....with the state of completion and way ISI handed off RF2, after so many years?
Are you at all happy
- Thread starter Terry Rock
- Start date
I will be the first to admit i was feeling let down by rf2 for a long while, but lets just say in the last 6 months and how its come along, id say its pretty hard not fall in love with it all over again..
form the few cars ive tried all i can say is wow it drives amazing it looks amazing (R3E looks better for live steam at present) but that's minor, i have a super frame rates on triple screen with quite high settings..
maybe if i spend more time with it ill find more problems but at present it seems ok...
and im more than happy to welcome it into the fold..
Content well its all new to me, so not so bigger issue ive already found cars i like.. and the tracks have always been there just maybe not in the numbers of rf1, but lets face it i only need one version of each track not 15.
Still to early to tell for sure, but i hope its on the up..
form the few cars ive tried all i can say is wow it drives amazing it looks amazing (R3E looks better for live steam at present) but that's minor, i have a super frame rates on triple screen with quite high settings..
maybe if i spend more time with it ill find more problems but at present it seems ok...
and im more than happy to welcome it into the fold..
Content well its all new to me, so not so bigger issue ive already found cars i like.. and the tracks have always been there just maybe not in the numbers of rf1, but lets face it i only need one version of each track not 15.
Still to early to tell for sure, but i hope its on the up..
I don't know if happy is the right word for how I feel, maybe more of blessed, blest, blissful, blithe, can't complain, captivated, cheerful, chipper, chirpy, content, contented, convivial, delighted, ecstatic, elated, exultant, flying high, gay, glad, gleeful, gratified, intoxicated, jolly, joyful, joyous, jubilant, laughing, light, lively, looking good, merry, mirthful, on cloud nine, overjoyed, peaceful, peppy, perky, playful, pleasant, pleased, sparkling, sunny, thrilled, tickled, tickled pink, up, upbeat, walking on air
Or maybe optimistic is the best way to put it
Or maybe optimistic is the best way to put it
It's getting there. It's nice to get a monthly newsletter just to have some news of what is being planned and what is happening. There is still a long ways to go. After just getting a new graphics card, rF2 still has a ways to go on the graphics front in both looking better and performance compared to the other sims on the market. Also lacking on the hybrid technology and ECU things that modern cars have.
I'm confident that S397 will get rF2 to that level, but I think that is another year or two out yet. Once it does get to that level, hopefully the modders will come back and add more of the content to the game, as that is something that is there and coming, but isn't there quite yet.
I'm confident that S397 will get rF2 to that level, but I think that is another year or two out yet. Once it does get to that level, hopefully the modders will come back and add more of the content to the game, as that is something that is there and coming, but isn't there quite yet.
I haven't driven simulators with a wheel for long, and rFactor 2 for little over a month. What I can say is that all simulators deliver some things while not delivering others.
Feature-wise rFactor 2 is the most complete, but it has very little official content, looks bad and performs bad for the looks too. It's that basic "not-a-simulator-but-a-sandbox" formula: here are a few cars, a few tracks, and that's it. But with rF2 it's way less cars and way less tracks.
It seems everybody has licensed the Norschleife but ISI/S397. Most MOD's of this track are, with all due respect to the people that created them, horrible. Hills' angles and cambers, lenght of sections, everything. Once you go laser-scanned, it's impossible to go back to these amateur-made tracks.
Development was slow and many features took years to get implemented or corrected.
rFactor 2 seemed like a science project that had really good potential, but it's caretakers didn't bother going too far on things that bring enjoyment for everybody like a good carrier and championship mode, driving school, hidden cars/tracks that are un-lockable by completing challenges, custom paintshop, good soundtrack, etc. There's no excitement.
Instead, what we get is always-incomplete simulators that lack many features that made them fun in the past, thousands of self-masturbatory tyre and physics changes that not a single non-racer would be able to tell/feel the differences or actually care about them, endless servers with an overwhelmingly majority of people that know NOTHING about racing and/or can barely do laps without crashing or using you as brakes, and fanboys who will protect their favorite sim no matter how flawed it is.
This makes sim racing nowadays completely boring, I see no reason to keep on it and I'm thinking of selling my wheel. The "hardcore simulators" are boring, incomplete, there's no reward, most can't drive.
Can you imagine most popular games among a genre, say, Call of Duty / Counter-Strike / Battlefield, turned to be called "hardcore shooting simulators" but removed many features they once had? Suddenly they removed the shooting training, night missions, hunger and sleep simulations, rain missions, etc.
One of these barely has 10 people to play with on a server for some parts of the day, which could very well be the biggest consequence of poor management. Most servers on this sim has some weird custom content that needs to be downloaded (largely because of lack of official content).
And on one of the most popular sims many of those features were removed and people playing there couldn't care less about how to actually shoot and started killing their own teammates. Sure they can pull the trigger, but that's it.
That is how I view sim racing ATM.
And if I had bought rFactor 2, say in 2012 or whenever it came public, I would be deeply sad and would probably never booted it since.
S397 did some progress on it, but it sure isn't super work and IMO is a very risky bet, trying to revive rFactor 2 and all. I'm not confident it's fate won't be complete darkness.
Feature-wise rFactor 2 is the most complete, but it has very little official content, looks bad and performs bad for the looks too. It's that basic "not-a-simulator-but-a-sandbox" formula: here are a few cars, a few tracks, and that's it. But with rF2 it's way less cars and way less tracks.
It seems everybody has licensed the Norschleife but ISI/S397. Most MOD's of this track are, with all due respect to the people that created them, horrible. Hills' angles and cambers, lenght of sections, everything. Once you go laser-scanned, it's impossible to go back to these amateur-made tracks.
Development was slow and many features took years to get implemented or corrected.
rFactor 2 seemed like a science project that had really good potential, but it's caretakers didn't bother going too far on things that bring enjoyment for everybody like a good carrier and championship mode, driving school, hidden cars/tracks that are un-lockable by completing challenges, custom paintshop, good soundtrack, etc. There's no excitement.
Instead, what we get is always-incomplete simulators that lack many features that made them fun in the past, thousands of self-masturbatory tyre and physics changes that not a single non-racer would be able to tell/feel the differences or actually care about them, endless servers with an overwhelmingly majority of people that know NOTHING about racing and/or can barely do laps without crashing or using you as brakes, and fanboys who will protect their favorite sim no matter how flawed it is.
This makes sim racing nowadays completely boring, I see no reason to keep on it and I'm thinking of selling my wheel. The "hardcore simulators" are boring, incomplete, there's no reward, most can't drive.
Can you imagine most popular games among a genre, say, Call of Duty / Counter-Strike / Battlefield, turned to be called "hardcore shooting simulators" but removed many features they once had? Suddenly they removed the shooting training, night missions, hunger and sleep simulations, rain missions, etc.
One of these barely has 10 people to play with on a server for some parts of the day, which could very well be the biggest consequence of poor management. Most servers on this sim has some weird custom content that needs to be downloaded (largely because of lack of official content).
And on one of the most popular sims many of those features were removed and people playing there couldn't care less about how to actually shoot and started killing their own teammates. Sure they can pull the trigger, but that's it.
That is how I view sim racing ATM.
And if I had bought rFactor 2, say in 2012 or whenever it came public, I would be deeply sad and would probably never booted it since.
S397 did some progress on it, but it sure isn't super work and IMO is a very risky bet, trying to revive rFactor 2 and all. I'm not confident it's fate won't be complete darkness.
There is no doubt ISI were gradually losing interest with other projects on the horizon, so the takeover came at a perfect time even though I was thoroughly enjoying the Sim anyway. I applaud ISI for taking the decision to pass on the game to Marcel and his team, they obviously know each other very well and that trust to improve the title is already playing off I think. It's better this way than the game just dying off and fading away, which would've been a massive shame as the Core of the Sim is amazing.
Speaking of those chaps Studio397 so far have excelled in bringing the game forward with plenty of hope for the future, whilst their 'Quality Of Polish' (as I call it) is lacking in some areas they have more than made up for that in others.
The VR implementation is very good, whilst I have had my own troubles associated with RF2, Oculus Software & SteamVR at various points it does work very well when it does work. I'm able to spend a couple of hours racing no problem with the headset on quite easily enough, although I would like S397 to pursue the Lock To Horizon feature as certain cars on certain tracks can be too much.
The DX11 transition has been good, VR works well as above and when I did a DX9 vs DX11 Benchmark on a flats creen there was barely anything in it, so for me at least performance in DX11 is working very well. Upcoming UI & Rain Effects look great and I have the patience of a Saint with these sort of features as I can imagine how much hard work they are to implement.
However there is a lot and always has been a lot of negativity aimed towards everything RF2 in various forums, the same "Usual Suspects" berating ISI are again now doing the same with S397, I really don't understand why people seem intent on being so miserable over a computer game production that they have no control over! I personally take every game for what it is whereas others seem intent to pick holes in the tiniest areas and have a good old farting match about them which just bewilders me on a constant basis! Having said that they do make me laugh from time to time with their tantrums, I guess that's just forums in general these days eh!?
So after all that am I happy with RF2? Yes...and I have been for a long time and will no doubt be happy for a long time to come.
Speaking of those chaps Studio397 so far have excelled in bringing the game forward with plenty of hope for the future, whilst their 'Quality Of Polish' (as I call it) is lacking in some areas they have more than made up for that in others.
The VR implementation is very good, whilst I have had my own troubles associated with RF2, Oculus Software & SteamVR at various points it does work very well when it does work. I'm able to spend a couple of hours racing no problem with the headset on quite easily enough, although I would like S397 to pursue the Lock To Horizon feature as certain cars on certain tracks can be too much.
The DX11 transition has been good, VR works well as above and when I did a DX9 vs DX11 Benchmark on a flats creen there was barely anything in it, so for me at least performance in DX11 is working very well. Upcoming UI & Rain Effects look great and I have the patience of a Saint with these sort of features as I can imagine how much hard work they are to implement.
However there is a lot and always has been a lot of negativity aimed towards everything RF2 in various forums, the same "Usual Suspects" berating ISI are again now doing the same with S397, I really don't understand why people seem intent on being so miserable over a computer game production that they have no control over! I personally take every game for what it is whereas others seem intent to pick holes in the tiniest areas and have a good old farting match about them which just bewilders me on a constant basis! Having said that they do make me laugh from time to time with their tantrums, I guess that's just forums in general these days eh!?
So after all that am I happy with RF2? Yes...and I have been for a long time and will no doubt be happy for a long time to come.
To be honest, I don't think about it at all. You can't really do anything about what ISI did (or better yet, didn't do) so I don't see the point in being mad about the past. A more relevant question would be about the present and the future.....if you're happy with S397's 1st year in charge so far, their priorities their promises and their progress.
To me it's a mixed bag, but regardless of that and despite all its flaws, I'm still enjoying RF2 as much as ever, more than any other sim.
To me it's a mixed bag, but regardless of that and despite all its flaws, I'm still enjoying RF2 as much as ever, more than any other sim.
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I agree there is not much difference between DX9 and DX11 on a modern GPU, DX11 is typically 5-10% slower (with old GPU it's a different story). GT3 pack has, however, shown that rF2 engine struggles with running cars that have the same polycount as other modern sims (it is good in itself that S397 pursues quality cars). Previously I think ISI compromised with car polycount due to their engine limitation, because older content typically runs with 1.5-2X more FPS than the GT3 pack.
There are still several remains in the gMotor engine which are not following DX11 standards, the current implementation feels more like a port than a native DX11 app. For example the huge PCI-E usage and huge OS virtual RAM usage. A modern engine should do most graphic processing inside GPU VRAM, which is not the case with rF2, as it's still duplicating VRAM in system RAM as a DX9 app does. I feel this will never be fully corrected as long as they maintain compatibility with DX9 by running DX9 builds alongside. And as long as DX11 is still in beta this is hard to correct.
As we are soon getting 4K VR headsets and GPU's with even more power, I think it's critical that these bottlenecks in the engine are addressed. The performance needs to scale better with GPU power.
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D
Deleted member 130869
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Deleted member 130869
Not at all, although I rather have someone else in charge extending the game's life than letting it be buried along with its name. Hiccups, slow progress, bad communication, etc... nothing new to most of us still following the game, so if Marcel and Dom bring forth 2-3 more years of life to this, it's still 2-3 years more than Gjon cared for.
Interesting responses here.
The question was posed after following a discussion here at RD a few days ago, about paid mods and the lack of updating.
The opinions in that thread were equally interesting to read.
As one who 'cheered' the RF2 project from it's release, I have to say I too, was a bit disappointed.
I really liked the fact that ISI was embarking on a new way to produce and market simulation software.
This idea that every year a developer has to release "version 2" of a sim was just gettin' old.
I'm all for development , until there is nothing left to develop and am happy to pay reasonable amounts for the updates.
My disappointment with ISI was due to the lack of a completion...despite the great patience shown by some in the simracing community, during extreme lapses in communication...all the while 'pushing' for lifetime memberships.
(Track depending...I still sometimes have blades of grass showing through car floors, rain inside some cockpits, etc...).
That should not even be an issue this many years in.
Much as I would like to make one, there is really no good excuse for this kind of thing
Studio357 is doing good work but I can't help but feel ISI should have handed over the project years ago, if they weren't interested in finalizing it... for whatever reason.
The question was posed after following a discussion here at RD a few days ago, about paid mods and the lack of updating.
The opinions in that thread were equally interesting to read.
As one who 'cheered' the RF2 project from it's release, I have to say I too, was a bit disappointed.
I really liked the fact that ISI was embarking on a new way to produce and market simulation software.
This idea that every year a developer has to release "version 2" of a sim was just gettin' old.
I'm all for development , until there is nothing left to develop and am happy to pay reasonable amounts for the updates.
My disappointment with ISI was due to the lack of a completion...despite the great patience shown by some in the simracing community, during extreme lapses in communication...all the while 'pushing' for lifetime memberships.
(Track depending...I still sometimes have blades of grass showing through car floors, rain inside some cockpits, etc...).
That should not even be an issue this many years in.
Much as I would like to make one, there is really no good excuse for this kind of thing
Studio357 is doing good work but I can't help but feel ISI should have handed over the project years ago, if they weren't interested in finalizing it... for whatever reason.
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Skins/textures stress the GPU minimally, the only big impact that 4K vs 2K skins has is on GPU VRAM usage. But as long as you don't exceed VRAM, it should be a few per cent difference at most. The real reason is probably in high poly car models, but the McLaren 3D model is same as Assetto Corsa uses, which just shows that previous rF2 cars had compromised poly counts and now the engine struggles a bit when the poly counts are same as in other modern sims.
Yes it's improved but waiting the final phase, all Dx11 with weather an the new UI that's when I'll be happy. Not used it much lately apart from the BTCC mod.
Quite happy with RF2. Sue, there are things that can be improved, but the same could be said of every game/sim/thing.
I'm not sure what the horizon thing referenced above is....I use a rift with RF2, PC2 and iRacing and don't notice any difference in the horizon. Maybe I lucked out and randomly changed a setting somewhere.
Graphics are sufficient. Looking forward to optimizations to improve performance, but with next gen cards available soon, throwing hardware may band aid things for a bit.
Personally I don't need hundreds of tracks and cars. I've found a handful of cars in different classes that are great to drive and enough tracks to keep me happy. More would be nice, and I'm sure there are some in the pipeline.
If there was an online competitive system close the iRacing, I'm sure I'd be 100% RF2. As it is now, I iRace mostly, with RF2 when I just want to play offline. Nothing comes close to the AI in RF2.
Jerry
I'm not sure what the horizon thing referenced above is....I use a rift with RF2, PC2 and iRacing and don't notice any difference in the horizon. Maybe I lucked out and randomly changed a setting somewhere.
Graphics are sufficient. Looking forward to optimizations to improve performance, but with next gen cards available soon, throwing hardware may band aid things for a bit.
Personally I don't need hundreds of tracks and cars. I've found a handful of cars in different classes that are great to drive and enough tracks to keep me happy. More would be nice, and I'm sure there are some in the pipeline.
If there was an online competitive system close the iRacing, I'm sure I'd be 100% RF2. As it is now, I iRace mostly, with RF2 when I just want to play offline. Nothing comes close to the AI in RF2.
Jerry
Tero Dahlberg
TeroD.xyz
Yes, I'm happy at the moment as it was a good move from ISI to hand of rF2 to someone else. It was a bit questionable how S397 will handle things, but @Marcel Offermans said the right things (to me anyway) that made me excited for rF2's future. And of course knowing that Marcel is an avid sim racer himself was a good sign to me. And so far they've delivered a lot of what has been promised. Of course not everything goes as planned so there are delays but I haven't seen anything alarming yet.
Sure, rF2 isn't as streamlined in some areas, or polished, as a lot of its competitors, but hopefully that will change with time. At least we're getting needed updates to the graphics engine and weather effects etc. And also seemingly more thought through content and not just random stuff.
And while not really part of the hand of, but I'm happy that there is a place in the market for a sim like rF2 that has a more in depth tyre model and/or weather simulation that its competitors are lacking.
Sure, rF2 isn't as streamlined in some areas, or polished, as a lot of its competitors, but hopefully that will change with time. At least we're getting needed updates to the graphics engine and weather effects etc. And also seemingly more thought through content and not just random stuff.
And while not really part of the hand of, but I'm happy that there is a place in the market for a sim like rF2 that has a more in depth tyre model and/or weather simulation that its competitors are lacking.
Sadly, it does. It's not a direct copy, but I had to express this somewhere as I share the exact same views as the author of that Blog does. Once I started reading his views regarding our community, a "click" went on my head and I knew at least someone has the balls to express the same feelings and statistics. That site was a good find for me.
