. But they're laser scanned. Then there's some like Fuji (https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/fuji-raceway-from-scratch-2022.72483/) where there's no proper laser scan data, but a huge amount of work going in from the modder. Finally some that are fairly low quality. But like there's an Oulton Park which I believe is just mod content and that's better than the iRacing equivalent. Or the Porsche Cayman GT4 mod (https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/porsche-cayman-gt4-manthey-mr-v2-01.70534) that's better than the iRacing one.
Thanks for the responses everyone! I appreciate everyone giving their perspective and opinions civilly. I suppose the sim racing community is passionate enough that the track mod quality seem to be community policing, in that really poor quality tracks are likely not used, recommended, or seen much besides an entry appearing on the Steam Workshop. If I'm joining leagues in rF2 then it's probably not going to use tracks that are super low quality or too inaccurate. Some of my questions aren't just because I'm from the iRacing side, I remember a long time ago I was in a V8 Supercar league and the Bathrust version they used (I don't remember what version it was, too long ago) was super inaccurate and it kinda soured me on the idea of a racing sim that relies on community content in general. But all your responses makes sense and I supposed I'll just keep an eye out on what are popular third party tracks and whether they have positive comments or votes on them. I'd like my racing sim experience to be as accurate and realistic as possible but even with iRacing's laser scanned content, tracks change over time and are often repaved or go through changes from weather, so iRacing itself has some tracks that are "not accurate" because it's been repaved or have had changes since they've scanned it. That said, I don't want an experience like that rF1 at Bathurst long ago where I'm racing a track that's very noticeably inaccurate but it seems that shouldn't be too much of a problem with rF2 if I'm looking out for third party content that's curated.
If you are familiar with a laser scan of a track, basically any community content that isn't scan-sourced (to at least some extent) is going to disappoint in terms of not having the correct layout. You either don't run at those tracks or try to consign yourself to driving around a track that's somewhat like the real one. The Bathurst included in rF2 very much falls into this category. If you can suspend your disbelief out of the pits and up the straight, T2 will drag you kicking and screaming out of your malaise. Meh, it is what it is. For all tracks you aren't familiar with, it largely doesn't matter. Unfortunately some aren't given bumps (fictitious, researched, guesstimated, whatever) and that can take away from the enjoyment.
I think there is a difference between "inaccurate" and "out of date". Tracks are scanned and produced to capture a point in time. Whether they are kept updated is irrelevant, they are accurate at the point of capture if the data was good enough. I think third parties will struggle to get the scanning data that any business could possibly buy but it doesn't mean the results will be drastically wrong. They are many great artists out there doing this stuff for the love of doing it. Many started off as modders then made it into a dev team. So it's all about access to data really.
