I run all the sims and most of the pundits claim that Rf2 has the best physics, tire model, lots of great content then I read stuff like this "Reiza Studios one day can do the same to the struggling rF2 product" in Bsimracing. Maybe I'm naive but I really just don't understand it. I just ran a league race in the f3.5 renault and that car is fantastic. I don't know, just baffled by the press.
The people who don't like rF2 most likely haven't raced it online with real people in a 45+ minute race. Call me a fanboy but I honestly believe that. The ones who hate it are looking for an instant gratification hot lapper. The tire model is the best in the biz and I'd say the same about the ffb but that feature is mostly subjective. Plus you look like you know what you're talking about if you say "rF2 SUX" Sim"racers" are a dying breed btw. Graphics built on a massive hype train is what sells software nowadays. FPS are the same, never will there be another RO-Ostfront
So a guy who runs a website for his own enjoyment is "press"? It's funny, there are far more complaints about other people not liking rF2 than there are rF2 users doing what they can to prove otherwise.
VirtualRcade being the biggest culprit, what do expect when its owner is a community ambassador for pcars and most likely has some nice deal with AC too. 1000s of subscribers/followers all taken in by the hype of post processing effects and bling. Then there is the news feed... every little video released. Every screenshot. Every time another dev so much as farts, its big news. Yet it takes days to even announce a build or new content from ISI. Then members, even ones who don't even own rf2 are un-moderated/allowed to post bull about how broken and rubbish rF2 is. I know of certain scratch built mods that are well into the wip process and almost due release... high quality mods from established modding groups or individuals with regular updates and videos/screenshots that the modders have sent into virtualRcade that have been ignored. But any other platform is given lots of biased coverage. Is it time ISI started a really big publicity drive ??
I don't hang out on these simracing sites trying to promote rF2 because....well because I just don't give a F***. You like it or you don't. Like I said, sim"racers" are a dying breed. Most of the people who use these sites aren't actual simracers. Ask him why his rear tires on the Indy car don't heat up. LOL.
I'm not baffled by the "press" or anyone else who is either ignorant or pandering to the ignorant. While there are many forces shaping "popular" opinion of various sim racing titles, two of the most obvious ones are commercialism and mainstreaming. Consider the fan base of the first PC sim, Indianapolis 500. Hardly a normal cross section of society. Users of this SW surely had unusually vivid imaginations, high IQs and levels of tenacity. Today any spoiled snot nosed tween can have a shiny "sim" on his PC in seconds serving up false validation of phantom driving ability without an iota of effort to learn software or invest in development of skills, knowledge and experience. Who needs any of that when these kids are born Senna's? This is exactly like the rest of society where the majority don't understand or respect the details of anything and the "press" or whatever they are simply feed off the ignorant.
I am, shall I say an older gentlemen, who comes from Detroit and 3 generations of motor heads. I never played any video games to speak of and this year found sim racing. So my intent of this thread is an honest one. I am learning the history and politics of the community so it may seem this post was to start wave of defense, but mostly it was for some insight and so far I am starting to see. LOL. Please tell me more.
I only use rF2 for my racing... but I think ISI don't do themselves any favours when they release stuff that is obviously bugged...for example the shiny grass in the new Brazil... it simply just gives numpties ammo
Promag, I too am an older gamer, old enough to remember the glory days of Zork and Oregon Trail. And I too have started sim racing recently; January of this year in fact. Here is my take on the bad press. Every game has its fanboys and trolls. rF2 is no different. However, there is a real problem with rF2. The game is a physics machine, the FFB sublime, the racing as realistic as it comes. But, and this is a big but, there are fewer and fewer players online. Leagues are losing members to the new shiny. (AC and pCars) Their games look amazing and have mostly passable physics. Not near as good as rF2 and their FFB is sub-par by comparison. But the mostly empty servers are a huge turn off. I race 60 minute races in my league with 120 minute series finales. The only game which can accommodate this in its most basic capacity is rF2. AC requires a lap count and only recently added pit stops. AC's pit stop and its adjustments are a mess in my opinion and rF2 kicks it's ass in this regard as well. In fact, I would say that rF2 is the superior sim in every category except graphics. (DX9 is hurting it in this regard immensely) But with empty servers comes league failure and eventual moving on to other sims as my league has done. The other thing hurting rF2 is the lack of marketing. The only "press" you see on rF2 is the videos on youtube (usually doing a poor comparison of graphics between it and AC or pCars) This is a significant problem because if a person is looking at a sim to begin with why on earth would they go for the bad looking sim when they can play a good looking sim with slightly less realistic, and more drive-able for a beginner, physics. Especially when the better looking sim requires less computing power to look good. (DX11) Oh, and one other thing, Career mode. So when you see bad "press" it is usually a person who was likely an rF1 driver who got sick of the glacial development time of rF2 and simply decided to go in a different direction. Or is a biased fanboy of their particular sim and wish to troll rF2. All of this is moot if you are willing to open the wallet and pay for iRacing. As you may or may not have noticed most of the video bloggers/youtubers play iRacing as their preferred sim. I dont have that kind of cash and so I must stick with the one time purchase type games... In the end remember that rF2 is a fantastic sim that has suffered from poor marketing and poorer graphical updating. That is all.
Welcome then. Simracing lived last decade basicaly using 2 titles. Rfactor 1 and simbin titles. Theres was some others like IRacing which born from this. There was also another title with quality named NetKar Pro which were made by the same guys (Kunos) that are releasing Assetto Corsa. It had this crappy online which killed it. RFactor 1 was the top title. It had hundreds of mods, thousands of track. Everything free. I belive the majority even used a cracked copy of rf1. All this resulted in packed servers, many online leagues, etc. Same (or similar) in simbin titles (race07 series) with a little less popularity. 5 years ago (or something like that) this titles start to become obsolete and new ones were required. ISI had their heads on rfactor 2, kunos on Assetto Corsa and a new thing appear called Project Cars. Here the things started to go wrong in all of them. Basicaly the system was changed. No more "buy->play" titles. We were flooded with information that we were buying Demos/betas/etc. Rfactor 2 was sold in 2 options, lifetime and anual subscription. Assetto Corsa was sold in something where if you bought the old NetKar Pro and some extra couple bucks you would get Assetto (forever). First thing this made was stopping all the things in modding scene. People had start some projects but quick they realize that there was no point in making things when products changed so quickly. They were releasing builds/versions at a pace that modding teams simply couldnt follow. So, everything halted there. People which bought rfactor 2 had a half made product. People which bought Assetto Corsa had a tech demo with one car which obviously couldnt show all game capacities, so the excitment of previews were imense. Development in rfactor 2 was at around the corner, meaning that every thing was worked step by step. This made rfactor 2 being reviewed as an unfinished thing. Obvious that people started to get no patience. I believe that if rfactor 2 was released only now with some new menus then things were much diferent. Then Assetto appear, after months of hype screens along the web. It delivers some great graphics, some fancy menus, some good showroom, some quicker loading times, some good oficial content. But it lacks several important things. But at that point people were tired of waiting for a clean rfactor 2 which were made of several annoying things specialy the colisions. This made simracing community not following both titles as it was supossed but to divide. There are rf2 fanatics, there are AC fanatics and theres a minority which can look to both in a non-biased way. This "news" sites are all made by simracers. People like me and you. But in most of them, bias is not a used word. Thats why things as Raceroom, simraceway, gamestock car, etc, have to few live time in their sites. They tend to be like the majority. Felt in love by this or that. In the end is all about past. People need to make a reset in their system (head) and look to things as they are. RF2 and AC are the main titles along with IRacing. Both are good, have their positive things. To me i think that the major diference is the time nedded to understand things. AC is a click-and-play title and rfactor 2 is more complex in part cause it has more implemented features such as real road which is the main diference when some guys say rf2 is an "ice sim". What i think its the future of all this? Well, i believe rfactor 2 will have the same destiny as LFS, a strong community for years but very closed to new members. AC will be the mass sim. PCars will have even more players since its a all-platform sim (sim?!). Basicaly, rf2=hardcore players, AC=majority, from kids to people which dont know what simracing means, PCars=everything. Sorry for my bad english, not EN native.
It shouldn't matter what the press say anyway - unless it effects sales for the company? you jump in a sim/game, drive the cars hard, you will know how real or unreal it feels - unless you can't drive - but then as long as you enjoy, who cares... enjoy mate
It is fantastic indeed. And I don't think that Wim was talking about "the physics, tire model, lot's of great content" and so on. The software is still missing stuff that has been announced some years ago... that's all I guess. Well I wouldn't say they are struggling but hey.... each to their own.
People buy a bottle of red wine ,drink it that night,get a buzz and wake wishing they hadn't bothered.others by a bottle of red with fine pedigree hold on to it,admire its maturing and know they have purchased a diamond that gets better day by day year by year.. Cheers ISI..
Do yourself a favor and don't read them comments. It's always fueled by a few biased folks (either for or against) who can't seem to see common ground. Ignore a bunch of biased crap here too - this topic included - with silly accusations and conspiracy theories. People's perception affects their reality and you don't want to be caught up in them pushing their reality onto others.
I can understand your cynicism, but reading threads is like looking for diamonds in the rough. i have read things that have quite a bit of insight and it's appreciated. Comments=grain of salt. I am just surprised by the press, all publications start somewhere and will grow according to their readership. Even EB is press whether he likes it or not, albeit editorial. LOL There is no sanctioning body for "press". We give credibility to them. I have given even less credibility to Bsimracing after that comment because it was unnecessary.
I'd wager that large percentage of these AC and Pcars fanboys are actually running the readily available pirated versions of these games. Its very easy to denigrate a product based on choppy youtube videos of a game you have never played.
I wouldn't say sim"racers" are a dying bread. I think it's just in a transitioning phase. In my experience the real "racers" (as in those that actually race online and in leagues) are typically older and not really gamers that always spend a ton of money on the latest and greatest hardware. So because the older non-gamer types aren't on cutting edge hardware they have stayed with rF1. I read a lot of misinformation about rF2 on some of the rF1 league forums where admins start a threads asking if they should try rF2 and a bunch of people say you need some crazy fast machine so they all write it off. rF2 has come a long ways and really doesn't require a supercomputer. At least not at lower settings that still look better than rF1. So until these non gamer types start upgrading it may take a while to get them to make the jump. I think what is happening today is "gamers" are crossing over into the sim world and lets face it there are way more gamers than there are racers. Gamers don't have any real racing experience any any shape or forum. They aren't focused solely on driving dynamics. Many of them probably haven't even driven a car much less race a car. These game types want gfx way over physics. Some say they want physics over gfx but in reality they wouldn't have a clue what real physics felt like. But these younger gamer types are all into social media so their voices are much louder. I run in an endurance league and only once in the 3 years of race there have I been on a team where all of them were on Facebook. When we are all on Facebook it's much easier to communicate about setups and planning. But it amazes me how hard it is to get a whole team of drivers that are easy to communicate with. My point is, not everyone that represents the sim community is on FB and VR all day ranting about their sim being the best. I think rF2 will be just fine despite what the same handful of people say about it on VR.
