It's a great engine, and fanboys gonna be fanboys for their favourite sims.
But seriously, does anyone think the content and setups is the best thing about RF2? Seriously?
Firstly we will all have different things we want from a sim.
If RF2 supplies them it does not make you a "fan boy".
To give you on angle (my personal angle).
I started on codies F1. Really enjoyed it. In wet weather the physics came alive IMO but the rest of the time it was a bit dumbed down
for where I personally wanted to go.
I loved the game but its strengths IMO were the graphics and gameplay, what happened outside the physics. The setups are a sham. Aero say 11 at one end and 1at the other (depending on the year 2011 was the one I liked) . However It produced great multiplayer racing and the guys with the most skill were the fastest.
I wanted to explore what I understood to be "Sim Racing" more.
With my trusty Xbox the route is Race Pro. the best sim on the Xbox. Its essentially Race 07 (which uses ISI GMotor2) ported to Xbox.
Now here is where it got different.
On certain cars the default setup was crap. (sound familiar?) eg the top Caterham was mega understeer. So rather than slagging off the game for its default setups I did my homework. Made a better setup and bingo it was great. I drove away from my Codies F1 contemporaries and podiumed online.
From there I was hooked on making setups.
I like taking a setup and making it faster. I'm a mid pack driver in League events and podium challenger in Club events in my strongest cars so certainly no alien.
However at Bathurst 3 months ago an alien was 2 sec slower than me in the BES 1.0 911. I sent him my setup and found 3 sec. That was cool.
This year my team mate (FR 3.5 League )who is ranked higher than me on pace, used my setup at Spa and was immediately 2 sec faster.
Its a technical game. the physics are cutting edge. If you are a non technical person and want to jump in and race "without all this setup do daah" you need a buddy who is good at it. Or grab one from the many posted in that section, or you need another game where its all done for you and the setup changes are kind of ceremonial and ornamental. I hear Grid is good.
But don't ask us who are "into it" to agree with you.
I have had races where my setup was good on tyre life and the hot lappers had smoked me till 1/2 distance then came back to me and I passed them due to tyre wear. Same game, same car just setup and technique.
The car in fact was the one you like the Ferrari 458 Challenge. It is easy to drive but understeers like crazy and nukes front tyres until you master setting it up and driving it well. I can beat aliens in it and that's down to my skill in setting it up well.
There are many other great cars in ISI line up. Last night we had a stunning race in the GT cars. There were blokes getting lapped but not complaining about the duff setups they were working out how to go faster.
One example is a guy who is appr 6 weeks into RF2. He is fast but on a steep learning curve with the setup and the driving technique.
He has picked up a mentor or two to help him study setups. Rather than simply say "thanks this ones nice", he asks questions like "your setup gets much more even tyre wear how did you do that?"
Last night in a quality field he just narrowly missed a podium.
So my friend. in descending order of difficulty.
You can get yourself a reading list and learn how to do it.
You can get a mentor to help you
You can just grab ready made ones.
or pass by this amazing journey and drive Grid Autosport 2.
But I don't agree with you central premise that ISI stock content is worse than the Ferrari 458 C or that the stock setups should all be great out of the box.
BTW ISI content does not include an LMP yet. It was made by a guy here who has gone down the route of creating his own cars from scratch.
Edit
The Howstons are an incredible challenge, I guess 600hp monsters in crude chassis with cross ply tyres have their limits. to race them well you need to be a virtuoso. Ive seen it done.
