You just can't compare LFS and GT4. GT4 may have extra content but the physics have been slapped together. I have GT4 but to me it's just a bit of fun, especially the Photo mode The devs at LFS must only get there income from this game (as far as I'm aware this is there job) so they need to make some money and I think £12 each stage is a bargain. If you were really cheap all you would have to do is buy one stage and you'd still get all the new graphics, physics etc this you can't do with any other game I know.

I don't have rFactor and I will not buy it without a demo to show it off. From what I've heard it's no LFS matcher and the graphics look worse than games I remember playing on my 133MHZ computer and god knows what directx version. For me ISI games have never felt right, I don't feel as if I'm behind the wheel of the car. Live for Speed is the only game that does this for me, I can actually feel the car and react to whats it's doing. Comparing it to the rF MP demo it just didn't feel right there seemed a lack of feel to the car. Another part I don't like about it is the way ISI are relying on the community to finish the game for them, thats not what I want. A community can only repair some parts of a game they can't hide all the bad bits.

Just my two pence worth

Keiran

just a quickie really: my first impression was one of confusion and frustration, having opted to pay online after download i proceeded to put my card details in, an error the popped up and it crashed! after that it wouldn't run just 'cos of 'windowed being unchecked'!? , GRRRRRRRR!

my second impression; tonigt i've got it fired up and spent the best part of an hour trying to tweak the ff into some kind of shape, it merely seems to fight me! i don't know if it's just me but rfactor seems that it is very weak and generally rough as far as the 'experience' goes.

man i feel that i bought my momo wheel just for lfs but i bought lfs for the momo wheel LOL , i tried GPL demo and it just don't feel right for me ... i don't like slow speed turns in lfs too much but if this is right i am with them you must get know the car first before you can suit it to your style

After 36 hours i asked for a refund for rFactor.
I tried everything to love this game, but in my world only one game counts, LFS S2...
rFactos doesn`t seem to be right for me. The feeling of the cars, the bad grapichs, trouble getting good ff from my black Momo and a lot more ended my rFactor history. And most of the times i looked after some on-line players but could hardly find any who would stay for longer than few minutes. CTD during 2 of my SHORT races. Netcode seems to be ok after all imo.

S2 and S3...

Quote from Shotglass :

where ? i just cant find it ... 9cough9 badly designed website 9cough9

http://racecast.rfactor.net/?go=vehicles
http://racecast.rfactor.net/?go=tracks

My bad... forgot to mension that it was the Racecast website, not rFactor's "real" website.

Quote from Blackout :

OMG, just cmon..they have been working like hell, dont you think they should have litle time off too? They could have been not to give us the Alpha, so please, give them a litle break

Nonono I didn't mean anything negative with my comment, trust me, I was only curious. If the Devs are on a vacation in Honolulu that's cool with me - they have earned their reward, no question about it. Peace!

EDIT: Looking at the progress reports, looks like there aren't any big promised features missing in alpha. Secretly wishing the Devs have some aces stuffed up in their sleeves for S2 Full... Again, peace out!

At the October karting event I plan to peer up Scawen's sleeve to see what he's hiding.

He seems to love surprises...

The attached video file (xvid, zip'ed only because of forum restrictions) shows me coming out of turn one at Lime Rock Park a bit too eagerly. Sadly, I can't add an attachment to convey to you what the force feedback feels like, so you'll have to make do with my description.

FF in rF (heh) is very well done: the steering goes light at the correct times, and the rear wheels regain traction with a nice, satisfying snap (you can just notice a tiny flick* in the vid). In LFS, the steering only goes light when you lock the wheels under braking (linear grip gone), but large to extreme slip-angles still produce the same "the wheels should be pointing there!" force feedback, which is odd. The transition from grip to sliding in the lateral dimension is obviously wrong in LFS. Any improvement here would vastly improve the sim.

I find getting out of slide like this actually a bit more difficult in rF than in LFS. This may be because the FF keeps telling you where to point the wheels in LFS - or perhaps it's because I've played LFS a lot more than rF so far.

The replays in rF don't seem to have smoke or skidmarks. On the upside, you can go back and forth in time and there are basic editing controls.


----
(*) Here, I avoided the term "jerk" because some of you undoubtedly would have wanted to ask "What? You mean the driver?" (j/k)

Well I bought rFactor on Thursday and I have only played it for about, erm let me see, 10 minutes ish, what a waste of money.

It looks horrible and feels so cheap. Is it just me or does it look too smooth? Theres no detail at all, it's like everything is smudged.

It feels and drives exactly like GTR and that is sat in my drawer aswell, that had a life span of about 10 minutes aswell, I guess I have a nack for wasting money hehe.

I can remember playing the demo when it came out ( racing round with Looney if my memory serves my correctly ) and I wasn't overly keen on it but it was fun and I could see room for improvment but having bought the full game now, just to try it mind because there's no demo, I am really dissapointed

I'll keep it installed to see if any updates come out but I seriously doubt I will play it ever again.

peeps

After an intense session, I got things going as good as they'll get--I think! I've come to the conclusion that if I have to try this hard to like a game, or in fact anything, I really shouldn't have it. Therefore I've asked for a refund.

S2 is still the DBs and I have good feelings about what is to come given the devs past record.

Yeah, I really wanted this to be good, and no prior bias against it. Sadly it has resisted all my attempts to get to like it. Its cheap* and nasty, and frankly naff. Refund requested.

*Although not that cheap, they quote prices in british pounds, but dont add british VAT, or even tell you that local tax will be added which is just downright deception. So note folks, it doesnt cost £25.99, it costs £30.54

http://www.autosimsport.com/
http://www.autosimsport.com/issues/autosimsport_1_8.zip
review of rFactor. its pdf document

I like it, but then I like RBR, GTR, LFS, N2003, GTL Demo etc as well. I think the physics are very good, the way the car reacts with the track feels very realistic, based on my own limited experience of real racing. In LFS you feel more like you are in a real racing car, but then GTR feels that even more so.

For me it's not a competition, all these racing sims offer something different and each has a different feel. Ultimately it's down to which one you find the most fun to play, which for me is still LFS simply because of its quick fire stress-free multiplayer mode

Whichever, I always have fun playing racing sims, I love them all. Really we should be grateful, whichever sim you choose you will find something deep which you will enjoy a lot.

I can afford both LFS and rF without worrying, but then maybe I work too much.

:rolleyes:

Hey hey Peeps, feel free to send me your copy of GTR and Rfactor, i'll play em if you wont, theres no point letting them just sit there. :P

Nice to see you finally made it, what took you so long?

Quote from Mr. Jones :

Lol. Sorry...if you give ANYTHING just 10 min you're a fool. Go back to your PS2. BTW, I'm not biased on either sim. I did purchase rF over LFS. I like it, it has weak points, it has strong points. Time will tell. Not 10 min. rotfl.

He said it looked horrible and felt cheap. One could say if it takes you more than 10 minutes to discover that about a game, then there's something wrong. He gave his opinion of the game, and you are entitled to yours, but we don't want to hear your opinion of him. Leave the personal stuff out of it please.

I'll be honest and say i was more than underwhelmed with rfactor, i was quite shocked by how much it stank of GPL, not that gpl was a bad game just a very old one now, it has similar (clunky,confusing) GUI and a very unpolished look allround. the FF is very poor, and doesn't tell you much through it's repetoire of canned effects. I'm not bitching, but i can't help feeling slightly ripped off at the mo, i was never given the impression that the game would be so unfinished. i seriously hope most of these issues get sorted out. it IS a cool game with some cool features, it just doesn't cut it as a sim, not YET!

LFS is smoother, more complete, has much better cars/tracks, has decent FF, more balanced sounds and it's cheaper! i'll play LFS please!

Quote from L(Oo)ney :

:rolleyes:

Hey hey Peeps, feel free to send me your copy of GTR and Rfactor, i'll play em if you wont, theres no point letting them just sit there. :P

Nice to see you finally made it, what took you so long?

Sure why not hehe I've been on this forum for ages now but I guess my presense is overdue, so here I am guys lol!

Quote :

He said it looked horrible and felt cheap. One could say if it takes you more than 10 minutes to discover that about a game, then there's something wrong. He gave his opinion of the game, and you are entitled to yours, but we don't want to hear your opinion of him. Leave the personal stuff out of it please.

Thanks Gunn You can tell instantly with things if they are not right for you, you shouldn't have to sit there for hours on end trying to like it, what the hell is the point? I must admit though I think it was slightly longer than 10 minutes if you take into account the setting up of the game rofl Perhaps 20 minutes is more realistic

peeps

To be honest I think anything less than a couple of days is not enough to evaluate a sim, some things you can tell are good or bad almost immediately but to really evaluate a physics engine you need time imo.

Quote from tailing :

To be honest I think anything less than a couple of days is not enough to evaluate a sim, some things you can tell are good or bad almost immediately but to really evaluate a physics engine you need time imo.

Unless the physics engine really stinks (e.g Spirit of Speed 1937), it probably takes a while to evaluate it properly. You can probably only really judge it once you have some good setups too. But if something doesn't feel right immediately then there is probably something wrong, which the user will have great difficulty getting past until the sim is updated or modded, whether they invest hours, days or weeks trying to like it.

I think you can judge many other aspects much more quickly. The front end, graphics and general playability are all things you can judge within the first hour easily, and if they don't feel right straight away the impressions will be hard to shake.

For me, the rFactor demo didn't do it for me. It was instantly easy to throw the cars around, save spins, etc. in an arcadey way. This meant it was instant 'fun' for all, but didn't have much long term appeal for me. The track and object graphics were OK but oddly coloured and not crisp, the car models were tuner style caricatures and the cockpits were awful. All of this I judged quickly. It's saving grace was some reasonable netcode offering some instantly accessible racing (probably the point as it was a netcode test). In general the initial impression was not great, which was in complete contrast to LFS (even back in the pre-S1 days) which impressed right from the first minute.

The fact that rFactor does not have a current demo of the released product means I can either buy the product unseen or stick with LFS. As the rF devs are relying on my first impressions of the multiplayer demo (which undoubtedly has old content, including physics) to win me over, I think they've made a big mistake.

I'm currently sticking with LFS. rFactor may get a chance if they release a new demo which impresses me and if some fantastic mod is released offering historic cars and real life tracks. Even then I only foresee it being used as the mod platform. For fantasy tracks and cars and good online racing LFS has it all.