It's a forum about Raceroom. It shouldn't be difficult to understand why people are talking about Raceroom here.
Dynamic weather is absolutely the worst thing for ranked and multliplayer. From experience on AMS2 people seem to love running the Stevie Wonder combo of races at night on tracks with no lighting - for that just switch the monitor off. For single player it does have its uses but we have seen that AI really are not smart at changing tyres or go super fast or slow for the conditions. The bells and whistles are nice but they are not what makes the game.
Exactly that's the point. People finally are leaving Raceroom. I think it is a big mistake to consider only one's own preferences as the best for the game.
I just ran a graph and RF2, AMS2 and RRE are all doing very similar numbers and well behind ACC and AC as usual. RF2 has gained the edge on RRE and AMS2 has also made inroads and both have release candidates on the way with major changes so it will be interesting to see what RRE offers up as a spring update considering the winter one was underwhelming to say the least.
Meaning what though? Finally meaning they won't come back? Of the above Sims they all have peaks and dips around when new content and features are added. The general trend for raceroom is (very) slow growth. Obviously that won't continue forever unless there is some kind of big change.
Raceroom is developing as well. Driving physics are completely different than what they used to be, and it can still be experienced by choosing one of the few outdated cars left. Ranked system wasn't even in the game a few years ago and now it's Raceroom's stample feature. The UI got a major overhaul and now it's up to modern standards. The FOV configuration screen for example is industry leading, every other developer should take a lesson from it. So you're spewing nonsense by implying every other sim is developing apart from Raceroom. There's no evidence whatsoever that Raceroom was even bleeding any players since the FFB update - it only recently did due to other reasons - not to mention any causation between the FFB update and the supposed playerbase bleed. Another blatant error on your part. And I agree that Raceroom's physics model is an outlier. That's because it seems to be the most correct one, and other sims like ACC, AMS2 and iRacing are actually making numerous adjustments that coincidently make their physics models closer to Raceroom, when they fix their quirks. So there's that.
Like it or not it's the evolution of simracing to be more realistic. All the games go in this direction. You don't stop a race for a change in brightness or for 2 drops of rain. Randomness is part of the race and fortunately its often the best pilots who have a great facility to adapt to changing conditions.
Oh nooo...League endurance racing with dynamic weather was my best simracing experience yet. Please don't speak for others.
I agree those features would be nice, but to say Raceroom's races lack dynamics makes me think you never raced anything longer than 30 minutes on Raceroom. It has just enough features to provide such dynamics, because you still have to take into account the tyres condition and fuel load, and tyre type for some cars, which all make a huge difference to how the car handles - and how your opponents' cars handle. So you do need to adapt. More features just mean more factors to account for, which doesn't make much of a difference to me, because as far as I'm concerned, it's the final outcome of the factors that you need to adapt to, not individual factors themselves. But maybe I'm not a nuanced enough of a driver to appreciate those individual factors, but then, how many drivers are, and how many races provide an opportunity to be so? I think the importance of those features - as far as I agree it would be nice to have them - is wildly overrated. Sun position does make a difference though. I remember vividly my breaking points being obscured by shadows during a race on Spa, because the sun position changed compared to practice and quali session. Hard to take notice, because those "fundamental" features only make a difference once in a blue moon. I have no issues with track fidelity and accuracy in Raceroom. You need to point out specific examples. Just the fact that they aren't laserscanned doesn't prove anything. 1) Driving model - disputable. I would particularily disagree with the statement that most other sims' driving model is ok. iRacing is called iceRacing or iSkating for a reason. ACC is unrealistically strict regarding the operating window of the tyres and applies too much drag on them when you're trying to push them. Its numb FFB doesn't help. AMS2 only recently fixed their issues with differential and tyre compound that were, I think, inherited from PC2, but they had those issues for most of their presence on the market. I need to give it another shot, admittedly, but there's a reason I haven't picked it up for a long time and stuck with Raceroom. I'm not too deep into rF2 but I think it has that low pressure exploit in it, which is pretty deterring. What's left there? The old Assetto Corsa? Yeah, that one's all right. Considering that, I'd say OK is excellent. 2) AI - I never said it's perfect. It has its bugs, but I wouldn't say you need to be lucky to get it right, I'd say you need to be unlucky, or very specifically exploitative like in the fuel example, to get it wrong, so overall I'd say it's a step over other sims. You're also giving it too little credit by saying it's only serviceable when got right. Maybe that's your impression but is there any AI that provides better racing on the market? And then you're being straight up unfair by saying it's disasterous when got wrong, because every AI is disaterous when got wrong. 3) "But the fact online works as it should is less of a testament of Raceroom brilliance and more of a testament of other games lacking." That's what brilliance is - being exceptionally better than the competition. Once everybody is brilliant, nobody is.
I've done plenty of races around 2-2.5h. You rarely need to adapt, because all things you mention are something you figure out through practice, you make some small calculations, set the strategy, and unless you got something wrong in this stage, you can safely stick with it throughout the race. You don't need to adapt, because you can be sure all conditions are 100% static throughout the race, so unless you fucked up fuel calculation or tyre wear estimates, it's as static as it gets. In real life they make difference very frequently. They only make difference once in a blue moon in Raceroom, because they are limited to tiny visual shift of shadows. The surface seems super smooth almost everywhere and there are probably cases where the elevation is off as well (like Bathurst). I think IceRacing days are gone, nowadays iRacing has a pretty good handling, at least last time I tried it. ACC seemed to be fine as well, even though I heard some talk about tyres being too sensitive to small pressure changes. AMS 2 seems a bit exploitable with the controlled drifts, but overall I'd say all these games handle similarly enough for it not to be major differentiator. All have their quirks, but you can jump from one to another without huge issues. You don't need to do any crazy stuff for the AI to do stupid decisions in regards to pitting. Nowadays I don't race with AI, but I remember in the past when I tried, they ruined some races for me by pitting for no reason, and there wasn't anything "exploitative" in the race setup, unless you consider any race over 3 laps to be too complex. I remember couple of Ermin's streams of Nordschleife AI races as well, where all the AI cars ran out of fuel because they didn't pit at all. I don't see how any of the settings for AI race could be exploitative tbh, if the AI isn't expected to handle race with fuel consumption on, just disable the option. I don't race with AI often, but in terms of general racing, I don't think the Raceroom is substantially better than AMS2 or ACC. Perhaps the cars here are a bit more aggressive, but that can also result in AI driving through you like you're not there.
Well it would be nice to see some rubber buildup on the track in long races. Or maybe dirt being dragged onto the track when someone cuts a corner on the grass. The base physics model is really good, it's those details that would make it a true racing sim and maybe prevent some races turning into a boring hotlap competition where every lap can be identical.
One thing i still to this day do not understand is why on earth we cant have our own liveries..... bums me behond belief to race wirth some other dude skin..... real or not...
It's licensing and a fact that the game's file system doesn't support user-made content. The way this all works is that each livery needs to be approved by the manufacturer. Why it's like that I don't know, but this is what developers said themselves.
Despite the fact there's room for extra features I absolutely love this sim. One of the few where I actually feel I'm driving a real racecar.