Has RF2 reached a level of sophisitcation above 99 % of it's users?

Yes I think, confirmed by an overwhelming majority of posts in the forum.
I include myself in those 99 % even if I try hard not to.
By luck, you can still have ot lot of fun with the sim as is, and as we are, overwhelmed.
Cheers.

 

Would be great if there was some kind of sticky with tutorials for newbies. I just downloaded the game yesterday and its very hard to wrap your head around it. I am at this point considering refund, learning curve is a bit too steep for me and I don't have much time figuring out how to set this thing up.

I even had problems finding how to play mods (installed them but didn't find an explanation how to play them), got an answer on forums but that raised another 100 questions, one of which is how do I join ANY online game? I got all the mods installed now but whenever I go to multiplayer and look at servers, all off them report I don't have compatible mod.

Before you start bashing me, I never had any experience with driving sims, and played just couple of racers.

 

Overwhelmed by what? Don't say the game because you have to be more specific if you're making a request to change things.

If this is a "too hard to drive" thread just ignore my post.

 

It can be intimidating in the beginning, but it's so worth it once you start to know where everything is.

However, if you're looking for a pick-up-and-play game, this is certainly not for you, and it won't and shouldn't be since it's much more sophisticated than e.g. Codemasters racing games.

 

Driving feels great, even though I got only G25.

The problem for me is figuring out GUI, and how to connect. Dunno what OP was about. anyway maybe you could point me to a direction where I could find some tutorials etc?

There is no reason why this game couldn't be a pick up game... Never found an mmo that got me into a situation where I check EVERY server and none is compatible with my game. Especially after paying 60 quid for it.

 

It's not a pickup race game because there is never a populated server that is both open and with the same content that I have installed or that I would like to use online. (I'm european, evening user).

 

In a word...yes. Surprising? Nope. Shiny graphics and arcade crap from other devs have attracted people to the genre who are ill suited for sim racing which is a technical endeavor no matter how you slice it.

To add to their misery, many fiddle too much especially with graphics and hardware out of greed or attempting extrinsic immersion to compensate for lack of skill which will never work.

Lastly, many are simply incapable of being self-directed and therefore never find what it is that they want because they expect others to do even this for them.

Sad state of affairs and thank goodness for the old hats around here who have a clue what sim racing is about or there would be no one left other than ISI who thankfully stay the course which is a godsend. I only hope that they stay true to themselves and all indications are such.

 

Perhaps in checking the FAQ : http://rfactor.net/web/rf2/rf2help/

 

If you are looking for an instant reward, may be you should ask a refund.
If you are willing to learn step by step you will be rewarded.
You say you have a limited experience in simracing, then use common sense, do as you would in real life.
Before knowing how to drive would you buy a race car and enter in a competition?
Would you begin your racing career with a F1?

There it is the same, choose a level entry class, like an ISI Clio, race off line with it until you feel reasonably confident of your driving, and later choose a ligue where you can race and benefit from your colleagues help.

Cheers and have fun racing.

 

Correct...except that it's not The good news is that pickup racing is meaningless. If you are unable to join a league (less meaningless), then offline is your best bet because AI is VERY good.

 

Sorry but I am on a phone so won't quote you.

I don't mind graphics, it's actually pretty good and could be a good thing when VR comes out, most of serious mmo's don't have flashy graphics anyway and I am cool with that.

Thank you for all the replies, that's what I need, a direction how to start. Driving itself is enough reward for myself, I don't need a game to pat me on a shoulder.

I tried FAQ but it's not extensive and I still got a lot of questions. Would be helpful if there was sticky guiding new players where to go, have an open server for noobs and get them hooked up. I understand it's a sophisticated game and it's got steep learning curve, that's why I picked it, it's just a bit annoying I can't even find an open game to join and see how net code works before 7 days allowed for refund.

 

I think this would be a good idea.
There is some unobvious things that needs to be done if you want to get all out of rF2, like using NVIDIA controlpanel to set your graphics, LOD bias thing, mirrors effecting performance, editing .json files to chance ffb and other settings and maybe something about mods and multiplayer things. There have been lot of useful information here on forums and putting the most important things in one place for new comers would be a good thing. It's lot of work to try to find out all this infomation from old threads without even knowing what to look for.

 

Your reaction is perfectly normal. The UI is and always has been a mess (though believe it or not, it is a second generation one we have now that is better than the prior one). But settings are still illogically placed and unintuitive.

But don't give up unless you have a very short fuse. Focus on finding one or two cars and tracks you really like and get deep into them. Only then will you realize why the rest of the users put up with the poorly designed interfaces and unnecessarily steep learning curves. If you are passionate to find the closest thing to realistic outside a professional simulator, this is it, warts and all. The slick titles that are easy to jump into and more fun initially don't have the depth, iRacing perhaps excepted. But if you can afford iRacing, you can afford rF2!

 

^ great post

 

Honestly, modding and tweaking the files is something best left alone. I haven't touched the configuration file or control panel stuff in yonks and it runs great.
That can definitely come later, getting the most out. I just don't think it's worth the headache and hassle.

 

This ^

Tim suggested a few weeks ago on Twitter to try rF2 with a default player.json and default graphics control panel and that we may be surprised. I took his advice and I was. rF2 runs much better the less you mess with it.

 

This is my experience as well.

 

+3

 

Okay, very interesting. I need to test that.

 

It is a product of increasing sophistication. This genre has evolved from the SCGT days (likely prior to that but SCGT is where I started). The clarion call from drivers has always been realism. As computers have evolved, the software (graphics and physics) have improved as well to continue to deliver a more realistic experience. Work with various manufacturers, race teams, and race series have infused a lot of real-life data to further the sophistication of what is still a relatively inexpensive piece of software for what it delivers. And auto-racing isn't simple in real life. Earlier iterations (SCGT) didn't allow us to fiddle with setups nearly to the level we can adjust now. And with it has come levels of complexity that I couldn't imagine 15 years ago. It is great but it is daunting for those of us without the time and knowledge to really get into the finer points of the software. In all honesty, very few of us could jump into any race car and be up to speed in the short amount of time we do in sim-racing. That's why they get to kiss the girl, hold the trophy, and for a small percentage of them, make a pretty good life out of it.