R3E: The Pure Sound of Awesomeness

[Bram Hengeveld]

Every weekend thousands of petrolheads are traveling towards a local racing circuit to watch live racing action, smell the fumes of high-octane fuel and last but not least: to hear the roar of the mighty engines!

The latter now has a new virtual benchmark set as SimBin Studios (oops, sorry) Sector3 Studios just released the above video showing a fixed angle camera located right next to the track, recording a race of brutal Group 5 cars producing stunning sounds in RaceRoom Racing Experience.

In my opinion this is what makes live motorsport so much more beautiful than watching races on your television: immersion. And guess what? We don't need to leave the house anymore as we can now experience the same feeling in a virtual environment.

It's time that fans are going to raise a statue for S3's sound-guru @anthony monteil somewhere in Sweden. Preferably somewhere close to a racing circuit.

Sound benchmark set, who's next?

 

[anthony monteil]

I owned the

Okay, I already owned 2 of the cars that came with this pack which leaves me with 5 cars I didn't own. The payment of £9.?? was for 5 cars and a load of liveries which are completely modable in all other titles I use. In my opinion this is NOT a good business model for anyone apart from the developers and personally I'm tiring of having the piss taking out of my personal circumstances. GTR3 would have been the way to go with a 35 quid ticket but it seems like it's easier to release a product that allows you to milk an extortionate amount of money out of the end user instead of including it in the original product. Tired of the cash cow?......you bet yer.

I hope you will understand that there is not many options for an independent developer to survive.
This business model is one of them, we may like it or not, but it allows us to push the development of this game forward, and without it , the studio might be long time gone (it almost happened last year)

 

[Robin]

I think the byte size payment model for stuff you can CHOOSE to buy or not and tailor your game with content you want, is pretty ok in my book.

Sure, I would prefer big packs or standalone games with full features of a given series as well, but if that can't be for financial reasons, I am happy with the current system as long as the core engine gets improved upon as well over time.

 

[Yapci]

You have not to buy everything they sell.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

I hope you will understand that there is not many options for an independent developer to survive.

No sorry, I don't understand that at all. Especially as an independent developer (are you as s3?) there are way more options than with a big publisher (higher margins, freedom to self publish, etc).

This F2P model is a nice marketing hoop but makes no sense at all as this game isn't free to play.

What got SimBin into trouble in the first place? The RACE Series with it's expansions worked perfectly fine. RACE Pro failed miserably and the first attempt with R3E didn't work either. (non-simulation approach). Conclusion: stick to the market you know and are good at: sim-racing on PC.

There was nothing wrong with releasing a racing game in the same style as RACE 07. Got a lot of good content for a fair prize. Die-hard fans as myself have purchased every expansion pack that came out and the total sum of these purchases was around a 100 euro's I think.

That's 2 1/2 time more than buying a single game.

How much would the same content in R3E cost (not including special sales actions)?

S3S should really not play the it almost happened last year card as that had nothing to do with how many games fans bought in recent years.

 

[Wedge]

Well, just tell that to Kunos and Reiza, specially Reiza Studios.

But still you don't have to pick up all the cars, you can choose and pick one.

And Steve Bird has a good point. The servers really are ghost towns the majority of the time.

 

[turesure]

Well, I think the biggest difference between "Race07" age and now is that
Sector3 is trying to move forward in many ways.

Back in the days, Race07 + expansion packs were just a bunch of modded car packs and tracks honestly.

But now though, developing RRE is whole different story as you now.
For example, newly fitted independant graphic engine, vehicle dynamics, tyre modeling, sounds,etc.

Even though this still uses the ISI engine, the way of cars feels like is just like they've achieved breakthrough in some points compare with Race series.

So, personally I'm happy with the way they're doing right now( not entirely I guess) and i think this kind of support is reasonable as a big fan of sim racing.

 

[The Angry Hamster]

Not sure why you think R3E uses the rFactor (ISI) engine. Most of the point of R3E being a completely separate and new title was being able to have its own engine.

In terms of the pricing, I actually find the pricing to be better than most current sim racing titles. iRacing's pricing model is ludicrously expensive. I've easily spent more than 3 times the money in iRacing for about the same total amount of content. Stock Car Extreme is only $30, but it's also based on the original (outdated) rFactor engine and doesn't have as much content as R3E. rFactor 2 can be had for around $90 with a permanent multiplayer license, but it also lacks a lot of content and many mods are not 'up to snuff'. Similarly Assetto Corsa is around $50 (Plus the $15 dream pack or $55 for both) but still doesn't have as much content, though it does have a strong modding community. When you look at the other options, realistically R3E's pricing model is right in line with, or better than, the competition. It will become tougher for newer players to make the initial investment as more tracks get added, and maybe that can be adjusted at a later point, but in terms of price to content ratio R3E is doing pretty well compared to its competitors.

I definitely agree about the multiplayer servers. At EU peak times you can generally find 1 or 2 servers with enough people to get a good race, but as soon as it rolls to peak US times the servers empty almost completely. Dedicated servers should alleviate some of this, to an extent, but mostly it seems people don't want to stay around in servers long enough to get the US community rolling or there aren't enough US players.

 

[Bez]

Not sure why you think R3E uses the rFactor (ISI) engine. Most of the point of R3E being a completely separate and new title was being able to have its own engine.

I thought they used a modified version of isi's gmotor1 engine with their own graphics engine ontop?

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Not sure why you think R3E uses the rFactor (ISI) engine.

Not sure why you think it's not. I think with exception of iRacing, Kunos, Milestone and Codemasters everybody still uses Gmotor core physics.

but it's also based on the original (outdated) rFactor engine

This is used so often as an argument. But what exactly is outdated on the (original) rFactor engine?

 

[Andy_J]

What I want is dedicated servers and RacEdepartment club races and I'll be happy. But we must not fall into the trap that members have to keep buying new content all the time.
I'd be happy with a one make series to be honest.

 

[David Wright]

This is used so often as an argument. But what exactly is outdated on the (original) rFactor engine?

I remain a big fan of ISIMotor2 but as it approaches its 10th birthday it is hard to deny its weaknesses especially in rFactor form. Things which come to mind are

- the graphics engine (no real reflections, lack of driver arm and pitcrew animation, and poor shadowing for example), and DX9 may be a liability if Occulus Rift drops support.
- the essentially single threaded engine doesn't really exploit current multi-core processors,
- the lack of rain, track rubbering and marble build up
- the physics engine doesn't properly simulate turbos, clutch/transmission, strut suspension, and chassis flex.

Of course its maturity does offer advantages over newer engines which are still being developed, and the Simbin development of ISIMotor2 does address some of the missing features in rFactor.

 

[Krzysztof Volek]

if you had to choose only one car to buy, which one would it be?

Definitely Capri. Best handling of them all and great fun to drive.

 

[anthony monteil]

No sorry, I don't understand that at all. Especially as an independent developer (are you as s3?) there are way more options than with a big publisher (higher margins, freedom to self publish, etc).

This F2P model is a nice marketing hoop but makes no sense at all as this game isn't free to play.

What got SimBin into trouble in the first place? The RACE Series with it's expansions worked perfectly fine. RACE Pro failed miserably and the first attempt with R3E didn't work either. (non-simulation approach). Conclusion: stick to the market you know and are good at: sim-racing on PC.

There was nothing wrong with releasing a racing game in the same style as RACE 07. Got a lot of good content for a fair prize. Die-hard fans as myself have purchased every expansion pack that came out and the total sum of these purchases was around a 100 euro's I think.

That's 2 1/2 time more than buying a single game.

How much would the same content in R3E cost (not including special sales actions)?

S3S should really not play the it almost happened last year card as that had nothing to do with how many games fans bought in recent years.

While I agree with you about the initial strategy, you also know that one cannot change everything from the ground in the middle of a project, especially when it was already released in beta through Steam, with all what it means.
This is where I think the number of options was limited, not saying that it was the only one possible of course

Sadly, developing this kind of game is becoming more and more complicated, and takes more and more time (therefore more expensive), while the number of players didn't increase much since the Race07 expansions time.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

while the number of players didn't increase much since the Race07 expansions time.

That's also a choice of strategy of the company by focusing initially on a different target audience. for R3E.

Ever since RACE 07 came out Simbin have been wanting to jump on the F2P model. First with GTR2 and Simraceway and now with R3E and it's not the success everybody hoped for.

It's never too late to listen to the fans and make some vital changes, but that's up to the big bosses of course.

I have my views how to increase your membership, but I'll save that for a later post in the future maybe

 

[Emerson Meyer]

Until now, R3E was/is extremely fast in releasing new content (cars and tracks). How long do you guys think this will keep the interest in the product?