Rate the Sims: Community Edition | RaceRoom Racing Experience

Paul Jeffrey · Dec 16, 2019

We are looking to crown the 'RaceDepartment Community Favourite' racing game - get your votes in now for our next game on the list... RaceRoom Racing Experience!

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
Wreckfest

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!

tlsmikey · Dec 17, 2019

Latest update really improved my overall score for this sim. The FFB is pretty good now (near the top for me). I think the AI and the adaptable AI selections are very good. Car and track selection is solid. The only thing that really let's it down for me is graphics quality and lack of sparks, marbles and other affects that we see today in the other sims. It's a minor grip though, graphics are one of the least important areas for me.

avenger82 · Dec 17, 2019

Ghoults said:
Overall the prices are just too high and the game all in all just is not worth the hundreds of euros it takes to get most of it (with discounts)

People can buy premium pack with all content for like 50$ or euro on sale, providing they haven't already. But yes individual cars and tracks are quite expensive.

Kevin Bradley · Dec 17, 2019

I scored 8/10.

Raceroom has possibly become my most used sim in the last few months. It's just a sim that immerses me and feels 'right' somehow. Also improvements are being made all the time and the latest December update was astoundingly good.

The positives
-Good physics. Cars are a blast to drive
-amazing sounds
-great car and track roster
-good ai (could be slightly less aggressive at times, especially in single seaters)
-improved damage model

Neutral
-UI
-graphics

Negative
-lack of organised on line ranking system, safely rating feature etc
-full day /night cycle (hopefully in the works)
-wet weather
-lack of live track progression similar to rf2 and Iracing

For me there is one thing can't be disputed and that's how much progress has been made by the devs especially in the last 2-3 years. I love the new hardcore sim direction the game is now moving towards.

RikusPRF · Dec 17, 2019

8/10

Great sim, like someone else said earlier, it just feels right. I love how Sector 3 goes for some unusual content, like Reiza with AMS. Some people have complained about the latest update, but I love the new DTM 92 physics, those cars were already a blast and are even better now.

As for the DLC, I just don't like having to pay for skins, either they should come bundled with the cars you purchase or they should let you earn them in-game. In terms of prices, at least here in Brazil, buying the whole pack is a bit expensive, but I already bought a lot of stuff and it never seemed overpriced, like iracing or rF2.

thepharcyde · Dec 17, 2019

Kevin Bradley said:
I scored 8/10.

Raceroom has possibly become my most used sim in the last few months. It's just a sim that immerses me and feels 'right' somehow. Also improvements are being made all the time and the latest December update was astoundingly good.

The positives
-Good physics. Cars are a blast to drive
-amazing sounds
-great car and track roster
-good ai (could be slightly less aggressive at times, especially in single seaters)
-improved damage model

Neutral
-UI
-graphics

Negative
-lack of organised on line ranking system, safely rating feature etc
-full day /night cycle (hopefully in the works)
-wet weather
-lack of live track progression similar to rf2 and Iracing

For me there is one thing can't be disputed and that's how much progress has been made by the devs especially in the last 2-3 years. I love the new hardcore sim direction the game is now moving towards.

They are currently in the process of introducing a ranking system.

R3E - Beta Multiplayer Rankings

game.raceroom.com

Kevin Bradley · Dec 17, 2019

thepharcyde said:
They are currently in the process of introducing a ranking system

Cool. Thanks for the link. I'm pretty excited for this.

Kevin Troschinski · Dec 17, 2019

Hi

like few other guy R3E is my most used sim in the last couple of month and overall most used beside AC.
I am single player only.

Pros

- Great variety of tracks and cars
- Custom Championships with many realistic series, teams. Make the immersion to realy be the @raceweekend
- Best sounds of any sim
- Good AI
- Very good FFB/physics. Only AC and AMS are litte bit better
- My favorite replays. Yes i love watch replays here. Most real TV like replays i have ever seen. In other sims even those with better graphics engine the replays looks a bit like ...plastic ?!

I don`t care

- Multiplayer (No time to do this

My online career ended years ago with rFactor
- VR I got instant motion sickness
- Overall graphics. Ok graphics are dated especially compared with other titles in genre. But still looking good enough.

Cons

- In car graphics (Cockpit) Unfortunately the most cockpits are just ugly. Much worse even compared to rest of the game. This is a big minus

- Balance. The AI on some tracks is not good balanced. Most of the tracks are ok if you find out best AI strength to compete with but at some tracks the AI is just too slow and other ones way too fast.
Overall there is sometimes also the problem they are way too strong in Quali and than too easy too catch in the race.

- Price system is questionable. It has his strenght for example you can only buy what you want. But i find its bit expensive if you don`t get a sale or something.
I mean in regions where you earn good money it`s not a problem but in many countries where people earn less cash its harsh....

Overall

good 8/10 Best result with AC together

odiopower · Dec 17, 2019

The best DLCroom Experience you can find in the market with too many ffb setting to fiddle. Assured headache.
The car sound is good.
5/10 for me.

Case_ · Dec 17, 2019

(For all those that complain about too many FFB settings - there are basically just four that really matter. Steering forces strength, vertical load, lateral forces and steering rack, with the last one being the only one that's kinda vague and unclear on what it does. On some wheels (Logitech, mostly), the Minimum force setting is obviously of some importance as well. That's it, though. Everything else is just "garnish" and doesn't really need to be touched from defaults.)

Deleted member 205301 · Dec 17, 2019

I gave it a 7, wich is a good point.
By far the bests sounds in simracing, but it don't do all^^
They had the worst ffb of all time during 2 years, they had (and still have at some point) a bad tyre model, but, all in all, it's pretty well done... Still lots of works on brake model, and i'll come back on that title...
@++

M-Bimmer · Dec 17, 2019

One of my favourites since switching to pc (thanks to the notorious pcars1). Huge DTM fan here so everytime there was an ad. on tv for the official game while a race was on i was literally itching.
So there was no brainer to buy the DTM packs at first.
(I remember that after putting this video someone from S3 contacted me on facebook to find out how i was able to race it on green hell because the C63 AMG was only supposed to be in the Benz championship TT and it was not available offline yet...didn’t mind that bug tbh

)

Anyways, fast forward and everything was bought and the latest update improved R3E even more.
sector3 have done a great job improving the game over the years.

Oh I almost forgot the amazing sound that R3E offers that keep me coming back for more

Let’s see what the next car will be (M2 cs?

)

STF YVR · Dec 18, 2019

9. Great content, physics, force feedback and sounds. I really want adjustable mirrors though.

Shannon Flynn · Dec 18, 2019

I've had a love/hate relationship with Raceroom since the early Beta.

In it's current state I'm really enjoying it. Aside from audio and massive amount of content it's not genre-leading in any category, but it ticks most of the boxes for me.

I like having a huge selection of cars and tracks without having to futz about with mods of questionable quality .Makes it simple to just jump online and race with randoms. Who, from my experience, are some of the best-behaved randoms in public racing lobbies.

I actually think the business model is great and wish more games would follow suit. Considering the number of updates over the last six or so years, how many "new versions" has the sim progressed? Two, three? We haven't had to pay the typical $60 new game price tag every time the game reaches a new milestone, and purchased content is retained throughout the process. I purchased a huge majority of my content at 50-75% off.

-2 points for always online. That's a huge load of crap.

Dave Thayer · Dec 18, 2019

I guess I will have to try the new updates out for RaceRoom. I rated it an 8. RaceRoom is a very nice SIM racing experience and also in VR. Did online leagues with it for a while till other personal things and time constraints made me stop racing every week. Tracks are nice but wish there were more American tracks and Street Tracks. I haven't bought new content for a while also, so will have to check to see what is new that I dont currently have and really need.

avenger82 · Dec 18, 2019

In my opinion
Advantages:
- Best sounds
- A lot of consisten quality content with racing series instead of just few cars in a discipline
- Has some unique series like DTM
- Nice GUI, great third party HUD
- still improved
- supports VR and I think triple screens too
- good AI
- championships

Neutral:
- graphics, it’s DX 9 , but looks fine

- physics and FFB:
when I first tried it seemed simplified and too forgiving in comparison to rF2.
Now handling and FFB I feel better. They improved some cars and physics are on AMS level(but FFB itself in AMS is better) -both are based on highly modified gMotor engine. Still not as good as in rF2 (superior tire model and FFB) or even iRacing.

- pricing (if you buy packs, and vRP, it’s ok)

- multiplayer:
has few series in SRS, but low participation . active leagues and racing club on RD. Public lobbies are usually not good option.
You only need to own one car(which you drive) in category in online race. Other drivers in the race can use cars you don’t have.

Negatives:
- Lack of street sport/super cars
- No modding (cars, tracks), and it could use more tracks
- Setups could be more sophisticated,I.e. just recently they added tire pressures adjustment
- Requires internet connection to play

Gelly916 · Dec 19, 2019

Raceroom is in my opinion the most underrated sim. Does a lot of things well and only a few things not so great.

Jugulador · Dec 20, 2019

7/10

Good gameplay, very good sounds, but I don't like this commercial format, despite the good content.

My problem with this game is that I had very huge expectations after RACE07 (one of my favorite sims ever... as GTR2), but RRRE falls very far from the target, IMHO.