GTR² and rFactor 1 are both amazing and made me get in the sim racing world and I'm very thankful to ISI and Simbin for it. BUT... at 2005 year, 10 years ago therefore, if you ask me what I could expect regarding to, let's say, 2014 - 2015 racing simulators, I would imagine something much more advanced in all aspects that we really have now (graphics, physics, immersion and so on). At least to me, sim-racing has developed on a disappoint way.
If iRacing looked better and wasn't a stupid price, it would reign supreme. It's a small and fragmented sector, can't do anything about it. AC is mainstream, ISI is more into private projects, there are amateur modding teams, Simbin was almost gutted by KW, Codemasters didn't evolve in the right direction, etc. We need someone with the resources and knowhow of Polyphony Digital with the vision of Geoff Crammond or the lead at Papyrus.
Yeap and in addition we had the end of Moore's law, CPUs (mainly) and GPUs are not improving as they were in 2000 - 2005 when I'd imagine our 2014 computers running all water-cooled with i9 or i11 @ 7.00 Ghz and 256 Mb cache. I'd expect virtual reality nowadays, but I was totally wrong. Take a good screenshot of a decent mod in GTR2 and you won't see a huge difference from what you see now. Of course things improved... but not in a sharp way. Computers don't improve that fast anymore and human resources are always depending on the emergence of some genius like Crammond to get big leaps,it's like Science and the producing of games and simulators are pure science.
My first love was Rally sims on PC: Colin Mcrae 1&2, Pro Rally 2001, Mobil 1 RC...never get into RBR until some years ago, when i joined a couple of championships with french mod. Then TOCA RACE DRIVER 2 came out and i absolutely loved singleplayer "campaign". It was and it is the best i've ever played. TRD3 was fantastic too, more based con championships series without and history, but a great sim/arcade one. I think i bought Rfactor back in 2008, mostly to race online with RFT08 mod, a lot of fun, and a lot of wreckers everywhere, but these days you always found open servers with lots of people. I buyed RACE07 and GTR-Evolution and those were amazing. I joined my first leagues with this sim and do a lot of races (Steam tells me than more of 300 hours). Months later my community friends and me "discover" GTR2 and that was a blast, what a absolutely *****ng GREAT sim. I still think that nobody did a better job with a "complete" game and even today i think is perfect for leagues, because of the amazing content it has. But...you can't put Rfactor aside...when you have V8 Unleashed, Historics GT&TC, Formula Nippon, Touring Car Legends, Formula Armaroli, Enduracers...and virtually any track of the world (plus fantasy ones), you finally join Rfactor Army. I can't even say the amount of great moment those sim and mods gave to me and my friends...with Rfactor (and RACE/GTR2) we started to making leagues with skins, videos, teams...lots of great races, frienship, chronicles, tension and serious moments too... Today our communitty faces a "terrible" situation: some likes RF2, others Assetto, or GSC, or Iracing, or PCars...and is a very difficult thing, as an admin, decide wich way to go, because the ones who likes Rf2/AC/GSC/...usually don't want to race in other sim. I like all those sims, but RF2 and GSC are my favourites by far. AC, for me, is good but i find it far from RF2 FFB, physics, overall handling...i even prefer GSC, i find it to be a more complete simulator, and is becoming better and better. I like Iracing/PCars but can't make them a community sim. PS: excuse my pathetic english.
Long story in short, Started with Commodore C64, played All racing titles from that time on, ended with rf 2.
Ten years ago i expected the damage physics to be like BeamNG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaV7YAFrUpg
i'm very grateful to ISI that they produce very realistic racing simulators which has a niche market instead of producing a product that satisfies the masses which is generally less realism centric. They could have potentially multiplied their profits manyfold if they had but for whatever reasons they have not (i think it must be out of passion?). I'm still amazed how cheap rf2 is in cost for what you receive. There will be those who don't agree and are only interested in games like p-cars for whatever their reasons.
