Just a few pointers off the top of my head... Some apply to rF1 aswell.
- With special effects turned off, you don't get visual tire deformation. That is enabled when it's set to low, on the player car and other cars.
- There's some suggestion that rF2 is prone to crashing with soft particles turned off. So if you're getting random crashes, maybe try turning that on.
- The "exaggerate yaw" option will turn the camera based on the difference between the direction the car points and it's heading. If you ever saw the camera angle left/right when spinning out in rF1, that's what this does. 0% will leave the camera pointed straight ahead at all times, but this apparently influences that mysterious type of 'feel' you hear so much about in sims but no one can explain.
- I'd suggest turning "Cockpit Vibration Mult1" and "Cockpit Vibration Mult2" to 0.0 in your PLR file. These add arbitrary vibration effects to the camera which don't occur in the physics simulation. Any further vibrations caused by rough road surface, riding curbs, etc. will still show if these are 0, because those are adjusted by "head movement" in your control settings.
- Some control schemes by default (like the G25) don't let you downshift into neutral. If you can't downshift to neutral from 1st, try pulling both paddles simultaneously. This is to prevent accidentally putting the car in neutral during rapid downshifting, and is also present in a lot of road cars. You can enable/disable this with the "Alternate Neutral Activation" parameter in your controller.ini file.
- If you ever sign up for a night race,
test it offline first!. Some tracks have impossible visibility in the dark, but you can improve this by trying different HDR profiles, or turning HDR off completely. You do not want to be surprised by this. Trust me.