Graphics engine going DX11, well, that is something. But they also need to improve the driving experience, which in four different demo builds that I tried from the very first ever to early this year never managed to thaw me up. So, its more likely I would look at Automobilista, if I ever would consider to go into a third racing sim parallel to the two I already use. Jedem Tierchen sein Pläsierchen - for fans of rF2, this is good news, however. Hope they celebrate!
@Skybird VR is also something big and, imo, a cooperation between modders and devs could only be beneficial for the game. About your driving experience with rF2 is something subjective. Personally, I find rF2 more enjoyable than AC.
Yes, of course. Isn't that always the case? I know some better drivers than I am who oppose my views of rF2 and claim nthe pyhsics of it are the best out there - but I also know a few who also are better drivers than I am, who share my views and avoid rF2, since like me they do not like the driving behaviour. Subjectivity always plays its role. Thats the nice thing in that we have so many titles to chose from these days. Almost everybody should be able to find one, two or three favourite race sims today. And as I said: its good news for the rf2 fans, so I hope they have a party day today!
One question from a clueless. What will happen with this tons of mods of cars and tracks when change to dx11 will occur? (How) Do they have to be adapted for further use?
DX11 shouldn't have much impact on mods, there's talk of allowing rf1's tire model parallell to 2's which would mean RF1 mods that haven't jumped to rf2 due to the more complex and as I understand it much less understood tire model will be easy to port over.
Wat? No they don't. The driving experience is fine, arguably the best out there. The reason people have trouble getting used to it is because RF2 punishes severely for even trying to go fast on cold tires than any other sim and because the default setups for nearly every car are near undriveable garbage. For me this whole news is hardly anything good. It's more of an implied slap in the face from ISI and not the first one. I was an early backer, played the game since pre-beta-alpha-borked preview whatever it was and hardly any of the features that have been promised at that level have been delivered. Car body deformation? Not there. Rain on windshield? Not there. Water being drained from tracks when raining? Well kind of there. Some Nissan car I stopped caring about a long time ago? Not there. All they did was fixed some bugs, went through no idea how many tire models until the holy grail of CPM has been reached and... after like over a year most of the cars released before it was introduced still don't have it. Half of the cars in fact look like RF1 ports, trakcside characters are those creepy looking 2D picture scans (why include something that ugly at all?). The AI can still be a mixed bag if you don't run a practice session. The UI is horrible and the whole game feels more like a tech demo. ISI never bothered with advertising the game properly or making any serious money which could ensure hiring a bigger team and polishing the product up. They had a head-start over all the other current-gen sims and still managed to arrive late to the party. It's been 3 years! 3 years and the still have not progressed the game by much. Sure some tracks were made (by 3rd party devs) and they added oval racing with a built in spotter (which anyone sane will turn off immediately), but that is about it. And now they are basically handing it over to another studio, because they cannot be bothered to deliver what people gave them money for. Let someone else finish the job. But it's all fine, they do have an army of faithful dinosaurs over at their forum, who claim the game is perfect and does not need anything else, expect maybe optimization for the 2001 toasters they run it on. Don't get me wrong, there are things about rF2 that I love. The no-BS Force Fedback, the way the road feels, the way the cars react and how everything you can think of in terms of engine, suspension, brakes and tires is simulated. I love the classic cars and the latest Howston Muscle junker and I love how the light is depicted in the game, so natural with no fake shaders or anything. But considering how much I paid for it and how long the development has dragged on... I just feel bitter. I mean the so called "release" would have been grounds enough for a refund. Remeber? They set a release date, out of beta, 1.0 and when it dropped, they did some bugfixes and said it's no longer beta, but "constant development" - meaning "totally not eternal beta". Now they push it onto someone else and go make another game. Did they get bored of rFactor 2? Or maybe they know it cannot finished for some reason? PS Oh yeah, the holy grail CPM is apparently too complicated make cars on, so we go back to rF1 tire model. Yeah, I got AMS for that, thanks.
Just for the record, my issue was no punishing physics, but lack of a convincing physics experience. No matter how much time I spend in options for wheel and game options and such, it always felt flat and simple like a car racer from 15 years ago. With the content aboard the demo. And if they have chosen bad cars for their demos, they have not understood then what a demo is for. A demo should shine and present the glory of a game to attract people and new customers, not its weaknesses and cheap sides scaring people away. If I get dissapointment with just one demo, then I may buy that it is due to an incomplete demo. But if it is four different demo builds from a time span of I think two years or so, then I conclude its something with the game's heart and core. They had their chances to get me hooked, and they spoiled all four. I see no reason in giving them a fifth one. There is too much other very good fish in the sea. Many cars in AC are easy to overdrive, I am used to that kind of physics behaviour. rF2 showed nice AI, but the driving experience left me totally underwhelmed. Well, different strokes for different folks. We all can chose according to our preferences.
Not sure what the recent demos had now (my guess is that they never updated it), but back in them olden days when I cared, it was the Corvette... As I said, the default setup on this thing was horrid and that was even before the CPM tires (does the demo even have this? doubt it). It did improve, but don't count on demos to get any impression on what rF2 is like to drive. ISI have never cared for promoting this title, they seemed to just consider that rF1's reputation and modding community's effort is enough and they miscalculated. As far as my personal feeling to the driving, you need to do a lot of googling on how the default setups need to be changed to make the cars even slightly fast or driveable, but after that the physics start to shine. The only exception is the Cobra, which does have great handling out of the box, but then again it was one the first cars (I may be wrong here, but probably close at least) that had the CMP tires out of the box. Handling aside though, as I wrote above, there are far more serious issues with the game that are a deal-breaker (especially when you take the online pass, dead pub racing and it's price into account). The only thing I can advise is to wait for what the future holds. I am sceptical about this whole new development, but I also wish to be so wrong here, you cannot even imagine. If I am though, and the features once promised become fact, then it will be worth to buy the damn thing blind, even if you dislike the handling, cause as I said, most of the issues people have there, can be rectified by simply choosing better cars to drive (and there is plenty) and just changing the setup. For example, the Stock Cars drive pretty close to what is in iRacing and are miles apart from what the demo cars ever offered (and oval racing is probably the only redeeming feature here, since the only alternative is iRacing). From a perspective of a person not owning the game, the new announcement is something that justifies keeping rF2 on your radar. From a perspective of someone who already own it and is not a blinded fanboy, it's just another promise that is not only long overdue, but also likely to end up DOA.
I can't imagine it will end up doa, it sounds like 397 have already incurred cost in acquiring rf2 so they will want to get some return on this, whether or not their full dream materialises I guess we will have to wait and see, I have not heard of 397 before so don't know their history.
I don't know.....I keep trying rF2 over and over again because I really want to like it....so I go on a track, press ctrl-x (fast forward) for a couple of minutes, so that the track is not green and full of rubber, I try to get a decent setup from a good online source.....and I honestly cannot even do a SINGLE lap with any rear wheel car. I have to loose the car in some corner...and oh!...I don't even push, take it easy....but I still have to end up on the grass. Last time I said..lemme try the F3.5 at SPA....so did same thing, rubberized track, got a setup...and I just could not make it through Eau Rouge! Honestly, tried 3 or 4 times, and not full throttle of course...I just kept loosing it....man, something is surely wrong. Then I tried the F3.5 in AC...ahhhhh....that was fun Having said all this, I hope this new rF2 venture works, out, really, rF2 has many great things and can be one of the best out there. Marcel, CEO of 397 has been around for many years and I have no doubt that all his dedication and expertise in the area will push rF2 to a higher and better grounds The more sims out there, the merrier
I had tried the rF2 demo numerous times, I just cant seemed to enjoy it. It feel like there is an impenetrable wall to get through before I can enjoy it. Then, I can boot up literally any game in the market to enjoy it immediately. So why would I need rF2 when there is absolutely no user accessibility?
Depends on what you want to do really, I agree it's not a very accessible game to just boot up, race for a bit and then try something else, titles like R3E do that much better and as a result have seen more gametime from myself. But look at what the VEC guys and others do with rFactor 2, for leagues, endurance ones in particular there's really nothing that compares. Ideally 397 will work on the just pick up and race aspect of the title as well, reworking the default setups and bringing the content more in line so certain cars/tracks are horrible compared to others would go a long way.
... and hopefully they won't break existing mods. rF2 is really strange game. I seriously think that one has to be programmer to be able to enjoy it, accessibility as is is the problem (one of). I already coded set of programs and scripts just to bring it alive, because out of the box it is dead ... It also need a lot of time investment to get started with. I dropped it once in frustration, with what Rodent mentioned (bad tracks, bad cars), but then invested time to get through. Now I can't get out of it - it is best available title per my requirements.
I don't quite get the accessibility issue that people mention. Sure, the interface and everything is kind of ancient, but it's not like it takes particularly long to set everything up and race (definitely the easiest FFB to set up right). Driving on the other hand is a different matter. It's hard to figure out breaking points and it's hard to adjust your speed to the level of grip you are getting. It all has a lot to do with the Real Road technology and tire heat. It's as if you basic cold and green track is like a mirror surface or just ice. It's kind of interesting really. PRC has an article right now about how sim racing experience can be beneficial in real world racing and it does mention that track grip level thing is not really something as important as games featuring it make it to be. Anyway, I'd say it takes a few slow laps to adjust and get in the grove. You probably won't be fast, but it's doable. I did drive some rF2 today, and considering how most of the stuff feels incomplete or low quality, I decided to do some oval racing, because it's the only current gen game that features a full set of rule, 2015 spec cars and a whole bunch of tracks. You would expect this to be at least a complete experience considering how much they spent on this module, but nope. It's the most horrible part of rFactor 2 and that is due to the AI. Setting them anything lower than 100% makes you the king of ovals after the first lap (I have no experience in ovals whatsoever, I don't even know the rules). At 100% and above they do keep an acceptable pace, but they are all over the place and keep driving into me or better yet, some dude in front of me decides to do a brake check mid corner on a super speedway. It's pointless. So yeah, physics are great, everything else falls on it's face.
If you read Marcel's latest interview, he said that they will do their best not to break the current mods ...and that's one of the main things they will be changing. Marcel said that they will do a new HTML interface which will come out next year...
To further expand on what I meant with accessibility I touched shortly upon the varying quality, rF2 has some car/track combinations that are absolutely wonderful and when it's firing on all cylinders, because of it's massive range of features compared to most others sims rF2 absolutely shines and excels. Sadly you're just as likely to fire something up that will drive so so and look even worse and this is the main problem for me comparing it to R3E where certain cars will be less fun on certain tracks but that's more down to the combo rather then one of the two or both being sub par compared to the other content offered. Secondly though I do recommend ya'll take some time with it because as I said, when it shines it shines. For me I was not a big fan of R3E until I sat down and spent a good few days trying out different FFB settings until I found one that works for me. A good place to start in rF2 as it highlights many of the sims best features would be to download URDs Corvette and VirtuaLMs Sebring. Racing day to night or night to day there finding a balance between pushing forward and not pushing right into a wall halfway though a race is something I feel any simracer worth his salt should be able to find some enjoyment out of.