I'm a sim racer at heart, and a gamer. I've felt the same way, said the same things at times, and really most of what is said is just badly communicated feedback that the devs actually want to hear. Of course I wish some of it was said more nicely, but this is the internet, where the other day someone asked me for advice on his aquarium, then got annoyed, abusive and childish when I gave him advice he disagreed with. I wish all feedback could come like the first post in this thread, which has negatives which really stand out because of the positives. Sometimes when someone only posts negatives from a product that does have positives, it's harder to respect their feedback as being correct or truthful. I pass on what I feel is useful.
pass on my idea bout a rfactor central like mod interface here on the ISI site and a race2play like match maker here as well We could 1 star / 5 star mods ... we could find leagues and ongoing servers with a join button ... much easier than trolling through the forums looking for stuff... Hell, I'll even help make it - thought of making something like this myself, but don't have anywhere to host it ...
well done, stonec. nice review in my opinion, stonec's points quoted above and the collision model are the things that ISI should concentrate on in the near future
I wanted to post a comment about you guys, ISI, and you Tim, because you do such a crazy good job here in the forums. I postponed my post, but I'd like to quickly point out that you do an outstanding job, and I admire the way you keep calm and answer in the best possible way, without ever falling into insults and what not. Well, I've been here only for so long, but from what I've seen, you seem like a very good person Tim. Don't ever let the forum or anything ruin that for you. Tip my hat off to you and all of ISI, what a great team you are. EDIT: Oh and very nice post stonec, we need more post like this! I bet if there were more positivity in the forums, the team would be more inclined to work faster/better/etc.. than they already are. If they manage to put out work like this with all the negativity there is.. imagine what if...
Funny that you mention that you aren't pleased with the pace of development, and then mention Kunos and AC. What Kunos got now? A tech demo with 1 car, 1 track... what ISI got? A lot more if you ask me. Plus AC doesn't live up to rFactor 2... if the game ends up looking like it is now with more tracks and cars... it haves about the same look visually, with a poor ffb compared to rf2... plus the menu system is horrible to me. If you look at the dev notes, there is new/updated stuff almost each month, and this month only felt like christmas... Then you mention the work they do ressemble more the work of a talented mod team... hmmm please tell me one track or one car that looks better than anything ISI has made. There are none so far... I'm not dissing the work of modders, some do very good job, like feels3, virtua_lm... close to what ISI does, but still, not quite it. Sure croft and bla bla bla looks good, but so does Lime Rock Park, Mills, Monaco, Belgium, Silverstone, and so on. Car wise... the best I've seen so far from a mod team seems to be the Megane... which we already have. It seems odd to me that someone can think they can do better when ISI got all the real data and a lot more experience in making sim cars than pretty much all modders out there. From what I remember of rFactor 1, sure there was many mods, many cars to drive, but most felt like simcade at best... not really depicting how that real car would drive. So in the end, the most enjoyable cars to drive were those made by ISI mostly, plus a couple mods that felt somehow pretty good. If you look at the historic track Belgium 67 that modders made in rF1, it barely looks like the one ISI made, and I'm obviously not talking about the graphics, but track layout. I'm sorry but even if ISI were to stop developing rFactor 2, I would still think my lifetime payment was worth it. If you are here since the beginning and paid 85$, and have had 18 months of updates and new stuff, I can't understand how you can be complaining about something that haven't even cost you 5$ per month.
its got the best F1 experience in ISI Formula Masters + Silverstone that i've been able to find... Not that i have a lot of the older racing games - this is between iRacing, F1 2012 and rFactor2 pretty much...
I think rFactor 2 has always shown a lot of potential, and in some areas we are seeing it coming to fruition. If it's going to take quite a while to bring everything up to the lofty standards ISI are obviously aiming for, then so be it - there's not much we can do about it and no one's forcing us to use it in the meantime. One slight annoyance though: As a league we got to the point where we couldn't stay away from rF2 any longer, because despite some issues (and some major ones at that) the driving was already too much better than rF1 to 'go back' to it. To outsiders it seemed crazy to move to a beta for a league series but we decided to roll with it anyway. Then we moved out of beta and into 'continuous development'. The issue here is it's likely to still be in 'continuous development' in 2-3 years. And that's all fine (progress is great!) except when a build, like the last one, introduces a pretty major bug for racing (someone leaves through no fault of their own, and the race has to be aborted or completely restarted because of the massive and ongoing lag created by that driver leaving). This is the sort of thing we might have anticipated happening during the beta phase, but having had it happen now there's no reason to think similar couldn't happen in a year or two - because the state of the game will be the same: 'continuous development'. Again, no one's making us use rF2, so despite us all contributing to server costs we have to bear with it. It's just not a great look when either continuing to use it now, or moving back to rF1 (or something else) for a while and coming back to rF2 in a couple of years, it'll still have the same status so there's no guarantee we wouldn't end up with another broken build at some point. But hopefully the testing will be a little more stringent in future... I suspect the good feedback from a quick update or two might have hurried things up unnecessarily.
Excellent. I would like to add the importance of a supportive, forthright, welcoming, constructive, unbiased, genuine and sarcasm-free forum with a dedicated moderator. Edit - This is not intended to be a slight to Tim, although the sarcasm can be toned down. It is more a recommendation that forum modderation seems to be necessary or else how are people going to get support. Also, now the the product is released what is plan for support? How is the demo getting supported? Would be a terrible waste to lose people just because bad first impression and no help.
Very well said points above. To me, as a new member to RF (never ran RF1), the whole experience is rather good. The offical content is an interesting mix of types and tracks, and visually the game most of the time does it's job. I ran pCARs for a few days as comparison, it did not seriously over-impress me in the visual department - some things were better, some were worse, in sum total RF2 seems to stand up okay. The biggest downside for me is that there seems to be a floodgate welded shut which holds the mods back - and that is often verbalized as "We (modders) will not release anything until ISI is finished changing the way core features work". As I said I never ran RF1, but I knew the community at simHQ and the real massive amount of choice they had for cars and tracks. For RF2, if you are looking for real high-quality content (i.e. same level as the latest ISI Offerings) there isn't much around. Yes there are a ton of conversions and 0.xx releases, I appreciate that time and effort spent, but running some of these "very long in WIP status" projects next to official content is kinda immersion breaking. So IMHO the biggest needed boost right now is to stabilize the platform to a level where modders will be happy to put out their in-team betas and previews without fear of having to redo them in a month or 60 days...
It's nice to hear that some of my points seem to be taken into consideration by ISI. It's clear to me that the main issues are related to the graphics engine and the collision model. After more consideration there are a couple of things regarding the graphics I forgot to mention. One is the anti-aliasing which does not seems to perform fully as expected (not fps wise, but image quality). I also forgot to mention the wet weather completely. It has improved a lot over the builds but there are still some issues; mainly the track dries up way too quickly and the wet road reflections are almost invisible on ISI tracks.
The only issue I have with the game as it is right now is the tire and/or track physics. The tire temps are way off, both off (especially off!) and on the track, and its really starting to annoy me. Comparing to my real life experience, there isnt nearly enough grip on the green (as in not rubbered in) parts of the track either, which of course increases the annoyance of the wierd tire temps. Lastly, I cant feel the rear end of the cars at all. I dont know if this is because I just have a G27? Im not going to get a hydraulic/pneumatic seat, but maybe a Buttkicker would help? Or is there some setting I should look into?
If i was talking to someone and they referenced their experiences, it's the first thing i would ask. It's a simple, valid question. Of course he doesn't have to answer but it would be nice to know. With limited information it's hard to form an opinion on the credibility of the opinion. Have you read nosslrac's post properly or are you just starting fires in the sky?!
While I dont have actual race experience, as in competing in a race, Ive driven both standard cars (Audi RS4, Porsche 997 Turbo etc.) and a couple race cars (Porsche 996 Cup, Ford Capri RS Cosworth), both on a "green" track and one that has been rubbered in. Id like to change my previous statement a bit though: I think the real problem is that there is too much difference in grip between the rubbered in parts and the green parts. The lack of grip that I feel might well be because I dont get the same input as in a real car, but I doubt Ill ever get to that point, hence I think its the developers of a game/simulator who should make it seem realistic, even though it might not be according to data. Realistic data doesnt always provide realistic simulation. If Ive been on track IRL and come home to play rF2, it might as well have been NFS since neither is no where near the real thing in terms of "feeling the car". With that being said, rF2 is still the best racing game Ive played.
I think you make a valid point, and that'll always be an issue where there's a disconnect between what you can feel in a real car vs a sim. Unfortunately the more you try to fill that gap the more you end up with unrealistic performance when compared directly against real life stats, plus anyone with more equipment to feed them information about the car will start to say it's too easy etc. So not an easy balancing act. On 'green' tracks though, a sim has to cover the full range of possibilities - including a completely green track. Think the Austin GP rather than just the first day at a street circuit. I doubt you've driven on a track in those conditions.
Since I read about problems in the collision model in rf2 (on these forums) I'm noticing the problems when testing (the collisions) Does anyone know if ISI have ever acknowledged this or have mentioned its being worked on ?
Jesus Christ he was asking a valid question, get over yourself. anyway yeah the grip levels between real road and off the racing line are extreme especially when racing the AI as they stick to the driving line more than humans do. I've seen online a wider rubber line which has helped, also not forgetting real road is (still) accelerated....hopefully when that gets normalised it may improve the effect of green parts of the track...maybe!
Few builds ago there was a mention in the build notes of a tweak to the collision model. In practice it made little difference to me. It made the cars bounce a bit less from walls offline, but online is still bad. My feeling is this would require quite a radical tweak including both testing the netcode (online) for better collision prediction and offline (collision physics themselves). Overall I'm disappointed in the progress since I first brought up the problem over a year ago. Big leagues such as FSR cannot move to rF2 until we can be assured of no (or at least minimum number of) silly jumping cars on broadcasts.
