I'd love to give rF a go, but the lack of a demo also puts me off. I tried the old mp test demo but it wouldn't work with a joystick.

I'm also one of the few that thinks LFS looks more realistic than rF/GTR/GTL (at least on my computer). With the ISI games everything looks too "shiny" when the graphics are turned up, but when they run at levels my computer can cope with, they look plain awful. GPL looks better on my computer than rF.

Quote from Pain-less :

No, I'm not in the wrong forum "mate". I know exactly where I'm at. He made a blanket statement that the Meganes were "awful". I am visually showing that they are not "awful" and they drive wonderful.

I am also not comparing the two sims, as that is pointless. I have both. I enjoy both, period.

lol painless, some people are just a bit too slow to catch that how are the AI like for the megan?

Quote from danowat :

What track is that?.

Dan,

Pics 1 and 2 are at Toban using Hudson Kerr textures. I don't know where the far right shot was taken.

Quote from Pain-less :

Pics 1 and 2 are at Toban using Hudson Kerr textures. I don't know where the far right shot was taken.

Of course, you even wouldn't be able to tell on some edited LfS-Screens, if the background was a real track or one from inside the game... And believe me, that last shot IS edited (mildly though)...

In addition, to be brutally honest, they really look awful... There is nothing on them that makes them look like anything with a body... Almost looks like 2D-Bitmaps glued together in the right shape...

Quote from Alan_Bernardo :

Actually, the numbers online are pretty similar between LFS and rFactor. If you run version 1.070 and have the proper mod installed, you're in good shape. The PCC mod is very good.

I agree with much of what you said, and that most things about the top sims are down to taste, especially the physics and graphics. (Incidentally, for me, I'm not a fan of the stock rF graphics (caricature cars) and also I find the other sims based on the ISI engines have a 'washed out feel', but they are just my feelings. The fact that the ISI games require a more powerful PC than LFS doesn't bother me as my PC is capable).

So, assuming the choice between rF and LFS is made on a subjective level, the one area that rF suffers greatly from LFS, no matter which I prefer, is the number of online racers in public servers that I can join at any time without spending at least some time getting my sim updated.

As mentioned earlier, when I fire up rF after any length of time, I'll probably have to close it down again and hunt for a new mod or mod update if I wish to find a decent race. My experience with rF is that more often than not I'll find a server with a few drivers, enter and then find they're just practicing, messing around or just sat in the pits. I saw far more racers and had far more enjoyable races in the days of the rF multiplayer demo, and in the very early days of the F3 mod. As more mods have been released, rF has been updated, and mods have been updated, the number of potential combinations has increased way more than the number of racers on rF has increased, resulting in a very fragmented online experience. The clunkiness of the server lobby, mod and car swapping and the time it takes to actually get into a server all compare very poorly to LFS.

LFS will always offer a selection of reasonably populated servers (even here in a US time zone, which isn't ideal with the Euro-dominated LFS) and I have always managed to find a race, even if it's not with a track or car combo I wanted, without having to exit the game and download a thing (presuming I stay on top of the rare LFS patches). At most it requires me to take a quick look into 2 or 3 servers before I find one with some decent racing going on. As you start to see 'familiar faces' in LFS, you get a good idea who'll give you some good clean racing.

I get the feeling that to enjoy rF online I'd need to join a league, despite it being a more US-based sim. I don't really want to commit to a league and much prefer if I can delve in at any time, like I do with the much more heavily populated FPS games I play.

Quote from bbman :

In addition, to be brutally honest, they really look awful... There is nothing on them that makes them look like anything with a body... Almost looks like 2D-Bitmaps glued together in the right shape...

You gotta be f'in kidding me? 2D bitmaps? Glued together? Nothing on them that makes them look ANYTHING like a body. Are you drunk?

The Yellow one is real ... the orange one is an UN-edited screenshot that I took.

well its undenyable lfs has its fanboys that bash other games no pt reasoning with them

It looks like you must be running RF at full details all around, must have a nice rig. The graphics look great and I'm sure they are more sophisticated then LFS at the moment but I've seen some shots of RBR and LFS that sit pretty equal with that and don't forget how long they have been out. I was dissapointed to find I couldn't run RF with dx9 gfx because my gfxcard(GF4ti4600) didn't support it or something. It was wierd because in RBR and LFS and even in F1c and GTR, I never had framerate problems (60+ fps). As soon as I put the gfx up abit in RF it would eat away at fps(25-30+) and make driving so much harder. I updated drivers dropped to 800*600 and even tried going to dx7... which just made the game look like crap.

I prematuraly bought the game because I used to race in a league that was changing to it the next year. I should have waited and been smart but I wanted to get as much practise in and get the feel of the game just as everyone else would at the time. I drove in a Formula1 league so the first car I jumped into was the F1is and I was appauled... to say the least. I even tried selling the game but had no luck at the time. I calmed down after the PCC mod came out but only for a short while... sure the cars looked great but did they drive like porsches? Real porsches? I think not. And then the next build up came in the form of the F3 Euro mod. Ok I will explain why after this point I gave up on RF till some major changes take place or atleast I hear that some new mod has exceeded the games expectations. Every car felt the same... the PCC the F1 and the F3 all had the same driving characteristics. It almost felt like if I was driving a car in RF, it wouldn't matter which one it is, it will "feel" the same as any other.

I'm an avid LFS supporter and only because I believe it's physics and forcefeedback are superior to RF in everyway. Just as many have mentioned before... LFS was stuck on me after my first ever lap. If Rf had done that for me from the beggining, I wouldn't be a skeptic now. And yes if anyone wants to add the "you didn't edit this ini or that plr or this whatever"... believe me I did and it wasn't worth the bother(for me anyway).

Quote from Yiots :

It looks like you must be running RF at full details all around, must have a nice rig. The graphics look great and I'm sure they are more sophisticated then LFS at the moment but I've seen some shots of RBR and LFS that sit pretty equal with that and don't forget how long they have been out. I was dissapointed to find I couldn't run RF with dx9 gfx because my gfxcard(GF4ti4600) didn't support it or something. It was wierd because in RBR and LFS and even in F1c and GTR, I never had framerate problems (60+ fps). As soon as I put the gfx up abit in RF it would eat away at fps(25-30+) and make driving so much harder. I updated drivers dropped to 800*600 and even tried going to dx7... which just made the game look like crap.
.

If you have an old slow PC of course it won't look as good.. You can't blame a game looking bad on YOUR PC on the game. New games will need faster and faster PC's// like they always have since the beginning of PC games.

Does that mean Quake 2 looks better than Quake4 because you cannot run Quake 4 on your PC? Of course not.. that would be a ridiculous thing to say.. same as saying rF looks bad because an old PC can't handle it.

I still don't like the graphics of the screens above, sure rF looks good *sometimes* from what I've seen but a lot of the time things look far to shiny and out of place. Just look at the cones - http://www.lfsforum.net/attach ... tid=9902&d=1147747579 the lighting on them looks out of place to me. Far to harshly lit. I just personally dont like that style of graphics. NR2003 is probaly the best graphics for me, that game ran so well on such an old system and still gave great natural looking graphics.

Keiran

Quote from Zero7 :

I keep considering rF but there STILL isn't a demo that gives you at least a try in one car and one track. OK, I could just go and purchase and get a refund if I don't like it, but to be honest why go through all that hassle?

The thing that pulls me towards rF is the sounds (ok, I know they're canned), but this is what is making me consider it. But, really without a demo how can you evaluate a product?

So what you saying the ISI devs should make a demo just for you because you are to hard arsed or lazy to buy and ask for a refund if you dont like it? I guess they have more from it if you simple stay away from the game then illepall

btw. there is a demo since a year already out but I guess you are to lazy to look for it either. Maybe mail ISI devs and they will bring you a CD to your bed.

I think you missed my point completely... as much as my comp can do is my own situation and everyones is different. I didn't say the graphics aren't good, I said that they don't look anywhere near as good as yours at the lower levels of dx on my pc. I know I need to upgrade... but at the moment for me if it's just for RF, I will be patient and wait.

Quote :

The graphics look great and I'm sure they are more sophisticated then LFS at the moment but I've seen some shots of RBR and LFS that sit pretty equal with that

Quote from Alan_Bernardo :

Wrong done? That's interesting.



There are at least six or so very good mods, and they dominate online play. You can't beat variety.

I think you exaggerate when you say "10" versions of F1. There are two, I believe. One is pretty decent, and the other I haven't tried.



Actually, the numbers online are pretty similar between LFS and rFactor. If you run version 1.070 and have the proper mod installed, you're in good shape. The PCC mod is very good.




Alanb

Also. lets see right now rfactor got 46 Players total. The biggest server is a 11 player. Others are spread pretty much in numbers of 2 per server.

LFS got 105 S2 players online. Plus another 200 on the dmeo servers lol. MAkes a total of 300 as it says on the front page.

Graphics is at last to me the first most important thing when it comes to any kind of games. rFactor,F1c any ISI games even GTR gives me this cartoonish feeling and I simple cant play scuh ugly looking games. Thats my opinion. But of course physics has to match to. The third thing is net code. If one of this things doesn't fit in I dont play the game. Now rfactor has the best netcode and good physics and gfx is a turnoff for me.
LFS has good physics and great GFX but netcode isnt the best but its still ok.

I also have rFactor and still waiting for the real F1 mod which will be number 5 of all F1 mods in rfactor lol.

My ideal game would have a gfx like Nascar2003/LFS with a netcode of rFactor. Physics are good in both so..
I really dont care about this DX9 shit. IF it will make LFS anything look like rfactor then no thanks

Quote from Sawyer :

Also. lets see right now rfactor got 46 Players total. The biggest server is a 11 player. Others are spread pretty much in numbers of 2 per server.

LFS got 105 S2 players online. Plus another 200 on the dmeo servers lol. MAkes a total of 300 as it says on the front page.

Graphics is at last to me the first most important thing when it comes to any kind of games. rFactor,F1c any ISI games even GTR gives me this cartoonish feeling and I simple cant play scuh ugly looking games. Thats my opinion. But of course physics has to match to. The third thing is net code. If one of this things doesn't fit in I dont play the game. Now rfactor has the best netcode and good physics and gfx is a turnoff for me.
LFS has good physics and great GFX but netcode isnt the best but its still ok.

I also have rFactor and still waiting for the real F1 mod which will be number 5 of all F1 mods in rfactor lol.

My ideal game would have a gfx like Nascar2003/LFS with a netcode of rFactor. Physics are good in both so..
I really dont care about this DX9 shit. IF it will make LFS anything look like rfactor then no thanks

You're calling LFS netcode ok and not the best?
I'm confused....
If there's one thing LFS excels in it's the netcode. It's widely admired in the scene and resulted in LFS getting the award for best multiplayer game.
I would say netcode is the most important aspect of games like LFS and Rfactor. Next comes physics and then graphics.
I mean, look at nK. It's got nice graphics and great physics, but what is it worth when the netcode sucks?

LFS's netcode is the best netcode I have ever used PERIOD, that alone makes it a sim that everyone should own.

Dan,

Quote from danowat :

LFS's netcode is the best netcode I have ever used PERIOD, that alone makes it a sim that everyone should own.

Dan,

Totally agree that the netcode is where LFS stands above the other sims. rF isn't far off and is certainly way ahead of other ISI sims. People also say good things for N2003, although I have no personal experience with that online.

I guess some people may have better experience with rF than LFS, but as LFS is lighter on the PC resources and works well even with dial-up, it would be rare.

I've never had huge problems with rF's netcode (although I've never been on a server as full as some LFS servers) but it didn't handle the F1 style car too well with problems such as floating cars, sudden braking (where the prediction failed), etc. all of which is not seen to any extent in LFS with the FO8 or BF1.

Well, Buddy Christ, as you can see, it's clearly a matter of opinion whether rFactor is worth it or not .

So I'll give you my opinion:

Mods and modability:
First of all, I agree with much that has been said here about the problems with mods and not having them. I personally always had troubles with games that were dependent on mods, simply because it takes a lot more effort and time to thoroughly enjoy them. I believe however, that if you're willing to dedicate that time to a sim, you might really have a lot of fun with it. Problem is of course, that you won't know if you're willing to do that before you've tried. That's a big problem, I don't have a solution for.

As was said before, installing mods is really as simple as it can be in rF, so no problems there. (Only sometimes installing a mod might mess up some files in your base install, which happened to me when installing the 1070 patch and Lienz. Was easily correected by dropping the original files in the appropriate folder, however).

Feel (Physics/FFB):
Again I agree with much that has been said about this. The default FFB settings of rF just didn't do it for me. I felt oddly detached from the road. But then I asked in the forum (major problem for me was that steering resistance didn't increase on turning in) and got quick help. I needed to change a setting in some .ini which I did. This really made FFB feel a lot better. However, I think that it should not be necessary to fiddle with some strange .ini-file in order to get decent settings. It wasn't much of a problem, though, but I think that something is not right when you have to do that.

As for physics, I can't really say if they're better, worse or just about as good in LFS. But what it comes down to for me is feel. And once i got used to the feel of rF I came to like it quite a bit.

gfx:
As much as I disliked the graphics of rF at first, I now like them. I'm running it on dx8 and I can't really agree when ppl say it's rubbish when you're not using the highest settings. I even like them a little better than LFS-graphics actually. It just looks a little more real to me. However, graphics are really not important to me. But this clearly is a matter of opinion. So you'll have to decide for yourself.

PCC:
Well, the PCC mod is probably one of the best mods available for rF atm. It looks great and the cars feel really good to me. Can't comment on realism, however, as I have never driven a Porsche Cup Car i real Life - but I think most ppl who comment on it haven't either.

Community:
I think the rF community is neither better not worse than the LFS-community. Might not be quite as big, but overall very helpful and, erm, just "normal". You do have some annoying fanboys just like here who will bash any other racing sim out there. But there are also, just like here, the voices of reason who try to shut those fanboys up (sometimes to no avail unfortunately). You will also find that the forum is rather strictly run, though, which I personally don't like. Warnings are handed out rather quickly, when you mention LFS as being superior to rF in any respect. Same goes vice versa, though. Posts considered flamebates will be removed in no time (as it recently happened when ppl said the rF Sauber looked much better than the LFS Sauber). So it will be almost impossible to have a conversation about the pros and cons of rF compared to another sim. So you have to be much more careful over there. That really puts me off, as I believe that a community should be allowed to take care of itself. But if you don't mind that, you'll be fine over there.

Did I forget anything? Don't know, but it doesn't matter, since noone will read my post in entirety anyway .

Edit: Of course I forgot something: AI. Naturally the rF AI is _way superior_ to the AI of LFS, and I use rF for offline play only (and therefore can't comment on netcode). And nothing beats the quick and easy pick-up-onlineplay LFS provides.

LFS and rF both have good net-code.. I personally think rF's net-code is quite a bit more advanced and has a few features that LFS's net-code does not that puts it over the top. They are both good though and both of them hold either the number 1 or number 2 spot in the industry.. Which one is best is debatable.

Quote from joen :

You're calling LFS netcode ok and not the best?
I'm confused....
If there's one thing LFS excels in it's the netcode. It's widely admired in the scene and resulted in LFS getting the award for best multiplayer game.
I would say netcode is the most important aspect of games like LFS and Rfactor. Next comes physics and then graphics.
I mean, look at nK. It's got nice graphics and great physics, but what is it worth when the netcode sucks?

Actaully ok was even overrated. But didnt wanna say terrible. Well its playable but worse then nascar 2003 or rFactor. Just take a look at some replays from OWRL where I race. It was terrible some or most were warping left right which were in a good distanced from me. Only the really close ones looked kind of smooth. But LFS can never match rFactor when it comes to onlineplay.
If I really had to compare it to something right now I'd say its as good as the netcode in GTA_San Andreas Multiplayer mod. :O

Quote from Wenom :

Good looking cones there m8! illepall

That is a stupid remark. Piss and moan about the lighting on a few cones?
I will agree with Keiran, the lighting could be a bit different.

Bottom line is this. I am NOT bashing LFS. I like LFS, but to call rFactor's graphics awful is just plain wrong and incorrect.

Quote from Pain-less :

That is a stupid remark. Piss and moan about the lighting on a few cones?
I will agree with Keiran, the lighting could be a bit different.

Bottom line is this. I am NOT bashing LFS. I like LFS, but to call rFactor's graphics awful is just plain wrong and incorrect.

Everyone to his own. I think rfactor gfx is as worse as it can get
If you like cartoons its the right game
I just recently tested one of the latest tracks. Think it was Silverstone. It looks so crispy like MIP -10 settings lol.

Quote from Pain-less :

That is a stupid remark. Piss and moan about the lighting on a few cones?
I will agree with Keiran, the lighting could be a bit different.

Bottom line is this. I am NOT bashing LFS. I like LFS, but to call rFactor's graphics awful is just plain wrong and incorrect.

Graphics is something which are probaly one of the most personal things in computer games. In the end it's like looking at a painting, some people like a certain style and others don't.

I personally don't like the rF style, I much prefer the simple NR2003 and LFS approach because they just look natrual.

Keiran

I wonder why such threads always end the same way?

Guys, it's still time to stop this before it turns to namecalling and flaming.

[rant, read in a humorous manner]What pisses me off about most of these arguements is that whenever someone says what they think, people go "Well that's just your opinion, mine might be different."

O RLY?

No shit? I didn't realise that it was my opinion, even though I said it. Is modern society really that stupid that you have to point out that what you say is your opinion and you only speak for yourself? And even if you do say "IMO" (just by the fact that that has been allowed to become an acronym, you know there's something wrong with people communicating on the internet), you still get self-proclaimed "politically correct" people that will only be too happy to point out that that's just your opinion even though you said so. Then they go off on a tangent about their views, not realising that they are being hypocritical in that they don't allow anyone else to have an opinion and state it but its OK for them to do so.

Where do you people draw the line between. "I think game X has better graphics than game Y because it looks natural, and not like there's been effects thrown in just to look cool but they've been poorly implemented" and "GAME X' graphics suck."?

Geee... its become impossible to state your opinion respectfully on an internet forum (I thought that's what these things are for, as well as providing information for others and asking questions) without getting a bunch of people shoving theirs down your throat and why you are completely wrong.

RSC has become full of people like that and now even moderators close threads/send out warnings/delete posts, just because someone stated an opinion.

What's wrong with arguing anyway? As long as it is done in a civilized manner I can see it being quite constructive. Just don't try to shove your opinion down everyone else's throat - give them the facts and let them decide for themselves for crying out loud![/rant]

Quote from Pain-less :

The Yellow one is real ... the orange one is an UN-edited screenshot that I took.

LOL... you know... Funny thing... The yellow one is NOT real... It's a photograph, yes, but that is no car, it's an empty shell, and not even of the real bodywork.