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!

 

[stickdeath1980]

Based on what? Your subjective feel? Verstappen and other pros playing it? How about tire model? Will NTM8 finally fix it? When different tire compounds will be available.

Again, source? I'm not saying it has best physics, but why simplified. It uses highly modified gMotor engine. Project Cars 2 has quite advanced, but people(including independent pro drivers) say result is not that great.


Are you serious? As others say:
-Sub fee's $17.99 a month
-Average Car cost = $11.99/14.99NZD
tracks can cost even a bit more.

Yes you can save 15% by buying 6 cars at once, but that's still a ripoff in comparison to other sims.
On recent BF sale you could get AC Ultimate for $10, a bit more for AMS Ultimate, PC2 Deluxe for $20 IIRC etc.
For instance AC ultimate has 178 cars 19 tracks (almost all laser scanned also) with 40 configurations.
I think iRacing cars and tracks are more accurate, but I don't know.
You can argue which sim is better, all have strong and weak points depending what you're looking for.
For me the only justification for iRacing pricing is when someone plays online a lot and doesn't like alternative options to it's online competition service.

Average Car cost = $11.99/14.99NZD
Average Track Cost = $11.99/$14.99NZD
plus sub

 

[avenger82]

I've spent a good $400-500 in the time frame that I have owned it.

I mostly agree, but that's ridiculous that you had to spent so much money on game in less than one year, to decide it's not good for you and there are better alternatives.

 

[GRGOutlaw]

I mostly agree, but that's ridiculous that you had to spent so much money on game in less than one year, to decide it's not good for you and there are better alternatives.

Exactly, the test drive feature is really the only useful thing for testing stuff but you have to have the content downloaded (which means you can only drive tracks you own) and the feature is only up when iRacing is down for maintenance. Other games like RaceRoom and rF2 have some sort of testing feature. rF2 has a demo and RaceRoom has a test drive feature for the cars.

 

[BrunoBæ]

.. RaceRoom has a test drive feature for the cars.

Yeah for ALL the cars

 

[Kurupt CDN]

Again, source? I'm not saying it has best physics, but why simplified. It uses highly modified gMotor engine. Project Cars 2 has quite advanced, but people(including independent pro drivers) say result is not that great.

I am not gonna say it's simplified....but compared to other engines...yes.
There is nothing currently dynamic used in the engine that would use advanced physics. No dynamic weather, shadows don't effects parts of the track, sun angle doesn't effect track temps, no track rubbering, no loose surface physics, no tire surface heating that I am aware of, only internal temps, they just added flat spotting....hopefully more features will be added.
Static tracks would make for less complex physics calculations.....as it doesn't have to factor in all the above things mentioned.

Not a physics expert, but an ex beta tester of the title.

 

[avenger82]

I am not gonna say it's simplified....but compared to other engines...yes.
There is nothing currently dynamic used in the engine that would use advanced physics. No dynamic weather, shadows don't effects parts of the track, sun angle doesn't effect track temps, no track rubbering, no loose surface physics, no tire surface heating that I am aware of, only internal temps, they just added flat spotting....hopefully more features will be added.
Static tracks would make for less complex physics calculations.....as it doesn't have to factor in all the above things mentioned.

Not a physics expert, but an ex beta tester of the title.

But for instance AC lacks similar things. Only for a year or so, SOL mod is available for PC. I don't think in AC sun angle affect track temps etc. SOL weather is only visual. Also AMS doesn't have many of these. They simulate flat spots, but in AC is simplified.
I checked in recent Sector 3 physics post: "It’s best to use the tyre info section at the bottom left side of the setup screen to help tune tyre pressures, comparing the inside, middle and outside temperatures. "
So it looks they have tire surface temps. It simulates drivetrain and suspension well.
But I agree since it's based on gMotor engine is not that advanced.