Introduction There are several video reviews of the various DLC for rFactor, but as a beginner I don't always find them all that useful. I race with AI at approaching 95 (depending on track and car), so I am not a total beginner but certainly am not fast. Things that might matter to a more experienced driver, like you see in the nice Ermin Hamidovic reviews on YouTube, are not necessarily the same things as matter to me. There also don't seem to be any (?) pack reviews - only those for separate parts of the content, such as cars or tracks. So I figured I'd do some DLC reviews as I buy them, to help potential buyers like me. This review is for the Nurburgring Endurance Pack. DLC contents: Nurburgring, Porsche 911 GT3 Cup, BMW M2 CS Racing, Radical SR3-XX Cost: about £10/$15USD Default set-up Before I start, I'll point out that lights on all of the cars are fine. Driving at night is not a problem from that point of view. There are cars out there that give out too little light to drive comfortably at night, but these are fine. Nurburgring 2.09 The Nordschleife, e.g. Nurburgring Endurance layout, feels great to drive. Loads of fast and slow corners, one enormously long straight, lots of elevation changes. Nurburgring GP layout gives you the conventional racing circuit layout and is an excellent example of this track, with some challenging technical sequences and a lovely swooping sort-of-straight towards the end. The layouts all look great, especially Nordschleife at 5.30am. Performance is solid for me, though might be an issue if you have less than 8GB VRAM in your graphics card. I set Texture to High (not Full) and race with 30AI. Comparing to other games, I find that Raceroom looks similar, but the road feels almost completely smooth (though for me FFB is generally unsatisfying in that game anyway). In Assetto Corsa it looks significantly worse to my eyes. Some have argued that the track details in AC are more true to life, but I don't know the real track so that doesn't make a difference to me. AC Competizione looks the best for Nurburgring, but there is certainly plenty of visual interest in this rFactor version and ACC doesn't have the Nordschleife at all, so it isn't really a fair comparison. Project Cars 2 has a nice-looking version, but I can't bear the FFB so uninstalled it long ago. Porsche Looks good in cockpit, but looks bad from behind because the lighting and liveries make it tend towards a single block of colour in sun/headlights. Inclined to understeer and the back likes to slide out, so if you're late braking for a corner then hitting the outside wall and/or spinning is relatively likely. Makes for somewhat physical racing as you have to work harder. Handles more like a GT3 car in ACC than the rFactor Ferrari 488 does, for example, with a heavier feel to brakes and steering. I don't have the GT3 pack so don't know whether this Porsche or the 488 are more typical of rFactor GT3 cars in that respect. Certainly I find the Porsche challenging and at times frustrating to drive, but when I get it flowing properly the satisfaction is that much greater as a result. The extra challenge means that I drop the AI by about 2% to help me keep up. 290km/h, 0-100 in about 2.5s BMW Strong brakes and decent acceleration make this a fun and engaging car to race round the twisting Nordschleife route. It feels like a heavier, faster Clio. You can't just throw it round corners, but when you do approach too fast you can stamp on the brakes without flying off the track. If you get the line right, you hold onto speed that other cars might lose, so can make good progress in a race. A nice touch is that you can actually feel the ABS kick in through vibration in the steering wheel, which I haven't felt on any other cars. The lights on the steering wheel and dashboard are super bright, so they are too distracting at night, but it isn't the only car with this issue. It is solved by turning Post Effects off to get rid of the bloom effect, which makes it drivable, albeit you lose bloom on all other lights as well. Overall the BMW feels like being one of those non-race-cars on the Nordschleife that you can see in countless YouTube videos. It's a nice way to enjoy (and learn) the route and makes for fun racing too. 250km/h (though you need a long straight to get anywhere close to that), 0-100 in about 4.5s Radical Feels, unsurprisingly, similar to the (free) Radical SR3-RSX. That is no bad thing, as the RSX is great fun to throw around a track like Nordschleife. And the XX does look better, both in cockpit and from behind, mainly because you get more reflections and therefore not so much flat colour. The XX is definitely more planted so to some extent it feels like RSX Easy Mode, though perhaps with set-up tweaks the RSX could be made to feel like the XX (and vice versa). With default set-up though, the XX is a perfect match for Nordschleife as it loves to be thrown into corners, then it flies out of the exits. Despite similarities to the RSX, the SR3-XX is a worthwhile, if not essential, upgrade 225km/h, 0-100 in about 3.5s Conclusion Given the reasonable price and solid content, I consider this to be an essential purchase for rFactor. It is my favourite version of Nordschleife, taking visuals, accuracy and handling into account. The cars give you a nice range of ways to approach the longer route, as well as making for fun racing on the GP layout. Yes, the Track Pack gives you Nurburgring and three other excellent tracks, but it is also more than twice the price and doesn't get you the cars (though it is next on my DLC purchase list).
