Before I start, I would like to point out that yes, some IRL drivers do sim racing quite often. Nicki Thiim is one example, and even some F1 drivers do it too, Lando Norris being one of them. However, it is the first time we see so many special events happening in sim racing where the majority of drivers are real life drivers. As far as I know, this has never happened before. And it is quite privilege to see it happening.
So what happened?
I'll talk about rFactor 2 on this post, and on Raceroom on another post if I decide to do so. If not, just note that Raceroom invited many IRL drivers to try the game as well. They didn't, however, plan it very well. Not only do we have a global pandemic forcing people to stay at home (and thus using their computers way more than they normally would), but Raceroom allowed a free weekend where everything is free. The result was their servers being overloaded and the special event having many lag events and some streamers crashing because of this. Not only this, but the second race that was supposed to happen (7 laps around the Nordschleife) was called off because technical difficulties.
Now onto the topic at hand.
Admittedly rFactor 2 is my favorite sim. Great physics, moddable, many features that we've been asking for on other titles (rain/dry transition, day/night transition, driver swaps, the whole shebang). However, we still have a lot of basics to cover with it.
Today, Nicki Thiim raced on rFactor 2. It was probably his first time. From the start of the session he was given penalties and he couldn't figure out why. Neither could we, since the stream started with his penalties already in effect and there was nothing on screen besides some weird icon, but who can honestly tell what it's trying to say just by looking at it? Those who have not yet raced on rFactor 2, please try looking at the image bellow and identify the icon and correctly state what it means:
I've been away from rFactor 2 for more than a year since I had to sell my PC, but I do remember there being messages on screen about the penalties, such as these:
However, for some reason the message didn't appear for Nicki. In fact, at 23:10 on the video you can see he accidentally disabled the pit speed limiter. I've done this many times when coming from different sims, because they actually simulate this correctly: you start with the pit limiter off. Clearly he thought the limiter was off (as it should be) and pressed the "pit limiter button" thinking he was turning it on, when in fact he turned it off, which made him speed on the pitlane. Again, no message about what the penalty was and how to serve it.
The result? He got disqualified from the race and he didn't even know why.
What happened next also baffled me.
The race started at around 54:30. At 57:48 you hear the engineer saying "your front tires are cold" proceeded with Nicki laughing and saying "Whhhaat?". That was my exact reaction.
You can see his tires' condition on the image bellow, taken right after he received the message.
I did, in fact, express concern over this matter about one year ago when I noticed a change in how rFactor 2 handles tires temps. Before the change, the whole tire would heat up nice and pink, and it would hold temperature quite well. After the change, the inside of the tire would heat up well, but the middle and outer portion would not. Not only this, but the tire would lose temperature too quickly overall.
Here is an example image where I had pushed the tires pretty hard.
Then, on the second race, he apparently lost FFB and crashed, leaving the game after coming to the pits in reverse (which I thought was HILARIOUS).
Another thing that made my laugh pretty hard was how there was a boxy yellow car on track. I was told this is a temporary car and players should assign a button for "load cars" or whatever if they don't want their immersion broken. Go ahead, you can laugh twice, once for the problem at hand, and another for the "solution".
You can see this in action from 1:32:25 to 1:33:25 on the video.
Studio397 has taken over rFactor 2's development almost 4 years ago. That's as long as some simulators' life span. Yet, we still face design issues not present in simulators much newer than rFactor 2. Assetto Corsa Competizione took a little over 1 year in development before public releases came out, and they did the entire interface from scratch. And the races where real drivers used ACC? Went fine.
It's not hard to see how disappointed Nicki was with rFactor 2, specially where he said "this will be the fastest uninstall in the history of gaming". We had a chance to show what we've got, and we blew it. In the end, the best physics in the industry mean nothing if the end-user experience sucks. The over dependence on HUD's for information, or information that doesn't even get to the player, and bugs that should've been solved years ago, still plague rFactor 2. This is bad enough when our sim is already a "niche product", but it's gotten way worse for rFactor 2's image now that a real-world WEC champion tried it and shat all over it.
My only hope is that this servers as a wake up call. Having the best physics means nothing for the regular user, and it just so happens to mean nothing for real-world racers as well. We've got to get our overall user-experience in a better state. In terms of how polished a game is, AC's user experience is there (they did a race where it went just fine, with David Parel); iRacing's user experience is there (don't need to say anything about this sim); ACC's user experience is there (most are considering this the best sim out there); Raceroom's user experience would be there if it wasn't for a dated graphics engine and the embarrassing server issues we had today; the list goes on.
On rFactor 2's side I could list many, many things that would pile up to make people give up on it, and today's Nicki stream was only a taste of it.
We can do better than this.
So what happened?
I'll talk about rFactor 2 on this post, and on Raceroom on another post if I decide to do so. If not, just note that Raceroom invited many IRL drivers to try the game as well. They didn't, however, plan it very well. Not only do we have a global pandemic forcing people to stay at home (and thus using their computers way more than they normally would), but Raceroom allowed a free weekend where everything is free. The result was their servers being overloaded and the special event having many lag events and some streamers crashing because of this. Not only this, but the second race that was supposed to happen (7 laps around the Nordschleife) was called off because technical difficulties.
Now onto the topic at hand.
Admittedly rFactor 2 is my favorite sim. Great physics, moddable, many features that we've been asking for on other titles (rain/dry transition, day/night transition, driver swaps, the whole shebang). However, we still have a lot of basics to cover with it.
Today, Nicki Thiim raced on rFactor 2. It was probably his first time. From the start of the session he was given penalties and he couldn't figure out why. Neither could we, since the stream started with his penalties already in effect and there was nothing on screen besides some weird icon, but who can honestly tell what it's trying to say just by looking at it? Those who have not yet raced on rFactor 2, please try looking at the image bellow and identify the icon and correctly state what it means:
I've been away from rFactor 2 for more than a year since I had to sell my PC, but I do remember there being messages on screen about the penalties, such as these:
However, for some reason the message didn't appear for Nicki. In fact, at 23:10 on the video you can see he accidentally disabled the pit speed limiter. I've done this many times when coming from different sims, because they actually simulate this correctly: you start with the pit limiter off. Clearly he thought the limiter was off (as it should be) and pressed the "pit limiter button" thinking he was turning it on, when in fact he turned it off, which made him speed on the pitlane. Again, no message about what the penalty was and how to serve it.
The result? He got disqualified from the race and he didn't even know why.
What happened next also baffled me.
The race started at around 54:30. At 57:48 you hear the engineer saying "your front tires are cold" proceeded with Nicki laughing and saying "Whhhaat?". That was my exact reaction.
You can see his tires' condition on the image bellow, taken right after he received the message.
I did, in fact, express concern over this matter about one year ago when I noticed a change in how rFactor 2 handles tires temps. Before the change, the whole tire would heat up nice and pink, and it would hold temperature quite well. After the change, the inside of the tire would heat up well, but the middle and outer portion would not. Not only this, but the tire would lose temperature too quickly overall.
Here is an example image where I had pushed the tires pretty hard.
Then, on the second race, he apparently lost FFB and crashed, leaving the game after coming to the pits in reverse (which I thought was HILARIOUS).
Another thing that made my laugh pretty hard was how there was a boxy yellow car on track. I was told this is a temporary car and players should assign a button for "load cars" or whatever if they don't want their immersion broken. Go ahead, you can laugh twice, once for the problem at hand, and another for the "solution".
You can see this in action from 1:32:25 to 1:33:25 on the video.
Studio397 has taken over rFactor 2's development almost 4 years ago. That's as long as some simulators' life span. Yet, we still face design issues not present in simulators much newer than rFactor 2. Assetto Corsa Competizione took a little over 1 year in development before public releases came out, and they did the entire interface from scratch. And the races where real drivers used ACC? Went fine.
It's not hard to see how disappointed Nicki was with rFactor 2, specially where he said "this will be the fastest uninstall in the history of gaming". We had a chance to show what we've got, and we blew it. In the end, the best physics in the industry mean nothing if the end-user experience sucks. The over dependence on HUD's for information, or information that doesn't even get to the player, and bugs that should've been solved years ago, still plague rFactor 2. This is bad enough when our sim is already a "niche product", but it's gotten way worse for rFactor 2's image now that a real-world WEC champion tried it and shat all over it.
My only hope is that this servers as a wake up call. Having the best physics means nothing for the regular user, and it just so happens to mean nothing for real-world racers as well. We've got to get our overall user-experience in a better state. In terms of how polished a game is, AC's user experience is there (they did a race where it went just fine, with David Parel); iRacing's user experience is there (don't need to say anything about this sim); ACC's user experience is there (most are considering this the best sim out there); Raceroom's user experience would be there if it wasn't for a dated graphics engine and the embarrassing server issues we had today; the list goes on.
On rFactor 2's side I could list many, many things that would pile up to make people give up on it, and today's Nicki stream was only a taste of it.
We can do better than this.
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