The other day I was watching a vid by simpit. And the guy made a point that really rang true for me. Because he opened with the statement that, that was the wrong question. As there is not a "best" sim. They all have their own strong points. rFactor2 has the most detailed tire model. iRacing best online. Raceroom best sound and ffb. AC most realisic overall handling. Those were his opinions of the most recent sims, not necessarily mine. He also spent a bit of time explaining his optinions. Anyway, it got me thinking about what Do I really want in my racing experience. I don't particularly care about winning races. For me immursion comes in having what feels like the closest to reality experience. Hence I would like a sweet line on the track, changing weather, even tho I hate racing in the rain and a whole lot of other things that I don't see happening here anytime soon. It's not sector 3's fault. Since raceroom publishing pays the bills, and therefore calls all the shots. Case in point, sector 3 is finally developing VR because the Asian tracks want it in their sim cafes. I understand where raceroom is coming from. The average person at a race track wants to get in a car and have some fun. He doesn't want to spend his hour in the game tuning his car or learning the finer nuances of a particular track. That makes sense to me. And yes we do have that to a certain extent here. Don't get me wrong, this is a great sim and has given me many hours of entertainment. And at the same time, it's missing so many things that help with my immursion. Too many to list here. And besides, so many people have made the list too many times. I think the thing that kept me here for so long was the AI. Raceroom also has the best single player mode of all the new sims in my opinion. Even now with the latest update bringing a few unwanted changes. It's better that the other options. So, I guess I'm wondering where do I go from here? Clearly raceroom isn't concerned about most of the things I want. And yet this feels like the best option of current sims. What usually happens with me in situations like this, is I loose interest and move on too other things to make a hobby of. And I'm getting pretty close to that point now. Maybe it's time to re-invest more time in my mountain bike and horses. I'll close with this. The simpit guys closing statement said it quite well. As a game to just jump in and play with great handling, sound, ffb and immursion. Raceroom wins hands down. But if you want to go deeper you have to look elsewhere. The question is, where? Catch you on the flip side guys. Gregoryleo.
good point. funny that in my case I played every other sim before but got stuck at raceroom because regardless of missing weather and day/night cycle it gives me the best immersion and the most joy driving around the tracks and battling in multiplayer and against the AI. I don't even miss the other sims. of course it would be great to see new additional features in the future that other sims have... but... which other new sim has the sachsenring? ^^ +1 for raceroom
Yah. I have played all but iRacing, and keep coming back to this one. The guy finished his commentary with a laugh saying "if haven't figured it out by now, I'll say it outright. To have the best sim you have to buy them all"
This is really the best answer. If you're starting to feel burned out step away from it all for a bit, R3E is getting flags soon(hopefully), rF2 is getting the whole engine and UI overhaul. Lots of things about to happen that could shake things up a bit, looking even further ahead we have some new titles announced that might shake things up further and or push the current ones into a techrace. Personally I play all the current sims except iRacing that I let the sub slide on recently and in that climate R3E shines rather brightly as it has very even content with standard setups that are very driveable out of the box. Simply put R3E is like you said above designed to just jump in and have fun, and that means it sees a lot of gametime from me.
In my opinion, the next step from Raceroom would be Automobilista. rFactor 2 is something I have a huge gripe with, since the devs did not deliver on their promises and the tire model itself does not make a sim. Let's see what Studio 397 can do with this dead horse, but I would not get my hopes up. Assetto Corsa can be fun, but it's more of a PC poor man's Gran Turismo. Nice to drive pretty looking cars on laser scanned tracks, the rest is a bit meh and the devs are focused on DLC rather than improving the platform. I would not bother with iRacing, since it's a huge money sink.
Some of the other sims I've seen or tried out have such bad and dated graphics that they were a deal breaker for me - Automobilista (SCE), rFactor 2, and even AC. I couldn't get AC to look reasonable and not blurry and generally very 2008 looking... although I've seen some reasonable looking videos online. I'm also at a loss why its handling and physics are considered so good. They felt just OK compared to PCars and Raceroom for me. PCars has good handling, graphics, but its Anti-alisaing is never perfect (unless using very demanding settings) What it does have is very poor sound (the sound mix is completely wrong) and very poor FFB, no matter how hard you try to tune it. Which leaves RaceRoom. As said before- best sounds and FFB, very nice graphics (lighting is basic but its the only game Iv'e seen that anti-aliases perfectly), very capable AI, custom championships, very polished UI and overall experience. No rain, no dynamic lighting/weather- Who cares. no game has managed to balance AI driving in the rain (Pcars, and F1 series have so far failed)
I cannot agree here. Runnig atm at gtx 960 on high and have no problems with quality of graphic or fps.
@ rodent Ya I've hardly done any racing for a few weeks now. I never really gelled with rfactor Just didn't turn my crank so to speak. But updates are always welcome. even when they don't pan out the way WE think they should @mmaruda I never really cared for GSC another one that just never got me excited. I'll have to give it some thought. I've read/heard a few good comments about it. And AC is as you say ehh. Vids nice but ffb and sound leave someting to be desired not really into street cars so.... @Squanchy I'm not really addicted to graphics which is lucky because my system kinda struggles in that dept. And I only have a free demo of PC spent several hours with it I'm not particularly impressed with it either. If your struggling with video on all of those you might want to look into your vid settings or contact the manufacturer. see if you can improve it some what. And having said all the things I have in this thread, I just had the best single player race I've had in a very long while. The Ai were great. Fighting for position without being overly agressive. Several battles with several different AI in both of the races in the 2 race format. Passing and being passed without incident while fighting for position. IT WAS A BLAST. This is my all time second favorite sim. Because of my systems short comings in the gpu dept. I have to run r3e with mostly low settings and about 15 AI. But I can run GTR2 at full settings and 30+ AI. And so it is in many ways better than raceroom. And it has pretty much everything I want in a racing sim. So even though I have been playing r3e more it's reached it point of maximum fun for me. I do love this sim. But I keep going back to GTR2. And thanks to the FFB meter and settings, and physics in this sim I was able to get a clearer understanding of what I want in those areas of the game. And thereby make huge improvements in the ffb and physics in GTR2 editting the PLR files. It was like getting brand new sims for free. Big thanks to Sector 3 for their work as it helped immensly. Anyway, I will still be playing this game. Just not nearly as much. If I was to be given just one update in this sim. it would be to be able to save a game in the middle of a race. so I could play longer races. Say 3hrs or more, by racing from pit stop to pit stop using the save option. That alone would make a big difference to me. Later guys.
Weather I get, I'm British, it rains but day/night cycle is extremely niche, endurance racing, which although many profess to crave I'm yet to see more than a handful finish a 20 min race online and before you all start battering me I know there are some groups that would relish the opportunity but how many honestly have the time to sit at their PC for 12-24hr periods (apart from me that is! ) , certainly not a deal breaker for me, far more interested in the soon to arrive ranking system, improvements server side, chat, kick etc, Flags, Multi screen support, well I could go on and on and on, most could (some do!) imo it's a case of trying all Sims out, cherry pick the one's that grab you and enjoy, if one Sim did it all there would only be one Sim! For racing only RR gets close for me, I find AC anemic but keep a constant eye on it, SCE promising and enjoy Time Trialing, rF a mess and Iracing disappointing and bloody expensive but quite expansive. At the end of the day it's what feels right for each individual. I do enjoy coming on here and listening to everyone's point of view and cherishing the fact that you are all sat at home on your PC's and not let loose on the general public! *Have gone back and tried rF2 and have to update my impression, vastly improved, very driveable, still a bit disjointed though and SCE's addition of trucks is a blast if the AI are a bit clueless.
Not that you're wrong @GooseCreature but the sims that do have day/night cycles also have the option to accelerate the passage of time, it's pretty darn fun to race a 12h Sebring, Bathurst or a 24h Spa or LeMans in the span of 2 hours or so. One day I will try to go for the whole hog though seeing as rF2 lets you pause and resume races too. Agreed that it is at this stage not something that should be on the cards for R3E, it's a great feature set no doubt, but way lower on the totempole compared to the features you mention. Whatever they're cooking up at Simbin though should really adding them back in, this whole generation of sims sacrificed just about everything for physics, the next generation needs to add back in what was lost in the transition from the previous one. Also an update about the whole "I play them all except for iRacing", I fell off the wagon so now I'm back to playing everything.
RaceRoom and Automobilista are the two best I've played. Race07 is right up there too, but so is F1 Championship Edition on PS3
I can totally relate to your "find another hobby" statement. Lately I'm only sitting down for a race once or twice a week tops. But glad I am still doing it at all because it's fun. My big interest for past six months has been hobby grade RC cars, especially with my 4 year old son involved. We raced in R3E together sometimes, but he preferred wreckfest (GREAT father/son game!!). But with the rd cars, he loves being chased around. I even put a police siren on our short course truck for chasing bad guys (him usually). For me r3e wins in the connection to the car dept...just makes driving feel good. The speed sensation too for a sim is great.
Just read about ist. Sounds quite interessting, especially with the Brits pack and the Caterhams. There is a season pass avaiable (together with the gam 32 EUR). What does it mean exactely and which content is avaiable, right now? Shall i buy it? As i said: R3E is really great to drive, but i´m getting a bit tired, because of the lack of tracks.
If you do get AMS you owe it to yourself to download every single one of Patrik Giranthons mods, season pass is well worth it aswell though I'll admit I'm biased as I got it for free from backing their GSCE fundraiser.
Ok I bought ams a few hours ago. And after a couple of hours of game play, as before I am not particularly impressed. I haven't downloaded all the free dlc's. But as before..... I appreciate the suggestion. And at the same time, it is truepybnothing special to me. I get better graphics and better AI from GTR2. Anyway, I appreciate the suggestion, and maybe after a couple hours on the nogrip forum, and a few edits to some of the car files it will be better. Who knows until you try. Thanks for the suggestion. I know it was given from the heart,
He probably meant the track being in the sim as official content, seeing as how mods have varying quality.