What are some of the things iRacing has that F1 2010 doesn't?

For those of you who've played both iRacing and F1 2010, I would like you to list some of the features/functions iracing has that F1 2010 either doesn't have at all, or has but is inferior to iRacing.

I haven't tried iRacing yet, but after reading some of the things it does well, and after playing Codemaster's F1 2010, I can't help but ask myself, why in the world am I playing this game instead of iRacing? I mean, let's completely put the superiority of physics and handling aside.... from I understand, iRacing has:

1)Much better FFb than F1 2010

2)Spectating mode, while F1 2010 doesn't

3)Let's you join in a race while already in progress to either wait patiently or spectate until it's over....F1 2010 does not.

4)Is able to achieve 60fps on most decent PC rigs, while F1 2010 requires a monster of a PC to achieve such high framerates

5)Text chat. None whatsoever in F1 2010....is your mind blown yet?

6)Safety car: I can't confirm if iRacing has this, but F1 certainly doesn't


Am I missing anything else, or are any of the above false assumptions? Because I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong. If those weren't good enough reasons, I am also someone who passionately loves racing online, while at the same time starting to loathe racing offline against the AI. As a result, I have not even TOUCHED the offline single player campaign in F1 2010, and have been playing the game exclusively online since the day it came out.

Is there absolutely any reason I shouldn't sign up for iRacing and simply leave F1 2010 to rot in the sun? Because that is exactly what I'm planning to do in a few weeks once I get my PC back from RMA repair.

The only things that I've been apprehensive about regarding iRacing are:

A)I suck MAJOR balls at hardcore racing sims and generally spin out every few yards even on straight sections of the track(OK OK maybe that's an exaggeration)

B)Forced cockpit view(never used this view at all in any racing games so I will need major adjusting to do).

and of course...

C)The cost.

If I can get past those issues, I think I'm ready :)
 
The car feels alot more advanced. Drive the Williams on your limit for 20min and you sweat. lolz
Setups: the gazillion options setups.
Lacks the f1 atmosphere, single car and not alot of F1 tracks in iracing.
Price
Car is useless in official races untill you hit your A license and that can take some time.

PS. I would like to know if there would be an interest for some hosted events, i am even willing to sponsor a few events if there is enough interest


I play iracing and really enjoy it but it misses the whole f1 feel. I enjoy f1 2010 for what it is. A good f1 game but tuned down to serve a bigger audiance.
 
For those of you who've played both iRacing and F1 2010, I would like you to list some of the features/functions iracing has that F1 2010 either doesn't have at all, or has but is inferior to iRacing.

I haven't tried iRacing yet, but after reading some of the things it does well, and after playing Codemaster's F1 2010, I can't help but ask myself, why in the world am I playing this game instead of iRacing? I mean, let's completely put the superiority of physics and handling aside.... from I understand, iRacing has:

1)Much better FFb than F1 2010 - Only netKar Pro is on the same level as iRacing for this, its incredibly good.

2)Spectating mode, while F1 2010 doesn't - You can spectate any race providing you own the content.

3)Let's you join in a race while already in progress to either wait patiently or spectate until it's over....F1 2010 does not. - You can join a race as long as you signed up to it, otherwise you can spectate and go out on track with all the other cars as ghost cars.

4)Is able to achieve 60fps on most decent PC rigs, while F1 2010 requires a monster of a PC to achieve such high framerates. - Depends on settings, you can really turn things down but then it looks terrible. Or you can ramp everything up and you end up with the most natural looking game there is.

5)Text chat. None whatsoever in F1 2010....is your mind blown yet? - There is full text chat, with drivers and spectators along with inbuilt voice chat.

6)Safety car: I can't confirm if iRacing has this, but F1 certainly doesn't. - There is a safety car for ovals and you get on on the formation lap.

Is there absolutely any reason I shouldn't sign up for iRacing and simply leave F1 2010 to rot in the sun? Because that is exactly what I'm planning to do in a few weeks once I get my PC back from RMA repair. - No, sign up and use one of the promotions.

The only things that I've been apprehensive about regarding iRacing are:

A)I suck MAJOR balls at hardcore racing sims and generally spin out every few yards even on straight sections of the track(OK OK maybe that's an exaggeration). - Everyone has to start somewhere, iRacing is a good place as it'll teach you everything.

B)Forced cockpit view(never used this view at all in any racing games so I will need major adjusting to do). - The best view to race on, means you can feel the car properly. Again something you'll get used to.

and of course...

C)The cost. - The cost is all up to you, other than the subscription which is at most $12 a month. - You can buy as much or as little content as you want, just depends on what you want to race really.

If I can get past those issues, I think I'm ready :)

Edited with answers^^
 
i was completely addicted by f1 2010. i joined race department to discuss f1 2010. i heard about iracing here. subscribed it. never ever thought about touching f1 2010 anymore.

iracing has so much more depth, you feel connected to the cars and you feel the tension of the battles. i'm a slow driver, the closer to a simulator i've ever played was forza on x360. i spun a lot in the beggining (perhaps because it was ford spec racer week, damned car!), but you get a feeling for it with practice, it's not rocket science.

the best thing about iracing is the clean races you get any time of day, without having to search for leagues in forums, etc. the grids are always full. no rammers, the safety rating system works, 99% of the field drives with competitive but respectful behaviour.

nothing gets close, imo.
 
If you've been racing against random people on public servers your mind will be blown when you see people racing hard for 20 laps on iRacing with minimal incidents. As far as spinning out, you will find that the rookie car (Mazda MX5) is forgiving and easy to drive. The Skip Barber car is an excellent step up from there - still pretty forgiving but more nimble and an excellent way to improve your open-wheel skills.

Cost is obviously a factor. Right now they have an amazing deal for $75 that gives you a 1 year membership plus the Williams F1 car, Zandvoort and Silverstone, in addition to the standard free content.
 
I wouldn't say useless. You can still race it in the formula fun races that are open to all license holders. Sure they are non sr or irating races but you can still race it.

Not to be nit picky :) but i didnt say useless i said "useless in official races" good example how a forum post can be pulled out of contex.

Fun week is only temp after the 18th you have to wait till end of season or be an A license ( altough i hope they keep them up all season). Didnt stop me from getting the car its awesome!, and hosted sessions offer a way to get it to race with friends.
 
I forgot to ask this question so here goes:

Seeing as how iRacing is all about online and the game is launched from a browser, does it allow you to open a browser and surf the net while *in* the actual game? Like say, you're in a lobby waiting for the remaining players to start, and you wanna check something really quick on the net. Does the game have its own browser that acts like an overlay, and open up for websurfing?

This is one of the best features I can say about Steam. Steam does exactly this, and I can't tell you how many times having a browser has made life easier for me while waiting for a game to start.
 
Iracing doesnt have the whole 2010 calender of F1 race tracks and cars, F1 2010's graphics are not as smooth because they are far higher quality, its on a completely different level of detail to Iracing so its not surprising it takes alot more beef from your computer. Iracing is no doubt better if you want competitive online racing and realistic physics. But F1 2010 is awesome for what it is, if you look at the quality of all the tracks, the detail its amazing. The tracks are alive (even if you dont think the cars are), full of every imperfection and characteristic. It could be agreed that some of the tracks do not seem 100% accurate in the way some corners feel but they did a really good job for the first game, and in my opinion its well worth the money for a game that does something no other game can do for an F1 fan like myself.

The main thing though, Iracing is for a completely different market, its for the hardcore sim racer, or the enthusiast sim racer, where as F1 2010 is intended for a much broader audience and was put together under a strict deadline with making money being the No1 aim of the day.

Iracing i'm sure is awesome (i'm going to signup as soon as my new wheel arives), but it has 1 F1 car, a 2009 model at that, and most of the F1 circuits are not available in Iracing, so for the F1 fan iracing cannot even begin give you the same thing, but for the sim racing fan.. Iracing is obviously on a different level.
 
I forgot to ask this question so here goes:

Seeing as how iRacing is all about online and the game is launched from a browser, does it allow you to open a browser and surf the net while *in* the actual game? Like say, you're in a lobby waiting for the remaining players to start, and you wanna check something really quick on the net. Does the game have its own browser that acts like an overlay, and open up for websurfing?

This is one of the best features I can say about Steam. Steam does exactly this, and I can't tell you how many times having a browser has made life easier for me while waiting for a game to start.

You'll just have to alt+tab. That said if you're in a race you wont want to be messing around doing anything else as there is only a 5 min warmup before it starts. Steam overlay and xfire don't work ingame, not that you ever need them as you can just alt+tab while you're in the pits.

@ Ryan

I'd have to disagree with F1 2010 looking better. It looks a lot less natural and the tracks are nowhere near iRacing at all. In iRacing I can go and find stuff that is there in real life, and it'll be exactly the same and in the same place - F1 2010 was nowhere near that standard. Also F1 2010 just seems to be a brown bloomgasm as is so often the case with new games, I much prefer the look of iRacing, its much more natural. Since the latest update everything looks even better. F1 2010 runs pretty badly too for what it is, especially when you consider its basically the same as DiRT 2 and that ran with about double the FPS that I get in F1 2010. That's of course with just 1 car on track in both games. Considering I can get around 45-50FPS with absolutely everything maxed (high quality mirrors off, 32xAA w/ 8x supersampling, 16xAF) on iRacing with a 30+ car grid it runs very well.
 
Imo its quite pointless to compare both games. Both games are made for different people/market.
One is a race game and the other is a Race Simulation. For one you pay 60 euro ones and for the other one you spent much more.
One person likes animated pitstop and the other person doesnt give a thing about it and wants accurate tracks. And many more things.
 
You'll just have to alt+tab. That said if you're in a race you wont want to be messing around doing anything else as there is only a 5 min warmup before it starts. Steam overlay and xfire don't work ingame, not that you ever need them as you can just alt+tab while you're in the pits.

@ Ryan

I'd have to disagree with F1 2010 looking better. It looks a lot less natural and the tracks are nowhere near iRacing at all. In iRacing I can go and find stuff that is there in real life, and it'll be exactly the same and in the same place - F1 2010 was nowhere near that standard. Also F1 2010 just seems to be a brown bloomgasm as is so often the case with new games, I much prefer the look of iRacing, its much more natural. Since the latest update everything looks even better. F1 2010 runs pretty badly too for what it is, especially when you consider its basically the same as DiRT 2 and that ran with about double the FPS that I get in F1 2010. That's of course with just 1 car on track in both games. Considering I can get around 45-50FPS with absolutely everything maxed (high quality mirrors off, 32xAA w/ 8x supersampling, 16xAF) on iRacing with a 30+ car grid it runs very well.

The lack of an in-game browser is well, something I guess I'll have to live with.

How are the loading times though? How many seconds does it typically take to load a track in the game? Also, can the game be ran in windowed mode? Any performance difference when doing so?

Also James would you mind posting your PC specs?
 
The lack of an in-game browser is well, something I guess I'll have to live with.

How are the loading times though? How many seconds does it typically take to load a track in the game? Also, can the game be ran in windowed mode? Any performance difference when doing so?

Also James would you mind posting your PC specs?

You can run in windowed mode I believe, I haven't tried it but the performance should be the same.

Loading times depends, I've got an SSD so it loads in a few seconds. HDD 10-15 seconds I'd have thought.

PC Specs:

CPU: Q6600 G0 @ 3600.16Mhz
Motherboard: DFI LT X48 T2R
Graphics Card: Asus GTX 470 @ 780/3600/1560MHz (260.99)
Memory: 2x2GB Team Xtreem Dark PC8500
Hard Drive: Corsair Reactor 60GB + WD 500GB
Optical Drive: Samsung DVDRW+
Power Supply: Corsair HX 620W
Display: Samsung 22" Widescreen (1680x1050)
Sound Card: X-FI Xtreme Music
Operating System: Windows 7 Pro (x64)
Wheel: Logitech G27 + Bodnar Box
 
Iam sorry Ivo but i do not completly agree with you.
I play both so it defo hits both markets for some. Stating that no Iracer would play f1 2010 because they are a diferent market aint based on facts.

Comparing them is useless because the other has to hit a wider audience and thus the game itself is made more acceseble i do agree on.
 
Ok, my wheel came this morning, litterally moments after writing the post and so i have started my iracing experience. Graphics wise, whether or not you prefer F1 2010 for looks, there is more on screen with it, the level of detail is higher, even if you think it looks worse there is more for the computer to do.

I've played Iracing today and i found it was really not running very smooth at some points of some tracks, with frame rate varying from 10fps to 70fps depending, and the whole game was slowing down even in menus. (alot worse than F1 2010), then i toned down the shadows to see my framerates shoot up to 120fps (a lot better than F1 2010). I like the way Iracing looks, but i still think that F1 2010 is on a far higher level, the lighting quality especially, Iracing is very flat in many aspects, and while a lot of it looks great i dont think its even close to looking like real life. If you put a real life video side by side with F1 2010 (the rain video was a perfect example) and do the same thing with Iracing the difference is plain as day. The brown colour of F1 2010 is just a colour scheme in the lighting, something that can be changed with ease and has nothing to do with the quality of the visuals in terms of the computing power needed to run it.


As for the driving experience, i have the williams F1 car, it feels really nice to drive and i was able to pickit up very quickly, feels similar to Rfactors BMW Sauber 2007, if you set aside the differences of the sims general feel, I was surprised how easy it was to lockup the brakes after all the FVA i had played, and if anything the Iracing F1 car is much closer to Rfactor than it is to FVA. In general i really like the car, though i'm not very good at it yet.

Back on the main subject, i still don't think Iracing can bring you what F1 2010 can bring you, which is (in my opinion) very high quality versions of all of the 2010 calender tracks, all the cars and a fairly nice single player career mode, none of which Iracing can provide. Better quality visuals and better quality sound to go with it.


But i must admit, i love Iracing so far, if you're a sim racer and you want online racing, this is obviously the winner.
 
Iam sorry Ivo but i do not completly agree with you.
I play both so it defo hits both markets for some. Stating that no Iracer would play f1 2010 because they are a diferent market aint based on facts.

Comparing them is useless because the other has to hit a wider audience and thus the game itself is made more acceseble i do agree on.

No i didnt really ment that :). It was more like what are you feeling of doing that night.
Some nights you want to drive quick against some AI with no setting up a car.
And one night you want to battle hard against some other real persons on a big grid trying to get that extra 0.100. Thats why F1 2010 is a game and iRacing a Simulator so thats why you cant compare them but offcourse both can equally enjoy them in their own way. :)
 

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