Opinions on R3E: What's yours?

[Nigel Mansell]

This is fine for ppl happy to dry-lap. RRE has improved over time - but I'm in the, "this is an outdated platform now" club. Best way to vent my frustration = stop buying DLC. When S3 care enough to drag RRE into modern times, I'll restart support. I buy the DLC, yet hardly lap with it - makes zero sense. I'm fed up of dry lapping. it's a personal thing.

We had rain in sims many years ago, then it all went tits-up IMHO. YMMV of course, that's fine. Why were Microprose ahead of their time. How long have I supported this stale engine for now, jeez. I've been doing this for a great many number of years - too long (dry-lapping) tbh. Hence the frustration. Approaching my mid 50's, I'm going to be more selective about who I give my savings to. Free to play software isn't the future. Otherwise S3 would have taken RRE to a modern place already. RRE, feels like a pay-to-improve model to me. By that I mean, RRE just releases tweaks here and there, but the fundamental tech is missing. We own this sim software, but at a UK track, we can't create a cold/overcast/low grip/wet or even damp scenario.

Fair play to Kunos for gambling, and having the passion/balls enough to deliver what some of us long for. By that I mean, driving at differing times of the day, in low grip situations. I get that we all don't see this as the "be all" of simracing. We all have opinions about SMS. At least they could be bothered to create time of day/weather, and moved the genre along. S3 is holding back the only genre I purchase games from. I'm unhappy about this lol. RRE started to feel stale, years ago. Much like how people feel that Codemasters have stunted the growth of the F1 platform, in the many years they've had the licence. Like a huge number of you, I've sunk huge amounts into regularly supporting S3. I hope one day, that a scenario arrives where I look forward to booting the platform and using the content I've purchased.

I know SimBin UK supposedly works on a modern game engine, supporting time of day/weather. Both platforms will likely share the tech. For me, it long overdue. Sorry S3, this is the only genre I enjoy. You starved your own engine of the features I've wanted most for years. It can't get any more broken than it is. You'll get nothing more now, until you care enough to update your engine tech.

 

[Leigh Nielsen]

In recent titles I have played Assetto Corsa, AMS and my recent favourite rFactor2. Decided to give R3E a punt (5hrs) and have been pleasantly surprised. Graphics are not top shelf but good enough. AI is not great (particularly at chicanes and "choke points") but okay. Feel is not rFactor2 but is pretty good. Sound and FFB are strong points.
The game experience is as good as any and maybe better than most. The overall package is better than what you might think of the individual components. Great range of cars and tracks. Not cutting edge but a very good title.
Well worth a try if you need a change from your staple drive.

 

[BrunoBæ]

However, for the single-player experience, it would still be a lot of fun to create custom skins, particularly for the F1 1990 pack, that would be epic.

Fully agree. And I guess the legal issues introducing this is only used as an excuse - because if your custom paints could only be seen by yourself then ...

 

[UMC 22]

– no structured multiplayer

Could you explain this con, as I don't understand. Like most other online sims you can set up a whole race weekend with all sessions included, as well as multiple venues. How is this unstructured?

 

[F_B]

Could you explain this con, as I don't understand. Like most other online sims you can set up a whole race weekend with all sessions included, as well as multiple venues. How is this unstructured?

Well, it was wrong named, I guess.
What I mean: a organized multiplayer structure, similar to Iracing or ACC where you gain or loose rating depending on how you drive/achieve within your skill level. Also, you’ll be placed in grids with people of similar strength.

That’s what’s missing in most sims imo.

 

[UMC 22]

What I mean: a organized multiplayer structure, similar to Iracing or ACC where you gain or loose rating depending on how you drive/achieve within your skill level. Also, you’ll be placed in grids with people of similar strength.

Ah ok, I see what you mean now.

 

[Lars Hansen]

The problem with ranked multiplayer is that you need a pretty big player-base to begin with.
There's little point in matchmaking if there aren't enough players to fill more than one grid in the first place.

So there's a weird kind of catch-22 going on here:
You can't use match-making until you have enough players, and you can't get enough players to a game that doesn't have match-making.

ACC took a half-assed stab at it with their rating-system, as did PC2, and both pretty much fell flat on their proverbial faces.
The only way to do it would be to go MP only from the very start, and expect to operate at a loss in the beginning. Which is a pretty big gamble.
And the infrastructure required to run it would mean a subscription-based game, in some way, shape or form.

 

[Will Mazeo]

I think official organized open races and championships are a start, you give ppl rating and put them together like happens in GT3 championships, once/if u get enough players u start splitting
unlimited players on track due to no colision in pits doesn't really help, stick to track pit stall/garage limits and u'll start getting populated races and grids split well enough
IMO

 

[UMC 22]

I think official organized open races and championships are a start...

Which would require staff resources and would lead to the need for a subscription based service like Lars mentioned. Unless you think the unmonitored, chaotic, crash-fest public servers would be adequate for use in a rating system which determines how and where people can race together?

once/if u get enough players u start splitting
unlimited players on track due to no colision in pits doesn't really help, stick to track pit stall/garage limits and u'll start getting populated races and grids split well enough

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but you 100% lost me with this part. I can't even guess what you mean here, or see how collisions in the pits has anything to do with populated grids or what we're talking about...

 

[Will Mazeo]

a rate system can do that, takes a while but things will be sorted, not perfect but then even with stewards it's not perfect either. You dont think iRacing has ppl 24/7 monitoring every race, do u? You may find some cases that an auto system cant judge, u can create a community tribunal then, some system can sort that out to filter trolls judging, etc
Second part is clear enough.

 

[UMC 22]

You dont think iRacing has ppl 24/7 monitoring every race, do u?

No, but it does have people setting up and overseeing the system. People = money, they're not volunteers. If you look, iRacing is a subscription based service so not really a very good example of what you're proposing for R3E.

Without that kind of oversight, a true rating system is worthless because we all know that public servers are useless crash-fests. A communal system for "judging" such incidents simply wouldn't be viable because people would down-vote anyone that even taps them, perhaps anyone who dares overtake. It's wide open to abuse. How do you stop abuse? Have someone monitor the system to make sure reported incidents are real... oh wait... that means hiring someone who would require paying. So we're back to a subscription service again.

The fact that automated systems aren't capable of doing what you're proposing successfully is why communities like RD exist.

 

[Will Mazeo]

Disagree. And ppl wont vote or "downvote" drivers involved in their own accidents. League of Legends had a community tribunal that worked better than the system that came after. There are many algorithms that could be used for this which can rank ppl based on how "correct" they judge the cases (yep you do get access to the result after ppl selected to vote on it finish) so the amount of ppl necessary to watch this system drops, they probably would have someone already for the job if they got any kind of community manager.
You need to think more when ppl give suggestions mate...... be creative
It's not like a subscription system is a bad thing anyway, as long as it's not iR level of pricing it's fine

 

[Spinelli]

At least this part of your outpourings I can more or less agree on.
But its not only Raceroom that has this issue.
Its more or less all the racing games (that I know of).
Years back I described this in the iRacing forum where I refered to the same behaviour in both iRacing and its "forerunner" NR2003(GTP mod) where the feeling was in an oversteering situ that instead of the rear sliding out then it was felt (and looked in cockpit) liked the front slided in instead!
My own explanation of the fact that this general issue is seldom discussed (almost never) is that when it happens and you as example save a replay then the replay seen from the outside looks ok.
It looks like the rear goes away as it should in an oversteer situ - and not like the front instead "slides" into the corner instead.

CatsAreTheWorstDogs: When I say "all racing games" (that I know of) then rF2 is the only game where this issue is not so pronounced as most of the competition.

Yes, Bruno, you're right, I'd say most sims but, in my opinion, I'd say ISI physics engine-based and iRacing physics engine do this the most while Live for Speed and Netkar Pro are the best at it and do it the least (if at all). Regarding RF2, I personally believe it's slightly improved - as you mentioned - on throttle-oversteer (power-oversteer). It's still the same though (or even possibly worse) during off-throttle when touching the brake. I am able to lap around Indianapolis (with decent times too) with the RF2 Nascar car using maybe only 25% the steering lock that real-life Nascar needs to turn the car. You can use the brake to make the car turn into the corner like there's an invisible force pulling you to the apex more and more. If you try to use the actual steering and angle of the tyres, it's like they loose grip much too easily but that's OK because you can compensate for that by using the brake technique and then you're able to turn much sharper into the corner (as if your front tyres suddenly gained lots of grip). Maybe a better way to explain it is that it's like the car suddenly gained a huge amount of front negative-toe and the car wants to keep turning into the corner even though you don't really turn the front tyres much. Using this technique, you rely much less on the actual "tyre grip" and turning the steering wheel, and much more on using the brake to exploit this "super-turn." I use it all the time in RF1, AMS, Project Cars, etc. but, for some reason, the effect seems even stronger in RF2.

Going back to the on the on-throttle, I think you're right again; it is a little more difficult to spot in replays but not so much to be honest. If you see the replay, it often looks like the car is just sharply turning across the track. Another way to help spot it in a replay is that when the slide is saved, the car will have shifted over laterally from, let's say the edge of the track to driving down closer to the middle of the track. This seems to happen because of the front-end thing we agree on. When the slide is saved, instead of the car's slip angle reducing back to where it was before the slide, the car instead drives along that new angle. I believe this is also connected to why it often seems to take less steering-lock than you feel to correct a car (adding more steering lock causes a snap-overcorrect which is incredibly common in ISI based games and iRacing) - in fact, sometimes very little lock and then you just sort of wait for the slide to end (when the car drives on the new line that the front-end slid too).

Going back to R3E, I was driving the F1600 and trying to get it sideways while entering a corner. I've done this many times in real life F1600s and can do it pretty good in Netkar Pro's F1600s, but do it in the R3E F1600 (or the equivalent cars in AMS, RF2, PC, etc.) and the car does a sudden super-sharp turn to the inside of the corner. As I said before, I have no idea if it's an issue purely with the tyre model or other aspects of the physics engine (forces related to vehicle dynamics, vehicle kinematics, or other areas) or a combination but it's not so much oversteer as it is a sudden, sharp turning/pulling effect. It's a fundamental flaw in my opinion.

 

[Robertinotje]

I am surprised how this game has developd in terms of ffb and handling. After a good amount of time i gave it a try ,just to see how it compared to some other sims i played. I can only say, this is a huge improvemend !

 

[BrunoBæ]

@Spinelli
I will have to qualify my saying that this issue is hided by the display in replays.
The reason of this has probably something to do with the fact that none of the racing games (except maybe iRacing/NR2003) does actually record the replay as some kind of video recording of what the car was doing at the time of recording.
No because of replay file space (in older days) the only thing that is saved is a stream of waypoints plotting the cars racing line.
Nothing is saved about as example the cars slip angle!
When the saved stream of waypoints is replayed the racing game simulate the cars slip angle by calculating what the tire models algoritm "thinks" the slip angle should be (mainly calculated based on the speed, corner radius and track curvature).
This is easily revealed by stopping the replay and as example play it backwards or forwards at low speed.
The slip angle is completely changed in these situations - which is a proof that the replays dont show what the car was actually doing at record time.

CatsAreTheWorstDogs. This replay issue is also the reason that replays from most racing games cannot be of (much) use trying to pinpoint errors in driving behaviour.

 

[Ryan Robbins]

RRE...well I haven't loaded it for quite some time. I have enjoyed the game for many hours in the past.

I wont repeat all the pros and cons of the game as they have been covered. For me the biggest 2 are graphics and feel.

As an example...The last time I played I purchased the newest car and fiddled with the FF settings for 1/2 hour (too many settings). I was trying to get the car to "feel" right. I know this is subjective, but that is my opinion. The quality of the drive varies a LOT depending on the car I drive it seems.

To be fair, I experience some f the same issues with PCars 2. Which also has a complicated FF setup that I am always messing with.

For my money I love the FF of ACC. So simple and so effective.

 

[Lars Hansen]

The quality of the drive varies a LOT depending on the car I drive it seems.

One of the problems is that R3E is being continually updated.
Which is the good news.
The bad news is that there's no way they can convert everything at once, so there's 5-6 different sets of physics in the game, depending on which car you're running.

And I agree, there are some classes I never race, simply because the FFB is so vague/diffuse.
I have every confidence they'll all eventually get updated, but until then a lot of cars are gathering dust.

 

[Terry Rock]

R3E has come a long way since it's inception.
It has really good audio, nicely modeled cars and is genuinely a lot less heavy on resources.
That said...It is one of my least raced sims for several reasons.
The newer cars are believable but the old content is all over the place on physics.
I'd really like the team to 'nail' down the sheer number of controller settings as well.
At the very least, put out a base profiles per car.
I would imagine the in-house testers use several different controllers and have collected the data.
As it stands now, It takes driving a particular car out on circuit...then coming back to the pits and spending too much time just trying to get a sense of where to go next with setup for each particular controller.
The whole buying skins thing is just confusing as all get up.
If I buy the car and go to do a race, I expect it to load...irregardless of skin.
The inability to test cars on one of the circuits I already own prior to purchase, is annoying to say the least.
I don't care for the circuit provided for those test. It is boring and bland.

 

[BrunoBæ]

The whole buying skins thing is just confusing as all get up.
If I buy the car and go to do a race, I expect it to load...irregardless of skin.

Im absolutely not against criticising Raceroom - but what do you mean with the above?
Because if you buy a car with as example only 1 skin then you can drive that car all you want - offline.
And online too - if not someone has taken the slot driving exactly the same skin.
Hehe I had this problem recently in a racedepartment race where I owned only 1 skin for a car.
The guy who had taken the slot with "my" skin refused to change to another of his skins - so I didnt race.
Hahaha and then he didnt even show up at race day.

Your other point about only being able to test a car on the same (boring) track I dont consider fair.
Which other racing games allows you to test any car in the portfolio for free?

 

[UMC 22]

And online too - if not someone has taken the slot driving exactly the same skin.

But this cannot be a criticism directed at R3E because it was an RD rule that unique liveries be used, not an in-game limitation.

 

[Will Mazeo]

Well, since we cant make skins for the cars and you have to pay for the real ones it'd be good will from Sector 3 to at least offer 10~20 skins per car based on the factory version, each with a different color, kinda like some teams do with the AMG GT3 in real life

Would be great for pick up races with no repeated skins (I dislike having more than one of the same too)