Everyone knows what happened with the 24hr Virtual race at Le Mans with rF2. iRacing just completed a 24hr event at Daytona and while there weren't technical glitches, there have been a raft of complaints about how the racing was, or wasn't. I don't want to start a .mine is bigger than yours' type discussion, but what about the scale of the iR event? They had a huge participation number. So far, the bulk of rF2 special online events have been almost solely for the 'Best of the Best.' I would like to see a 24hr race for absolute beginners, for weekend only drivers....iRacing may have ghost cars in the pits and phantom contacts but they did have thousands of drivers participating. The bulk of any sim user base rarely only consist of top flight drivers. Why can't rF2 have multiple layers of the same event so 90%, 95%, 100%, 105%, 110% drivers can take part?
The bulk of the negative sentiment I see towards MSGM is that they've bought up licenses that took events from being inclusive and made them exclusive to only the top drivers. While a bunch of that is just the unpaid equivalent of a troll farm trying to funnel everyone into iRacing, I think a lot of people would appreciate being able to take part. Much of these events is the hoohah at the time and people want to be involved. I'm not sure how many people will stay up to watch a 24 hour sim race, but there's obviously heaps who love to take part in an online mega event. Without needing to see more than highlights of the top split, I think those racing at 110% pace of the top split still appreciate the names that they are racing alongside. Even if those names are on a different server, they are still in the same event. Think R3E recently had 2.4 hours of Daytona and that looks to have been popular too. So yeah, opening up splits to allow people a crack at Le Mans 24H on rFactor 2 is surely a win win? I'm sure a good proportion of the people who are currently put out by the loss from iRacing (which is silly really as they could still run it..) would be up for giving it a go in rF2. Would be good publicity surely. Also I can't see it doing anything to the detriment of the eSports top split race.
The only complain I have about the iracing event is that it was not promoted and broadcasted well enough. I'm not even sure if there was an official broadcast. Iracing themself barely talked about it on their socials and overall it felt strange after the huge event LMV was in this area. But I like the fact that we have Lemans @ rf2, Daytona @ iracing and Spa 24h @ ACC
They did make a post about it: But it's like a fun run as opposed to the olympics. No one really cares too much about the broadcast. Just the taking part. There's a fair amount of fuss in social media with amateurs streaming it. But it's an amateur race at the end of the day. Which is the main attraction I think.
The mediocre is always the best marketing target, as we comprise the 99% of the simracing people, good advice.
What do you want ? Very nice sweat soup without any taste, free served ? Very good meal, high price, small portions, poor cook but with a very good wine ? Choose wisely
I was at Cadwell a few years back and the guy parked next to me in the paddock said he'd just come back from the Isle of Man. He was over there watching the TT. Well the practice leading up to it. He decided he couldn't be bothered watching other people riding and wanted to go ride his own bike. Cancelled the TT and spent the time doing track days instead. Think point is that some people would rather watch how it's meant to be done. Others would rather potter around in an amateur fashion where at least they are participating. But in this case there's no reason why we couldn't have both. Like there's lots of talk about the top split of the iRacing Daytona 24 having a few solo drivers who just dropped out after an hour, leaving a boring race for those left. The top split in rF2 would be the invitational race. Not just the fastest public lobby. So I think that would still draw some public interest with real drivers like Romain Grosjean and sim drivers like Michi Hoyer. Then the rest of us plebs* could roll around the track at our comparitively slow pace without taking anything away from the spectacle (?) of the feature race. * Should say I'm mainly speaking for myself here. For whatever reason I am getting my arse handed to me in LFM rookies. I'm like top 20% or something iRating on iRacing, what's going on ha. Same deal on ACC. Back in AC on SRS I was top 8th in the UK at one point. A couple places behind gamermuscle. What has a few years in iRacing done to me
I think you're comparing apples to oranges. The iR event, to my limited understanding, is done within their system and is basically open to everyone. To run it in their system, with public visibility (within the game, as much as that makes sense), and then restrict participation would be pretty harsh, and presumably would be preceded by some sort of qualification process. The LMV event was run as a standalone event - it wasn't in the CS, the server wasn't even (intentionally) visible. MSG could have used anything at their disposal to run it (not just rF2). It's pretty much the equivalent of a league holding a big event, except due to the MSG license and the involvement of the related parties it has a more official standing. Any expectation that the general public would be able to take part (except the known [potential] route of impressing via the CS competitions last year) would seem a little naive. No one was complaining in previous years (let's say pre-2019) that rF2 wasn't holding an event to coincide with Le Mans, the Indy 500, etc (maybe some wishes, but no widespread outcry). The change since then is 1. MSG is holding the official event, and 2. iRacing isn't holding the official event, and is not holding a similar event (either because they can't, or they've just chosen not to). From an rF2 point of view nothing's really changed - maybe a lot of people would like to take part in a big event that coincides with the real thing, or resembles it in some way, but rF2 isn't doing such an event, and to this point never has.
I thought Dave was saying why don't we also have the public races to run alongside the main event? Though there's nothing to stop something like SimGrid or LFM from doing it I guess. But having it official would be good I think. There could be qualification like you said. Maybe those finishing in times comparable to the main invitational event might get an opportunity to race the invitational the following year. People love the big events on iRacing. Theres's a good sector of people who don't bother with iRacing on a day to day basis but will go there just for the special events. Mass involvement creates a lot more warm fuzzy feelings. I mean the top split was tainted by cheating but you don't hear a peep in social media about that do you. Because for the most part the people who didn't get crashed or netcoded out of the event had a good time. Having said that, there was a lot of talk of boredom and it being a grind. But I think that's probably more to do with the tyre/track model and the fact so many splits fell apart within the first hour. But as an overall event you'll mainly hear good things about the special events. In terms of bad press towards rF2 though yeah, I think just MSGM's involvement drew a lot of criticism. I think iRacing were kind of canny to just opt out of running their event and let the angry mob carry their pitchforks right on by towards rF2. I mean it's not like they have the official license for any of the other endurance races they run is it. They just stopped the main one that MSGM had got exclusive rights to. Maybe so that they're not just the unofficial Le Mans or maybe just because they know their users. There's a mob on the iRacing forums who have spent years attacking iRacing themselves, so I'm sure it's refreshing to take a break from that.
@Owen Pyrah yeah, I get it's probably more a wish than a comparison, but mentioning them both in the same breath (post) will just lead to comparisons. I don't think it can be iR vs rF2, because it wasn't an rF2 event - it was just run on rF2. Makes sense to me that simracers will want to take part in an event rather than just watch it (as I gather happens in iRacing), and it's a fair wish, just not sure how ready the CS etc is yet and how much that might mean for S397 in terms of infrastructure to run it. If we had 5-10k people playing on the CS daily it'd probably be a lot easier to cater for a big event.
Ah right yeah I get you. It was an event by the parent company that just happened to use rF2. Do you know if it's possible to see stats on the CS races? It's a pretty opaque system and I admit I haven't tried it since using LFM. But when I tried it a while back I remember being one of 3 cars on track. An open wheeler at Hampton Downs. Was a good race but just a bit of a sparse grid. I can't remember having any clue if there would be drivers or not until I was in the session.
If you subscribe to a competition in the CS you can see how many people subscribed it and of them how many entered qualifications (they have laps and times in their record), then how many took part in a race. It's several months that I don't make one, but last time I took part in CS competition there where between 200/300 entries for that particular event. Then as always you have people that never race, never show up and people that race the same event multiple times. I've made races with just 2 opponents and races with 12/15 people. I'm not the kind of people that quit a server if it's not full enough.
Ah nice, that's good to hear. Yeah I stuck my race out that I did, as did the other 2 cars. Between 200-300 entries is very decent! I let my iRacing sub lapse but I was looking at the stats for the series I used to race (Formula Renault 3.5): My timeslot has between 8 and 15 cars depending on the day of the week. The main draw to iRacing is the player numbers so it's been surprising to join LFM rookie races and find 2 or 3 splits running in my weird timeslot. With ACC I've seen over 120 cars! Though the numbers drop drastically for the non-rookie LFM races due to the DLC and needing to buy all the cars. I think I'll give the CS another go thanks. Always good to have another option.
Usually there is at least one competition that rely on free or not new content, so partecipation is not constrained to buy it all now.
