Hi David, I moved your thread here from the league section. There is no defintive answer so I'll give you my opinion, some may disagree. If you're used to buying a game in a box and then playing it offline or online then something like rFactor or the RACE series would perhaps be more to what you're used to. iRacing requires a subscription to continue playing and there is no offline mode, only practice but to practice on your own you still need a valid subscription. You get a basic package of 6 cars and 9 tracks (not counting the alternate track layouts for 4 of those tracks) after that you are required to buy additional content, much like you would buy DLC on XBOX Live. Cars cost around $12 each and tracks can range from $12 - $15 though you can get discount on this DLC if you buy a few at a time. 6 items would give you a 20% discount and so on. So thats the economics done, onto the sims..
In my opinion both rFactor and RACE are at the end of their life now and a lot of fans are waiting patiently for rFactor 2 or GTR 3 for example. These games can be modded but the mods range in quality from very good to extremely poor and you'll have to wade through some extremely poor ones to find the very good ones and few of the good tracks or cars are built on solid data from the manufacturers. That said the default content in RACE in particular is very good and I personally don't see the need to mod the game as it has enough in the box to give you many many hours of enjoyment. It has tin tops and open wheel cars with many well known international tracks and it can be picked up online very cheaply if you shop around because it is an older title. I've played it a little online but outside of RD you'll find a lot of idiots crashing you out and very often no admins around to kick them out. The quality of the servers also range widely from server to server depending on the hardware used and quality of connection. Again you'll find good solid servers at RD with leagues setup using the default content so maybe its worth a look there.
On to iRacing...I have most of the games used here, rFactor, Live For Speed, netKar Pro, RACE series, GTR series, GT Legends, Codemasters F1 etc on the PC and Forza 3, Codemasters F1 and GT5 on the XBOX and PS3 and yet all I play on the PC is iRacing. Why you ask? Yes its expensive but in my opinion it is the best. Some will say the laser scanning is a marketing tool yet those people might also have said the same thing when sims progressed to using GPS data instead of just photographs and survey maps of tracks many years ago. Drive a track in RACE, rFactor, Forza 3 or GT5 and then drive it in iRacing and you'll be stunned by some of the glaring differences in the elevations and radius of the corners. The laser scanninmg is not just about feeling the bumps and imperfections of the track but also about getting the elevations right and the radius of the corners right and also the heights of the curbs, the cambers and all the other little nuances right. I'm not saying you can't have fun on the versions of tracks in other sims but as a racing sim fan don't you want to feel like you're driving the closest possible facsimilie of the track you see drivers using in real life? The cars also get the scanning treatment but are also weighed and broken down to get their size and weight correct and iRacing goes to great lengths to get proper licenseing deals with car manufacturers to get input from them and drivers on handling. Its not left to guess work by some mod maker in his bedroom.
Online in iRacing is a structured environment. Yes there are a small number of people who join the service and bring with them the smash and crash mentality but they get penalised. There are crashes but in 99% of cases in my experience its down to a momentary lapse in judgement by a driver that caused a crash i.e lunging into a corner they thought they could grab or moving down onto another car on an oval and not realisng someone was there or misjuding their closing speed. iRacing attributes a safety rating to all drivers using their service. If you drive cleanly and don't crash out your safety rating will improve and you will gain access to the next license level which will allow you to drive the faster cars. Those who crash out a lot will be kept on their rookie license until they either improve their skills or stop messing around online. Because iRacing is a closed subscription service - you use their servers and their servers only they can control what goes on. When you join iRacing you agree to follow their code of conduct which includes not only driving cleanly but also how you conduct yourself in the chat during the races and what you say on the forums so if you see someone dropping the f-bomb you can report it to their staff if you feel it necessary and they will take action. The same goes for crashes, if you felt someone maliciously crashed into you then you can send in a replay and protest the incident and the iRacing stewards will review it.
I'd really recommend spending
$12 on trying iRacing for a month. You'll get a good feel for the service and how it all works much better than prattling on about it. They are also running an offer for
3 months for the price of one here.
