In the end, you'll all come crawling back...

Truly spot on and well written and structured. Would be worth making a blog if you have more insights like these in your head. Not so sure whether it would be visited by many because most popular blogs (like everything else after all) are those that shout agressively, are very negative, perhaps shocking.. simply they contain something that catches the attention of a random surfer, those that actually contain quality content not so much.
If the rep system was still present, THIS is the kind of post that would deserve +. Although you'd probably gain max rep within few posts so it would be indistinguishable from others with max rep so it's better it's off anyway.

 

rF2 is a lot more satisfying to drive than pcars , pcars is fun for a while but somehow it doesn't make you want to drive , rF2 has something that keeps you coming back for more , it has a nice feel to it . Think that at some point I will look at the pcars shortcut on the stat screen and think that it's been along time since last played it .

 

Well, I'm not so sure people will.

I have a fairly major issue with the graphics quality. I get a lot of stutters. I have a 7970 in a PC with an i7; I should have zero issues with performance. But I do. Even turning down a lot of the settings sometimes doesn't help. There's something very badly wrong with the graphics pipeline if this is all the performance they can get out of it. It's not even DX11. I don't think there would be a way to get cars with the number of polys and texture quality we are all expecting/wanting. The existing content, seems highly simplified. Now when rFactor 1 was released, for sure, there were performance issues with what was considered mainstream capability at the time; hardware has improved from my running at barely 45-60 fps then, to over 300 now, more than anybody could need. I don't see that happening with this graphics engine.

As regards the physics, I personally don't feel the love many here seem to. The cars still behave weirdly in many situations. I suspect a lot of people started off and never learned about the hack to solve the rattling on their G27s, and don't even realize there is now a UI setting to control it (nor what values they should have). To me, to release a sim like this with the number one most prevalent piece of hardware in use having such major problems, says they weren't and aren't ready.

A lot of the coding still feels like 'proof of concept', rather than optimized/realistic values. Rubbering in the road is a good example. So, we can do it, but the method feels incomplete.

Is pCARS the answer? Well, not currently, no. They have had similar graphics stuttering issues as well, but they've also fixed them from time to time, and lets be honest, their graphics are far more ambitious and superior. ISIs still exhibit the same traits as when I first downloaded it, it doesn't seem to have changed in a year. Physics-wise, pCARS has an evolving tire model. It still isn't anywhere near right, but its a lot more benign than it once was, even if every car has a sameness to the feel of it.

The direct competitor looks to be Assetto Corsa. If their physics are as good as nkPro, and their graphics actually look the way of the screenshots in real use, I'd say it'll beat rFactor 2 hands down. It's designed to be moddable, but we don't yet know if that will be any good.

Which brings me to online play. And its here ISI have a problem. The new mods structure is proving very complex and confusing; I don't even see people hosting the stock ISI content, because they can't/won't since they could only use the allowed combinations without posting vmods. Certainly something needed to be done to solve the online mismatch hell rF1 disintegrated into, but what has been designed doesn't seem to achieve it. If rF2 doesn't get masses of people online, it's going to be in trouble. I have to tell you, I have to rethink every time how to install updates to the program, and then how to install the mod/mod collection. It's too much work. This should have all been finished and automated first; even pCARS have solved this problem more elegantly.

 

Nice post but you left out iRacing
The standard stuff from ISI graphically is way behind but i cant complain with these visuals, shows great potential :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P2xyHEkd7E (this is even a high lost of quality due to compression)

 

great post agree with you on everything.

 

Forthright

-thanks for the good thread & sharing your opinions & overview of diferent sims etc, interested read

 

Excellent 1st post, absolutely agree with everything he says, good points and bad.
I am not a 100% open wheeler fan, tin tops being more to my liking, and since the Vette was released the other day, the driving in this game is "real". The F2 mod is just as good, but then thats an openwheeler, ptui!! lol.

Also, if anyone hasnt noticed, some of the best modders had their beginings with ISI based games as far as I know.
Simbin got there start with F1C by releasing their GT mode which eventually lead to GTR game.
Also VLM. makers of the best tracks so far released for RF1 and RF2, had that unbelievable Prototype C mod for F1C.
One that we are still waiting for in RF1 and hopefully RF2.

I have RRE and still playing with it so no real opinion yet but I probably wont get Asseto Corsa as I tried LFS and didnt really like it.
Unless a new GPL or Nascar 2003 Racing series comes out, and we know thats not going to happen, or unless Geoff Crammond has nothing to do, I,m going to stay with RF2. Its all that I wan,t.............except for a 917-30 Porsche mod and a Audi 90 GTO mod

 

Forthrite

Good thread, thanks for sharing you opinion & overview of different sims etc, interesting read

 

Gotta ask and sorry for the Off Topic, but what has AC got to do with LFS (please pardon my ignorance)?

On Topic...great OP.. almost agree with everything said by Forthright

 

Run Pcars in DX9 mode, you'll see little difference, while I agree rF2 has a way to go, the DX11 argument doesn't really hold water. So there is no reason why we will not see some dramatic improvements in the look, when? well that is a whole different question. Folk who know a great deal more than me say that bolting on graphics improvements is easy while getting the physics right is hard...So for me it's being done in the right order. Your stuttering is going to be annoying and as an Nvidea user I am afraid I cannot help there, but I'm sure there are folk with the same card that don't have issues and maybe one of them may pop by with some solution.

 

It is a good post mate but still to say that we will all come crawling back though is a tad on the premature side...give it 6 to 12 months and yup we may be calling u a sir...time will tell

 

Ah, well, yes, the iRacing question. I am a member of iRacing, and one of the main reasons I joined it was to get away from the Mod Hell that rF1 had become. Even racing in leagues, rF1 was problematic.

So here's what iRacing did. They hosted all the races for you; zero setup to do, once you own the content, it auto updates. They structure the competition, and provide a means via SR and iR to weed out the T1 crashers/wrecker kids that you get on open servers. And, they license ALL content - cars and tracks.

Compare them to Simbin, and what they are trying to do with RRE. Again, this seems to be a fully hosted environment, paid content. Not sure how the races are organized. But basically, it seems to me that you buy the content, download it and race. No mismatches. In their case, they have a mix of licensed and fantasy, but that can be OK.

Simraceway is rather similar. Again, they host and you pay a small amount ot download content. They are of course using the old rF1 game engine so its a bit lacking, but I'd expect them to maybe sign up with ISI to get this engine from rF2 - they can't stay on that one for ever.

Then you get Race2Play. Similar idea: you pay for them to host races (leagues). I'm not sure they do such a good job of managing the content you need to do those races, but I think the races/events are rather easy to set up.

What have ISI given us that's different to rF1? Not much. You still have to host your own races with a dedicated server, bandwidth issues, complexity etc. etc. They've done nothing to help in this regard, and other than 'Get Mod', which doesn't always get you what you need if it's a virtual mod and you still don't have the underlying content from somewhere else downloaded manually, more often than not it hasn't solved anything. Whilst I'm sure a lot of people play offline, to really make it, ISI have to solve the online racing problem. They haven't done it. I had some high hopes that since ISI were licensing more content this time around (lots from Renault, more real world tracks), they'd do a lot more of that and provide a much better starting point than rF1's fantasy-only content had. But I see few people using that as-is. I feel we run the risk of only getting bad track and car conversions from the community (though the new tire models seem to have stopped the latter). It's now become almost impossible to fix or augment a broken piece of content (which we often had to do for leagues) since now you have to package it all back up into MAS files, not use individual separate fix files. ISI need to come up with a way to provide a hosted infrastructure, like Simbin/RRE, Simraceway and others have. I know why they don't have it; because they'd have license violations from community-created content that might be uploaded. It's kind of an unsolveable problem. But at the end of the day, its this problem that is going to hold ISI and rF2 back.

 

How does AC get developed without open beta, like rf2? Could you imagine how messed up rf2 would be without community feedback?

Edit: this seems to be ISI formula --> release pre-beta, have community tell you what is wrong, then fix and do what you want in whatever timeframe you want and inform users as much as you want. Not complaining, just pointing out approach in contrast to other shops which release fully-developed software albeit sometimes early with patches needed but feature complete.

 

You are giving 'the community' too much credit..., like ISI can't build a product on it's own, guess it's pure luck then that every other F1 team is running rF pro

 

I was wondering this too, but when you think about it sims never really had prolonged 'public beta' periods in the past, and they still turned out fine (for the most part). It has become a new trend it would seem, which is why it feels a bit strange that Kunos hasn't done the same to help with funding etc.

Still, it looks to be turning out okay. If they release the thing without any wheel support or something I might have to take that back...

 

That was just for effect.

For ISI's sake it's probably best if we don't leave in the first place, but as was made clear in my original post i've already been sleeping around.

 

Hope you have been practising "safe driving" lol

 

You slut!

 

lol.lol

 

Simraceway was a huge disappointment for me. Especially in the physics department. I haven't played it for quite a while, so I don't know the current state of it. I do however get a lot of spam about new cars and 24 hour free testing of them. Also I don't like their bussiness model at all. I think they are not targeting the hardcore sim driver though.