Best performance of any current sim, though comes at cost of worst graphics (low polygon, DX9 lighting)
Most tracks of any current sim outside of iRacing: 38 locations with 120 track variations
Most historic tracks of any sim (I chuckle, though, at including the Kyalami Castle when it wasn't built until after the old Kyalami was rebuilt to the modern config)
Most kart tracks of any sim
Strong formula car representations
Strong karting representations
Weak touring cars, GTs, sportsracers, street cars
- Edit: forgot about the Copa Petrobras de Marcas... that's a strong touring car series
Good sample of content not found elsewhere (dirt, trucks, Brazilian series)
Strong racing sim (as opposed to the driving sim of Assetto Corsa)
Supports triple monitors, but not VR (opposite of Raceroom Racing Experience & Project CARS)
Excellent consistency in appearance of tracks & cars and ffb/physics
AI is lackluster and a work in progress; possible to have a fun race, yet not stimulating
Online is excellent, but not populated
Admire the way Reiza maintains their content for that consistent look & feel
***
Back at the release of AMS, I was going to wait for Reiza 2017 to emerge because I'm not attracted to the visuals of AMS and the strong formula car content is not compelling enough for me since I prefer GTs, touring cars & historic cars. Then, since I was buying other sims just for the experiences and AMS had some unusual fresh content, I finally gave in back in August 2016.
The visuals are not so detracting when racing, but the lack of compelling-to-me car content has left AMS on the backburner. I thought Formula Vee and the classic F1 cars would be enough, but they're not. Love the depth of tracks, enjoy the driving experience, but... it needs *something* to make me want to spend more time. It certainly deserves more time. Maybe if Reiza did for Group C cars what they've done for vintage formula cars? Maybe I just need to adopt a different time zone & find a league or two like I do with rFactor 2?
Edit: okay, after remembering Copa Petrabras de Marcas, I
should play this more.
How I Use the Other Sims
Because it's such a wreck in all the important aspects, Project CARS gets fired up only to compare visuals, to be a benchmark. Assetto Corsa has a few interesting cars out of a lot of unrelated content, terrible sounds, lacks official tracks, and the racing experience is shallow, so I end up occasionally driving the cars without racing. Raceroom has interesting cars & tracks & visuals & sounds but doesn't support triple monitors, so I've kind of quit using it since I acquired triples 2 years ago. Which means most of my time is spent in rFactor 2 despite so many unpolished & unfinished aspects of it.