Hi there. I've just come off from a 2 week research project with a purpous of finding out which of the up coming racing sim I would invest money and time to take a closer look into during development phase. I ended up with rFactor2 and so I am writing my first impressions here. First off the reason I ended up here is quite simple. My priority (which seems to be important these days to be mentioned) is physics/feel of the game, second coming with graphics and sounds. I myself find it little silly that this is something that is being questioned these days since in my opinnion the overall feel comes from combining these factors... does it resample with appearance a real thing, does it sounds like a real thing, does it drive like a real thing AKA does it simulate real life equalent in the aspects that our senses can grasp thru a screen and controller. When I started playing driving games the controller was a keyboard or a joystick and you could say that things kinda looked like something of a car and sounded like a dying rat in a toilet... while listening it from kitchen... with a tea cosy stuck over your head. (imagining it, havent really experienced such event.) In my research the obvious debates were all over the place, fan boys vs critics, I have a bigger epeen than y'all, but it wasnt too hard to find genuine opinnions of sense and reflection that was actually helpful. The nail to that coffin deffinetly was the fact that one of the best sims ever EA F1 was developed by ISI, thats hard to beat when it comes to experience, and the feel of that game around 2003 was amazing. I was sold after I got my head around the fact that the engines and their developers involved would have alot of potential and knowhow to create a great sim once more. About first impressions. First game I recall that I found fun and with a tad of wow factor was Outrun with c64, it had a feel of speed that was interesting compaired to the other driving games around that era, but the true eye openers for c64 were Test Drive and Grand Prix Circuit. I would call them sims of their time, and what a wonderful introduction it was into the sim world. Next I would absolutely have to mention the king Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix. That took things closer to a sim like idealism and gave me another moment of awe, what is possible in gaming. GP 2 and GP 3 followed and they didnt let down and managed to delivere great first impressions that I kept going back for a long time. Especially the fact that I got my first wheel for GP2, and that was just one big yay all around. Next game that gave thrills and chills was Gran Turismo. The first one was just so pretty with its "real" cars and life like appearance that it took some serious time to top that from other platforms, deffinetly left its foot print into the sim history. I could go on like this and list all the driving games that gave me a thrills from the first time I touched them, but who cares.... ok just a quick list: Formula1 2001, F1 Challenge '99-'02, Toca, Colin McRae, Forza 3, GT5 (with H shifter especially), RBR, rFactor2. Point. Now All these driving games have given me alot of joy and everytime what I have experienced in the first 16 minutes (yes 16, not 15 nor 14) of the game play has lasted till a next title has improved on that same experience. I never got that itch from Race 07 series (which I have to mention) for example, even with all of its mods and expantions being as abundant as they are, it really didnt bring anything new in ways I'd hoped. Dont get me wrong, I really really like that game, its great, but not good enough to steal my undivided attention. Well... I sure as hell got that itch, buzz, shock and awe, wow about rF2 when I fired it up and jumped into the tiny clio and ran it around whatever track it was, and how about the mean green machine Brabham around spa -67. I think I pooped a little on that second straight first time around. I just loved it. Thanks for that. Anywhoo... more to come I suspect? I'll quit this "fan boy" fanfare here while Im still ahead and come back with something widdy and critical, trash the graphics or someones hairdo or something *hear me roar* next time. (I kid I kid... or do I ) Bybye.
What can i say? i have almost the same experience has you, first Grand Prix from Accolade in a IBM 8086, then Grand Prix from Geof Grammond in a clone 80286, THAT was a wow, Geof is the KING, the rest pretty much the same and why i ended here in rf2, previous rf1, i just can add that RBR is the only sim that gave me fear when i take speed. Nice reading, thanks!
Yeah I agree that the RBR feel of speed is very good, as I find it to be in rF2, to the point of it getting scary which is a very nice thing indeed. Something that Id actually like to add to the point of "realism" is the damage to the car. That is something that I have found over the years increasingly important. Damage from collision to have realistic consiquences aswell as over torturing the car, like tire wear, highly tuned cars dont have long life spands without maintenance for its most sensitive parts and I think that that is important to show in a sim. So called random mechanical failure is everyday life in motorsports, usually more than desired, but no matter how frustrating it is to quit the race from top, cause your gearbox runs out of steam, thats just how it is sometimes.
How it did run? I had friend that had that for 286 and it was not running as well as it was running on my Amiga + I had lot better sounds as it was almost with every game at that time, PC got better sound only later.
Im having a hard time understanding what do you actually mean but I'll give it a shot. Since the games with relatively easy access atm. are rFactor2 and pCars, it wasnt hard to findout that the physics are atleast at this point of development in better shape with rF2 and if you paid attention to the point I made about the priority, I consider this game is more worth my time and ~40€ at this state of development.
To be fair jtbo, the Amiga computer was leaps and bounds ahead of it's time. The fact that it was running Motorola chips and was designed to be true multi-tasking gave it an edge as well as the dedicated audio processor and graphics processors that the Amiga had. I saw a demo of a game, can't remember which it was, on the Amiga side by side with the same demo on an 80486 system. In order for the demo to even appear close, the 486 had to have the sound turned off to reduce the memory and CPU usage enough to stay up. The Amiga was the Amiga 500.
Another thing where Amiga was good was copying a floppy, with 2 disk drives, amiga did read and write at the same time, thing which is not possible even fastest PC today, PC reads first, then stops, then starts writing, it has no meaning to have more than one floppy drive. Oh yes, nobody else uses floppy discs anymore? I would like to see rf2 3 1/2" disc edition, those towers of discs would be quite massive and also hospital bill from wrist issues, but it would certainly be something nobody else would do today
Ha floppy disks (btw I just google and its disk).. I can brag about remebering using them in front of classmates, many of them have never touched one, they started with PCs when CDs were mainstream already (I was born in 90' and started doing PC stuff in late 90s).. I have to say that F1 GP for Amiga looks like fun considering its from 91.
You bring up another point that I sorely miss from the Amiga days jtbo. With disks or CD's you could have multiple drives and the system would recognize that the disks were loaded and knew what to do if you started an install from the first disk. If the next disk in line was in another drive, it knew it and would continue the install from the next disk without asking you to insert it as it was already in another drive. Too bad these IBM clones are not capable of true multi-tasking to that extent anyways.
You're not old! Do you remember 5 1/4 inch Floppy Disks? They were actually 'floppy'. Before that we had magnetic tape and before that punched tape and cards like an old Piano that plays itself. Computers filled rooms and simple programs took days to run. My first home computer (ZX81) had 1K memory. My Dragon32 had 32K. My Amiga500 was like a supercomputer in comparison.
My first computer was a ZX81 also... then moved to a Commodore 64 (which I still have, but is for sale right now)... then an Amiga 3000... now THAT was a supercomputer! In fact, I just sold my Amiga 2 weeks ago, but not before duplicating its hard drive into a Windows Amiga emulator, so I have an exact copy of my old Amiga on my Windows machine. I too had F1 GP, I'll need to fire that up in the emulator sometime and give it a go. My most fond memories are from college, where myself and three other friends would play F1 GP. It had a "multiplayer" option where you would take turns driving during the race... when someone else was driving their car, your car was being controlled by AI... spent many hours behind the joystick!
My first computer was ZX Spectrum 16Kb with all the basic-commands printed on the rubber-buttons, the sequel to the ones you talk about :-D At that time there was no racing-games even, i remembered we tried to program our own, but didn't come far until the hardware was choked. View attachment 4612 The first memorable racing experience i had was on a console though, hmm Sega 16bit(?). Anyway there was some kind of Formula 1 racing-game on it and i still remember i was so proud i could drive through Monza full speed without lifting the throttle at all, lol.
I remember in school we had a computer that one of the guys programmed a Star Trek game for. The output was a teletype and you could program with punch tape, punch cards or toggles on the computer itself. That computer took up half a classroom and was probably no more powerful than today's calculators.
Ah yes floppy disks. I remember them well. First PC was apple II plus. My uncle had a trash 80 with 8" floppies. LOL.
Apple IIe here. Loved Lode Runner bunches. I got started gaming on the Intellivision. Later had to get the Intellivision 2 as I wore out the original. I believe I was 7 at the time. Had a friend that had the Magnavox Odyssey that was a hoot to play as well. It's not common to here those names thrown around.
