Bought the game, Nordschleife and the Aston Martin here and I’m really impressed of how the track looks and the car drives. Wow. Really wow. Now I really have problems to go back to R3E here. I think, this was it for me. Standing on the start line, driving a full in Lap, then standing on the starting grid, race a few laps with the best FFB I’ve felt before, going into a sundown and after that a cool down lap into the boxes. The race was with all GTEs and LMP2 and LMP3 and cup Porsches. Wow. This was awesome. Bought the whole stuff...
Yes, in many ways it's no longer the game it was...when it works; that old cliche still applies. When (not if) when you hit issues I would suggest Discord for support.
I dip in and out but I liken what's there to a buffet at the moment.. Most of it is a weird mess and has been sat out for far too long, but hidden within it all are some really nice fresh-from-the-kitchen bits, with GTE being the tastiest. Their roadmap is promising though. If they can apply that same magic to the GT3 pack, then those two classes are the start of something promising to keep building on. As a supplement of sorts, I find it sits along side RRE really well. It fills in some blanks I sorely wish RRE had (GTE, Donnington, Road Atlanta to name a few), but I don't currently find it has anywhere near enough solid go-to content to stand on it's own two feet. As a relative newbie to it, the earlier stuff must've been truly awful. Roadmap: https://www.studio-397.com/2020/06/roadmap-update-june-2020/
In some cases it was way better. AI for example. AI now has some serious issues, like drafting with brakes, stutter throttle and stutter brake, not overlapping or overtaking in the in-lap, the notorious weak AMG GT3 AI, some tracks without proper AI polish and so on... I blame the "everything wants to be a multiplayer iRenting competition-culture" in sim racing for that, because i can
I took advantage (or they took advantage of me) of the Steam sale and loaded my Sim rig computer up with sim racing games. R3E has been joined by Assetto Corsa, Assetto Corsa Competizione+Intercontinental Pack and Rfactor 2 base game. This is my first experience with Rfactor 2 and I cannot say that my first impressions were good. The UI is clunky and looks like it is from the 90s. The Wheels set-up, graphic set-up and FFB set-up are not user friendly. But I have heard great things about the handling physics and the FFB feel so I wanted the chance to experience it and the 50% off price made it less painful to grab it and give it a try at some point.
Well because RR refuses to run on my PC anymore I've been delving into rF2 far more lately and have observed a few things both good and bad. Lets get the UI out of the way first, it's crap. The new one is way better and if you go to the games steam properties and enable the public beta, you can try it out but be warned, has a tendency to freeze. GTE's are getting better, with the GT3's getting some love next, the new Radical is eh rad, jury is out on the M2 for me at the mo as I find one horse races hard to judge. S397 tracks are fantastic, Sebring being phenomenal, as is the Nords and Le Man, they all are. Other cars that really are fantastic is the entire Maclaren pack, Porsche 917k is stunning, as is the Eve range. Historical F1's are brilliant, especially the Prost/Senna/Shuey pack. Howston's are great but will kill you, in fact there are lots of great mods available, just grab a couple at a time, evaluate, keep/dump as appropriate, fun in itself. At least it feels like rF2 will still be around in the future, unlike RR, which continues to dither with both hands tied behind its back.
Agreed on all points there, and the price you paid is about all the base content is worth IMO - I think you're essentially just buying the engine/framework at this point. If you're still willing to splash out a little further, then their endurance pack (I think that's what they called it) is worth it. IIRC it has all the GTE cars, the Senna, an LPM2, and one LMP3. As for tracks, the included 2020 Zandvoort is great, and Silverstone has just had a massive clean up. From the workshop I grabbed Road Atlanta and Donnington. The official Sebring is the one held up in extremely high regard, but it's not a track I know at all, so I'm in no rush to try it - I certainly will at some point. Personally I wouldn't recommend grabbing too much free stuff from the workshop before thoroughly assessing what's there already, as it's too easy to just bloat the thing out with crap. Once you know what you like/don't like with the original content, you can remove all the parts you're never going to use to streamline it right down to a core set of bits.. Then slowly add new workshop elements as you go to build a library of content that works for you.
I've tried it today because of the Steam sale, but I was trying to limit myself 2 hours, to be able to ask for a refund if it wouldn't work out ok, as I've read very different opinions about rfactor2. Didn't start very well, as soon as it downloaded, I pressed Start and then all workshop items got downloaded (the free content is downloaded in that way) and it burned 43 minutes of my 2 hours slot Then I choose Silverstone and the free Radical SR3 to give it a try, and wheel setup was really unfriendly. I have a Fanatec CSL Elite 1.1 base + Formula V2 steering wheel + CSL loacell pedals, and the first time I ran rFactor2 I couldn't even change any binded controls. It detected it as a CSL Elite Xbox, but my pedals (which are directly connected via USB) weren't recognized. Rebooted, started rFactor again and then my gear was detected, but all of it was mixed up (steering wheel was set to pedals/etc). I mapped some minimal controls to be able to drive and tried a pratice session. Now, I don't know if it was a bad mapping, setup, missing tweaks, or a bad track/car combination, but I didn't feel FFB as being that great. In the end, the 2h were almost done, and for the fear of being left with another simracing ecosystem besides R3E which could not work or that it would require too much tinkering, I just decided for a refund.
Yeah, my first impressions pretty much mirror yours. I do not really care about about the money nor the disk space so I will keep it on the computer and maybe someday, in the future, I will give it another go.
I bought it 2 years ago, asked for a refund. Bought it again last year because everyone was telling how great it is. ok, let me try again. Bought some payed content as well. Played it, but I can’t understand why people like it. As you said, it can’t coop with my Fanatec gear. I have to assign everything manually. The setup screens are just from an other era. And the GFX can’t appeal me. That said, if people do like this game then that is great for them of course. For me it is a no go and I have uninstalled it a couple of months ago.
Is it only me where rFactor doesn't look that good? OK, I'm driving in VR. But when I go out of the Pit, it is very pixelated there. SS is at 1.3 in Oculus, because with more SS I only get 40 FPS instead of 80 and this is not the way I want do go racing. I'm a bit buffed about how it looks in the video (except the reflections on the cars, they are indeed very wrong and ugly in the video, too) but the rest shows another game than it is in my Rift S. Raceroom looks way smoother and better :\ I really miss the rF2 FFB in Raceroom. And the sundowner and night races. And the Formation Lap. And the cooldown Lap. And the GTEs. And the knowledge of all edges of this sim, I've earned in the last 5 Years of R3E. Then I would be a happy rFactor user :\
Jus finished a race at Mugellousing the Renault Megane World trophy and it was up there with my best FFB experience in a Sim title.
When everything is dialed in, rF2 is amazing. When everything is dialed in wrong or incomplete, rF2 is annoying. GTE on LM or Puma P052 racecars on Portland are some of the best experiences, you can have. Sometimes it can feel a bit game-ish/tool-ish, but sometimes it feels just, like driving a car. It's a love/hate relationship for me.
I have the same thing going on with AMS2. There are some combos in that which are really strong, and I'll lose an hour just screaming round on a practice session. But then I'll hit a combo where I just don't feel it, and end up quitting out in favour of something else. I'm giving it some distance/time now for them to catch up with the slew of issues that probably shouldn't be there in v1.0x Rf2 is slightly different in that I just accept the whole thing's a bloody mess, and stick to the very limited content I like. I found a laser scanned version of 'Seca last night that drove really well with the GTEs.
The difference is, that rF2 is released for about 7 years now. ' It's hit&miss. It CAN be a bloody mess, but it also can be usable, at least, if some things are saved, pre-set and learned. Documentation of rF2 is even more important. An updated official manual would already solve some stuff...