Rfactor Questions!

[TheRealF1fanatic]

I am a pretty serious PS3 racer but I would like to know more about Rfactor. There is so much on the interwebs it's overwhelming, I don't know where to start.

Where is the best place to buy it? Do I want the disc or download? What is a good price?

What are the system requirements? What are the optimum system requirements desired?

I have a pretty wicked laptop, is that enough if I have a HDTV?

I use Windows 7? Do I want to wait for Rf2? When is that suppose to come out?

If you have a specific link for me, please by all means. Thank you.

 

[Omer Said]

Ask rFactor question in rFactor forum please :thumb:

 

[TheRealF1fanatic]

sorry, missed that, thanks. Anyone please.

 

[Senad Subasic]

The game is 5 years old, so no need to worry about system requirements much.

I'd wait for rF2, no official release date yet, but shouldn't be too long.

Anyway, download the demo and try: http://www.rfactor.net/

 

[Adam Eggbeer]

As Senad has said, try the demo and see if you like it. You can buy it from their site for £25 or you can have a look around Amazon, Ebay, etc. and try and find it for a lower price (I got my copy from Amazon for about £8)

If you got Windows 7 you should be able to run the game fine but check the demo works as that is the full game but you only get 1 hour of play.

rFactor 2 will be out soon, however no release date as yet so we don't know how soon. It could be 2 months, could be 6 months, could be longer.

Hope this helps.

 

[Chris Butcher]

I can confirm that rFactor works fine on windows 7 (running Home Premium x64 here)

 

[TheRealF1fanatic]

Thanks guys. I followed the link but I am having trouble locating the trial version download. I can find the full download but not the demo. Sorry, uber-noob.

 

[Senad Subasic]

You download the full game, but with limited content, and I think it's only an hour or something?
Anyway, download the full game.

 

[Ryan Callan]

The download has all content but like Senad says, allows play for an hour only. Then you have to activate it.

Btw if you're a PS3 racer, prepare to be disappointed by the graphics. It is 5 years old after all

 

[Doug62]

The game is 5 years old, so no need to worry about system requirements much.

I'd wait for rF2, no official release date yet, but shouldn't be too long.

Anyway, download the demo and try: http://www.rfactor.net/

I'd tend to agree with Senad in this case. To todays standards rF is old. Being a SP3 user you would have GT5 now out. I'd stay with that for now.

Ryan's also right about the graphics. Tho there are a lot of things that people have done to improve things over the years it still doesn't match PS3.

rF2 will be DX9 only. A laptop may find it hard to run with full graphics settings unless it is DX10 capable. Your HDTV will be fine as it's more then likely PC compatible.

We really don't expect rF2 to be to far away now and it may take some time to get yourself up to speed with loading mods and tracks. Getting settings to how you like them eg.eg. For this reason only you may want to start with rF1. You'll be able to get all the help you need from forums like this one. The guy's here are very good at problem solving and help with any issues you may have. What's the best mod for your preferred car types (F1, GT, NASCAR) and the like. Track's, There are at times more then one version. One is always better then the other and leagues no the best ones.

Joining a league is easy and highly recommended. The open server can be real crash & bash were the leagues have rules against bad conduct on and off the track. Many use Team Speak so they can talk to each other. Abuse of any sort is also heavily monitored with offenders being suspended from leagues. Sounds hard and all but it's not when it keeps a friendly atmosphere.

 

[TheRealF1fanatic]

Thanks again. Yes, GT5 is out and it's truckloads of fun. Like most games, it is not perfect and far from what you would expect from a car guy for car guys. But it is fun and I will get hours and hours of enjoyment from it.

I was able to download the rfactor demo. I think I have 40 minutes or so left of play time. I find the program very interesting and loaded with potential, especially seeing that rF2 is on the horizon. I was able to run the HDMI from my laptop to my receiver and then out to the TV. This gave me video on my big screen though a little sub standard in terms of intensity. I see this being an issue more with my 5+ year old rear projection Toshiba that has a max resolution of 1080i. Nonetheless, works well enough.

A couple of things I noticed. The program ran very smoothly. Except for about once a lap the frame-rate would freeze for about .25 - half a second. It was very slight but noticeable and would be very distracting for a dedicated racer. Is this common? I have an Alienware M17x9(I7-720QM, ATI Radeon HD 4870) laptop that is designed for gaming so I can't imagine it's my hardware, especially on a 5 year old title, unless I don't have something optimized or set correctly. As far as graphics go, yes, not as good as the current titles for PS3, but acceptable. I would have to imagine rF2 will be a huge upgrade.

I was extremely impressed with the sound, very good. Some of the finer audio details were really interesting like chassis squeaks after throttle lift. I also liked the huge amount of adjustment that could be made to the car. A person could go crazy trying to study up on their setups, but a very appealing feature. I could not find how to change my car to a manual transmission but I didn't want to waste my 60 minutes of demo time trying to figure out game function.

ForceFeedback notes. I found some of the settings but again I rushed through them because I want to spend my demo on the track, not in the menu. I feel resistance in my G25 but little to nothing on the FFB side. How do you guys feel the FFB is on rFactor? Is it good or just mediocre? I have to say I've driven a lot of recent PS3 titles that have really done a good job with FFB but the new GT5 game takes the cake. It is really good, I can't say that enough.

All in all I find the rFactor demo an interesting experiment. And I think I will return to play with it some more just to try and familiarize a little with the program if not experiment with the capabilities of my laptop. I will really be keeping an eye out for what rF2 will have in store.

Please contribute anything to add. I have found all your information very helpful. Thank you.

 

[Ryan Callan]

FFB in rFactor does take a lot of tweaking tbh. It's one of it's 'failings' for want of a better word - however there are number of plugins that improve it and the benefit of PC racing is ability to use somebody else's settings very easily .

RealFeel is one of those plugins and rF2's FFB will be more RealFeel based than previously (FFB reacting to suspension movement rather than tyre grip).

rF2 will also not be a 'huge' upgrade graphically being based on the same engine (certainly nowhere near Forza or GT5) but it will be an improvement, especially in terms of graphical features such as rain, heat wave, dynamic racing line etc etc. So don't get your hopes up too much.

Of course rFactor's strengths lie in the encyclopaedic array of motorsport series and tracks it supports thanks to the modding community. I can't go back to console racing thanks to vast number of tracks available on rFactor - never will I be satisfied with 30 tracks again while they are hundreds on rFactor. Some are better than others of course, but there are still probably 100-150 of excellent quality.

 

[Rob Every]

Ryan

Wonder if you might be able to help?

Am running RF for the first time on Win 7 and it's all installed fine, am getting very much into the F1 1991 mod. THey use Real feel for that mod.

Now my issue is this. ON Vista I could open the .dll file in lugins with Notepad, but in 7 I get the gobbledegeek stuff that you normally get?

Any ideas? Only reason for the change is that F1 sim use fairly specific settings on 91, and would like to use them in this version?

 

[Ryan Callan]

You shouldn't be opening .dll files

You need to open the .ini file to adjust the RealFeel settings.

 

[Rob Every]

Not particularly helpful when all I have from every download available is a dll file and a txt file!

 

[Ryan Callan]

When you run the game it will generate a .ini in your root rFactor folder.