SOLVED Please convince me to buy this over Assetto Corsa :D

M

Motorsheep

Registered
Hi Community :)

First of all: I'm not really a "serious" sim racer in the sense that I spend enough hours on it to be competitive outside a select few car/track combinations. BUT! I use a decent controller setup (Fanatec Porsche Wheel, clubsport pedals) and I can appreciate realistic physics. At least I know enough to be able to tell that games like Gran Turismo are not really "sims".

And since I first touched Live for Speed in 2005, I haven't been able to enjoy any other racing sim, not even rFactor. I tried GTL, I tried R3R, I tried Race07...was put off by all of them because the physics and FFB felt so much more...right in LfS.

So I kept coming back to LfS for several short bouts over the years, and right now is another one of them. Only, LfS is pretty much dead.

What I'm looking for is a game that has:

* an online community large and mature enough to let me race against other beginner-/ amateur level players WITHOUT having to fear 1st-corner-pileups every time. Preferrably in a number of track/car combinations so that I'm likely to find exactly what I'm looking for at any moment.

* subtle FFB effects which make sense intuitively - not the gimmicky rattle that most other games give me. It's all nice and cool if the engine makes the wheel vibrate and if the wheel shakes like mad to tell me I've gone over a curb or went into the green, but that stuff doesn't help me feel what the car is doing. LfS excels at that to this very day.

* road cars. vanilla rFactor 2 seems to offer none of these, but what about mods? And the quality of those? rf1 was all over the place in that respect.


I don't mind graphics. Yes, AC is prettier, but rF2 looks good enough for me.

Now, I've heard good things about AC's physics. I tried it at a friend's, and I enjoyed it enough that I couldn't stop hotlapping and hotlapping... good sign. However, there's no day/night cycle, no rain, and I've heard bad things about the netcode and first-corner-pileups.

With rF2, I find the real road feature utterly fascinating. It's almost a reason to buy on its own. BUT! I have heard people say that rF2 suffers from the same idiot racers in public lobbies as AC, and people have said that due to the number of mods, it's hard to find a server that won't require me to download stuff before I can join. I'm on a 3Mbps connection, so that's an issue.


Finally... AC is cheaper, and it's a one-time buy. With rF2, I pay more to get the game, and then I'll have to continue paying a year later.

Well. What would you guys say?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Reasons to buy rF2

1. Dynamic real road
2. Dynamic tire wear and flatspotting
3. Superior real-world physics
4. Day/night transitions, weather
5. Races with pitstops and rules
6. Free DLC
7. Free DLC
8. Free DLC
9. Free DLC
10. Free DLC
 
Does rF2 have easily accessible tools like LfS had that show me all the important current conditions of my car at the press of a button? Stuff like tyre temperatures, tyre wear, etc., that will help me evaluate my driving style and my setup on the fly before i stop to dig through the telemetry data?

Oh yeah, and LfS has online tools to compare my hotlap telemtry to those of other people, allowing me to see their racing line, control inputs and car data like suspension travel, etc, compared to mine. Pretty rad if you ask me, and immensely useful for getting better. Do rF itself or any 3rd party tools allow me to do stuff like that?
 
theres a full-feature/limited content demo where you can try the ffb & hud options yourself.

rf2 is capable of having great road cars, but there arent many out there; sports cars on tracks is kind of ACs thing, so depending on how important that is to you, it might be the better buy.
 
Hi Motorsheep.

rF2 online can be hit and miss, if you are just looking for pickup and play online racing. There are, however, plenty of leagues running and some of those leagues are pretty casual, if you're not looking to spend hours and hours practising to be competitive. My advice here would be to look in the private leagues section here and maybe look around the internet a bit and see if there's anything that takes your fancy. That's not to say there aren't servers running that you can just jump into, F3 Fanatics and SR4L servers are often populated. But the best online experience.. in my experience, comes when you join a league.

As for first corner pile-ups.. well, in all honesty, that to me is more of an online racing thing. I've come across that in any sim I've played over the years. Be that Assetto Corsa, rFactor, iRacing, LFS. I think this again comes down to finding a good bunch of people to race with.

FFB is subjective and down to personal preference in my opinion. Best thing is try the demo out and see for yourself. For me the FFB in rF2 is the best there is (even better than Live for Speeds), but others may disagree. You can feel exactly what the car is doing, weight transfer, slip, everything. You may need to do some tweaking to get the most out of it, but it is pretty good "straight out of the box".
There is an excellent FFB guide here --> http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.p...-for-rFactor-2-The-key-to-being-in-the-Zone-D

As for road cars in rF2 there's actually quite a few official, licensed ones now. There is a Panoz AIV Roadster, Honda NSX, Chevrolet Corvette C6 and the newly released AC Cobra 427 all of which are fantastic fun to drive.

As for rF2 cost, yes if you purchase the standard option then you will have to renew your subscription annually, to be able to access the online features, i.e. multiplayer. However the sim still works offline and you will still receive all ISI content and sim updates, if you choose not to renew. OR, you can opt for a lifetime purchase option, which is around £65 GBP, with no further fees to pay in the future.

Ultimately you need to make your own mind up which game is right for you, rF2 has it's good points and it has it's bad points as with any sim. The good thing is there is a free to try demo http://rfactor.net/web/rf2/rf2dl/ and I think rF2 also offers a money back option within 7 days (double check that on purchase page though, as I may be mistaken), if you are not satisfied.

Hope this helps and good luck with your purchase, whichever game you choose in the end. :)

Cheers
Justin
 
Buy both. Really.

There isn't a clear victor with the way you shared your preferences/criteria. How you choose to weight the criteria might produce a winner though.

If it is street legal sports cars that count then AC wins pretty easily. I actually think the RF2 sports cars probably feel superior but there are so many more available in AC and they all feel good and quite different from each other. And there will be a lot more over the next 12 months.

If it is FFB that matters most... for me RF2 is the best available although I also like AC's ffb.

Online racing is what it is. There is more with AC but problems are there with both. IRacing is the best online platform but costs more and has even fewer road cars.



Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk 2
 
id also recommend buying both, but i feel like its a copout to someone looking to save as much money as possible. speaking of which, depending on your patience level...sorry to say im pretty sure you just missed a 50% of sale for assetto corsa. the good news is its been half off multiple times already & will surely be again this year. so you may want to go with rfactor2, which is almost profoundly deep, and pick up AC when its on sale.

and i wouldnt worry about the $12, you might be dead next year & its only for multiplayer anyway; a dollar a month is almost nothing.
 
Motorsheep said:
Hi Community :)

First of all: I'm not really a "serious" sim racer in the sense that I spend enough hours on it to be competitive outside a select few car/track combinations. BUT! I use a decent controller setup (Fanatec Porsche Wheel, clubsport pedals) and I can appreciate realistic physics. At least I know enough to be able to tell that games like Gran Turismo are not really "sims".

And since I first touched Live for Speed in 2005, I haven't been able to enjoy any other racing sim, not even rFactor. I tried GTL, I tried R3R, I tried Race07...was put off by all of them because the physics and FFB felt so much more...right in LfS.

So I kept coming back to LfS for several short bouts over the years, and right now is another one of them. Only, LfS is pretty much dead.

What I'm looking for is a game that has:

* an online community large and mature enough to let me race against other beginner-/ amateur level players WITHOUT having to fear 1st-corner-pileups every time. Preferrably in a number of track/car combinations so that I'm likely to find exactly what I'm looking for at any moment.

* subtle FFB effects which make sense intuitively - not the gimmicky rattle that most other games give me. It's all nice and cool if the engine makes the wheel vibrate and if the wheel shakes like mad to tell me I've gone over a curb or went into the green, but that stuff doesn't help me feel what the car is doing. LfS excels at that to this very day.

* road cars. vanilla rFactor 2 seems to offer none of these, but what about mods? And the quality of those? rf1 was all over the place in that respect.


I don't mind graphics. Yes, AC is prettier, but rF2 looks good enough for me.

Now, I've heard good things about AC's physics. I tried it at a friend's, and I enjoyed it enough that I couldn't stop hotlapping and hotlapping... good sign. However, there's no day/night cycle, no rain, and I've heard bad things about the netcode and first-corner-pileups.

With rF2, I find the real road feature utterly fascinating. It's almost a reason to buy on its own. BUT! I have heard people say that rF2 suffers from the same idiot racers in public lobbies as AC, and people have said that due to the number of mods, it's hard to find a server that won't require me to download stuff before I can join. I'm on a 3Mbps connection, so that's an issue.


Finally... AC is cheaper, and it's a one-time buy. With rF2, I pay more to get the game, and then I'll have to continue paying a year later.

Well. What would you guys say?
Click to expand...

1- AC online community is way bigger specially if you are looking for pickup racing, which is almost unexistent in rF2.
2- rF2 has better physics and FFB.
3- AC is far ahead in number of road cars, and they are usually quite good. There are some nice road cars in rF2 but very few and hardly used.

I'd buy AC if those are the things that matter the most for you. But if you can, buy both.
 
Online racing isnt great for pickups, I found more people online in AC generally than I do in rf2. There are also a few no-nonsense AC servers that will weed out bad drivers. If you want to do league then it would pay to see whats running in your timezone.

Based on your criteria I would go AC tbh.
 
Motorsheep said:
* road cars. vanilla rFactor 2 seems to offer none of these, but what about mods? And the quality of those? rf1 was all over the place in that respect.
Click to expand...

Has everyone gone mad? :p

AC Cobra
Corvette
Honda NSX
Panoz Roadster
Palatov D4 Trackday

Those are all excellent road cars. The ones is bold are not just the best road cars I've ever driven, they are right up there in the best sim cars ever.

Worth the price of rF2 right there ^ :)
 
What does it matter how many cars you have if they feel inferior to drive.


If you don't think in a few corners the Cobra, NSX and Vette feel better to drive in rF2, mate........ I would give up. ;)
 
Motorsheep said:
...Finally... AC is cheaper, and it's a one-time buy. With rF2, I pay more to get the game, and then I'll have to continue paying a year later.

Well. What would you guys say?
Click to expand...
Hi Motorsheep,
i would say, buy the Lifetime Subscription of rF2 and you`re done ;)
 
Get both.
AC is on sale in steam atm. half price, and rF2 is in my eyes, game for the future which you can test for free with a demo.
Both are absolutely awesome sims, and you won't regret putting money into either one of these titles.
 
Thank you all for your input.

What I omitted in my op is that I already bought AC during the 50% off sale... just hadn't finished the download yet. I'll use the rF2 demo and Steam's "refund under two hours playtime" now to try and form an opinion.

My gut, however, tells me I should return AC get rFactor right away. Even though it has fewer road cars, I get the feeling it's more closely related in spirit to LfS. It seems to try less than AC to appease a broad audience, and that's usually a good thing in niche markets (and I would say sim racing is a niche market) - fewer compromises usually make a better product.
 
Good luck, its great steam now lets you buy and try although a couple of hours is not a lot of time, I think you get even less with the rfactor2 demo.

Save some time so that you can get online and see how the servers are populated at the time you might race. Some will be locked and not open to you unless you are in their league though.
 
Golanv said:
Both are absolutely awesome sims, and you won't regret putting money into either one of these titles.
Click to expand...

In their own way ? Yeah I can agree with that 100%.


Then again I just had a conversation with 2 very intelligent simmers, one a modder whom say " rF2 users think it is the only true sim "



I mean how bent up are they ? ...... lool


---------


I don't buy this Free DLC as a plus, Tim can say they free all he wants. hehe

AC and pCars have more content and even with DLC they are still cheaper.

Shame to think any serious simmer would be swayed by how many cars they can drive.

Guess that is why so many of you buy GT and Forza and play arcade consoles. ?

lool p ;)
 
Domi said:
1- AC online community is way bigger specially if you are looking for pickup racing, which is almost unexistent in rF2.
2- rF2 has better physics and FFB.
3- AC is far ahead in number of road cars, and they are usually quite good. There are some nice road cars in rF2 but very few and hardly used.

I'd buy AC if those are the things that matter the most for you. But if you can, buy both.
Click to expand...

The answers are brief but mostly can't be faulted. It is sad to see so much of the simulation aspect of AC be dismissed especially as a lot of users judge physics through FFB, which in rF2 is more "complete" as you feel more than the steering wheel.
You already got AC for 50% off, that's a great deal. Are you interested in the DLC pack? Might as well get it, though the Sauber C9 was a massive letdown for me.If you want rFactor 2 and wish to play online, your best bet is Lifetime subscription. Things may be slow for a while and before you know, your year's worth of online has run out. If you feel the price is steep, then you can get standard and renew online yearly or wait for a possible 20% off sale at some point in time - that no one knows and follows no regular gaming discount periods.



If you are weary about content, see if there's anything of interest to you below. This is not every available piece of content but it is a more filtered, picky selection. Remember you can find all first-party content here: http://rfactor.net/web/rf2/rf2dl/ . Also do pay attention that rate of release may vary and as more of the game is developed and fleshed out, more dated some older content feels. But new content has been mostly flawless.

Tracks

--ISI--
Atlanta Motorsports Park
Belgium (Spa) 1966
Brianza (Monza) 1966
Estoril
Indianapolis - Oval, RC 2007, RC 2013, RC 2014
Lime Rock Park (No chicane, Uphill chicane)
Loch Drummond
Mills - Inner B and Inner C especially
Monaco 1966
Mountain Peak - Speedway, Road Course, karts
Palm Beach
Québec Karting
São Paulo
Sepang
Silverstone
Tiger Moth Aerodrome - R1, R2, R3


--Mod--
Assen TT Circuit 1.0
Autodrom Most 1.0
Bahrain 1.01
Birmingham Road Course 1.0 (lesser graphical fidelity)
Brands Hatch 1.01
Croft 1.0
Curitiba .9991
Dubai Autodrome 1.04sm
Essington 1.04
FSR Montréal 2015 1.0
Hockenheim-Ring 1.1
Imola 2006 1.01 (lesser graphical fidelity)
Lester GP 1.0
Longford 1967 .98
Motorsport Ranch 1.1 (lesser graphical fidelity)
Nordschleife 2.01
Oschersleben 1.0 (multiplayer only)
Portimão Circuit 1.01
Poznan 1.0
Putnam Park 1.0
RaceFactor Monza 2014 1.0 (lesser graphical fidelity)
RaceFactor Shanghai 2012 1.0
RaceFactor Spa 2013 1.0 (lesser graphical fidelity)
RaceFactor Suzuka 2013 1.05 (lesser graphical fidelity)
Road America 1.01sm
South Shore International 1.0
Symmonds Plains .95
VLM Le Mans 1991 1.0
VLM Mid-Ohio 2.01
VLM Sebring 2.01


Cars

*Open Wheelers*

--ISI--
Brabham BT20 (F1 1966/1967)
FIA Formula 2 2012
Formula Renault 3.5 2014
Indycar DW12 2013
ISI Kart Cup - Junior Karts

--Mod--
F1 Matra v12 1.0 (F1 1968, old tire model)
F1 1992 ASR 1.86 (undertray collision issue, physics are not finest)


*Road, GT and Endurance*

--ISI--
BTCC Honda Civic 2013
Camaro 2012 GT3
Corvette 2009/2010 C6.R GT2
Corvette C6 (ZR1, Z06) - Road car
Honda NSX/NSX-R 1991 - Road car
Panoz Roadster 1999 - Road car
Renault Clio Cup 2010

--Mod--
Lola T280 1.3
RMT Renault Mégane Trophy 1.11
SEAT León Euro Cup 2014 1.5
SimHQ LMPs - Porsche 919 1.6 and Acura ARX 2.3 (Undertray ride height issue)
Toyota Celica GTO 1.0
URD Corvette C7.r 2014/15 and Corvette C6.r 2013 1.95
URD Endurance GT 1.95 (including URD Corvette GTE)
 
So far I gotta say I'm more impressed with rFactor. Shiny graphics aside, AC feels somehow...detached to me when compared to rF2. Haven't had the time to fiddle around with setups yet, but either rF2 is much harder, or the standard setups are worse than in AC. I lock my brakes and slide and spin out all the time in rF while AC seems to be much more forgiving of my mistakes.
 
AC unfortunately is missing basic setup options like brake pressure, and I know exactly what you mean about detached feel: http://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/i...o-much-spring-too-little-actual-detail.16129/ , http://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/i...ime-to-be-honest-and-critical-about-ac.21861/

Whatever wheel you are using, set anything regarding dampening to 0%, and in the main menu, anything on the bottom left quadrant of FFB options to 0% too. It will make things less superficial though still not what you'd want. In rF if you're locking up and spinning so much, you may need to look at your setup and driving. Brake bias, pressure, and power differential. You should make sure to set your driving sessions to have progressive real road instead of green.


ps: Keep AC and rF2. Both will shine brightly.
 
Motorsheep said:
Thank you all for your input.

What I omitted in my op is that I already bought AC during the 50% off sale... just hadn't finished the download yet. I'll use the rF2 demo and Steam's "refund under two hours playtime" now to try and form an opinion.
Click to expand...
rF2 isn't on steam at this point, we offer 7 days and unlimited offline playtime within that 7 days for our refund policy.

But as some others have said, if you can afford both, get both.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top