I was just curious, how many here have tried Racer and how many currently use it? I have been trying to like Racer for quite some time now, but I just don't get any feel in the cars. It's a great concept, and fantastic work for just 1 guy doing it in his spare time (well, along with all the people doing tracks and cars). As much as I wish I could like it, I just compare the feel of the cars with LFS's feel and nothing compares. Even though I feel force feedback with Racer, it really doesn't tell me what the car is doing. Now here in LFS, I could practically drive with my eyes closed letting the force feedback tell me what is going on (ok, not really, but you get the picture. Can't really drive without the visual clues.) Man, I really want to like that sim, I've installed it a hundred times, messed with it, and always just ended up deleting it. When I found LFS, a concept like Racer is what I really was looking for. Thank goodness for that, because if I wasn't looking, I would probably still be running NR2003 and wouldn't have found LFS. I like all the different cars in Racer though, and I've had the thoughts of doing a track of local roads around my area in a sim and that is why I was looking when I found LFS. I just don't get Racer and am surprised at the huge fanbase it has.

Any thoughts?

Exactly same as you. I would like to like Racer. But everytime I try it I realize it's not good. Racer is a good example why fan made addons cars suck. ABout 99% of Racer's cars are too arcadeish or other ways too far from reality. And the 1% of the cars that are actually likeable are ruined by the games weird feeling physics. The main problem with Racer is that it just does not feel like driving a real car.

Played it a while. The fact you can drive real tracks & cars was welcome but there are some silly cars out there, you'll have to change quite a bit to keep things on the tarmac.

Momo ffb felt quite shitty, damn heavy and bad feedback

You can play online SOMEHOW, but you'll have to find your way through zillion patches I believe. Only to find out in the end that no-one actually plays online .

the game can be fun. Especially racing the f2002 or the 91 ferrari at the 'ring. the game is slowly improving over time. When i first tried the game it was bollocks.

does someone have a link to this "racer"?

i've never heard about it besides this thread.

speedfreak227

try looking here http://forum.rscnet.org/forumdisplay.php?f=111

i've been basicly doing the same thing as mr. rogers. i install racer... play it a few days then delete it because i get dissapointed with the physics...cars..and tracks. i install once in a while but usually end up uninstalling after a few days.. infact i am about to reinstall the latest version of racer right now. i'm sure that i'm gonna be uninstalling it in a few days.

i did until after several times i couldn't take that bug that would lock up racer if you hit something to hard and went flying
also when i hit over a gb of files i got rid of it so.. ya

tried it again a while ago ... didnt like the physics at all
and for some reason my wheel was shaking violently when a was on the gras (which i was a lot due to those weird physics)

I used to play Racer and and LFS S1 demo before, but after i bought S2, i completely stoped playing racer. This was 1 year ago. Now, i checked the racer forums the other day, and it was almost dead(2-3 new cars etc.). I downloaded the latest beta, and a couple of cars/tracks, and i was like "Why the hell did i like this shit"

i feel like i might as well fire up gt4... if only just to do a few laps around the nurburgring and a few other of my fav tracks.

Quote from Gabkicks :

i feel like i might as well fire up gt4... if only just to do a few laps around the nurburgring and a few other of my fav tracks.

But compared to Racer, the feel of driving (with a DFP) the car around is miles better in GT4

Racer has really big flaws in physics, also it is very unstable so everytime I go my eyes big as plate into racer's world I come back and smoke pours out from my ears...

It has lot of cars and tracks, true many cars are silly, but almost every car is possible to make realistic quite easily. Usually I did download car, check specs from net and altered config so it would be realistic, then I did test drive.

One problem with racer is that sounds, graphic and physics seems to be all from very different products, they don't work together, this are in LFS is probably best that exists today in any product.

I was hoping racer to become good sim, that was when LFS was brand new too, but racer seems to be stopped to certain level, is it still being developed?

Quote from Gabkicks :

i feel like i might as well fire up gt4... if only just to do a few laps around the nurburgring and a few other of my fav tracks.

rofl.. you shoulda seen me a few nights ago online .. i havent played LFS in so long before that time.. havent really touched it since early/mid november, been playing NFSMW for a while now, and just a while ago i decided to plug in my wheel and do a few laps... that didnt happen lol i couldnt drive for sh*t lol

was a pretty emberassing sight.. took me a few laps to get back into the handling.. and the akward sounds.. im sorry lol but in LFS i cant depend on sounds like i can with other games

Quote from mrodgers :

It's a great concept, and fantastic work for just 1 guy doing it in his spare time (well, along with all the people doing tracks and cars).

And what's LFS then? Well if we count the Racer mod makers it has more devs than LFS.

I once tried Racer (last August or something). The version I tried was very buggy and it didn't even have a proper menus for controller settings. I should have to set my wheel from some INI files! Because of that I didn't actually play it more than 5 seconds. After that it never got a second chance. I've been thinking about testing it again, just to drive teh 'Ring. Btw is that Ring a portion of the updated versions from GPL?

Quote from XCNuse :

im sorry lol but in LFS i cant depend on sounds like i can with other games

It's the complete opposite.

Like the ISI sims it just doesn't feel right, however much I want it to

Its a good idea, but the cars generally have no feel or are just stupidly modelled. Most of the cars wont turn, and to be honest last time i looked the track lineup wasnt that impressive.

I tried it ages ago and gave up, then tried it again a year later, and gave up again. I really want to like it, but unless the cars get some feel in them its not going to work.

Well, you all seem to follow my same thoughts. When I saw Racer for the first time, I didn't have the machine to run it (yea, my PC was that bad). Then I picked up a newer PC and tried it again. Like I said, I liked the concept (real cars, real road cars, classics, etc. Not just race cars). I was looking around some more for the same concept and that is when I found LFS S1 Demo. It didn't have any race cars in it, looked like what I was looking for. It wasn't, I was looking for track day type of driving, but the multiplayer online just blew me away (well, it was the first time I went online with racing). Now here I am in S2, loving the GTR cars (ie. race cars) completely away from what I originally was looking for.

deggis, I don't put the LFS devs in the same category as Ruud. He is just a guy doing a hobby and Scawen has actually quit his job to persue his passion. It is totally amazing what Scawen has done with LFS by himself, but it is now a consumer product (please don't go with that where that ridiculous thread went about the demands because it is a product, that thread is absolutely gone out of hand). With Ruud and Racer, it is only his hobby during his spare time and I am impressed with it as I wouldn't be able to do the same. For the modder's of Racer, there are only a handful that I've seen producing anything worth while in tracks and cars. They are basically the LFS Eric's of Racer and are not doing near the fantastic work that Eric has done (and hopefully is still doing ) with the new tracks and cars of LFS. Racer isn't actually opensource, Ruud is the only one doing the coding and physics and stuff, only tracks and car models are open for the public to create.

I was only curious about other's, with the passion of racing sims that we have here, opinions of Racer. I really want to like it and want to add it to my collection of driving because of the cars and stuff and the potential it has, but it just doesn't work. What I was hoping for was something that I could go out and beat on the classic American muscle cars that are out there for it.

And deggis again, in the same post down at the bottom, I totally agree with you about the sounds. Actually it's the excellent blending of sounds, visuals, and feeling (through the wheel) that immerses you into the driving of LFS. They all just blend together to give you perfect feedback that you are actually driving and not just playing a computer game.

The main thing about Racer for me is, I have to thank the developer because from looking for something of the same concept, but that works better, I found LFS and fell in love with racing!

Thanks for all the comments here. We all seem to be of the same feeling.

Quote from mrodgers :

deggis, I don't put the LFS devs in the same category as Ruud. He is just a guy doing a hobby and Scawen has actually quit his job to persue his passion. It is totally amazing what Scawen has done with LFS by himself, but it is now a consumer product (please don't go with that where that ridiculous thread went about the demands because it is a product, that thread is absolutely gone out of hand). With Ruud and Racer, it is only his hobby during his spare time and I am impressed with it as I wouldn't be able to do the same. For the modder's of Racer, there are only a handful that I've seen producing anything worth while in tracks and cars. They are basically the LFS Eric's of Racer and are not doing near the fantastic work that Eric has done (and hopefully is still doing ) with the new tracks and cars of LFS. Racer isn't actually opensource, Ruud is the only one doing the coding and physics and stuff, only tracks and car models are open for the public to create.

Now that you put it this way I have to agree with you.

We had my 2 yr old's birthday party last night. My brother-in-law said I needed to get the latest Racer up and running as soon as I got home so we could head to the PC after all the hoopla of dinner, presents, cake, and icecream (which I felt quite sick after all that, LOL). We messed with Racer for quite a while. After everyone left and the kids went to bed, I messed some more. My wheel felt wierd, like a deadzone in the center. I checked it in the windows gaming options and saw it there too after running Racer. It was wierd as I've never noticed it in the window's options, so I loaded up LFS to check it. All is fine with the wheel, but after running Racer for a few hours, jumping into LFS was like coming home from church and changing out of the Sunday cloths into a nice comfortable relaxing pair of sweatpants and sweatshirt. LFS just feels so right, especially when you just come back after struggling with something else. Even though I was at Westhill in the XRT and couldn't keep the tail in the back where it is suppose to be, all the visual, sound, and force feedback keeps the car on the road and allows for recovery of mistakes and slides. In Racer, anytime the brakes lock, the tail gets loose (which isn't often since cars are modelled to real specs rather than modelled for racing and they all oversteer) you have no feeling that the cars are locking up or getting oversteer/understeer. You just are along for the ride. It's just so lacking in car feel.

As you can see, I really want Racer to work for me and really want to like it (not as a replacement for LFS, just for something to play around with). Though perhaps all the new people who join our community and complain about not being able to control the cars here, etc. should after a month load Racer and run around with it for a while. When they come back then to LFS, they will realize how much feedback they get from the cars here in LFS.

Impressive that it's just some guy who is just doing it in his spare time as a hobby for free, but it really makes you realize how good LFS is!

I work in a hifi store, and we have a system for showing our customers how much the sound of their TVs suck.

We have a TV with decent sound, play it fairly loud with some music DVD, and leave it. We have a button with a big 'Press here' sign, and when the customers press it, the sound in the TV cuts out, and we have a small hifi system playing the same audio for 10 seconds, then switch back to the tv's audio. Initially, you hear the hifi audio is better, but it's only when it cuts back to the TV's sound you hear just how bad that sucks. That's the real kicker.

Much the same with LFS vs Racer carfeel. You get used to the LFS way, then struggle with racer for a while, not really noticing how bad it is until you get back into LFS. Then you realize just how awesome LFS is. A-B-A tests are excellent in that respect. I regularly get off LFS for periods, because I know it will feel sooo good when I get back in it.

Only problem with that atledreier is that everything seems crap compared to LFS now.

I've always been attracted by Racer because it lets you model your own
cars, which i did, for a while. Problem is, it's no fun driving them. Perhaps
the lack of a multiplayer is my problem, but the physics aren't that great
either, so it's hard to say. I feel like Racer is more of a showroom for
modelling than a racing sim.

Now NetKar on the other hand is quite enjoyable. I've played quite
a bit a while back, i even 'converted' Blackwood for NetKar. Now that
was getting pretty fun, especially with the Modena and the formula car.
I'm back to LFS though Haven't played Racer or NetKar in a while now...

Quote from Fonnybone :

I've always been attracted by Racer because it lets you model your own
cars, which i did, for a while. Problem is, it's no fun driving them. Perhaps
the lack of a multiplayer is my problem, but the physics aren't that great
either, so it's hard to say. I feel like Racer is more of a showroom for
modelling than a racing sim.

Now NetKar on the other hand is quite enjoyable. I've played quite
a bit a while back, i even 'converted' Blackwood for NetKar. Now that
was getting pretty fun, especially with the Modena and the formula car.
I'm back to LFS though Haven't played Racer or NetKar in a while now...

hehe, tried the blackwood conversion. kinda cool (did 1.08 with the f3000 after few laps with default setup). didn't know it's yours. grats

Quote from atledreier :

Much the same with LFS vs Racer carfeel. You get used to the LFS way, then struggle with racer for a while, not really noticing how bad it is until you get back into LFS. Then you realize just how awesome LFS is. A-B-A tests are excellent in that respect. I regularly get off LFS for periods, because I know it will feel sooo good when I get back in it.

Hey Maverick, how's it going! How's the shifter coming along? Anyway, the only problem with your analagy (sp?) there about leaving, racing something else, then coming back to find that you realize LFS is great is that I already know LFS is awesome in the FF department, LOL. I don't need to leave and try something else to realize it .

Fonnybone, I felt the opposite with netKar. I don't know when or how old the version was that I tried, but I just thought it was very cartoony with no feeling in it in regards to FF. I did see Blackwood as a download and thought "COOL!!!! I wonder if it is the LFS Blackwood?" I think I've heard of an actual real life track somewhere called Blackwood and figured that was what it was. I didn't realize it was your track. I started downloading (on dialup) when I saw it, but gave up on netKar far before the track got completely downloaded.

As for Racer, I have been playing around with it quite a bit. I have a few cars that are modelled quite nicely in the carbody and the driving of them. I've been playing around a good bit with all the ini files and I think I've figured out the FF for it. I now get some feeling in the steering wheel when the front end washes out. I need to figure out how to get the FF feeling correctly when the rear gets tailhappy. I'm starting to like it a bit since I've gotten the cars to give a little more feel for what they're doing. Now, I don't need all of you to tell me I should stick with LFS because it's the best and everything, hehe, I already know that . But if I get Racer feeling more true, then it's something cool to take a break from the true racing here and relax driving around in some classic American muscle or some European exotic.