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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[randomcallsign]

gave it a 8. super competent sim!

 

[Dethrone1427]

Easy...10/10.

Just brilliant work by the guys (AI, circuit design, FFB), super attentive to the community too.

How it should be done.

 

[gamer19]

Should be about... 8/10 but thanks to that CART Extreme mod (of which, if I may say, I'm small contributor too) - it's easy 10 out of 10.
Without a shred of doubt.
Wish AMS2 would be at least 10% moddable as One.

 

[Emery]

Reiza's strength with AMS has been their continued maintenance of the content library. The coherence of all the content is amazingly well done.

 

[Mike Smith]

No VR, no worries!

 

[newbert]

-overall much non-mainstream approach (i see that positive, many don't, i think) but you can add many tracks, that are more "known" by downloading the Patrick Granthon trackpack, it's great!^^

I agree with all of the glowing comments so far. My only "niggle" is that the car names are a bit small to read (for me) in the UI's selection screen.

That said - where do I find this track pack? Does anyone have a link?

Thanks!

 

[FeltHat]

I agree with all of the glowing comments so far. My only "niggle" is that the car names are a bit small to read (for me) in the UI's selection screen.

That said - where do I find this track pack? Does anyone have a link?

Thanks!

https://www.racedepartment.com/down...ltimate-trackpack-28-tracks-41-layouts.11779/
but as i see, some of his tracks listed standalone received some further updates (its up to your investigation )

 

[CrimsonEminence]

I agree with all of the glowing comments so far. My only "niggle" is that the car names are a bit small to read (for me) in the UI's selection screen.

Yeah, the fonts are pretty small...

That said - where do I find this track pack? Does anyone have a link?

You find it here on RD^^ EDIT: Yes, you should maybe at least update Spa.
https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/automobilista-ultimate-trackpack-28-tracks-41-layouts.11779/

 

[Ross McGregor]

Has the Mini Challenge; 11/10.

 

[CrimsonEminence]

Has the Mini Challenge; 11/10.

My least favourite car in AMS...but not because of the sim, more because of the car
So still 8/....i mean 11/10

 

[Andy-R]

I gave AMS an 8. A really great title that I only stopped playing because VR. Should be 8.5 really.

Pros for me are:

Tracks. A huge amount of unknown tracks with some absolute gems in there, very refreshing compared to a lot of vanilla content.

AI. Not something I'm typically interested in but they certainly stood out as better than usual in AMS.

A few fun and interesting cars. Copa classic, Formula Vee and the classic stock car are great.

Overall features and polish.

Subtle differences in performance for different skins/cars.

Cons:

Focus on F1 which isn't something I'm personally interested in driving.

No VR support

Slightly dated visuals. Also at night I had some visual issues (but that may have been beta build. )

Some issues with the game crashing and having to force start as admin.


It's also credit to AMS that it gets this score on vanilla content alone. I gave AC a 9 and really I have had way more for my money from AC thanks to the large online community and mods (large bonus was Minorating when it was running.) That said if I had to score AC on vanilla content alone it wouldn't do as well as AMS, AC would be lacking a lot in terms of tracks which is where AMS really shines for me.

 

[Momperface]

i just wish it had vr

 

[muzikant]

For me a 9 ffb..ai.. some beautifull historic tracks and oultonpark with the Catherham. Feels so good on my dd1

 

[Dann Murillo]

10/10
Overall Immersion
Moddable
Fantastic Force Feedback
Excellent online/server support (too bad almost no one races online apart from leaguers)
Formula car selection by era with epic physics
A fantastic group of developers who react so well to the community

I absolutely cannot wait for AMS2 where we will hopefully have more of the same type of things as above plus variable weather and updated graphics.

 

[MPortnoy]

I never understood the hype about AMS. I rate it 5/10
I found it similar to rF2 in many ways but where it mattered to me I found rF2 to be superior (FFB, physics and content including tracks mods).
I think the only aspect where at some point AMS got ahead was on AI but rF2 wasn't awful either, except for some bugs that still exist.
In 2019 I find both sims dated so I'll give AMS2 a try.

 

[ShredatorFIN]

10/10 - God tier.

FFB - Imo the best around. I actually prefer it to rF2
AI - Pretty damn good.
UI - Better than rF2
Mods - Lots of them, Patrick Giranthon's tracks solve the issue of lacking track roster
Damage model - Better than many sims. Wings and tyres flying off, engines setting on fire
Sound - Pretty great, actually. Not quite RaceRoom/ACC good but not far off
Content & features - Overall, the best sim with most complete set of features, rules and car series
Graphics - Good enough. 2D trees are actually better in sims IMO. By using my crowd mod (shameless advertisement) even the crowds won't look terrible: https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/ams-real-crowds.26484/

But "Boo-hoo obscure Brazilian tracks?" People prefer their boring Spa, Silverstone, Monza and around we go? Yeah learning something new sucks I know

I see the exotic tracks as a strength, not a downside.
Plus, mods can get you the boring Monzas and Spas, if you want

I got Rift S some time ago, and been driving a lot with that. At first, I stashed my triples in storage, to save (limited) room space. But after a few weeks I thought "**** this, I need also AMS" so I reinstalled my triples. Now I don't have room space, but finally able to drive AMS again. Of course VR often times too, in other titles

Looking forward to AMS2 beta, obviously had to become a backer. Expecting something really special

 

[Serge.M]

Any way to see results without voting?
Never ran AMS so not right to throw a random vote in but would like to see how this goes

 

[TrumpetReich]

One thing I don't see mentioned a lot is its low system requirements. Sure the graphics aren't spectacular, but I think it's really important to have a fully functioning sim that doesn't take a high end pc to run. I originally got in to GSCE when I only had a super low end pc and it was the only thing I could run, and I'm so glad I did. I've got much better equipment now, but I really hope that AMS2 continues this trend for other newcomers who might not have the resources to play something like iracing or AC.

 

[Mari Duarte]

9.5/10

It is the best all round package I think. Great AI, FFB, some wonderful mods - both cars and tracks. The addon trackpack is amazing, as is the 1971 F1 mod by Richard Wilks.
It will still be played in ten years time I´m sure, because it caters for us fans of historic mods better than any other title probably will in future. Alas people would simply rather race GT3s online at Spa it would seem if you look at the content some devs are focussing on... It has filled a void of historic content that rF2 should have done given its initial direction.

Renato and the guys set the standard for community engagement, keep up the great work!

 

[Case_]

10/10

Currently likely my most raced sim. I can only find some small complains about it which are not worth going down to 9/10.