Rate The Sims: Community Edition | iRacing

[Paul Jeffrey]

We are looking to crown the 'RaceDepartment Community Favourite' racing game - get your votes in now for our next game on the list... iRacing!

Our dear RaceDepartment community. You folks are the most mighty fans of sim racing, often displaying an immense amount of understanding and depth of knowledge when it comes to our favourite hobby.

With sim racing and eSports in such a wonderful boom period of late. Gamers looking to have some fun with their virtual racing machines have never before had such a wide and robust variety of software to enjoy.

Now occasionally I've been in a position to rate new racing titles that have come my way, and almost every time I've received a wide variety of folks agreeing, or strongly disagreeing with my own opinions.

Opinions are great, but sometimes the opinion of one person, with their own likes and dislikes taken into account, can often give a bit of a skewed picture (intentional or not) to the greater cause in which said person is trying to explain.

As such, rather than doing one myself, and in the spirit of engaging some interesting community discussion, I thought it could be fun to let our own community rate each of the key sim racing / racing games available today.

As always with these things, please do try and respect each other and their opinions, and let's try to see if we can give a fun, but fair shake of the stick to each of the games included in this poll.

For transparency, I'm going to be featuring the following racing games over the next weeks:

• Assetto Corsa
• Assetto Corsa Competizione
• Automobilista (AMS)
• DiRT 2.0
• F1 2019
• GT Sport
• GRID
• iRacing
• NASCAR Heat 4
• PCARS 2
• RaceRoom Racing Experience
• rFactor 2
• WRC 8

I'm going to launch the article each Monday evening, and keep the poll running for a full week until the next new article is pushed live. So get your votes in quick!

Once I've completed the full list of games, I'll publish a final results feature, and we can award the winning developer the lofty title of 'RaceDepartment Community Favourite'!

Have fun, stay sensible and let the voting commence!

 

[Bonehead]

Outdated tracks that also lack the luster of other sims, plus the cars do not feel like I am connected to them. I was a 'Beta' tester for them back in 2008, and would expect far more progress from them in the past eleven years than what I have seen. I voted a "4" trying to be nice for tracks and cars that I never use now. I'm patiently waiting for the day when we can have offline racing, however that promise is well over a year old now. I am a driving instructor, and Sebring is my home track. When iRacing released the Sebring track, I laughed at how horribly wrong it was and it was even outdated on the day it was released. When rFactor2 released the Sebring track, I went WoW! It is remarkably spot on even to the minor details as it was scanned very resently. I'll pass on iRacing for now, however I am sure I'm in the minority of opinions.

 

[DND]

License system is a good idea poorly executed, like to see the promised AI incorporated before I give it a chance for a third strike.
I do like selection of tracks so I gave it a seven

 

[Slowdive]

iRacing gets a 10 in worst value for money. Other than that it's pretty meh.

 

[muzikant]

The only sim I have never played. No vote for me.

is the formula 3 better there than in AMS ..?

 

[Jugulador]

8/10

The game nail on everything... or almost everything, except the business model that make it too expensive.

It's not the best sim, but it's at least good on every aspect... and still have the best online ever with the best community and overall online system.

But it's expensive... I said it once, but it is so expensive that I said it twice.

Oh, and another problem is that you will expend a lot of money on it.

And there is the cost issue.

Anyway... you need to be rich to enjoy it.

Did I tell you that the game is expensive? Maybe you should buy a real racing car.... but, despite it, the game nails on everything.

 

[Jason Mullin]

Wife said what is this iracing that keeps coming out of our account?

Oh yeah completely forgot I haven’t touched that in 6 months.

Gets a 5, lower your prices.

 

[Enagee]

Put the business model aside, iracing is one of the best sims. There's no argument its the most stable online racing sim, might not be the best physics but there's a reason why racers like Max Verstapen and Lando and many other pro drivers use it.

Let's not kid ourselves a sim or game will never be as accurate as real life but the spirit of competition remains and is no different to real racing. I'd rather race in an organised online series than a sim with the best physics but no online races.

Personally I don't like the ffb of iracing but as long as its the same for everyone ill deal with it . Iracing has continued development, and the structure its built can't be built by any dev overnight. Esports is growing and online racing is the future.

Iracing is a sim people love to bash... Even the ones who ain't played it.

 

[DonZmeuheu]

Guess what....IRacing is the Best Sim out there thats why a lot of people hate it who can't afford it. Simple as that.
It's expensive because it's holds all the people out of the sim who don't take it as serious as the guys who paid a lot of money for it . Thats a good thing....thats why IRacing has the best online Racing experience out there. Quality cost something but the reward you get out of the enjoyment in Online Racing is worth any penny....at least for me

 

[PickABetterUsername01]

Guess what....IRacing is the Best Sim out there thats why a lot of people hate it who can't afford it. Simple as that.
It's expensive because it's holds all the people out of the sim who don't take it as serious as the guys who paid a lot of money for it . Thats a good thing....thats why IRacing has the best online Racing experience out there. Quality cost something but the reward you get out of the enjoyment in Online Racing is worth any penny....at least for me

It's expensive because they have a monopoly over pc simracing, simple as that.

 

[DonZmeuheu]

It's expensive because they have a monopoly over pc simracing, simple as that.

Nobody has a monopoly in PC Sim Racing. Do you think IRacing is so powerfull like Oil Companys? Of course not. But they rule the online Racing on PC because of their price policy. Don't get me wrong I like all the other sims too but when it comes to online nothing beats IRacing and this wouldnt work the same way when they wouldnt be so expensive

 

[PickABetterUsername01]

Nobody has a monopoly in PC Sim Racing. Do you think IRacing is so powerfull like Oil Companys? Of course not. But they rule the online Racing on PC because of their price policy. Don't get me wrong I like all the other sims too but when it comes to online nothing beats IRacing and this wouldnt work the same way when they wouldnt be so expensive

They are the only ones with good structured multiplayer, so yes they have monopoly over that, which is the reason people pay.

 

[Mike Smith]

8 for me.

It's a great sim in most respects. But for me it's cost and time prohibitive. The cost issue has been discussed above by others, but for me the time commitment is a killer, too. I'd love to be able to have a single player race and be back to my family in 30 minutes like every other sim, but I can't here.

It gets bonus points for bringing sim racers and real racers together. I loved that Jimmy Broadbent raced against Max Verstappen this year! What a moment for our hobby.

It loses those bonus points for my inability to access the content I paid for after I cancelled my subscription. Why can't I at least practice?

 

[DonZmeuheu]

They are the only ones with good structured multiplayer, so yes they have monopoly over that, which is the reason people pay.

Well...when you wanna call that a Monopoly you free to do that

 

[Dave Thayer]

I cant really rate this game since I have never Subscribed to Iracing, only have watched from the outside streaming videos of other racers when doing Nascar events.

I feel Iracing is only for the real serious racers that can devote allot of time with the tracks and cars to jump up the top rankings, which I dont have. Never driven any of their cars or tracks, I have no idea how they compare to my other top popular games. I know they keep doing some improvements.

Cost has kept me away from this venue. I dont know how bad Iracing is far as anger to each other in this game if incidents should occur in races to hurt your ratings. I saw a little taste of it watching streaming videos.

I am waiting to see what the so called AI added feature does to this game. If it is a standalone game feature, and a one time buy, not subscription, I might take a look at it. It then might be comparable to a RaceRoom type game which also has cars and tracks as one time buys but probably more expensive.

So for now I will stick with other popular SIM racing games current and future.

 

[newbert]

8 for me.

It's a great sim in most respects. But for me it's cost and time prohibitive. The cost issue has been discussed above by others, but for me the time commitment is a killer, too. I'd love to be able to have a single player race and be back to my family in 30 minutes like every other sim, but I can't here.

Bingo!

My subscription is almost up and I don't plan on renewing unless/until they introduce their announced AI implementation.

All that said - but I think that it's also one of the best for supporting VR. For me, it just .... works, without having to jump thru hoops.

YMMV.

 

[RCHeliguy]

In a nut shell, it works with all hardware, has a very good VR engine, has the best online community hands down, has the best telemetry and teaching tools.

It does cost, and you can argue about that until you are blue in the face, or you can just subscribe and enjoy it.

 

[OzzyNeil]

All sims suck, but iracing sucks the least.
Easiest sim to get going in vr and ffb, once AI is here its bye bye to the rest.
oh and those who cant afford it, stop spending your money on McDonalds and dope.

 

[nangu]

I don't rate it because last time I played iRacing was almost 8 years ago.

I remember I didn't like the physics at all, it was like driving on ice to me back then, but in other way, I liked so much the online structure and rating system. I can't believe after so many years iRacing is still the only one offering an online structure like this.

Never subscribed again because the afformentioned physics aspect, and I don't have much time to spend on this hobby so it's not worth the subscription fee to me. At least for now I guess.

 

[Koen Verlinde]

Benchmark of all physics orientated racing sims when it came out, but horribly horribly overpriced and greedy.

People who are ok with their price structure mostly don't understand that if this is considered normal other companies will do the same and we end up with hyperinflation on prices, not only for simracing titles but for all the others as well.