Ayup folks, I feel a bit 'dirty'. Somehow unfaithful. A bad man. I noticed that Game Stock Car Extreme was on offer on Steam. I have some Paypal balance available thanks to the Crew Chief donations. I figured that I'd keep it secret and buy it with part of this balance. After all, lots of people think it's a great sim. As it turns out, I am not one of these people. Now, rather than just rant and belly ache about it, I thought I'd ask here (you are a wise and learned bunch) if I'm missing something obvious or doing something daft. The issues are as varied as they are tedious so, for the most part, aren't worth going into here. However, a few are so glaring and painful that I wonder if I've bought the same game that so many seem to be enjoying so much. So here goes... The graphics. Yes, who cares? Not me. Much. But when I have to lower details substantially to get a steady 60fps, it goes from looking like bollocks to looking like something from the 90s and makes my eyes bleed ("the goggles, they do nothing..."). My i5 4690 / R9 280 should be up for the challenge, but clearly not. But I can get used to it I suppose, there's more to a good sim than how it looks. Next... the force feedback. If this is supposed to be good, Project Cars must be amazing. But "hang on...", I hear you say. "Project Cars ffb is *arse*". Yes. Yes, it is arse. But GSCE is, apparently, worse. There's only a setting for my wheel at 360 degrees (a Driving Force Pro). I select this. It's like the wheel is attached to an enormous bowl of cake mix that has rather too many eggs in it. The only force I can feel is wheel that *really* doesn't want to turn. And what are presumably engine vibrations. I've no idea what the car is actually doing. Turning down the force level (the options are rather limited) just changes the size of the attached mixing bowl (or the stiffness of the cake mix). Still no idea what the car's up to. Hmm.. perhaps my wheel is just rubbish and they only focused on non-rubbish hardware and I should upgrade. As this rubbish wheel is sitting right in front of me (I can actually see it. In real life and everything), I like I switch off the in-game wheel. Who in their right mind would do such a thing? Clearly only me, because in this configuration most of the cars have no dashboard at all so I have to guess speed / gear / whatever (guessing speed is hard because the framerate is rubbish and it looks appalling). Or turn on the comedy HUD. Which spoils the otherwise seamless immersion. I played with my seat position a bit. But then the mirrors went out of view so I turned on the virtual mirror. But oh dear, the virtual mirror doesn't work in cockpit view for some cars. So I moved my seat position a bit more, but oh dear, in some of the single seaters the mirrors go grey / white / whatever colour the bodywork is when I've got the seat where I want it. Then there's the actual game. Now, I know it's built on rFactor. OK, this doesn't bother me - it was a long way ahead of its time and has plenty going for it. But the game just looks like a collection of third party mods all piled on top of each other. Which, I suppose, is what it actually is. Never mind. What might be the best car / track combo? Hmmm... the Emerson Fittipaldi 70s F1 car on Interlagos might thrill me enough to see past the flaws, surely the Brazilian dev team would have created awesome for this combo. Start the race... briefly see the steering wheel I disabled (never mind), gogogo. Ahh, no, turns out the green light must mean "stopstopstop" for the AI. Start again. BAM, same thing. Again. BAM, same. Again, dive to the side from last (25th) to 4th by turn one (98% AI, 50% aggression). Through T1 in one piece, chuck it into T2 and BAM the guy in 3rd just stands on the brakes. Aaaaannnyway... I know it takes time to 'click' with a new race sim (I'm very old and have played many many sims over the years). I know early impressions aren't a reliable indicator of the quality of a sim. But before I go past the Steam refund period, does it actually get better? No no, I mean, does it actually get *good*? I mean, Project Cars got "better" but it's still a hateful pile of crap. Does GSCE actually provide entertainment and excitement? To be honest, I actually think PCars is substantially better than GSCE. Am I insane? Did I accidentally install Grid or something? I even tried some mods (some Porsche thing that didn't work, Cart Extreme, Donington, and Bathurst). They all were great, given that someone made them in their spare time (for which I really am grateful), but the overall experience was the same. Somewhere between disappointment and astonishment (not the good kind). Can anyone help? Do I just not like racing games any more? I fired up R3E just to check, and I still like that one...
Thats super odd mr_belowski. I've had the opposite experience with SCE. The only time I've noticed bad force feedback is on mods. The in game content (and CART extreme) is pretty good. You've got a much better system than I do and I get 110-150 fps always. What I'd do for the steering is set it in the profiler for Logitech at the highest amount, then set it in game to whatever you feel comfortable with. When I had a Driving Force GT, I set it in the profiler to 900 then set it in game at either 540 or 270. You can do that in the controls section. I'd also load the G25 or G27 profile in the game as opposed to the DFP profile (I always loaded the G27 profile). As for graphics, I don't really know what to tell you. I'd turn shadows a bit lower and maybe set special effects a bit lower as well. Also turn off VSync. It does get better. I split my time between R3E and SCE pretty evenly and play stuff in SCE that's not available in R3E (tracks, mods, etc). Also if you want a steam refund make sure you play it less than 2 hours as that is the cut-off.
Howdy Mr. Belowski, I've been through some similar issues with GSCE in the past and had to do some digging to get it working right. However, once I have done that... the game made it easy for me to fall in love with As a disclaimer, I have just about every sim currently available, and enjoy them all for various reasons. No one sim to me is perfect, and fanboying over a single sim is disingenuous and rather dumb to me. Well, it is an old engine... modified rF... so, it is dated. However, I play on a gtx 660, which is less powerful than your gpu, and max every setting, and play consistently at 70 fps during races with ~20 cars, to 120 fps playing solo. The game runs like butter for me. I have read on Race Dept. that many people are having performance issues if they are running Windows 10. I would imagine that's why your performance is hampered. It's a game from 2005, so I can see why it wouldnt run well on W10. Maybe try compatibility mode for W7? Or at least look around RD. Once you get it working right, you should be able to use VSR or whatever AMD's solution is for upscaling the game to 4k. That is where I currently play it at, and get frame rates that are quite good. Although I have 2 gtx 660's, which is about equal to your gpu. The above info was when I only had 1 gpu working though. Also check out this guide from the devs on Steam. With an R9 280, you should easily max the graphics. Easily. Something definitely sounds off here. And I think it has to do with not configuring the wheel properly, or all the way. GSCE requires a lot of setup time before you can actually enjoy the game. First, check out this guide from RD. It basically tells you how to configure your wheel. For logitech wheels, I use the G27, you should set the FFB strength to some negative number. This will invert the FFB so it actually feels proper while driving. I use - 62%. Also, make sure you have the FFB effects set to "low". This will give you the natural FFB without any canned effects. Beyond that... there is 1 more thing you will need to do every single time you race or practice. Before going out on track, you will need to go into the garage, and change the car setup. You will need to change the steering lock. GSCE defaults to 14 I think for most cars. I use 540 DoR, so I use 22-23 steering lock. The game doesnt remember your choice like R3E, so you have to change it every single time unless you save a setup... which is a pain, because you would need to do that for every single car/track combo. More configuring to do, yay! This is one of my least favorite things about GSCE. You have to manually edit an .ini file (actually I believe it is a PLR file, but you can open it just the same with notepad) if you want the mirrors to work properly. By default, I think the mirrors show a skeleton of the car. Also when you click the look behind button. I got rid of that because it is nonsense. Also, I think you need to edit the .ini to make the mirror show up properly. By default, pressing the number 3 key cycles the mirror options. You can edit whether just the main rear view mirror shows. The rear view + side mirrors, or just the side mirrors. You'll find that ini file in the main GSCE file folder in the steam directory. You can look at the folder listing at the top of this pic. The 2nd post in this guide from RD describes the mirror thing. As well as the weird suspension parts in the mirror. Once you configure all that... the game does get quite fun. It really shines online with a pretty good community, much like R3E. Albeit a fairly small online population unless you play in leagues. AI like any game, has some issues with aggression and being slow in some corners. I havent had much issue though. Find a difficulty % and aggression % that works. Once you learn the AI patterns, they put up a hell of a good fight. Quite clean too. For races, I use about 105% difficulty, and 40% aggression. Give these guides a chance, and see if that improves anything. Cheers Edit: I will say one last thing about GSCE.... for you to truly like it, enjoy it, and want to play it... you'll have to at least be alright with the thought of modding your game. GSCE much like the original rFactor, is a modding platform. There is a decent amount of stock content... but since then, I have added ~50 tracks, and ~50 different cars or so. If you arent okay with downloading, searching through the install destination, modifying the PLR file, and others occasionally, then this sim may not be all that enjoyable. If you can look past that though... try out the super karts and Kansai... it's been one of the most enjoyable moments I have ever had sim-racing.
Hey Mr B....Yeah somethings up with gfx side of things. We have roughly the same there and mine runs with pretty much unlimited fps. that said it's not the greatest to look at even maxed out. But it's not bad. As for the steering, it took me ages to work it out but I set my T300 to 540 in the driver, (I do for all my sims now) then about 16-20' lock in the car setup. The setting for DOR is just graphical in game. Ignore the Gamepad setting in this pic they are just profiles to load, mine is in that list. I dropped GSCE for ages because of Raceroom, but I keep going back to check on it...right now I'm diggin the Karts. Cheers for those guides Nate...
I just remember going through the growing pains of setting up the game so it runs well... I have all those guides on standby for when I need to quickly access them for some info I forgot. I dont mind editing some files to get the game working, but without some assistance (namely those guides), it would have taken me ages to figure out how to do the rearview mirror or remove the suspension parts when looking behind.
Thanks for the info guys. I get a bit annoyed farting about with config files to fix basic stuff but will give it a try. The framerates are a bit of a worry. I'm on win 7 running 720p res with 4x supersampling. Should be OK I think but its staggering along in the 30s maxed out. Have to turn a few things down to medium to get 60 fps and man it's ugly. I think it's the overall lack of polish and 'stuff actually working' that's rather wound me up. I wasn't expecting modern graphics but I did expect stuff like ffb to work properly out-the-box. I'll have to decide whether to persevere or get a refund and buy AC instead.
Ahh, yeah, that is a pain that a modern game requires a lot of configuring before really getting into. Have you tried just playing at 1080p with no supersampling? To me, the game, even without SS, looks pretty good. It's not shiny like pCARS or fancy like AC, but a track like spielberg, montreal, kansai, or bologna, really look pretty good. Like Dave said though, 2 hrs of playtime is generally the cutoff for a refund, although I've heard of plenty of exceptions being made if you send Steam a message telling them the game does not run and you have spent the entire 2 hrs+ trying to configure it via guides from the devs online. AC requires a bit of config much like R3E, but runs very well, and doesnt have these issues where you need to find specific files to edit to get the game to work properly Good luck with it! Edit: Just thought of something you might try to do to get the game working well, before your refund period expires... You could try out GSCE's free demo called Copa Petrobas de Marcas, play that and make the tweaks... and if you are satisfied... return to playing GSCE. The demo is completely free, has 4 cars and 6 tracks. And all of the same features as the main game. So this should allow you to make the tweaks, and have a direct comparison to how it would be if you made those changes to GSCE. That way you wont pass the 2 hr refund period!
I hadn't run SCEx in months but the release of the V8Super got me curious being an Aussie, had to update the game via Sync, that took 5hrs. Then I had to reconfigure everything, I forgot what a headf&#k it can be , had to resort to RD forum guides, the one's Nate linked above to get it right again. Was all exited to get it running, but within moments I was questioning my motives, don't take this the wrong way, there's nothing wrong with SCEx other than being a little dated, but it just doesn't thrill me anymore. Maybe Ive just become too accustom to RRE & AC's awesome, all round, deep immersion & amazing FFB. To be honest, Id go the refund and acquire AC, you definitely won't regret it.
Same thing happend to me... today... because of the offer haha. I could quote so many things you wrote. I was in my second or third race asking myself again and again: why do people like this so much? I also started to think that maybe there's something wrong with me But don't get me wrong, it wasn't a bad experience (my graphics were working fine), it just didn't feel so "great". I decided to give it time, the "not so great" experience didn't make me blind to some of its qualities, and there's a chance it has many more. I guess learning to tweak and set properly will help a lot. The minis were fun by the way.
Have this game also, which i love very much. Yeah the beginning was hell, 1st hour and i did a ragequit Those V8 could not be handled, my opinion on that time. But like said above you need to put some hours in to adapt. Great sim and fully adjustable. Menu's, car liveries etc can be adjusted, i even got RfDynhud working. For now only downisde i have is the lack of usb inputs which is limited to 3 but they work on that for the new release. And yes i donated on their crowdfunding campaign
Mini's were/are always fun. My problem is that AC & RRE offer more all round satisfaction...............at the moment! I still enjoy the DTM2013 Mod, that was, and still is, an immersive mod for me, so it's not like Ive written SCEx off completely, it still has something to offer. Like the ORSM authorized Bathurst track, simply the Best and most accurate yet, bar none, I just can't resist the temptation or the challenge to go flat out around such an amazing circuit without having a fender bender, any car, I'm not fussy cheers
GSC is good if you join a league that uses it. I've heard for years how great the AI is in GSC but I've always thought the opposite. It's typical RFactor AI that either run you off the track or completely lay over when you attempt to pass them. I fire it up from time to time cause I enjoy the historic cars & karts but get bored quickly cause the AI kills the immersion. Maybe the crowd funding project they have going on will help fund an overhauled AI.
I've just refunded it. The prospect of arsing around with config files, chasing ffb settings, working out which gfx settings I have to fiddle with to make it run right and so on just really puts me off. To go through all the faff and wasted time only to find I didn't like it anyway was just too big a risk. If, after the faff, I found the AI to be poor I'd just never play it. I think the clincher was having to set ffb to "low" in the options to get 'correct' ffb. Just smells of unfinished and broken to me.
Tbh... You've probably made the right choice.... AC isn't a bed of roses either though. But at least it's up to date, and for the most part is a great drive... But as with all the others, some how they just don't have as much soul as R3E. but each of them have something I like.
GSC will always be one of my 'go to' sims for it's namesake content alone. Those V8 stock cars are awesome. Running full 34 car grids on all the real tracks can rival anything R3E has to offer. I tend not to stray too far away from this series as the rest of the sim is a little content-limited, but I don't mind so much because I always have time for any game that can give me a real, licensed championship in full, something that is becoming a rarity these days. I think it's worth noting that Reiza is a tiny studio without any serious backing. GSC is their first title and although it might look like a bunch of rFactor mods and has a basic, sometimes clumsy feel, I think, however, they've done rather well with the platform and resources at their disposal. GSC isn't perfect, it certainly is dated in some ways, but it should serve as a solid platform for the successor, which sounds altogether more interesting. Most importantly I think it's clear Reiza are among the good guys in this niche sim racing genre. They are worthy of all our support even if GSC doesn't tick all the boxes. It's such a cheap and well supported product that I feel every sim racer should own it.
One and a half year ago I did not know about Raceroom, and Assetto Corsa was in very Early Access, with Snoopy'S Nordschleife mod still not available. I then took the opportunity to get GSCR in a sale, because it had a nice Nordschleife mod, and one for Transfagarasan as well. These where the two arugments that got me into trying it. It is based on a by now very old graphics engine - ISI - that shows its age. That it also is true that never before said engine was used to such beauty and optimal results, does not help to hide that it still is that old, although it looks better than rF1 ever did. I did not had to lower graphics options, it was smooth on my rig, which is W7x64 on an i5-2500K @3.3GHz, 8 GB, nVidia 680. I tell people to lower AA and AF if they have stuttering, for me, both at 4x works pleasant enough to the eye, anything beyond that means more system investements for less and lesser gains. The handling of cars was okay, but I felt the heritage of cars in sims from 10 years ago, certain harsh changes in car's attitude the sim could not adequately display, weight transfers and balance shifts that did not feel as right as in AC, the phase of loosing or gaining grip just at the critical treshhold feels not any different from any other sim from that era 10 and more years ago. I think it is this recognising of somethign people recall from the past that lures some to claim that the GSCE physics are "so damn good". To me, they are functionally working, but mediocre, representing what today must be labelled as "sub-standard". Indeed it felt quite backwardly in these regards, even more when you came from Assetto Corsa's superior physics and driving, which to me was a revelation. But okay, it was reasonably predictable in results your inputs created, and was enough to get me going around the Nord and up that Fagarasan pass.Considering the price, I did not feel cheated at all. I recall that the AI gave me a very good impression. I do not recall details anymore, but I recall that I liked it, found nothing to seriously complain about. A surprise were the karts, if you haven't tried them, Belowski, then you have missed some real good fun - driving those things was great fun indeed. Check Youtube for some videos. It is usually said about GSCE that one of its charms is that it offers a "complete package". Problem is if the - quite unknown - cars included do not represent cars you are interested in, and tracks included for the most are not catching your interest either, you end up with a polished but overaged graphcis engine, a decently performing AI, but a driving experience that within the limits of its age is good, but nevertheless represents right these old standards of what you expected from driving in a sim ten years ago. And I never was a fan of driving in already the first rFactor. The game cannot hold its ground against Raceroom or Assetto Corsa. Taken for itself it may be good value for money, but you cannot get around the fact that it simply represents very old, overaged visual and physics standards. They are high standards judging by what was expected of an engine like this ten years ago. But today - I think it simply is pointless to invest into such an old thing. Time has moved on, so have the titles on the market. GSCE is solid, but cannot keep up with the standrds of the present anymore. Raceroom and Assetto Corsa over GSCE any time, every time, always. I stopped playing GSCE when Snoopy released his Nordschleife, and I deinstalled it when the Transfagarsan mod was converted to Assetto Corsa. My main arguments to keep GSCE had been invalidated by these two releases for AC. I recognise Reiza Studio's dedication, however. GSCE is not bad - it just is old in what it represents, in visual and physics standards. The title might still be an option on secondary rigs or laptops that lack the power to run stuff like AC, or Raceroom.
I can't argue that they're good guys and are a force for good in sim racing. But there are plenty of other small dev teams doing good work and keeping our hobby alive and constantly improving. Reiza's product simply (IMO) doesn't stack up, even when it's cheap. For all the love and attention they've invested in it, the end result just seems oddly and unnecessarily rough and unfinished. There was a time when I'd be happy to spend time tweaking and fixing. But I just don't have that time any more. Needing to do this makes the game feel rather broken
Agree. Still, for me GSCE's strengths are in the mods, mainly CART 1998 mod. It is simply stunning representation of one of the greatest openwheel series and is definitely payware quality. Unfortunately not all the tracks of 1998 season are available, at the moment at least, but there are enough and of course you can race on any track you like.
Agreed James. Just yesterday I ran a few oval races with Cart Extreme at Homestead, Indy, and Michigan and a few road courses and had a blast. Quite of few the complaints in this thread will be addressed by the crowdfunding (3 USB limit, better looking HUD, physics and tires). Just like many I don't like the HUD and I don't like the menu interface but found solutions. For now, if you want a better looking HUD, use rFDynHud, and if you want a better looking interface download and use the rFactor UI. Just about any mod or track from rFactor can be converted using rFactor tools. Here's a few links UI Data (Menu Interface) UIData rFactor Tools (to convert mods and tracks automatically) rfactortools DynHud http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/gid-plugin-working-on-v1-31.103585/