Need VERY basic help to get started

Also get some rubber on the road (realroad).

 

Did you watch this?
The UI has changed since but all these controls are in there still.

 

Thanks, everyone. Holy crap, there's a lot to learn with this stuff! And no, I hadn't seen that video, despite doing a lot of searching on how to get started with RF2 before I found this forum. Looks like just what the doctor ordered. I'm taking the day off work, largely to immerse myself in FR2 and learn my way around. I also think it might be a good idea to start with a track I'm familiar with, like my home track where I drive my real car practically weekly, Driveway Austin, which I believe RF2 has, or Sonoma Raceway, where I took a two-day class last March.

 

Yes, 100% agree. When learning something new it's nice if at least something is familiar.
I'll briefly explain real road (RR).
RF2 features a dynamically evolving rubber level. It's not a canned amount of grip, instead as cars drive over it they leave rubber.
In your session settings you will see that you can choose a starting level of rubber AND the speed of evolution. "User Autosave" will transfer the end of the prev session (incl wet track)

Green (like Bahrain on a Thursday after a sandstorm)
Some modders will offer some presets like Light, Moderate or Saturated. Or 25%,50% etc.
You will need some rubber. So you can take a preset or you can go out there yourself or with some AI with RR set to say X5. Once you and 10 AI have done 10 laps you will 500 laps down.
Tips: AI won't rubber the pit entry much, they usually will lap for say 24 laps b4 entry. They will also all drive the same line so it will be tricky off line (passing).
So less AI and more you will vary the line a bit.
Testing a car rubber everywhere is good. (heavy pre-set)
Learning a track a more realistic line is better. (lighter pre-set and more driving).

 

I take it back - I've already watched that video; I just didn't recognize it from your screen capture. To underscore how much of a novice I am, despite the video's title, it's WAY over my head and beyond my comprehension, as the narrator goes through brief descriptions of what the various setting are, with no background as to what they actually do, and whether they are things a beginner needs to worry about (I suspect most of them aren't). To use a school analogy, I would place that video at the middle school level, where I'm just stumbling through the door of my first day of kindergarten

Similarly for the real road thing - I'm really not following what you're explaining. I appreciate your taking the time to try to help me get up to speed, but what you're explaining is again way beyond my level of experience. Remember, the sum total of my experience so far involves crashing into a guard rail in a failed attempt to pull of out the pits at AMP! Pathetic, I know. Could you please just tell me what setting I should start with for real road for my first session, and I'll play around with it as I gain more experience. Thanks.

OK, I set my number of opponents to zero - that will be a big stress reducer - thanks for pointing me to how to do that. My steering and brake assists were already set to zero. Now, I just need a little help loading Driveway Austin, assuming it is available (a google search revealed that it is). Track selection is still confusing me. When go to Race/Customize/Single Player, and select All Tracks and Cars, it doesn't bring up a list of available tracks as I would expect. And nothing comes up when I enter a track name (of any track) in the search box. So, my questions are: 1) How exactly do I bring up the list of available tracks in RF2, and then select the one I want? And 2) If the track I'm looking for isn't listed, please walk me through the steps, starting from the beginning, for how to select it and load it into RF2. I suspect it's through Steam Workshop, which I can access, but I don't see where to select a track. Thanks yet again - you guys are awesome.

 

Seriously, don´t worry about realroad. It doesn´t matter at all at this stage.

As for Driveway austin; in order for a track to show up on the track list, you have to download and install it first... a quick google search revealed that it is available for rfactor... 1, not rfactor 2 so you won´t be able to use it unless somebody makes a version for this game. (But this was a quicksearch after all; if you found a link that says the track was made rfactor 2 post it here and we can help you install it)

So if you don´t feel like driving on atlantaMP, you could try other simple tracks like Limerock and Portland, which I supose come pre-installed but in case they don´t, you can subscribe to them here:

Limerock https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1238604887
Portland https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1238604887

 

Thanks, Mitch - I kind of figured that about real road - I'm sure it's a valuable feature, but not something I want to get hung up on at this point. And thanks for researching the availability of Driveway Austin on RF2. It's OK that it isn't available - I've spent the past couple of hours watching videos of AMP, and feel like I understand it well enough to drive it in RF2, although it is quite a complex track with many blinds turns, tons of elevation changes, and hardly any moments when you aren't actively doing something. But that's the track I'm going to be driving on in a couple of months, and it looks like a lot of fun.

 

Its the amount of rubber down on the track surface. = grip.

So many times new users have been frustrated because they find their car is really hard to drive because they have been using a green track. This makes me feel it's actually quite important at this point.
But guys I'll leave you with it. Good luck.

 

put some opponents on with you about 5 wait till the track gets rubbered in and you can save the real road. then you can use in the future. can use then without any opponents

 

Yep, as per my suggestion above. I suggested doing it with 10 at realroad rate x10 to save time.

 

OK, just wanted to let everyone know it's working - I was able to actually turn laps at Atlanta Motorsports Park. This is definitely going to take some getting used to, as "driving" without the normal feedback from g forces is very weird, and I'm getting a little nauseous, which never happens to me in my actual track car. The car seems to be accelerating very slowly, because of the absence of the push to the back of my seat, which made me wonder if there was something wrong with the car, but the speed is building at the expected rate when I press the throttle, so again, it's just going to take some acclimation. Any tips on settings that might cut down on the nausea would be appreciated. I have a tripe monitor setup, ut am only using the middle monitor for now.

davidporeilly: You may be onto something that part of the weirdness I'm feeling is because the track grip level is "unnatural" (at least I think that's what you're trying to say), but I'm still not quite understanding what you're recommending. When I go into Practice1, I see that RealRoad is set to Default, and I can't change it. RealRoad Timescale is set to Normal, and it does allow me to change that. I exited RF2 and started it back up, and it still isn't letting me change the RealRoad setting from Default, even though the "-" and "+" buttons light up when I select them. Which is weird, because I distinctly remember being able to change it previously.

 

Click on the session settings button and then choose practice 1.
This is where you can assign the pre-set level of real road grip under the TRACK heading. Remember, you have to do this for each session. Practices , qualifying, warmup and race. You can also Save and reload grip levels, but that's for the advanced class. I would suggest using more than what I show, keep clicking the + symbol for a little more rubber on the track surface. Green is very low grip as if the track has just opened after a heavy rain. (so DON'T choose green!)

 

Thanks, but like I said, when I go to this screen and press the '+' sign where you have your arrow pointing, the little frame around the '+' sign lights up, but nothing changes. So I'm stuck on Default. I can change every other setting on this screen, but not the RealRoad. I've exited out of the game and re-launched it, but it's still stuck on Default.

By the way, what software are you using that allows you to post a screen capture in this forum, and allows you to draw in it like yo have above? Thanks.

Edit: Well, I can't explain this, but I went back and played around with the other settings on the screen (temperature, sky, start time, etc.), and then tried the RealRoad setting again, and suddenly, it's working, so that's good. OK, so the available settings, as you guys obviously know, are Green, Naturally Progressing, Preset:Saturated, Preset:Heavy, Preset:Light, Preset:Medium, and User Autosave. Interstingly, Default is no longer a choice. Which of the choices would you recommend to give the most natural feel to the grip and its progression over the course of the laps? And what about the RealTrack Timescale? Thanks as always.

 

Realroad presets only work if you set the weather to "scripted".

 

Screen captures, at least for me are a real pain. I know very little 'bout graphics so I press F12 to have Steam take a screen shot. THEN you have to convert it to a graphic file this forum will accept, I use an old old program called Irfanview. I copy and save the image as a .jpg file. But then I have to use some other program in windows to draw the arrow. Very clunky, I have used another windows program in the past to draw pre-shaped arrows, but I never remember the name. As I said, this is at least a 3 part process. I'm sure others can whip screenies out with much less effort.

 

For the nausea problem : if you have never played on PC as your experience seems to show, then you probably will need some time to get used to it, make short sessions and take breaks. Then when you are ready to setup your screen, ask here for help, because it's a little tricky even for computer skilled people.
Then when everything is fine and dandy, remember to ask about that V-sync stuff, depending your hardware setup, this may have an impact on you.
I hope you enjoy your RF2 setup, when it will be all ok, you will enjoy it. Surely you have to adapt to what information are missing in comparison to the real world, but I'm sure you will get used to it fast.

 

Thanks, everyone. Wow, there's no way I would have ever figured out that RealRoad presets only work when the weather is set to "scripted" - It was pure luck that I toggled the weather setting, and it was doubly lucky that I inadvertently left it on Scripted instead of Default. I've said it before, but if it wasn't for this forum, I would be on my way to Target to buy some stick-on hooks to attach to my sim to make it perform better as a coat rack, because that's all it would ever have been useful for! But I'm grateful that it's finally working, and I like the fact that because of the lack of g force feedback, it's actually significantly harder to drive on the track with the sim than it is in a real car, so I feel that if I can get to where I'm turning respectable lap times on the sim, replicating that in the actual cars in March will be an easy transition. So, back to my question about RealRoad: Which setting do you guys recommend I start with? Of course, I can always play around with it.

As far as the nausea, I'd did some reading about it, and yes, I will definitely have to keep my sessions short for awhile and build up, which is fine.

Regarding the driving experience, the car responds pretty realistically overall - I'm glad I paid the extra for a direct drive wheel base, because it gives a lot of feedback, which is welcome in the absence of actual g's. The only thing that feels a little off is that the rpm's don't seem to start building significantly until I've pressed the pedal to at least about 50% of its travel. When I calibrated the throttle pedal, I set the min to correspond to zero pedal travel. Is there anything else I can do to make the throttle a little more responsive to initial input?

 

You can tweak "sensitivity" of each pedal to make better suit how it work in the real car.. or to your preference. You can even "shorten" the travel simply clicking the "max" button when you are pressing the pedal 50 or 75% , in this way your pedal will always be linear but you will get faster to 100%. (incresing sensitivity will make the response non linear, as you can see in the graph in the calibration panel).

 

look for a free program on Steam called "ShareX"

 

or a free program called "windows snipping tool"