Rate The Sims: Community Edition | Automobilista

[Paul Jeffrey]

We are looking to crown the 'RaceDepartment Community Favourite' racing game - get your votes in now for our next game on the list... Automobilista!

Our dear RaceDepartment community. You folks are the most mighty fans of sim racing, often displaying an immense amount of understanding and depth of knowledge when it comes to our favourite hobby.

With sim racing and eSports in such a wonderful boom period of late. Gamers looking to have some fun with their virtual racing machines have never before had such a wide and robust variety of software to enjoy.

Now occasionally I've been in a position to rate new racing titles that have come my way, and almost every time I've received a wide variety of folks agreeing, or strongly disagreeing with my own opinions.

Opinions are great, but sometimes the opinion of one person, with their own likes and dislikes taken into account, can often give a bit of a skewed picture (intentional or not) to the greater cause in which said person is trying to explain.

As such, rather than doing one myself, and in the spirit of engaging some interesting community discussion, I thought it could be fun to let our own community rate each of the key sim racing / racing games available today.

As always with these things, please do try and respect each other and their opinions, and let's try to see if we can give a fun, but fair shake of the stick to each of the games included in this poll.

For transparency, I'm going to be featuring the following racing games over the next weeks:

• Assetto Corsa
• Assetto Corsa Competizione
• Automobilista (AMS)
• DiRT 2.0
• F1 2019
• GT Sport
• GRID
• iRacing
• NASCAR Heat 4
• PCARS 2
• RaceRoom Racing Experience
• rFactor 2
• WRC 8

I'm going to launch the article each Monday evening, and keep the poll running for a full week until the next new article is pushed live. So get your votes in quick!

Once I've completed the full list of games, I'll publish a final results feature, and we can award the winning developer the lofty title of 'RaceDepartment Community Favourite'!

Have fun, stay sensible and let the voting commence!

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[pascal28]

7
Malgré une bonne physique, un bon FFB, le contenu est très bon mais reste un peu trop exotique (à mon goût) et également un peu limité en terme de choix.
Ceci dit c'est une excellente simulation que j'aime vraiment beaucoup.
La référence pour moi reste rFactor 2.

 

[Nick Hill]

For what Reiza did with the rF1 engine, the sim deserves 10, but since I can't and won't rate any sim a perfect score - sims are WIP and there is always room for improvement, AMS gets a solid 9.

I'm of the same mind, but took a slightly different conclusion and went in for the 10. I think it's very possible that a "10" sim has never and will never exist, so my mind is open to the possibility that a "9" may in fact be a "10" (if that makes sense).

One phrase sums up AMS for me: "attention to detail". That is the Reiza ethos, it seems. What they've squeezed out of what is essentially rFactor is absolutely astounding. And it's not a "polished turd" situation - even if you didn't have the appreciation that it's rFactor somewhere under there, the sim experience stands on it's own. The incredibly detailed tracks, the huge variety of cars, the FFB sensations. It's all top flight, there are just holes and gaps (same thing can be said about the other 5 or so sims on my PC right now).

AMS has never and will never have the player base that, in a perfect world, it should have attracted. Too many competitors (both worthy and unworthy). We are spoiled rotten, as sim racers we'd do well to remember that. There is a pretty convincing case to be made that, from a dollars and cents perspective, sim racing really shouldn't even be a thing, but here we are with more titles than any one person could actually play on a consistent basis.

 

[John B. Ellis]

AMS deserves a 10 if for no other reason than Rieza's unmatched level of care and support throughout the life of the title. Rieza's efforts set the gold standard of simracing software developer support.

 

[Salvatore Sirignano]

It gets a 10 from me!

How six people voted it a 1 I don't know, they must have got a Groupon deal on lobotomies...

Reiza did everything they could with the graphics, for me they are fine, but I accept that for a lot of people newer titles are more appealing looks wise.

However, everything else is top notch, the physics are brilliant, the FFB likewise, the sounds are up there with Raceroom.
The AI and content spread for me are a lot better than rF2, yes some of the tracks are niche, but Patrick's tracks fill in any glaring gaps.

Reiza have to their immense credit kept up the support and improvements for AMS when other devs might not have been so generous to their customers...
Keep it up Reiza!

 

[Terry Rock]

It's the 'little engine that could' of simulation.
I love AMS....a solid 8.
It is the most natural sim out of-the-box...no massive tweaking to get it to respond like a car.
If you want to feel and correct slides as you would with a real vehicle....this is it.

 

[147852369]

Even if AMS is your favourite sim you shouldn't give it a 10, there's no simracing title that deserves that rating.

 

[E304LIFE]

Great simulator with all the fixin's. My small gripe is with the skins not being original, and graphics being a bit dated, but has a great community for mod content. *Always play longer than I expect when i start 'er up.
Reiza

 

[BP]

AMS...was waiting for your moment in the sun. Still the closest thing to a complete, engaging, multi-class sim that has come out in this decade. The only drawbacks being no weather, no VR (although I heard there are solutions around for that) and my personal tiny issue: you can’t adjust the pitch angle of the cockpit camera without editing a file. Gets a solid 9 for having some of the best FFB of any sim and an amazing selection of cars and tracks. I think with the highest AA settings used, it looks pretty awesome even in 2019, and system performance is exceptional, which is more important to me than extra eye candy. Not including 1st party DLC’s, AC + the latest mods is the only sim that beats stock AMS in my opinion...remove mods from the equation and AMS is the king of the hill.

Here's my little soapbox issue: If AMS is such a near-perfect, highly cherished sim as so many people have come out and acknowledged today, they why oh why couldn’t we have regular AMS races on RaceDepartment??

Been asking for this for awhile, but other than the Mini Challenge (once a year) and the Aussie club races, the EU and US guys couldn’t care less it seems. I don’t like the “no VR” excuse, because it's almost hypocritical how ACC was not treated the same way: when ACC multiplayer came out, it had VR support and no Triple support...but it got races on RD. AMS has triple support but no VR support and, even though most racers play on some kind of monitor whether 1 or 3, it gets no love for club races for the last 2 years I've been racing here. Just putting it out there...Reiza put A LOT of love into this game looong after they said they'd hang up the towel on updates, and it's a travesty that RD isn't hosting a regular EU and US race every week.

 

[M D Gourley]

For transparency, I'm going to be featuring the following racing games over the next weeks:

• Assetto Corsa
• Assetto Corsa Competizione
• Automobilista (AMS)
• DiRT 2.0
• F1 2019
• GT Sport
• GRID
• iRacing
• NASCAR Heat 4
• PCARS 2
• RaceRoom Racing Experience
• rFactor 2
• WRC 8

Where's 'Wreckfest' - it deserves to be there in my humble opinion
10 for Automobilista 1 as I am more than happy with everything on a 'Single Player' level, Physics / FFB / Audio / Graphics - for it is a very good example of an old engine...and as I do not go online for this Sim a 10

 

[Greg Latty]

the only thing stopping this sim from being a 10 is the lack of VR.. otherwise one of my all time favorites. 9\10 for me

 

[Chris]

8/10 for me.

In my opinion AMS is the best overall package currently available on the market. From multiplayer to content, to pricing, to physics, sounds and force feedback.

It doesn't perfect anything really, but it's good at everything. An incredibly well rounded product.

The downsides are that it's running on a vastly outdated engine. The tyre model is simplistic in comparison with the likes of ACC and rF2 and the graphics are fairly outdated considering the competition out there.

 

[fireballr18]

8

 

[Deleted member 197115]

So many people are happy about the title, yet nobody plays it.
Paradox.

 

[PickABetterUsername01]

So many people are happy about the title, yet nobody plays it.
Paradox.

Old engine and lack of a structured multiplayer probably. At the end of the day, racing just for the sake of racing is not enough to push someone into playing it everyday and being highly competitive. That's why GTS and iRacing are at the top when it comes to multiplayer. Even Forza, with a terrible ranked multiplayer structure does better, because it's better than nothing.

It's the same with ACC, bunch of people calling it super amazing next gen simracing, yet barely anyone plays it. Obviously, with just whatever lobbies for multiplayer you cannot expect it to grow big.

 

[x0141745]

I choosed this sim because at the time was the only one capable to run in my low end laptop. Now it's my favourite despite the upgrade in hardware.
Because of this poll and high AC and ACC rate I tryed it again.
I tryed a Lotus 49 at Springfield and it's not even closer. It lacks the raw, the right slip feeling and I can't keep focus on driving.
I grew up with racing sims since PC DOS Indianapolis 500 (yes I'm pretty old) and till recent releases feel was everything.
AMS is for me the real deal. Graphics can be below par but most of the time I'm looking at track and apex.
Also I race usually offline (not much time left between work and kids to atend online racing).
A solid 9 for me.
Can't wait for AMS2.

 

[Ruy Horta]

21 ..... voted sub 5
No sense in arguing taste, but that’s just plain offensive.

I would have voted a 9, because there is no perfect game, but gave it a 10 to at least off set the 7 ueber ..... that voted a 1.

Sorry, some things need to be stated for the record.

 

[Case_]

So many people are happy about the title, yet nobody plays it.
Paradox.

Plenty of people play it, you just have to know where to look

 

[CrimsonEminence]

21 ..... voted sub 5
No sense in arguing taste, but that’s just plain offensive.

Some people would argue, that voting ACC under 7, like me (6) is plain offensive, too. Everybody has the freedom to do it, statistically, there are way more people, that seem to find it worth to be rated higher, so no big deal.^^

It is not for everybody, and it doesn't want to be, so some are enjoying it very much, like me and others are just upset with it, when it doesn't fill expectations. This is fine.

Plenty of people play it, you just have to know where to look

There is a community around it, indeed, which works with organized events and even leagues, but the overall population of general Multiplayer is very, very poor. It's somewhat of an ISIengine game thing, i dunno why

 

[Serge.M]

I really feel like there should be a “don’t own it” option in the votes so you can still see how the votes are spread

 

[Case_]

(Reading the complains about what score is or isn't acceptable is kinda funny, though. Voting below 5 is plain offensive, or even below 7 apparently in some cases, but then again you also shouldn't vote 10, because clearly there's no perfect game It kinda reminds me of game reviews, where a game is considered a complete failure if it gets a lower score than 7/10 It's just silly - there's a scale, but you're not supposed to use more than half of it.

Just let people rate the games according to their own perceptions and preferences instead of trying to fit everyone to your own, which is exactly what you're doing by judging what rating should be acceptable. Somebody voted a number you find ridiculous? Have a laugh about it and move on. It apparently made sense to him, even though it doesn't make the slightest sense to you. In the end, it's still just a meaningless poll done purely for fun, it won't affect your enjoyment of the game in any way.)