Hi all,

I have been loving LFS since I got it around August time, and it will always stay my online sim of choice until something better comes along, namely, S3. However, lately I have had a hankering to do lap some real tracks offline, particularly the Nordschleife (sp), laguna seca, bathurst etc in a variety of real world cars. (Neils' Corvette looks intriguing...). It seems in order to do this rFactor is the only way to go.

My questions are these. Will rFactor be a huge letdown physics wise compared to what I am used to in LFS? Do I need to download a plethora of new things if I purchase rFactor this late in its life, and if so what do I need to download?

I notice that this community is one of the most, well, 'discerning' I have come across, so if someone can recommend rFactor then I shall see it as a sign!

Also, please don't let this turn into a flame war. its been done enough in other threads. I simply want to know if rFactor can 'fill a hole' that LFS doesn't yet fulfill, so to speak.

Thanks.

i think its a good game IF u have a decent mod for it as the Vette C6 of (sorry dont know ur name) som1 here on the forum, JTBo's Volvo 300 is also a BLAST to drive in(LOVE IT), and some other mods, looks good (better then GTR² at some points), so yes i recommed it if ur looking for some amusement besided LFS

Grtz,
Kevin

I'd recommend it, even though the physics and stuff will never feel as good as LFS, it's still a really fun game when you driving on real life tracks in real cars, like the le mans cars or the megane series.

It might not be an instant hit, it wasn't for me, but once you work out the good and bad points, how to handle the cars and make them go fast it can be really good fun.

If you like tinkering with loads of different (and not always very good) addons, then get it.

To me, I just try out the latest and greatest mod, and quickly get bored with the actually "racing", as it just feels wrong to me.

Niels Heusinkveld will be able to recommend you to rFactor.

This is the guy Scrabby was on about, who made the C6 mod.

Well there are some good tracks for rF, and a lot less good cars. The quality of the mod is very important, yes rFs methods are basic but they're still more sophisticated than the Papy engine, and GPL isn't half bad. Niels Corvette and the Mercedes W196 (and possibly JTbos Volvo 300, the Skoda mod and the Lexus IS F) are the cars I'd recommend bothering with. If that selection interests you round tracks like the 'ring for a bit of offline fun then I'd say you won't regret it, OK it may not give you as much satisfaction as LFS but for what is still less than the price of a normal game you can get a lot out of it.

If you're wanting to race round the 'ring in a sim with good physics also consider GPL and N2003. GPL is a bit awkward to setup though and unless you already own it N2003 goes for ridiculously large sums of money on ebay.

If you're wanting to race online I'd say forget it, pick up racing has low availability and generally low standards compared to LFS.

Quote from The General Lee :

Niels Heusinkveld will be able to recommend you to rFactor.

This is the guy Scrabby was on about, who made the C6 mod.

yep thank you

ajp / Scrabby - neither of you noticed he mentioned Niels' C6 in his opening post.

ajp71: N2003 had a Nurburgring mod?? I haven't found it!

Quote from TiJay :

ajp71: N2003 had a Nurburgring mod?? I haven't found it!

yep it does. I found the track on the N2003 track database a long time ago but its an EXE so it doesn't work on my mac.let me find the link though my collection of dead links...

yep had to nurry to on my N2003, shouldnt be hard to find

here's a site: http://www.nr2k3tracks.com/n2k3tracks.html

Quote from TiJay :

ajp71: N2003 had a Nurburgring mod?? I haven't found it!

Yes and a GTP mod

I wrote a short guide here ages ago, should have everything you need.

I remember that track on the site! I wish someone would finish it!

No-one tell Niels but I did re-install rFactor yesterday... I may own him a shirt if he found out. :shhh:

I haven't fired multiplayer up yet as I failed to find any interesting-and-played-mods online last night and earlier tonight - some things never change.

I do can recommend their customer support as I had trouble re-activating my license. Answer was in my inbox within 24 hours.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I think I'll give it a go, should provide a good diversion to LFS and prevent my simming time from becoming too stale. I was also looking into Race 07 after reading some positive comments but I suppose rFactor will have more variety and customisation.

Now, can anyone recommend what to download first and from where to get me up and running? Things like RealFeel etc...

Thanks again.

Haven't ever played rfactor or really even looked into it much at all, but this looks like a lot of fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4o09vk6InE Probably feels extremely arcadish and leaps away from LFS physics but that still looks like a few hours of fun

I can recommend rFactor for many reasons, but the game takes some big hits in some very important departments.

Good points are that you have lots of cars and tracks to try, so you almost always will never get bored of playing around on them. There are some fairly nice mods out, and they keep getting better.

Quote from ajp71 :

If you're wanting to race online I'd say forget it, pick up racing has low availability and generally low standards compared to LFS.

Couldn't agree more.

The big cons about rFactor is its online play. It is a very big step away from the norm if you are used to fast-paced racing sessions that keep the racing active every 10 minutes or so (like in LFS). Races take FOREVER in rFactor because of their session based system that every server uses. Have to go through qualifying, sometimes servers set them for 60 minutes...... and nobody votes to goto the next session as usual. Then it is warmup for a shortwhile, then you finally get to the damned RACE! Until you finally realize that people can't start a race worth a damn, and crash you after all that work. Not to mention that in order to restart the race, someone needs to DNF (Esc) out of the race and vote for a restart... usually doesn't always work. That is another big annoyance, where if you hit Esc you are out of the race instantly. Hell, even before all these session, some servers even enable a long free practice. So going through the entire process just to get to a damn race is very tiresome and annoying. I don't think any other rFactor players here could disagree to that, because it is very true. You could do about 6 or 8 races in LFS for the time it takes to do one race in rFactor.

Another thing to mention is that a lot of people royally SUCK online in rFactor. I don't know how to explain it... do people just not know the track and/or car? But after seeing people so many times online in some servers, they still don't learn, and are still slow. The FIRST night I played rFactor online officially, people were asking for my setup and I was kicking their arses. Pretty sad if you ask me. Occasionally I have seen a few fast people that are competitive at my level, but that is very very rare. There are also more wreckers and immature drivers online in rFactor in my opinion. People slamming you in the pits, blocking you and hitting you off the track if they get angry. Again, very sad. It is my understanding that you can only get a better experience through leagues online, as the competition is a bit better and more well mannered. But I honestly don't have time for any league bullshit, so all in all, rFactor really blew it for me in the online department.

If people want to know how rFactor's netcode is online, I'd say it is alright though. Probably easily comparable to LFS's netcode, if not better. But honestly, who cares about the netcode, when there is not door-to-door racing when I play online... it is either they aren't near you at all because they suck so bad... or they are actually hitting your doors by crashing you like noobs.

So in summary, Multiplayer is a big disappointment for me in rFactor. And not very many servers are filled... because there are so many different mods to use... and you'll likely only find one or two servers that have the mod you wish to play.... and some not filled very high. About the only thing rFactor is good for is Singleplayer when you are really bored, and you want to have a go driving around a track or something . It definitely fills that void.

Am I upset that I bought the game? Yes and no. It at least gives me something else to play around with, rather than sticking to just one racing simulator like LFS. And in no way is this mini-review biased because of LFS.... I judge the multiplayer on ease of use based on so many other multiplayer games I play... and this is by far the worst, and biggest waste of time.

And BTW, rFactor is really easy to learn, no matter what mod. First night on standard installed car and track, I was already within 1 second of the world record.

I am actually considering looking at RACE07 instead, but not sure about how the multiplayer is there

Quote from NetDemon01 :

Haven't ever played rfactor or really even looked into it much at all, but this looks like a lot of fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4o09vk6InE Probably feels extremely arcadish and leaps away from LFS physics but that still looks like a few hours of fun

Its actually not much "arcadish", but its hard for me to learn how to drive the cars unlike LFS.

Quote from Kevin. :

Quote:
Originally Posted by NetDemon01
Haven't ever played rfactor or really even looked into it much at all, but this looks like a lot of fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4o09vk6InE Probably feels extremely arcadish and leaps away from LFS physics but that still looks like a few hours of fun

Its actually not much "arcadish", but its hard for me to learn how to drive the cars unlike LFS.

That thing is really, really arcadish... Do you know how they got bikes in rFactor? They used an invisible 4-wheel car driving on the surface, while graphically drawing only the bike which leans according to the steering animation (think of it as a bike shaped steering wheel plus invisible car body).

Quote from yoyoML :

That thing is really, really arcadish... Do you know how they got bikes in rFactor? They used an invisible 4-wheel car driving on the surface, while graphically drawing only the bike which leans according to the steering animation (think of it as a bike shaped steering wheel plus invisible car body).

Who is "they"?
I play rFactor all the time and didn't even know about any bikes. You can also do silly stuff to the LFS cars and that doesn't make LFS an arcade.
I agree that physics in rFactor aren't as good in general and vary a lot from mod to mod but are definitely not arcade, netcode is comparable, graphics are nice.
About the multiplayer, there's no pickup racing in rFactor. rFactor MP is completely dominated by league racing. So you'll find maybe open practice servers, but you need to find and join a league to have any kind of decent racing. Race2play has plenty of events scheduled for almost every day and the racing there is top notch.

Quote from Tweaker :

I am actually considering looking at RACE07 instead, but not sure about how the multiplayer is there

But if you get RACE07 you're stuck with the physics SimBin gave it if you want to race online anyway and the conversion of the original RACE to rF wasn't great, as FWD touring cars the tires weren't too bad but I think you'll find powerful RWD cars will just be undrivable. Also AFAIK the online play is unregistered so expect wreckers. To be honest I wouldn't bother trying to find non-league online play in any other sim because you'll always just want to go back to LFS.

Quote from danowat :

If you like tinkering with loads of different (and not always very good) addons, then get it.

To me, I just try out the latest and greatest mod, and quickly get bored with the actually "racing", as it just feels wrong to me.

This is pretty much exactly what I found. You are so spoilt with the number of (often bad, though don't get me wrong, there are some corkers out there) cars and tracks that you find yourself doing 2 or three laps with one, move on to the next and stopping completely when you run out.

I think the (relative) lack of cars and tracks in LFS makes you actually drive more. I certainly have put in a lot more effort with LFS.

Quote from Tweaker :

I am actually considering looking at RACE07 instead, but not sure about how the multiplayer is there

RACE07 is brilliant, huge step up from RACE.

There's some sync issues online, but they're quite rare and Simbin are working on a fix for it, the netcode is very smooth, allows for bumper to bumper racing very easily.

Public servers are full of wreckers as mentioned before, but I race with a community with organised race nights on tuesdays and fridays (and any other days people organise them for) and getting 24 people in evenly matched cars bombing around Brands Hatch Indy circuit is a hell of alot of fun, I can tell you now! :P

In short... for online play, join a community.

Oh plus, Custom skins and addon tracks are supported with RACE 07.

Quote from jfgcatalan :

Who is "they"?
I play rFactor all the time and didn't even know about any bikes.

The guys who made the mod. The mod's arcade in the sense that you can't fall off and the bikes lean way too fast. It also doesn't do any physics even remotely close to having two wheels.