Back to rFactor 2 after many years. Need guidance.

[Sk3ptik0n]

I came back to Simracing about a month ago, after stopping for 5 years. I used to love rfactor 2, but since returning I am having issues with finding good, fun to drive mods with decent AI and well rounded series in rFactor 2.

For starters, I have installed a number of Tracks, but some are very poor quality and others don't have a icon so I can see what track it may be.
Ditto for the cars. The majority of the cars I downloaded don't have a icon and I have to go to the showroom to see what car it is.

The new UI is better than the old one, but far from perfect. I was glad to see Oval cars (I am a road guy and I suck at ovals, but I'd like to learn), but on some tracks I keep getting black flagged for who knows why? Likely some pit transgression.

The short of it is that I would like to know what cars and tracks are there for rF2 so that I can cover Formula one (and F2 and F3 if available), some GT cars with decent BOP, series like BTTC and the like, including vintage cars, without having to spend 45 minutes trying to guess which cars go with which.

Yes, I used to be able to do that on my own back in the day, but I have been out of the loop for so long and with my wife getting very sick (of the kind where each morning I have to check if she is breathing) I was hoping that some in this forum would be kind enough to point me in the right direction.
For instance, is there a way to fix the tracks and cars missing icons?
Are there mods that group cars in the same class when appropriate?

Is anyone racing online in the Road and/or oval cars? Unfortunately, I live in the US West coast, so unlike East coast people or Europeans, I am sort of at the edge of the planet when it comes to Simracing online. Races are either too early, or I'd have to set an alarm in the middle of the night to catch the East Asia/Australia folks.

However, for now I would really love to find a decent F1 Mod (which I may have, if I knew the name), some door banging GT type cars (But not necessarily GT3 since they are everywhere already) and especially some good vintage mods along the lines of the old GT Legends.

One last thing: every time I launch rF2, it starts downloading a number of things with a message like "Downloading - 1 of 3,468" (well, maybe not quite that many) and then I sit there for so long, I often forget why I opened rF2 in the first place. I assume it is installing whatever updates were released, but it'd be nice if I could bypass that process or tell the program to download a specific one but ignore the rest until I am done using the game. The first time I launched rF2 it took almost an hour to install everything. I'd rather have it install whatever I may need it, when I need it rather than stare at a download scree.

Thank you very much for reading this.

 

[davehenrie]

I came back to Simracing about a month ago, after stopping for 5 years. I used to love rfactor 2, but since returning I am having issues with finding good, fun to drive mods with decent AI and well rounded series in rFactor 2.

For starters, I have installed a number of Tracks, but some are very poor quality and others don't have a icon so I can see what track it may be.
Ditto for the cars. The majority of the cars I downloaded don't have a icon and I have to go to the showroom to see what car it is.

The new UI is better than the old one, but far from perfect. I was glad to see Oval cars (I am a road guy and I suck at ovals, but I'd like to learn), but on some tracks I keep getting black flagged for who knows why? Likely some pit transgression.

The short of it is that I would like to know what cars and tracks are there for rF2 so that I can cover Formula one (and F2 and F3 if available), some GT cars with decent BOP, series like BTTC and the like, including vintage cars, without having to spend 45 minutes trying to guess which cars go with which.

Yes, I used to be able to do that on my own back in the day, but I have been out of the loop for so long and with my wife getting very sick (of the kind where each morning I have to check if she is breathing) I was hoping that some in this forum would be kind enough to point me in the right direction.
For instance, is there a way to fix the tracks and cars missing icons?
Are there mods that group cars in the same class when appropriate?

Is anyone racing online in the Road and/or oval cars? Unfortunately, I live in the US West coast, so unlike East coast people or Europeans, I am sort of at the edge of the planet when it comes to Simracing online. Races are either too early, or I'd have to set an alarm in the middle of the night to catch the East Asia/Australia folks.

However, for now I would really love to find a decent F1 Mod (which I may have, if I knew the name), some door banging GT type cars (But not necessarily GT3 since they are everywhere already) and especially some good vintage mods along the lines of the old GT Legends.

One last thing: every time I launch rF2, it starts downloading a number of things with a message like "Downloading - 1 of 3,468" (well, maybe not quite that many) and then I sit there for so long, I often forget why I opened rF2 in the first place. I assume it is installing whatever updates were released, but it'd be nice if I could bypass that process or tell the program to download a specific one but ignore the rest until I am done using the game. The first time I launched rF2 it took almost an hour to install everything. I'd rather have it install whatever I may need it, when I need it rather than stare at a download scree.

Thank you very much for reading this.

Tracks and mods are available in the Workshop area in the Steam Library. Cars covered with tarps need a series of icon files that were added about a year ago. Mods that have been updated will show cars, mods that have not will show the tarp over the car. It is up to the Mod creators or other 3rd party users to make those icons. S397 can't legally start messing with other people's creations. So if you have a-lot of tarped cars, search out the download sites for updates or find the author to see if you can prod him/them to create icons.
Be aware, rF2 is now a paid DLC product. Most, not all but most, newer cars and tracks have to be purchased. This applies to all of the GT3/GTE/LMP3/LMP2/Dpi cars & S397 produced Laser Scanned tracks. F1 is almost all 3rd party only, searching the Workshop will be your best bet.
Also check out the competition system in the new UI. There are a series of online races that have times scattered about every 5 hrs to allow most users a time to join in for some quick pick-up(not trucks) racing.
My advice about the updates....pick a time you can't race, start up rF2, let it begin installing everything and you go about your day, or night. Once you get fully caught up, you won't have these large groups of files to contend with. The sheer number of files should give you some idea how much progress rF2 has made over the last 5 years.(and...unfortunately....some lack of progress as well)

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

Tracks and mods are available in the Workshop area in the Steam Library. Cars covered with tarps need a series of icon files that were added about a year ago. Mods that have been updated will show cars, mods that have not will show the tarp over the car. It is up to the Mod creators or other 3rd party users to make those icons. S397 can't legally start messing with other people's creations. So if you have a-lot of tarped cars, search out the download sites for updates or find the author to see if you can prod him/them to create icons.
Be aware, rF2 is now a paid DLC product. Most, not all but most, newer cars and tracks have to be purchased. This applies to all of the GT3/GTE/LMP3/LMP2/Dpi cars & S397 produced Laser Scanned tracks. F1 is almost all 3rd party only, searching the Workshop will be your best bet.
Also check out the competition system in the new UI. There are a series of online races that have times scattered about every 5 hrs to allow most users a time to join in for some quick pick-up(not trucks) racing.
My advice about the updates....pick a time you can't race, start up rF2, let it begin installing everything and you go about your day, or night. Once you get fully caught up, you won't have these large groups of files to contend with. The sheer number of files should give you some idea how much progress rF2 has made over the last 5 years.(and...unfortunately....some lack of progress as well)

Thank you for the reply. I had arrived at some of it myself, but I didn't want to color my question with possibly wrong assumptions.

I did see the Workshop cars and tracks, in fact much of the content without icons I believe comes from that.
I did not know about the icons becoming available relatively recently. That makes sense.

I also saw the premium content. Frankly, I will buy Spa, Sebring and the rest because they are mine (and everyone's) favorite tracks.
Part of me wants to protest that owning ACC and iRacing (my wife's gift, in fact, she is the one that insisted I get back into simracing) the last thing I need is GT3 content. I'd prefer, and buy, content that is less popular but more unique.
On the other hand, I realize they have to make money somehow.
It would be nice if they offered more unusual tracks like many of the ones R3R offers, where some are truly great (Like Slovakiaring for instance, or Most, Autopolis, etc.) Again, I suppose they have to pay rent and eat food, so I am OK with that in principle.

I am actually interested in the Electric cars, if nothing else because I am curious on what's like to drive them and some of the street circuits are at places I know. For instance, my mother lives almost walking distance from the Rome circuit and when I lived in Italy, I went by the EUR to go to school. I guess I'll have to buy that package. That is truly unique and I suppose that since they have some kind of license, theirs is probably the most accurate.

As far as multiplayer, i's a bit too early for me to race online. I am way off the pace and since I have brand new load cell pedals I have been modding myself, my braking is... problematic at the moment (but it's getting better now that my mod is not coming apart anymore like it used to).

Do you have any suggestions in regard to any online racing that may work for the US West coast? If not, don't worry, I'll take look myself. What I really would like is a league like the GTR2 League I used to race in around 2012/13. We all knew each other and we didn't have to deal with idiots, testosterone filled rookies and imbeciles that think they are playing Mario Kart and sound offended when we tell them to please not to crash into our cars on purpose during practice. I have been back at iRacing for two weeks and I already encountered a half dozen members of this human subculture. Rookies is even worse (I tried the Dirt Ovals, never seen so many flying cars in one place. Not even in the Jetsons cartoons).

Anyway, thank you for the clarifications. Imagine that until last Thursday I never picked a car without an icon because I assumed I didn't have the mod. The first time I tried to prctice I just could not pick the right track or car and got stuck into a endless loop. Now I can explore the game with a bit more confidence.

Thanks again.

 

[BrianGon]

I've come back to sims after quite a few years and noticed that the ethos in mods has shifted from providing sets of playable cars to doing one-car-at-a-time. There are a range of reasons why this is but it makes setting up a field of cars as a player more time intensive than it used be. I'll often spend more time mixing, matching and balancing different cars in a field to where that becomes the game in of itself. This can be fun too, but if you're expecting a seamless experience it can be rather disappointing.

Tbh ACC, Raceroom (and probably iracing) offer a better experience when it comes to class based car groupings. There are even some electric cars in Raceroom that might be interesting.

With rf2 car mods you could try:
BTCC 2018
ETCC 2003 (this is more of a retromod)
F1 1986 & 88 (this one actually includes all the tracks too, which mods usually do not)
F1 1998
CART 1998
EVE F1 + 1968 Skin set
FIA GT3 2012