Sim Discussion Monday - RaceRoom Racing Experience

[Paul Jeffrey]

Another working week on the horizon and to lighten the mood (probably), let's have ourselves a discussion about RaceRoom Racing Experience..

The sim with the silly name, RaceRoom Racing Experience has plenty of licenced racing content to offer players who can navigate their way through the occasionally confusing pricing and store structure.

If you do manage to find you way into the game itself then you are rewarded by a product that has come on leaps and bounds in recent years. With plenty of officially licenced racing series to be found (no road car nonsense here), a very robust and varied selection of greater and lesser known circuits and easily the best audio experience in the sim racing marketplace, RaceRoom and Sector3 Studios have pulled together a very compelling product for sim racers to enjoy.

With all that said, the core game experience does still lack in several fundamental areas before it can genuinely be considered a true racing simulation, to be frank that same accusation can be levelled at pretty much all the current crop of sims to varying degrees, and what it does it does very well indeed.

So in the spirit of sharing our collective experiences and knowledge can our community let us all know what we like / don't like about the sim, share any useful tips to get the most from the title, let us know what you'd like to see in the future and just generally shoot the breeze for a day or two about Sector3 Studios current racing simulation..


Mondays be like...

Image credits: M-Bimmer and TheReaper GT

 

[Paul Bennett]

The sim overall is okay, good for all things touring cars. If S3 could fix the aggression in the AI it would be so much better.
Although you can fix it by deleting the AI file in documents after any updates, this will reset the adaptive AI.
Edit 18:13. ...\SimBin\RaceRoom Racing Experience\UserData\Player1
Delete aiadaptation.xml

FFB settings are a few too many, but found with Thrustmaster wheels add 5% damping in game takes out those rattles.

 

[FeltHat]

Great in VR, gtx 1070, ss 1.5, i think mostly in ASW, stays at 45fps no problemo everything maxed, couldnt spot any artifacts- feels smoothy smooth compared to rf2 vr
beside that, great sound, group 5, nsu tt falkenberg
cant wait for ue4 port

 

[PicoBp]

My only real gripe with R3E is the handling and FFB... It's strange... At least I find the lack of communication regarding car balance and grip lacking. I simply couldn't find a good setup, no matter the time spent fiddling with in-game and config file settings. RWD cars seem to be better put.

Graphics are nice, little cartoony, but do a great job. And the sounds... OH THE SOUNDS!!! That is definitely the best around the competitors!

 

[Bozz.gee]

For those who don't know about it....
I find the Crewchief app really beneficial in this sim (as well as all the others!)
Really helpful for fuel, sector times and spotter

http://crewchief.isnais.de/CrewChiefV4.msi

 

[Witti]

This is the only game/sim which doesn't let me use the functions of my Steam controller. In AC everything works fine (after tweaking some .ini files) but in R3E it just doesn't work so I can't play this game/sim.

 

[Deleted member 99238]

And most importantly, if you are a fan of the DTM series, then this is the best offer on the market among simulators. This is the main business card R3E. So everything here is deep and detailed. Actually, only because of DTM, I bought it, well, and then I started to buy cars GT3 and legendary tracks such as Suzuka, Spa, Laguna Seca. Buying a DTM package even for the 2013 season is the easiest way to start mastering R3E.

 

[Will Mazeo]

I kinda like their business model but the game itself never attracted me much for the lack of stuff like flags, now that they added it it's kinda "too late" for me to get into it.
Waiting for GTR3 and the potential improvements it can bring to RR. Hopefully they'll be smart and not use their version of isimotor for the future

 

[Tigerteeth]

I was enjoying it to begin with and bought a fair amount of additional content, but some odd decisions like removing the experiences and what I consider to be an expensive and confusing pricing structure have made me favour other titles over R3E.

If there wasn't so much competition, I'd would play more RaceRoom but with titles like AC, RF2 and Automobilista offering a comparable driving experience with additional features like modding support then I struggle to find a reason to fire up R3E.

 

[TheReaper GT]

To be honest I do like it a lot... Those content announcements that take more than an year to materialize are the main problem to me right now... Other than that, great stuff all around.

 

[Celestiale]

My favourite sim when it comes to online racing:

+ best sound, best FFB, best collision physics, graphics outdated but still good atmosphere and nice tracks. The feeling in the wheel and all is the most immersive, and the complete classes make nice grids for online. What it does, it does superbly.

- not much to say here. Aspects that are important for me are mostly included in R3E. Only downsides are the lack of rain and night and dynamic weather/light, like almost all sims. And the lack of some licenses, like Ferrari or Lamborghini, especially for GT classes that's a bid sad. An up-to-date GT3 grid is severely lacking.

Otherwise all good

 

[bigaustin]

I adore R3E, the sound is awesome , now it has VR which works well from the off its fantastic
The adaptive AI really does work, and having battles in the grid makes for exciting races.
Especially love the old DTM and often have races back to back in the different cars.

It looks good in VR, unlike AC which always frustrates me, having to take the vive off just to change car or even start a race. The UI is like project cars, works perfectly even in VR.

heaven forbid even RF2`s 1990`s looking UI works well in VR.

overall a great game, even if the price structure is odd at times. usually wait for the sale (which is often) and buy stuff.
Bathurst, the DTMs and group 5 are must have purchases.

 

[Andrew Harper]

Only downsides are the lack of rain and night and dynamic weather/light, like almost all sims.

Yes I suppose that's a valid point and one that I missed.

The only modern sims I can think of that offer both of those are RF2 and Project Cars? Being that wet weather races are probably tough to implement I would be happy with day night cycles in R3E, that would be cool. Even if they only made it available at a few tracks where they can build in some night lighting.

I know what you mean about the GT3 grid but it isn't bad by all means, I kind of take and leave it as they have lots of other series in the title that are bang up to date.

 

[Ryan Robbins]

RRE is a great sim. I will say that it took hours for me to find good FF settings. But the reward is a great "feel" on my T300. I love the adjustability of the engine vibration and some of the other FF features. This SIM drives very different than others. Many say it is easier. It is nice to have good default setups in a SIM. The Touring Classics are some of my favorite cars on any SIM, fantastic. In fact, I really like the historic cars in general in RRE. Graphics are not bad, actually I prefer them over rfactor 2 and iRacing I think. If they went dx11, that would be awesome. I like the Competitions.and Leaderboard challenge. I wish they had weekly racing like iRacing.
Many say too easy, but I think to myself...is it realistic to not be able to finish a lap in a car ?even taking it easy as happens in iRacing and rFactor 2 (for me anyway). I think some of the Sims are unrealistically difficult. For us as sim racers it is fun, but I won't let a friend play rFactor 2 on some cars, because they cannot finish a lap at 50mph! So, I appreciate the RRE physics, it is still not easy, but driveable.

 

[Ryan Robbins]

I will post my T300 settings sometime soon

 

[Fanapryde]

Not bad at all, some things could be improved (most of them have been mentioned already), but my biggest gripe is the lack of proper triple screen support.
I did buy most of the content, still hoping for this support, but I gave up since it is probably not going to happen.
Unless it does, I have my other sims to go to... so I'm not going to invest any further in DLC.

 

[TheMattyOnline]

A very enjoyable sim.

That Audio! Unmatched and every other sim racing title should go and stand in the corner after listening to RRRE.
Why the feeble sounds are present in other sims is a mystery to me. It's clearly possible.

FFB generally very good, as are the graphics and overall physics.

Content is really nice. No random pointless cars and tracks. Packs of linked content like GT3 / DTM / open wheel etc.

Only downside for me is I've been unable to get any kind of decent performance in VR.
My FX8350/RX480 8GB works just fine in iRacing and AC as well as rFactor2.
In Raceroom it's a stuttery mess and unplayable for me.

Would Def recommend it to anyone who wants a polished fun sim racer.

 

[traind]

"No road car nonsense" says the OP. I find that interesting because most PC Sims have either very few or no road cars. But the best selling titles in the genre tend to focus mostly on road cars. Now we can't say that all of the causality is between road cars and huge sales. But I think cars and sports cars are more popular than racing when you look at the broad population. And even though I play the sims that have no road cars I often wish they would include more.

Anyway, my experience of Raceroom is a mix compared to many of the comments above. The sound is indeed awesome. The race car selection is substantial. I find that the handling feel usually replicates a sense of mass and momentum which I appreciate. But the force feedback lacks nuance compared to the best titles and the feel at the limit of grip suffers as a result, at least for my setup and my equipment. This puts Raceroom behind some of the other pc-based simulations for my personal taste.

 

[FeltHat]

best collision physics

u sure about that?

slightest taps are lethal weapons in r3e

 

[Leynad777]

I like RR, but i don´t know what to do with it other than doing some hotlap-competitions and Multiplayer-races occasionally.

Apart from the crazy worst-driving free-content-servers most other servers are empty or locked and i don´t like the AI anymore. Now it´s about impossible to do a Group 5 AI-race without getting hit by a faster Porsche down the straight. They break too early and the performance is different on every car-/track-combination. I tried adaptive AI but it´s about the same. Sometimes too fast and sometimes very slow plus you can´t change the AI-difficulty during a championship, which makes this feature useless.

I tried some AI-races in AC recently and that went a lot better with the possibility of changing strength, aggression and variation during a championship. So AC is now more than a hotlap-simulator and RR took over, even the AI was the best when i started sim-racing on PC at the end of 2014.

And where is this ranking-system the devs talked about coming soon in December last year?

 

[Deleted member 242533]

For me I find it the most accessible game out of the current sims. It has made me a better driver in rf2 and AC and is a good stepping stone to more hardcore sim. It is also a lot more fun, you can just pick it up and play. There are not many other games that offer a full roster of cars and plenty of tracks to race them on. The atmosphere while racing puts a grin on your face.

Sound is great graphics are good for a dx9 engine and once dialed in the FFB is quite informative.