• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

PC Racing Sims

Any of you guys know of a way to increase the damage in GTR Evolution/Race 07/Race On/whatever above 100%?

I've been playing that game lately and while the driving is great, the damage is absolutely WEAK, I can run straight into a wall at 40mph with an open wheeler and it will keep rolling without damage.

In the old GTRs you could put it up to 200% and even then it wasn't enough.
 

mclaren777

Member
@DivineRage002 -- Are you sure that Invincibility is turned off?

In rFactor you would make changes to the damage.ini file (like this guy did) but I'm fairly confident that it causes mismatches if you try to play online so I'm not sure it's worth the hassle (assuming SimBin games even have a similar file).
 

Sethos

Banned
If you follow this account on Twitter and give it permission to send SMS messages to your phone, I'll update it ASAP after official content releases (this beta, future updates, the final release of the game, post-launch updates, etc).

And I'll only post meaningful updates so each Tweet means that you can download something good from ISI.

[url]http://twitter.com/rFactor2Updates[/URL]

Probably won't do the SMS thing but I'll definitely put it in my feed.

Man I need a long HDMI cable so I can hook up my PC to the TV and use my Racing seat + G27 with this game.
 

mclaren777

Member
I bought a 25' HDMI cable (Monoprice) and a wireless keyboard/mouse combo (Newegg) last year just for rFactor 2. :)

I total I think everything cost less than $50.


Edit: look what I just found online...

iRqVbnBNZqsTO.jpg
 

Shawsie64

Banned
My Thrustmaster T500 still hasnt arrived in the mail :( looks like it wont be here in time for my birthday.. In the mean time however im downloading the rfactor 2 files hopefully its today
 

dubc35

Member
I bought a 25' HDMI cable (Monoprice) and a wireless keyboard/mouse combo (Newegg) last year just for rFactor 2. :)

I total I think everything cost less than $50.
Yeah monoprice rules. I bought 30' usb and HDMI cables for about $40 for ps3 racing games.
 

mclaren777

Member
The Racedepartement stuff is just an rFactor give away.

I guess that's possible, though they sure sold it as rFactor 2. :(

"ISI was so kind to give us the opportunity to randomly giveaway a version of rFactor 2 together with a lifetime subscription. The competition will close on Friday January 13, 2012."

"We would like to welcome every licensed member to the Grand Opening of the rFactor 2 Racing Club. This is your chance to compete at the inaugural event here at RaceDepartment and be one of the first to sample the delights of the rFactor 2 multiplayer features. The event will take place on the release day of the rFactor 2 Open Beta."
 

mclaren777

Member
Update on KartSim

Zach's been hard at work trying to get on top of some bugs that have popped up recently. It is unfortunate that we were not able to get the beta out when we wanted. As we were testing some new (and essential) code to make it smoother for a larger number of karts on track, we found some unexpected bugs. It is my understanding that Zach has now fixed most of these but, as you can appreciate, time dedicated to doing this has eaten into the time that Zach was using to polish other aspects of the game.

It is my opinion (as an alpha tester and QA adviser) that these things should be polished before the beta is released. So having said that, Zach is now working on getting these final little bits into the beta before it launches. I know a lot of you want a time frame for this, but I'm afraid I can't give you one because I simply don't know how long it's going to take.

We really do apologize for this and thank you for your patience.

7mhEj.jpg
 

1-D_FTW

Member
Bloody hell that looks so real! Watching low Res on iPad but the lighting looks great, and sounds wonderful. Looking forward to the beta. :]

It's not the first time I've gotten a scary sense of speed from this game. There's just something about this game.

I can only imagine how insane this game would be on the Sony HMZ-T1.

is he... wearing racing gloves? ahahahaha


game is gorgeous though

:lol I've seen a dude on youtube wearing racing boots before.
 

1-D_FTW

Member
What's so funny? I've had my hands go incredibly sweaty playing racing sims. People wearing racing gloves and socks while playing sims is nothing out of the ordinary.

Sorry. I was referring more to the dude who was wearing racing boots.

Although, to be honest, it was watching that video which made me question my choice of driving bare foot. Now I at least usually put some socks on. G27 pedals are kind of a pain with nothing on.
 
Oh man, so excited for rFactor2. I have longed for the glory days of GPL. To have those back with modern gfx any physics... oh man, I feel genuinely giddy. Nice gif btw. Love the old school slidy tires. Fuck down force! Real men drive without wings.
 

Kyaw

Member
Not really digging the online access membership, but there is so much awesome that I will bite anyway.

Yeah same here. Where do I give my money? Am I supposed to wait until the official beta access date and buy the license through the launcher?
 

1-D_FTW

Member
Awesome :) now if someone at the courier company hadn't stolen my new wheel id be a happy man

Damn. Somebody knew what they were doing and are pimping it in style now.

Hope they get you that replacement fast. Didn't they know it was your b-day present?
 

Shawsie64

Banned
Damn. Somebody knew what they were doing and are pimping it in style now.

Hope they get you that replacement fast. Didn't they know it was your b-day present?

Yeah hopefully, gotta wait for their call this morning..

I should ask for pain and suffering compensation on top of the cost of the wheel for it missing my bday :) haha
 

mclaren777

Member
Yeah same here. Where do I give my money? Am I supposed to wait until the official beta access date and buy the license through the launcher?

Here are the steps:
1. Download the installer (482MB)
2. Install the game on your PC
3. Buy license through launcher
 

Shawsie64

Banned
Just got a call saying they have found my package.. I asked where it was and they couldnt tell me hmmm.

Anywho ready for the beta now! :)
 
What are the odds that you'll have your wheel by...tomorrow?

*cough*ITSCOMINGOUTTOMMOROW*cough*

Amirite?

By the way, could anyone remind me what are the cars that will be available right off at the start of the beta? I think there were the Meganes and the '68 F1s, but that's all I remember.
 
By the way, I just thought that it could be a good idea to write up a little "getting started in sim racing" guide for the people who have never played such a game before.

I started out with a few simple guidelines that I came up with, if you guys can think of anything else, feel free to remind me, I'll add it up.

Guide to getting started in sim racing.

1: Turn off every assist. This includes traction control, ABS, automatic transmission, and so on. The only assist that should be considered ok is the autoclutch, if you don't have one with your steering wheel.

You may ask yourself "Why?" thinking it will be easier to progressively turn them off. NO.

Why? Because turning them off later, after you've gotten used to having them, will be ten times harder than just turning them off straight at the beginning, and getting used to not relying on them.

2: Start with a front wheel drive car.
Unlike in many other games, rear driven cars are particularly hard to handle, and will easily spin you out if you are unaware of what you are doing. This may lead to a lot of frustration. Starting with a FWD car will allow you to learn the physics of the game on a smoother learning curve, and will allow you to focus on important details such as not locking your wheels during braking, learning the tracks and their curves, finding the APEX, etc.

3: Do your first run alone, no AI/other players on the track.
Having other racers around you may be a lot of fun, but it WILL make learning a lot harder, since you will have a lot more pressure, and tempted to go faster than you would otherwise do, and end up in a wall.

4: TAKE YOUR TIME, unless you have already played a real racing simulator before, this will be a very steep learning curve. For reference, Gran Turismo, Forza, and Need for Speed Shift, while great games, are not even close to being as accurate as these games are. It WILL be frustratingly hard at first, so it is very important that you take it slow, and learn the physics.

5: Steering wheel.
Get a steering wheel, just do it. Keyboards and gamepads, from personal experience, do not work well with this genre, unless you turn on every single assist in the game, which in itself, breaks the whole point of the game being realistic. Do yourself a favor, and get yourself one, some can be had cheap, and still do pretty well.
 

mclaren777

Member
Link

It is time for a small snippet and "behind the scenes" look at the creation of cars. Expect these to come in for all cars that will feature in our game. This post comes back to front, since you've already seen the finished car in the first released screenshot. Expect it the right way around for the next cars!

iJK1TLpnhA8FX.jpg
 

mclaren777

Member
iXkdmsAsGeBEj.jpg


So how have you simulated the different way karts handle - as they don't have a differential and so rely on the inside wheel on the back axle to lift so that the tyres don't scrub and bind up?
Zach: It's an interesting challenge. Of course most games that feature karts have typically just used the same physics model as a car, with tuned suspension settings and a locked differential which will never be right. KartSim uses the Finite Element Method (FEM) to simulate the kart chassis flex alongside its steering geometry model.

This allows the stiffness of the chassis and other parameters like the caster angle, kingpin inclination and tie rod length to be entered into the simulation. The end result is a kart that lifts the inside rear wheel when turning around a corner from all the chassis forces at work. The great thing about this is depending on how much rubber is down on the track, the kart will flex differently forcing players to adjust their setup to match the conditions.


Karts are massively responsive to steering input and can be quite tricky to drive smoothly. How have you balanced the physics needs of the simulation with the all important imperative that the karts feel realistic, but are still fun to drive?
Zach: The great thing is the karts have always been fun to drive despite it being a simulation. You can throw them around quite a lot or be smooth, so it inherently caters for different driving styles. That said, the exceptionally small steering angles can be quite a challenge for someone who plays a lot of car racing games and are used to driving bigger cars where you need to turn the wheel a lot.

For the upcoming multiplayer beta, the setup of the kart is fixed for all players and has quite a soft front end which makes the steering a little more forgiving by sacrificing how direct the kart is.


How is the beta process coming along?
Zach: It's progressing quite well, with only a short list of bugs to fix and final features to implement. I've setup a great testing team which means the end product should be reasonably bug free. I'm also currently setting up the global network of servers which store the data for each player as well as other services like the in-game advertising and player skin systems.

Full Interview
 

Shaneus

Member
Ooh, an Australian-based dev is working on Kartsim? Interested.

Also, with me only now just getting back into PC sims, I have to ask: Was there a clear, obvious title that was (pretty much) unanimously the game? Only asking because when I tried to get into it I never knew whether to hedge my bets with rFactor, SimBin's titles or any of the others. Does it look like there'll be one this "gen", what with C.A.R.S, rFactor2 and GTR3?
 

1-D_FTW

Member
Also, with me only now just getting back into PC sims, I have to ask: Was there a clear, obvious title that was (pretty much) unanimously the game? Only asking because when I tried to get into it I never knew whether to hedge my bets with rFactor, SimBin's titles or any of the others. Does it look like there'll be one this "gen", what with C.A.R.S, rFactor2 and GTR3?


I don't think there is a one. They all pretty much have there own little niche.

I suppose iRacing could be considered the one if you're talking about online community. But that's a subscription service.

rFactor was probably considered equal/slightly below it in the driving model, but had a modding community like no other. There was a near limitless supply of cars/tracks and they were all free.

Personally, I feel rF2 is a huge bump up from the original. So if it gets the same type of mod support, it'll be the definitive sim racer IMO. But that's just my opinion. Because, again, there really is no recognized leader and they all just carve out a niche. Everyone has their own biases and favorites.
 

Shaneus

Member
Thanks! I think I like the modding idea of rFactor the best (even though the implementation seems very crudely implemented in the beta... took me a good half hour to work out I had to download cars and tracks!) given how much I loved racing around Belgium in one of the older cars or the Formula Renault on almost all tracks, the potentially infinite combination of cars and tracks really appeals to me.

As far as "mods", is it fair to say that pretty much any car, licensed or otherwise, would be playable with the game? I'm going to delve into the mod community for the first rFactor just to get an idea, but first-hand knowledge wouldn't go astray ;)
 

1-D_FTW

Member
Rfactor central is a good place to search for a centralized database for what's available:

http://www.rfactorcentral.com/list.cfm?cat=Tracks&type=All

I'm sure there's cars/tracks that aren't in it, but you could certainly build a lifetime of content with what was available.

And if you think the mod menus are crudely implemented in rFactor 2, stay far away from the original. It's literally a 1000 times better. Somebody called rfactor the linux of racers and that's a fair description. It was disorganization like no game I've ever played.
 

mclaren777

Member
Personally, I feel rF2 is a huge bump up from the original. So if it gets the same type of mod support, it'll be the definitive sim racer IMO. But that's just my opinion. Because, again, there really is no recognized leader and they all just carve out a niche. Everyone has their own biases and favorites.

This summarizes my feelings as well. pCARS will definitely be the best looking game and Assetto Corsa will likely have a superior driving model, but rFactor 2 appeals to be more than both because of its mod support. rF1 had some truly amazing content and I'm guessing that rF2 will be even better.
 
I don't think there is a one. They all pretty much have there own little niche.

I would love it if there were one or two really big online racing communities, with a lot of activity at all times of day. Now it's all very much dispersed in small online communities on various games and platforms, and the wide-spread use of mods has splintered this even further. Maybe CARS will bring this? I doubt it, though.
 

Shaneus

Member
Rfactor central is a good place to search for a centralized database for what's available:

http://www.rfactorcentral.com/list.cfm?cat=Tracks&type=All

I'm sure there's cars/tracks that aren't in it, but you could certainly build a lifetime of content with what was available.

And if you think the mod menus are crudely implemented in rFactor 2, stay far away from the original. It's literally a 1000 times better. Somebody called rfactor the linux of racers and that's a fair description. It was disorganization like no game I've ever played.
Thanks! "The Linux of racers" definitely seems like an apt title. The visuals haven't wowed me at all, where it seems it's at the point where you can guarantee it's not going to look amazing... but that doesn't really worry me.

This summarizes my feelings as well. pCARS will definitely be the best looking game and Assetto Corsa will likely have a superior driving model, but rFactor 2 appeals to be more than both because of its mod support. rF1 had some truly amazing content and I'm guessing that rF2 will be even better.
Exactly. The yearly sub (or whatever... I hope there's a cheap option to upgrade from yearly to lifetime if the appeal's there for me) could perhaps be better justified as a sub for awesome additional content rather than just "online". Pitch it that way, and everyone will sign up (even though addons can obviously be added without a sub).

Are most people looking at porting their mods over to rF2? Are they mostly just content or are there lighting/performance mods as well to improve the overall IQ?

Apologies for all the questions, just trying to get some momentum going, knowledge-wise.

PS. Asseto Corsa? There's ANOTHER game I need to look out for? Damn. Excited for Kartsim though. The demo video seriously had the most realistic looking in-game environment engine I've ever seen. Lighting and textures were life-like.
 

mclaren777

Member
Thanks! "The Linux of racers" definitely seems like an apt title. The visuals haven't wowed me at all, where it seems it's at the point where you can guarantee it's not going to look amazing... but that doesn't really worry me.

rF1 looked pretty good and rF2 has every reason to look even better.

p805c.jpg
 

1-D_FTW

Member
rF1 looked pretty good and rF2 has every reason to look even better.

http://i.imgur.com/p805c.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]

And because it was a game that had such incredibly modest requirements, you could force Super Sampling AA and still easily achieve 1080P @ 60fps. To me, that's graphical heaven.

Haven't really tried forcing it in rfactor 2. Not sure if it would work. Or if I had the graphical overhead on my GPU. Fairly certain I couldn't keep 60fps on my current card with it. Not without turning things like ambient occlusion off.
 

mclaren777

Member
And because it was a game that had such incredibly modest requirements, you could force Super Sampling AA and still easily achieve 1080P @ 60fps. To me, that's graphical heaven.

Haven't really tried forcing it in rfactor 2. Not sure if it would work. Or if I had the graphical overhead on my GPU. Fairly certain I couldn't keep 60fps on my current card with it. Not without turning things like ambient occlusion off.

Level 5 AA is some kind of SSAA on Nvidia hardware and that's what I use in rF1 and rF2 (it's what I used in that Radical image). On my GTX 460 it only drops performance about 1% over Level 4 AA.
 
Top Bottom