Hi all - back when rFActor 2 was released as a beta - a couple of years ago at least - I bought a 1 year subscription to it but ended up not playing it very much. Besides my PC not quite being up to the task, the much larger annoyance was that the game would not launch if the only available network connection was WiFi - only a physical ethernet connection would work. Now I've just bought a much better PC and am wondering if its worth giving rFactor 2 another go, but one thing I do not want is to have to physically attach my computer to the network. Can anyone confirm for me if the game will work on WiFi now, or is a physical network connection still required?
WiFi will work just fine but you should have a setup where your PC adapter will receive a strong signal from the router's antenna(s). If it's not something just across a hollow wall or in the immediacy of the router, I'd recommend a range extender. WiFi waves get absolutely crushed when having to traverse walls that have pipes (alluminium construction) or water going through.
Wifi has always worked fine. Not sure where you got this information. It's not recommended for any online game to work at it's best though as Gui says, but to not launch? No idea why you have that impression... Unless you're talking about how the launcher reacts to a DISABLED device, which you could have easily just enabled, allowing rF2 to launch.
As the others are saying - WiFi works just fine. I was using rF2 with WiFi for half a year, before my new apartment allowed my PC to be physically connected. Quality of online of course then increased for me. But rF2 always launched when using WiFi.
RF2 is an online game. It runs through the internet. It doesn't care whether you have WiFi or a cable, and it never did.
Wifi on a Desktop usually means USB wifi adapter. These are usually very power hungry beasts (by USB standards of course). If I'm downloading heavily, and have any more than my wifi adapter and a USB stick connected, my internet connection drops. Took me a while to work out what was going on. Seems both my gamepad (for other games!) and wifi adapter have heavy power draw on the USB buses, and the wifi adapter couldn't keep up with the downloads and power drain. Another thing to note is that Windows Zero conf (inbuilt wireless management) is HORRID! It constantly scans in the background for new connections (a feature to suit enterprise customers who might roam around a building with several nodes on different channels etc) which can affect performance as well. You can use a little app like WLAN optimizer ( http://www.martin-majowski.de/wlanoptimizer/ ) to turn off background scanning, and improve reliability and performance of your adapter.
People use WiFi USB adapters? Seems like a bottleneck to me. I just get a PCI-E card so there is no problem with power, bandwidth or other USB peripherals.
Wifi should work without a problem and as fast as cable when signal is strong and not interrupted(of course you need capable router with strong signal and stable software, not everyone is good enough, specially under 100$) but i strongly don't recommend it for other reasons.
I was using WiFi at the point that the Indycars came out, (May or June?) and had absolutely no issues doing online laps with people. I'm using cables again since I moved to a house where I can have all the equipment in one room though.
