Sim Discussion Monday – The Best Bits of Everything

[Paul Jeffrey]

The working week beckons for most of us, and to help get through the day I thought it would be nice to celebrate the things we love about sim racing.

Inevitably this feature will be less popular than if I asked you what you don’t like, but nevertheless I’m going to plough onwards with the more positive look on the current state of sim racing games out in the marketplace today.

So rather than focus on one particular title as we have done recently, this week I would like you to have a think about the different good bits from each sim, and explain to us why you like the feature and why you think it better than its immediate rivals.

Appreciate it might be tempting, but this isn’t a “sim a is better than sim b because..” type piece, but more a celebration of the little differences that make our favourite simulations so compelling.

Mondays be like….

 

[apex11]

How fantastic the community is and how bonded we all are over the fantastic titles on offer....


lol....

As a 'normal' person I love all the sims and love the fact at any time of day I can take pretty much any car and any track and any scenario and take it for a blast..... that is the simple reason why i love driving cars made from pixels to the point where now i don't bother having a track day car...

 

[Yapci]

For me the best characteristics of each sims are this more or less:

AMS: FFB and content (although I love pretty much all about it and is the only sim I play since a year)
AC: graphics and licenses
pCARS 1 or 2: dinamic weather
RFactor2: tires and ffb (but I prefer AMS)

I haven’t played RRE more than a few laps because I didn’t like it so can’t say anything about that.

Happy Monday for all!

 

[peppepino]

AMS: driving feelings
F1 2017: graphics and career immersion
AC: mod contents, developing product support

 

[DKOliver]

I haven’t played RRE more than a few laps because I didn’t like it so can’t say anything about that.

Did you only try stock content? You can try the premium cars 24h free in R3E. Try to give some of it a go. R3E is my favourite sim.

 

[JackCY]

LFS world, all these kinds of services where other sims are decades behind and many may not even know these kind of things exist in a sim. A complete web system with many things including WRs, skin upload, teams, web spectating and many other stats, news all in one place.

Modding. While LFS doesn't support it itself the devs are quite friendly for allowing reusing some of their content, which is a big contrast to most other game devs.

In game "lobby"/pitarea with ability to change track, car, race parameters, weather, ...

Driver swapping in pits.

 

[Davide Sciacca]

Mmmh...let's see:

iRacing: sense of immersion. It is absolutely FANTASTIC. Marbles, dirt on the cars and the track...just amazing. And the online is the best you can have now.

AC: contents. The car selection is superb, and the level of detail too. Physics and FFB are really good.

rFactor 2: ALL the software is the state of art. Dynamic track, car behavior, FFB. BUT it lacks of OFFICIAL contents.

R3E: sound. Nothing to say. Plug the 7.1 headset, active the Dolby and let your head thinkig you are REALLY inside the car.

GT Series: the offline career

 

[Mankiewicz]

AMS: FFB, Physics, content and overall product. The king right now

rFactor2: Concept, ability for endurance races, ambicious tyre and physics model (unfinished though)

R3E: Sounds

iRacing: Good quality circuits. Competition platform sistem without the need of a community like Race Deparpment. But i prefer better the community approach. And a great sense of humour about pricing the product.

 

[F_B]

AC: amout of cars (especially historic racecars), FFB, physics, mods
Iracing: online racing & structure, eye for details
RF2: FFB, physics, dynamic track, day & night
PCars 2: weather, day & night
RRE: sounds, many complete series to race against
Automobilista: FFB, physics, track & car selection (content you don’t find anywhere else)

 

[MarkR]

As a 'normal' person I love all the sims and love the fact at any time of day I can take pretty much any car and any track and any scenario and take it for a blast..... that is the simple reason why i love driving cars made from pixels to the point where now i don't bother having a track day car...

Exactly this, Dickie Meaden in evo magazine did an article on just how close and realistic games now feel but with the endless options of cars, tracks and conditions that real life can never offer no matter how much money and time you might have. In terms of ££ per hour of fun racing games come out well on top.

I'd just add that for me VR makes the experience even more immersive.

AC (PC version only) - for the steering feel and just feeling so right in so many cars.

PCARS2 - for the race weekend feel, best Le Mans 24hr race game by far - lets me get as close as I'm ever likely to taking part in a 24hr race. By far the best feeling of car scale in VR yet and the way the lighting changes in the cockpit as the sun moves around the track is just stunning.

Forza 7 - for the game and progression elements, I know that won't be a popular view here but I still like these games.

Forza Horizon 3 - for remembering that car games are meant to be fun and accessible for all, true love of cars game for all ages.

 

[Andrew Harper]

In no particular order...

AMS: Lovely selection of content (both official and modded), FFB, the recently introduced surround sound is great too. Friendliness to towards older systems that couldn't cope with the newer titles. Visually it's still very nice and does the job. Top work by Reiza.

Assetto Corsa: Visuals, selection of cars to choose from. Probably the most mod friendly of the current crop so always spoilt for choice. Just wish I was faster on it!

rFactor 2: Since the DX11 update, visually it's now really good, FFB is great too. Like AC a good selection of mods available as well but the sheer complexity of the sim model limits it's appeal to modding groups.

Raceroom: That sound track! A great selection of official series (with the matching tracks). FFB for me is great, lots of weight and feel. Visually it's still very good and I like the little touches like moving characters in the pitalne and crowd. I know it's not as hardcore as some of the other sims but that's also why I like it for the occasional race without hours of practice, and like AMS it's pretty forgiving of older systems.

GTR2: Only because it's probably one of the most complete sims feature wise for offline racing. It also has those GT1 cars Some great mods too if you search for them. Due to it's age I can run it in 4k and it still looks pretty nice

I know it's been mentioned before but I wish Sector3 had kept the experiences section of Raceroom. The one thing a lot of titles are missing is a fully sorted championship mode (unless you manually create it). The F1 games have it of course but it's a shame that some titles miss out on the simplest things. I know there are the championship creator tools but the Raceroom experiences were nicely implemented.

 

[ears]

Is there a Max Verstappen game out there?

If so I'd like its interpretation of track limits, so I don't need to bother with the more tedius elements of racing such as corners.

 

[Deleted member 241736]

Formula one Grand Prix Micrprose 1992:
stunnig 3D effects for good immersions. Unforgetable LAN -sessions

GTR2:
Love it a lot of years and also the first racing-simulation touch for my son. Moddability was the focus.

Pc2: no - sorry! graphics and night-racing is OK, but no modds and driving-physics will never be my friend.

AC: greatest of all. It feels simply good and gives me a breathless experience. Main reason is the moddability and the support of Kunos guys.

 

[Ruben De Wulf]

gtr2 was like a drug for me , still searching for the same high ... pc 2 comes close for me...

 

[ShredatorFIN]

Dirt Rally - rally car sounds
WRC 7 - rally stages
RaceRoom - sounds in general
AMS - force feedback, complete features, exotic content
Assetto Corsa - all around package, impeccable car models, pricing, lot of mods
Codepasters F1 - career, I've heard. Don't own the game tho
iRacing - multiplayer implementation
pCars 2 - weather, track selection
pCars 1 - steam refunds

 

[Ghoults]

RF2: all the physics parameters. I'm not sure I'd use rf2 physics engine itself due to its focus on complexity and illegibility but having all those parameters is great for creating a full car. I don't like rf2's devmode but I like that you can adjust couple of shader values while in the game. That is useful even in rf2 it is not really a working feature. I would not want rf2 mod packaging system but I'd surely want the steam mod system and the system for downloading mod updates when joining a server. But from rf2 I'd just take the idea. Actual implementation of that feature needs to be very different. From rf2 I'd also take the upgrades system. It has some limitations but as an idea it is nice. For damage I like the idea of parts falling off the car. I'd also probably take rf2 ffb although I like the ffb tuning options from ac: like filter and lookup tables from ac. Maybe the rain with its new features sets oming later this year(?).


AC: moddability, all the modding documentation and tools and the community. It is clear that lots of love has gone into making all that documentation and example files available for the community to create high level content for the game. And the community has also created lots and lots of stuff for ac as well. Stereo's driver rig for blender, all the different driver rigs for max, the ffb tools, sound addons, content manager etc... It is pretty amazing modding platform and light years ahead of its only competitor in that regard.

And I'd also take Ac's simple approach for creating mods. No complex packaging, no weird and outdated restrictions, no mods conflicts. Easy to make all kinds of mods. Making skins is easy and you can change any texture you want in a skin. You can make sound mods even for official content. Also the sdk is pretty good in ac. I mean if I'd get a choice I'd take the ue4 editor but the ac sdk has never stood in my way and it is good at what it does. I also like the kn5 file system so that I don't need to mess around with individual mesh files and textures and manually create text files for lods and whatever unexplained parameters. Also from ac I'd take their logs. Some other games have pretty useless logs for trying to fix errors in mods.

Ac has also some nice cars even if the car selection is all over the place. I'd also take the moving wings and wing controllers from ac along with their hybrid drivetrains although iracing's hybrid drivetrain model could be better (I've not driven anything hybrid in iracing). In ac I also like the lookup tables although I'd want to see what kind of curves the in-game curve fitting system creates from those lookup tables. Graphical damage in ac looks nice too although I'd want a system where damage appears on places where the car made contact and not in pre-determined places. I also like the way parts hang off although I'd eventually want them to fall off. Another thing I like about ac is how little you need to mess with their text files to get the game to run well. All I need is turn on dev apps and set prerendered frames to 1. And also I like apps and how you can move them around on your screen.

Automobilista: I kinda like their obscure track selection. The lack of laser scanning hurts them but at least they have lots of new driving experiences.

iRacing: Their dlc model in the way you don't need to own a car to race against it. Also iracing tracks are way above anything else.

Pcars1/2 and raceroom: Their car selection. Maybe the rain from pcars2 as well although I have not driven it.

Gran turismo: graphics. They just know how to get so much out of that little peasant box. Imagine what these guys could do with the processing power of pc. Also their online server lobbies were great in gt5. Full graphical interface and easy to change ownership of the server on the fly.

LFS: I like how the options menus are available all the time. You can iirc literally go to steering settings while driving. You can also change cars and tracks on server without having your players leave. Autocross editor is nice little thing as it allows creating new layouts even for existing tracks. I like how you can change colors of your car straight inside the game in addition to skins. Also lfsworld is great with its online skin sharing system, hotlap database and stat tracking. In lfs you can even adjust car sounds straight inside the game although I'd probably not want the lfs sound system as it sounds pretty bad. I'd also take lfs server plugins which allow people to create very complex online systems. Heat racing, track rotation, car rotation... In a perfect world I'd combine lfs server plugins with ue4 visual scripting code which would make it super easy to create complex plugins so you don't need to learn to code. Also lfs is totally bug free and runs on a tomato.

 

[KoeleKoen]

project cars: dynamic weather and time
rfactor 2: tyre and track physics,good flag system
AC: available mods
RE3: sounds
F1 series:career immersion

 

[MarcG]

In no order of preference:

RF2 - AI, FFB and Dynamic track
AMS - For the different Series as opposed to everyone other Sim that has the same cars
AC - Graphics, Road Cars, Attention to Detail
iRacing - Online structure
Wreckfest - Damage effects!

 

[Steve Worrell]

Assetto Corsa - Graphics, modability
RF2 - Physics, modability & Log analyser (btw does this exist for AC?)
AMS - The official Brazilian stock car series - I love a full official series
RaceRoom - Official DTM series & sound
Wreckfest - Damage
F1 Series - Graphics & weather effects
Grand Prix 4 - Authentic Race Weekend experience
GTR 2 - Everything! This is still my favourite sim!

 

[Ryan Robbins]

AMS...FF feels very immediate and responsive, cars and tracks consistently good.
AC...tons of cars and very good DLC. Good graphics, good optimization, FF excellent, Python Apps great, modability great, one of the best overall games.
RRE...Track atmosphere and consistency great. Sound of course awesome. FF very good but hard to dial in (has a few nice features other games lack like engine vibration, which adds to realism). Complete series.
IRacing...multiplayer, attention to detail, Dirt nicely implemented, atmosphere good. Painting option nice.
RFactor...FF, night, track and tire realism.
Pcars 2...FF not bad, tire feel and track feel very good, Graphics great, Full pit crew animations. Weather great, tons of tracks and cars, but vary in quality.
Dirt Rally... weather great, Graphics nice, good sound, tracks great.