Can I just ask - have you actually tried Rfactor properly with good mods and decent people racing online?
I did a league race in the old Le Mans 911's on the Le mans track, the event lasted about 50 minutes and did a whole cycle of a day + night. Far better than any league race I've had in LFS so far!
I have to admit I tried Rfactor as a pirate :yarr:
But I did not try any mod's etc. For me I make my statement on how it's released, not how other people enchant it later
It seems very obvious that a sim's influence on a genre is something that you can actually only gauge when the NEXT sim is released. That's when you know if the sim has influenced the direction that the genre goes.
That gamesradar post is just a barely-veiled iracing editorial.
I really like iRacing, but let's not pretend it has influenced anything at all yet.
Let's talk again when the next sims have a similar ladder/license system, or laser-scanned tracks/cars. Even that doesn't seem likely due to budgetary constraints though, so
iRacing is just too much of a unique concept to influence other sims.
Or based on budget?
Sure, I can see that Iracing is a great simulator, no doubt. But for what it costs it ain't that groundbreaking or great that it's worth over 100 bucks for one year's play.
There, I did not say anything wrong about it, just the price, please don't eat me :scared:
I'm certain that any developer who is working on a simulator will be looking at the features in iRacing. iRacing has already brought more new ideas to sim-racing than any other, and ideas are what creates influence. If devs are looking at iRacing and its various systems, it's already had an influence.
Erm, then you've entirely missed the point of rFactor. What comes with it is just token content. It was entirely designed to be a basis for modding. Personally I rate it above LFS as a package, simply because it's more exciting to drive.
I'm not going to start a "my sims better than yours" argument, but i cant believe you just said what you did. rFactor is just bad. Exciting to drive? in what way?
And what are all the fabulous new ideas iRacing has brought to sim racing? Lets list them.
A ranking system (ohh, I've seen one of them before)
Safety Rating, I'll give you that one. (and I've spent the last two days seeing someone's SR plummet Race after race through absolutely no fault of his own. It may even out over time, but two days of racing has ended up just being a highly frustrating waste of time. There's only so many times you can have your race ruined by complete idiots before you think perhaps you are wasting your time and money)
Charging a lot of money to host some servers and update the aforementioned ranking system.
I cant think of anything else off the top of my head. If those three(well, only two are actually new ideas) things are influencing other sims then god help us all.
Rfactor was made for modding so judging it on its original content is a bit silly really. If you ever buy the game (i strongly suggest doing so) get the R1RFT mod and the Historic GT & Touring car mod. The physics on both of these are as good as LFS and the massive selection of tracks you can drive them on means that Rfactor well deserves its spot in the most influential sims.
Another quick though - influential racing sims is the title. Not best racing sims, Rfactor has influenced the modding community so greatly I guess it would be silly not to include it, I guess.
Okay, so how much of an influence has iracing had on the genre? Quantify it. Which ideas in iracing are new, never-before seen, and of those (if there actually are any), which ones have been adopted by other sim developers thus having a quantifiable influence on the sim racing genre. Please cite some examples of this influence.
I think that list is pretty good although I'd add Sporscar GT into the ISI sims. It was SCGT which got the modding thing started, rfactor was the natural progression of that. Putting iracing on that list is highly debatable though. First of all, it has a lot of features missing atm, the system is still taking shape and it hasn't really even kicked off properly. But on the other hand it has lots of new tech added into the sim, it has got the americans to sim race and it is really the first sim racing product that can really be one day the best sim of all time.
But at the moment I'd put iracing as the most promising sim and replace iracing on that list with Richard burns rally. LFS would have been the most promising title in 2004, 2005 and 2006 but after that there have been sims with much more promise announced. Like kartsim, iracing and maybe even nk pro before it was released. I don't think isi sims have never really added anything new to the sim racing scene so. Their influence is in much in the mass, lots of products sold and generally being the only products in the cold years of 2004-2006 when there was no decent race sim with road courses available (except GPL).
For me LFS was the first sim designed from scratch to be mostly on-line. All other sims before are offline sims with a good or bad netcode if you want to use it. In all other sims before LFS, it is more comfortable to play offline if you have half an hour spare time, whereas in LFS you can get quality races online immediately.
iRacing simply takes LFS concept, a 100% online simulator accessible at any time, and adds some commercial power.
SamH, iRacing is definitely considered as the new leader for FFB and track accuracy, without any doubt. I can bet this will influence next sims and they will feel different from now.
But, doesn't iRacing just feel like Nascar 2k3 with some polishing? Besides, who in the real world can afford £100+ for a year of online racing, I'd take LFS over that, anyday, no matter what iRacing had to offer.
The most influential racing game ever was GPL. All others are irrelevant and, so therefore, the top 5 influential racing games are :
1. GPL
2. GPL
3. GPL
4. GPL
5. Geoff Grammond (or whatevers) GP2, with the pitstops, setups, etc. I loved that game, hours of fun with me dad on the really old PC 8-10 years ago, I think anyway. Can't even remember lol
FFB isn't revolutionary, it's evolutionary. If iracing was the first sim to introduce the concept of FFB sure, but it isn't. It's probably the best-feeling implementation of FFB at the moment, but even that's arguably not iracing's win but nkP's right now. Any currently developed sim - LFS, nkP, RoR or iR - could launch a new satellite with a refined FFB model. It's not beyond any of them.
Until it actually DOES influence something tangible by doing something that no other sim has done, it simply cannot be described as "the most influential". It's entirely possible that no other sim takes anything from iracing. I suspect that laser-scanned tracks will be iracing's legacy.. where all future new sims begin with the premise of laser-scanning real environments. In that case, iracing will have been a major influence on the genre in that respect. It isn't the first to include real tracks or cars, though. It's not the first to introduce a licencing system with negative-impacting consideration for driving behaviour. It's not the first to offer a career path. It's not even the first to introduce online multiplayer racing..
It IS (AFAIK) the first to introduce an integrated, wholly pay-to-play subscription system. An expensive one, too. If that becomes its legacy and the mark by which it is regarded as an influential racing sim, then it'll be one very large, embarrassing and rather unfortunate tattoo on its arse, IMO.
I know I Know what Iracing does over other sims. It's cuts your leg off and says you have any other body parts you wish to sell? Cause thats how much it's going to cost you to play. That's revolutionary, I guess it's a good thing too, at least people make it out to be. I know I will pay more for something thats already available....hmmm
I agree with the final three entries (GPL, rFactor, iRacing), but not the first two.
GPL is obvious, as is rFactor and iRacing. All three have had a major impact on the simulation of physics (GPL), modding (rFactor), and game distribution and management (iRacing).
I sort of agree with F1GP, as it has been quite influential in the F1 sub-genre, but definitely no to Indy 500. Replace it with Colin McRae rally - the most influential game in the once-large rally sub-genre.
LFS is not influential at all. Its realism is comparable, not outstanding, with other sim racing games; and gameplay and content are very ordinary, even sub-par against modern sim racing games. It's taken a lot of already-popular ideas, but haven't contributed anything new, popularised a non-popular concept, or given any inspiration whatsoever to later games.
No, Indy 500 was THE start of the genre. IMHO the most important of all the entries. Before it, there were basically just bitmap based arcade racing games like outrun and accolade's GP and Test Drive with no physics whatsoever.
Also, Colin McRae wasn't really influential. It was the first sim like game that had success on the mass market, but other than that, it wasn't really. And for the Rallye sub genre, Rallye Racing 97 did almost everything that CMR did, just 2 years earlier, including very long stages you'd need up to half an hour to complete.
