Rate The Sims: Community Edition | iRacing

[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... iRacing!

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!

 

[randomcallsign]

7. Outdated content that is handsomely paid. Still it has the standard on competitive mp

 

[F_B]

Gave it a 7

+ online structure and multiplayer
+ laserscanned tracks
+ variety of disciplines (road, oval, dirt)
+ day/night
+ attention to detail
+ rating system
+ damage model (not finished yet)
+ nearly all US tracks

+/- ffb
+/- pyhsics

- slow development
- costs
- many series incomplete/outdated
- still many european tracks missing imo
- probably too many similar series competing with each other

 

[Will Mazeo]

Keeping the avg score of 4 I'm giving to all sims till now lol
Expensive due to senseless pay for sub + content (should be sub only)
Tracks take too long to be updated and some cars to be added (like the GT3 grid)
No weather yet, 24h cycle took too damn long to arrive
Car model limit is too low
Ghost cars in pit stalls (are there leagues for men that wont use this crap?)
Safety rating makes ppl drive like grandmas sometimes, it's a great thing to have but they need to fix this
Community is the worst among all sims, a true cult

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

10 from me, simply the best, and since it's Miss Turner's 80th today:

 

[Jonny Austin]

Benchmark of all physics orientated racing sims when it came out, but horribly horribly overpriced and greedy.

People who are ok with their price structure mostly don't understand that if this is considered normal other companies will do the same and we end up with hyperinflation on prices, not only for simracing titles but for all the others as well.

Thats not how competition in the sim racing software market or the majority of other markets works is it?Another comment on this thread talked about monopolys etc.There are valid arguments that companies like Google,Amazon & Facebook have a dominant position within their markets but that is simply not the case with Iracing.They have not been handed a dominant position in the market place by government or anyone else & do not have anything unique that people have to buy.If it is over priced people will not buy their products & will buy cheaper software elsewhere.

How many years have RFactor,Project Cars,Automobilista,Raceroom & Assetto Corsa had to come up with something similar to Iracing for multiplayer?Gran Turismo has copied the Iracing safety & ratings system so it can be done but it requires massive amounts of money either from investors or players/members.

"Its a great game but multiplayer sucks" is one of the most common complaints on RD forums about most sims except Iracing.

 

[LN-virtualpaddock]

Gave it a 7

+ online structure and multiplayer
+ laserscanned tracks
+ variety of disciplines (road, oval, dirt)
+ day/night
+ attention to detail
+ rating system
+ damage model (not finished yet)
+ nearly all US tracks

+/- ffb
+/- pyhsics

- slow development
- costs
- many series incomplete/outdated
- still many european tracks missing imo
- probably too many similar series competing with each other

Exactly my thoughts as well. When it comes to multiplayer, iRacing is unbeatable, and for a lot of US-based series and tracks, it's pretty much the only option.

But it's absolutely overpriced. The only reason I tried it this year is that a friend had an old coupon code for 3 free months, and he gave it to me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to afford it as a student. €10 a month plus €10-15 for every new car and track is too expensive for a lot of people.
What iRacing needs most of all is a competitor, at least one other sim focused on structured multiplayer.

 

[Norbert Sajtos]

The best value in iRacing is that this is the only sim that has the VRWorks Single Pass Stereo functionality implemented for nVidia cards. I don't know why other devs don't deal with this as it would give most us solid 90fps with higher detail levels in VR. Single Pass Stereo solution is available there for years so just curious... is it so hard to implement?

Anyway community is good, races are enjoyable and fun. You can pre-plan your evening by registering to a race.

But all of these come with a price to pay. Subscribing for a year (or more) is so expensive and for the smaller plans you can't get any discount.

And one more downside: there is no option for trying out any track or vehicle before you buy it???

So overally I gave it a 7.

 

[Terry Rock]

I've personally never tried it
Interesting to read what folks think about it.
Given it's cost, I'd have fully expected it to be in a league of it's own, with not even a 'hint' of comparison to other sims.

 

[Maro_Marinov]

After an exitement explosion 9 years ago when I first subscribed and was impressed, I had an 8 year pause.
Recently, I have decided to see what's changed over those years and subscribed again. And got hooked so much, that I bought a 1 year subscription on the Black friday deal.
iRacing is a solid sim in my opinion.
Physics/FFB may not be on AC, ACC, Automobilista or rFactor2 level, but are more than good enough.
Track modeling is superb, very detailed tracks, albeit some of them are now outdated.
Cars are good, sound is great.
Online/multiplayer is second to none.
It has two major drawbacks for me - pricing and the lack of AI.
The later can be somewhat neglected, considering the online experience and the fact, that I personally perceive iRacing as an online/multiplayer only title, but the first one... oh, boy.

It's expensive. Especially when I discovered that now VAT is added to the price, for us europeans, the price i s quite high.

All and all, I gave it an 8.

 

[dd11]

It is still the KING. But it suffers badly because of this fact.
Slow development (tracks, feels old) >> higher costs >> stupid pricing model >> lack of players.
1) Outsource track development = concurrent improvement, faster cycles, always fresh / attractive sim for even wider audience.
2) Outsource infrastructure = concurrent improvements, cheap scaling, more active customers = always more money.
3) Reduce subscription to 29/year. There will be 4 times more players compared to current bunch bringing same or more subscription money + waaaaaaaay more on "virtual copies" of content that was not cheap to develop in first place.

End/dream result : more people in splits >> more money for new development >> better future for beloved sim.
Hope they will realize it someday.

 

[Momperface]

if you are someone who wants to race other humans then a solid 8

if you want to race against bots than 0

racing against bots is boring as watching paint dry, so a solid 8 for me, things it could improve are keeping cars and series up to date better and promote league tables more

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

And one more downside: there is no option for trying out any track or vehicle before you buy it???

you can test every item while iRacing is down for installing the season update every three months. I know, it's only five hours and they maybe don't fit one's schedule (they don't fit mine), but one can do it. Has been possible for two years or so.

 

[Ciccina2016]

Check number of players online on daily basis.
This game is the top on the category regardless all the negative aspects already mentioned.

8 for me

 

[RCHeliguy]

Benchmark of all physics orientated racing sims when it came out, but horribly horribly overpriced and greedy.

People who are ok with their price structure mostly don't understand that if this is considered normal other companies will do the same and we end up with hyperinflation on prices, not only for simracing titles but for all the others as well.

I think you have the pricing backwards. The only reason they can keep a subscriber base at this price is because they are the only game in town with with their feature set and they have a large subscriber base.

Other titles can't charge that because they don't have the infrastructure and they don't have the critical mass of online players. This has to do with iRacing's origins and what they have evolved into. The were purchased a while back by a guy who owned the Red Sox who specifically wanted to create an eSport. So it has been designed specifically to foster competition, hence their iRating and Safety and automatic penalty system. They allow appeals and I know for a fact that they respond to those reasonably quickly. So it's not just keeping the servers going. They have people to handle thousands of complaints. They are working with NBC to get TV coverage of the more serious races. They are very specifically trying to grow an eSport, not just create a video game.

People can complain all they want, but if the iRacing model didn't work, they wouldn't be able to maintain their subscriber base. That's simple economics. If members didn't see the value, they wouldn't renew, and some don't, but others join and the base keeps growing. Like it or not they've done a lot of things right and they have a large user base because of that.

 

[Enagee]

It be great if people could rate the sims and not the price. Title doesn't say best value sim.
But we know the price issue will never be avoided with this title.

Any smokers? Pack of cigarettes, about £10 how long does it last... Say two weeks. Versus the cost of iracing for a month.. Work it out and the benefits.

To non sim racers hearing someone spending £300 on a wheel is crazy... Let's not mention direct drive wheel, Triple monitors/VR and racing seat.

There's things iracing can improve like being able to play offline when subscription is over but for now it what it is.

If you have a passion for sim racing price shouldn't stop you.. Just need to break the mentality...

 

[Fucitol]

Doing it purely for the multiplayer and for now endurance racing (special events) only actually. Physics feel off sometimes, low-speed spins are impossible to recover from and forcing an untested new tire model on a very popular class sucked big time (fixed now and it's a good improvement!). Too much focus on weird US racing classes that a lot of people leave after just a few months (good for them though as there is little competition in that regard) and it feels like there is almost no development.

Though it runs very well in VR and multiplayer including driver swaps work wonderfully, so it's a very good experience but I just can't get over the fact that I expect so much more from them..

 

[dd11]

Asking people not to judge price (value for the money) and then trying to compare it to cigarettes or coffee?

Price complains are legit, for those who has other options and for those opponents (and money) existing members do miss.

I used to support iRacing first years, even though I could not afford PC / decent wheel and time (waiting for my twice a week series). But then they had axed lots of existing customers at the time by raising prices (instead of lowering) while more and more competitors started to show up... I've cancelled subscription in hope they will figure out better "math" of "selling content" they spend most money on (while running costs are x10 times lower).

No luck.

There is no hard feelings, I will re-join this year to support them once again (and to check how things are going).

With 100for75$ offer -10$*4 seasons - 5$ loyalty bonuses and BlackFriay's 49$/year it was -7.5$/year before (yes, they had to pay you in the end, instead of you paying for "subscription"... minus all content you had to buy to participate in those 2-3 series regularly).

Nowadays the cheapest "returning" subscription would be 75$ (BlackFriday's 150$/2 year subscription ) - 10$*4 seasons activity bonus - 5$ loyalty bonuses = 30$/year (saving/returning you 90$ of 150$ towards new content or future subscription). That's ok....... but why can't they make it 30$/year just for everyone? People would subscribe just for doodles (would not participate) and many will be be lazy to unsubscribe from such a nice simulation, buying bunch of "virtual copies" of track and cars along the way

 

[FernandoAFM]

I don’t understand why some people think iRacing needs the most time investment. I actually think it’s the opposite. It’s so quick to sit down, pick a race in 5 minutes and start racing in a competitive field.
I gave 10/10, not because it’s perfect, but because it’s the sim I enjoy the most and where I made the most friends.

 

[snyperal]

I don’t understand why some people think iRacing needs the most time investment. I actually think it’s the opposite. It’s so quick to sit down, pick a race in 5 minutes and start racing in a competitive field.
I gave 10/10, not because it’s perfect, but because it’s the sim I enjoy the most and where I made the most friends.

I think it's just the amount of time spent practicing just to be competitive at some of these circuits. With maybe one or two races a week. I would usually practice one evening then race the rest. Just to keep things fun.

I love the oval racing, endurance racing and gt3 stuff. I think it's the best all round sim out there. The price is the price, it's not expensive if you race smart, one or two tracks per season, plus the participation bonus makes it a very respectable price. However you do need to use it to make it worthwhile, and swapping cars or buying the new shiny is where you lose value.

 

[Ryan Robbins]

Voted a 6. Here is why...

Pros

1. Race anytime, but not necessarily cars I want
2. Tons.of well done cars and tracks
3. Dirt racing and ovals possibly the best of any sim. Dirt ovals are unique.
4. Stable online
5. Rating system
6. Feels like you are part of something bigger when competing in a series.

Cons

1. COST
2. Graphics (look dated at this point)
3. Forcefeedback...wheel forces are good, but not enough feedback for road bumps. Get in a real car and you can always feel the wheel vibrating under your hands, just not enough feedback options in iracing.

They are always changing and trying to improve their tire model. The newer iRacing TM "feels"better than the old to me. Kudos for effort. But I rarely race there anymore.because I can race AC on SRS anytime with full grids.