Post your first impressions

[Bob Luneski]

How about people posting some of their first impressions of rFactor 2? What do you like? What don't you like? What are the coolest new features?

 

[Ivo Simons]

I was just saying that with a more crap card and lower settings our graphics almost looks the same.
Thats weird.

 

[Ben Tusting]

was underwhelmed yesterday, just checked if everything was on max setting visually (yes, it was) and took a first outing at Spa1967 right now. I am still decidedly not overwhelmed as far as visuals are concerned (and if I play for 90 mins, that is what I look at, after all, for 90 minutes)

Those cars look awesome!!!

 

[Ben Tusting]

Weird. Looks here like this. This is at high settings.
Dont have the fastest pc also. 4850 512mb Card, 3.00 Ghz, 4GB ram.

Can't you force better graphics through your ati controlcenter?

 

[Ivo Simons]

Probably. But its running fine now with 100 fps. And its looks nice also.

 

[Mark Birney]

Don't forget, most betas turns down some settings to make it a smaller package to distribute. Many betas on console and PC do that. Just a possibility here.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

I was just saying that with a more crap card and lower settings our graphics almost looks the same.
Thats weird.

ah, now i get the message. yeah, weird innit? i guess it's done for medium end pcs to be still able to get good fps, so basically most of us here could run it on the pc we ditched last year or the year before (or even three years ago, maybe five?). like i said, the strengths are elsewhere, it just makes me not feel so immersed.

 

[Alberto Casado]

I am not very impressed.

The graphics are not exactly amazing, but for me the biggest disappointment is the much praised FFB. I can, more or less, feel the understeering when I block while braking, but a power slide does not give me any warning. I have yet to catch a spin, I have not been able so far because I can only see it and then it is done. As for the megane, I remember some review saying it feels exactly like your street car, well, I have to agree, mine is being repaired for an oil leakage and while suspended in the air it feels truly the same! That is, dead.

IMHO the formula 3 car handles like a shoebox. On a kerb, like a shaken up shoebox.

 

[David Garcia]

I am not against rFactor 2 of course, and understand I am judging it from videos and screenshots, but I have to say to the guys who said that Eckhart picture was nice possibly did not ever tested iRacing.

I am sure rFactor 2 have a lot of new features that no other sim has, but in what comes to grafix, please admit it looks a bit old.

 

[William Levesque]

I am not very impressed.

The graphics are not exactly amazing, but for me the biggest disappointment is the much praised FFB. I can, more or less, feel the understeering when I block while braking, but a power slide does not give me any warning. I have yet to catch a spin, I have not been able so far because I can only see it and then it is done. As for the megane, I remember some review saying it feels exactly like your street car, well, I have to agree, mine is being repaired for an oil leakage and while suspended in the air it feels truly the same! That is, dead.

IMHO the formula 3 car handles like a shoebox. On a kerb, like a shaken up shoebox.

I've catch a lot of slides in the Megane, but past a certain point it just snaps like it should on that modern slicks, medium downforce car.

As for the 60's Formula, well most of the time you're going crazy fast so of course it's tricky to catch it when things go wrong

 

[Ivo Simons]

I am not against rFactor 2 of course, and understand I am judging it from videos and screenshots, but I have to say to the guys who said that Eckhart picture was nice possibly did not ever tested iRacing.

I am sure rFactor 2 have a lot of new features that no other sim has, but in what comes to grafix, please admit it looks a bit old.

Oh yeah agree. iRacing looks to me still the best imo in the simracing area.
But the ISI guys are great. They are the most innovative guys arround they are always setting benchmark with something. But a agree not graphics wise.
Same was for rFactor 1. The default stuff wasnt great also but we all know how it evolved.
But i am lucky also i think. I dont really care for the most top notch graphics. I still like some eye candy offcourse so i am not playing on the Low settings but i dont have it maxed out either. Some good FPS with some little eye candy is enough for me.

Also imo ISI is a different developer imo then other developers.
Were other developers make a overall package with updates etc the whole time. ISI makes their game more "open source" and let the community more in control. Both have their positive and negative points.

 

[Jamie Shorting]

I think alot of people get confused at the whole concept of rFactor. It's an open platform which developers/modders can use to create anything they can dream of. No other developer does this right now. Right now rF2 has just been born and has alot of maturing and growing to do and it will.

So you can say that the graphics are old and crap but just compare early days of rFactor 1 to Reiza's GSC. Again, rF2 will grow and get better with time. Personally I think the graphics are nice and NOT old looking. It's personal preference really.

I don't want to derail this thread as it's for your first impressions of rf2 which I have already given but I just wanted to respond to some of the comments that have been on this page.

 

[tony_s]

Yea I agree Jamie, I think the graphics are very nice, not old-looking in a negative way, but in a small way remind me of the last era of GPL when it had been tweaked & re-written into something cool.

I love it I've only driven the '60s cars & for me all the important ingredients are there - lovely cockpits, tons of authentic suspension detail, & massive amounts of physics feedback from the suspension/car mass/grip/track bumps etc.. oh, & did I mention how hard it is to drive them, lol

I will say the FFB is far too strong if you go off onto the grass, or hit anything really - my G27 won't last long before it's broke..

And graphically the cars are tonally too "light" - there's a layer of something on them that's making them too reflective (with player detail on full) they need to be a whole lot darker, with deep, almost black shadows and areas around the engine.. however the track (Spa) was beautiful, with a huge amount of research gone into it, giving it great atmosphere

Just my initial impressions..

 

[Gary Lennon]

My first impressions are mainly positive,love the new FFB and really liking the feel of the tyres now,most fun has been had in the 66's F1/F3 cars,im another one who has full confidence in ISI and ofcourse the modding community at large to gradually develop this in to the future of sim racing.

 

[Jonathan Motteram]

really impressed with the tyre model, weather and ffb. love the 60s cars(although the f1s don't like me).
i think there's loads of potential in this and i look forward to seeing how this'll end up after it's finished and the mods start coming out

 

[Abdul Al-Amry]

I tried to love this. I am always open minded before being negative towards a product etc etc. I'm afraid I am hitting the refund button. I'll wait until all is resolved before committing again.

I was expecting features that even during Beta should already have been implemented.

 

[Bob Luneski]

Third impression

After applying both of these fixes as well as messing with some of the 3d settings in the Catalyst Control Center I managed to get rid of the stuttering and get the frame rates for my triple monitor 5760x1080 system up to 40-70. There's a long way to go, but it's very drivable now. Driving the old F1's @ Spa with the changable weather this morning was WAY TOO COOL. The sim has a lot of bugs and still has a long way to go, but the potential for a really great sim is there.

 

[Klyde Parker]

First Impression,

Awesome sounds.
Terrific FFB (after tweaks).
Great graphics.

The only exception I have right now data-comm. Even though the graphics were superb eye-candy, the thru-put was HORRIBLE. In rFactor1 my FSP run between 250 - 350. In Race07 EVO they run between 150 - 200. NOW in rFactor2 it hovers between 40 - 50. Cars are Bombing all the time. You'll be racing along and the pack will disappear for 1 - 5 seconds.... making it impossible to drive close!!!

My ISP bandwith show 2 mbits UP and 20 Mbits DOWN........ 1 Mb = 1024 Kb right? and they asking for Kbits (Kb) not KBytes (KB)

Found this in the Mutiplayer.ini file... settings originally 2/64/64..... now 6/2048/20480

Net Connection Type="6" // 0=28k, 1=56k, 2=ISDN, 3=128kbps cable/dsl 4=256kbps cable/dsl, 5=LAN, 6=custom
Upstream Rated KBPS="2048" // Rated uploading speed of connection, in kilobits per second
Downstream Rated KBPS="20480" // Rated downloading speed of connection, in kilobits per second

.This didnt help any.... still @ 45 FSP which is HORRIBLE !!!

HELP, is there anything else I can do ???

KP (aka The Turtle)

p.s.

System = Asus P5P43TD MB, Intel 3.1 dual-core Proc, 8 Gb DDR3 1333 Mem, Nvida 260 Vid card.

 

[mikem]

was underwhelmed yesterday, just checked if everything was on max setting visually (yes, it was) and took a first outing at Spa1967 right now. I am still decidedly not overwhelmed as far as visuals are concerned (and if I play for 90 mins, that is what I look at, after all, for 90 minutes)

But things like the cars in that image has little to do with what rFactor2 is capable of graphically. Perhaps whoever did the track, didn't bother spending too much time modeling those cars. One of the reason could be because it's assumed that in a racing sim trackside objects aren't meticulously studied but rather zoomed past at high speed and became nothing more but blurred objects.

I simply don't buy the argument that things like these reduce the immersion factor. Maybe in first person shooter but not a racing sim.

 

[Alberto Casado]

But things like the cars in that image has little to do with what rFactor2 is capable of graphically. Perhaps whoever did the track, didn't bother spending too much time modeling those cars. One of the reason could be because it's assumed that in a racing sim trackside objects aren't meticulously studied but rather zoomed past at high speed and became nothing more but blurred objects.

I simply don't buy the argument that things like these reduce the immersion factor. Maybe in first person shooter but not a racing sim.

Visual quality personal standards are, sadly, not easily reversible. Once upon a time DOOM was an "incredibly realistic game" (I remember it like that), today what seemed an amazingly convincing fireball appears as a blocky bunch of orange squares, and enjoying becomes difficult because you don't see the ball, you see the squares. If you feel the image is "off" you will start looking at sagged edges and squares no matter the type of game.

 

[Philip Antonia]

My first impressions (finally).

UI is a massive improvement and all of the Mod implementation looks very simple and easy to use.

Graphics are decent though the Megane models look poor from a distance (maybe incomplete or basic LODs).

FFB is very nice. No complaints here from that.

Performance on my system isn't as good as I'd hoped, but I'm sure this is down to optimization and hopefully improved drivers etc.

Sounds are good. Not special, but good.

Tracks are nicely made, but Estoril doesn't have a good feel to it. Monaco is very nicely done with the moveable objects like hay bales etc. The crowds and marshalls etc all add to the feeling of a real track.

Ai are much improved from rF1. Very impressed with them at Monaco in the 66's.

Classic cars are a blast to drive and feel intuative to drive (though bloody tricky). Meganes are quite nice to and get grip into the tires quite quickly, but Formula 3.5 is horrible to drive . Seems to understeer badly when tires are cold making it hard to get temperature into them and the rear end just turns around even at low speeds. I realise the tires need to get to operating temps, but it seems to take ages and the car is far too unpredictable to work the tires up to temp!!

So thoughts for now are: A little disappointed initially, but the obvious potential is there. I think I felt much the same about rF1 (having been into GTR at the time) but in time, with mods rF1 became one of my favourite Sims and I'm sure rF2 will to .