I drive SCCA road racing in the USA (midwest). I've used RF1 to learn tracks before I went to them, and have also practiced on RF1 before going to a track. Tracks like Heartland Park/KS, Hallett/OK, Road AmericaWI, MidAmericaMotorplex/IA... I'm looking forward to RF2's improvement in physics/graphics quality. The question is, when can/should I upgrade to RF2? I read a post earlier about people recommending against just converting RF1 tracks to the RF2 format since you miss out on a lot of the enhancements that RF2 gives you. Is there going to be a way to use or convert RF1 tracks in RF2?
I'd suggest to stay with rF 1 for at lest next few months. rF 2 in its current state IS already better, but from your point of view might not be enough, because: - there are just a few tracks available and none you've mentioned (I think Mid-Ohio is the only one you might be interested in), - physics wise, there will be some changes and the tyre model is not finished yet so from build to build, you might experience noticable variations in how cars feel on track, - there are no very good mods at the moment (ISI cars are aceptable/good but obviously they are not THAT good yet as they've might be in my opinion). But I can already say, that if everything will be in place and rF 2 will get all the neccesary updates, it will be a very noticable step forward.
As for tracks: Heartland Park Topeka should be coming within the next three months, Road America will be the next after that.
Based on Rf1 It will probably take around a year or so before most the quality tracks are in the game and top cars are in the game. For just learning track layout Rf1 is probably fine so long as you have a good track installed. Rf2 physics are really nice and from a sim and gamer point of view are a massive improvement over RF1 , having said that due to the twitchy out of control nature of allot of Rf1 cars they might actually train your driving skills better than Rf2 as it punishes mistakes with the cars more willing to lose grip. But that's up for debate and would also probably depend on your driving stile. I'm sure allot of basic conversions will move from Rf1 to RF2 within the next 6 months as well but I give the one year time frame as a good bet for when you could get RF2 and be garentied lots of content and some polished mods. For practising side by side racing / overtaking under pressure RF2 is probably better than RF1 due to the improved more realistic and more forgiving tire model. Cars can also bump into each other without losing grip and flying off like would happen allot in RF1 and in general the cars are just far more stable and predictable.
Converting rF1 tracks to rF2 is very possible, and already proven by publicly released tracks such as Mid-Ohio by VLM, and the first conversion of rF1 track: Putnam Park by Alex Sawczuk. Maybe you could ask for some help from modders here on converting tracks you need to learn. As for when to upgrade, I would say it's relative. If you really don't mind being a BETA tester, then you should do it now, but bear in mind there are loopholes here and there in the BETA software. If you don't want to get such early headache and ruin your racing agenda, then I say just wait until rF2 is going gold.
It is not conversion in a sense if you use original project file for adjustments and then export to rF2. Conversion would mean that you take rF1 track files and some how change them to be compatible with rF2. At least now it is not very easy thing to do, and maybe never will. So we won't see crappy conversion from rF1.
So, Conversion Plus? Yes, direct conversion is never good. Take for example all tracks that were created for F1C then converted to rFactor1 without proper modification. They never look good. Another crazier example is direct conversion of GPL track to rFactor1. Very ugly but usually give us high FPS due to low resolution textures.
Yes those are good examples of (bad) conversions. I've seen conversions from Race Driver: Grid, and actually they were quite good. But quite illegal I guess. I wouldn't mind having a possibility to convert tracks easily from rF1 to rF2, there are lots of great tracks offering good drive even without latest graphical advantages.
