I have tried, but i still don't like rFactor. There is no feeling with the cars (did not try that realfeel plugin, but basic stuff like that should not need plugins). Too bad, i like the fact that there are a lot of mods for it (pain in the *ss for pickup racing but great for leagues), but i can't drive them. I have the same problem for GTR2 and Race07 (wish i had a money back offer for those, i never play them).
I guess there are more farmers than racers. Also farming is a bit more useful to human kind than just polluting air and burning fuel for the sake of it .
Here is a legend racing sim that we oldies played a lot:
+ awesome graphics (for its time) and stunning sound effects (falling parts (triangles) off the car are so funny I always end up driving in reverse )
+ first sim with ability to modify setups?
+ very good immersion (try to drive backwards with full grid :razz
+ good, aggressive AI
+ doesn't require latest HW !
- your FF wheel probably won't work
- only one oval track
- single player only
DOSBox emulator is recommended to play
And no one mentioned Racer, free simulation (well, free as in free beer):
+ free
+ nice clean gfx
+ ability to easy create new cars and track (never tried myself tho)
+ tons of cars and tracks if you have time to search through all the broken links and different versions
- hard to get good ones, specially those that actually have cockpit view
- tyres feel like bricks (at least to me) and collision system is not something to call home for
+ native win32, linux and mac (hey, it must be rewarded for x-platform programming)
Reasonably new....
GT legends from 2005 is still reasonably new.
Richard Burns is already old but it is the only rally sim we have.
But sorry, rally trophy (2001!) is OLD....if you take it every other sim since 1990 will follow
Edit: OMG there is GPL too...1998... then you need to add Virtual Grand Prix 1, which was released on Amiga in 1998 too...maybe racing sims from the 80's?
another one i thought of is:
Realflight G4 - Remote Control Plane/Heli simulator. I've tried just about every RC sim i can find and this one (to me anyway) feels closest to the real thing when you use it with an RC controller, and it can make a world of difference if you practice on the sim before trying the real thing (i know from experience). I would give it a very good.
Not really, although it's definately more realistic than average arcade racing game such as NFS:9873249 or GRID. I'd call it true arcade racing game because cars actually feel like cars and overall immersion is pretty good.
...and because I love cruising around in Ferrari F40 or 512 TR
I wouldn't call it a racing simulator but a city driving sim. (TDU)
The cars don't feel extremly good but are OK in hardcore mode. The overall idea is to drive around the city with expensive cars and race and get more expensive cars :P. So it's kinda like a simulation of a life in Hawaii :P.
They're in a totally different league. If TDU is "Good", then GTL should be "Very Good".
I still think rFactor deserves to be in the same league with LFS. If previous installments of Grand Tourismo is any yardstick, rFactor blows it away for realism. rFactor and GT don't belong together.
Either:
- rFactor and GTLegends both go into "Very Good"; or
- rFactor goes into "Awesome" and GTLegends into "Very Good".
At the moment, they really look out of place.
A vehicle simulation doesn't need to be physically accurate. It only needs to be convincing.
Even military flight simulators aren't completely physically accurate. But they are convincing enough to be useful training aids.
It does.......at least I can feel the really good mods are different from the rest, and they are always more accurate and done scientifically. So if it's accurate it's convincing for me.
yes they do thats the entire point... and it cant possibly be convincing if the tyres have no semblance of reality in them
just take any rfactor mod and get the car sideways... if you believe thats convincing youve probably never sat behind the wheel of a car
1) im sure they are far more accurate than the vast majority of rfactor mods and anything else based on isi simply because they have proper data to feed the sim with instead of made up tyres geometries etc
2) a professional flight sim usually could do with fairly simplistic physics since those arent the goal of flight sim training... training how to use the cockpit to fire missiles at blips on your radar that youll never see up close and how to navigate needs far less physics interaction than driving round a single corner
No. The point of a simulation is just that, to simulate. Not to recreate.
I don't know how much study you have done in this field, but I did quite a bit of work in creating VR simulations at university, particularly in the industrial training context. Immersion - or perception of reality - is actually more important than physical realism.
It is entirely possible to create convincing behaviour in an environment without actually modelling it mathematically with real physical data. Of course it's nice when it is modelled on the real thing, but it isn't necessary. And one only needs to make something convincing within the parameters of the simulation.
Slip angle behaviour is a known problem in rFactor, even hard core fans admit it.
However, the behaviour of cars in the best-made mods in rFactor are convincing enough, as long as you don't abuse them.
Eh? I'm not comparing ISI games with flight sims. I'm merely pointing out that even flight simulators used in the military are not 100% physically simulated, so simulation can be achieved even without perfect physical modelling.
Professional flight sims are used for a wide range of training scenarios, including stall and spin recovery, which do require accurate reactions to control inputs. However processing power is finite, so you'll often find that simulations are strong at some aspects of its modelling, while weak - or even unsimulated - in other parts.
LFS is not the best simulation, and neither is rFactor, but they are good simulators with their own flaws. rFactor's big flaw is its tyres, which don't behave realistically when slip angles exceed some arbitary values, with the result that the cars do not recover properly from oversteer. LFS's damage system is dismally weak compared to rFactor's, and it doesn't simulate aerodynamic drag properly, something that rFactor does better.
Putting down a sim just because it has some flaws, is not doing it justice, IMHO. Grand Prix Legends has the same tyre flaw as rFactor, but hardly anyone complains about that. GT Legends doesn't suffer the same problem as rFactor, but has a big flaw of its own (brakes don't behave properly at high speed). It's important to be objective and not judge too harshly on competing sims just because this is a LFS community.
i have quite a bit of experience and knowledge of the code and use of real simulators used in the design process and scientific research
for one i strongly disagree and even if you were correct rfactor would still be rubbish by your standards since it teaches you the complete opposite of how to deal with oversteer which can be dangerous for inexperienced drivers
normally youd countersteer and any simulation thats supposed to be useful for training should represent that in rfactor all that achieves is spinning even faster and the solution is to steer more
yes thats whats called an arcade game... drives convincingly has all the obvious characteristics (eg 4 wheels) but its not a simulation
anyone (eg you) whos been around long enough to know how much of a difference a tiny little change in the rear suspension geometry of the xrt did to its handling will sure be able to conclude that the usual guesswork which goes into rfactor mods does not represent the real cars handling
and tyres are the single most important factor in whether or not a sim drives and feels like it should
you dont have to abuse them... just driving them on the edge is near impossible unless you have lightning quick reflexes when it all goes wrong and whats worse is with the standard effects based force feedback you dont get any useful information on when thats about to happen
which is ok... for a flightsimulator thats used to teach how to get out of hairy situations in the air collision detection doesnt need to sap processing power
but the point is that each simulator has one area which is the major contributor to its accuracy... for a flightsim its aerodynamics and rigid body physics and for a car sim its tyres and rigid bodies
isi sims dont get either right or even convincing
correct but putting it down because it gets the single most important factor to its handling completely wrong is
