There are a handful of sim racing titles that make up our must have list; iRacing, RaceRoom, Automobilista 2, Assetto Corsa Competizione and rFactor. Each have their strong qualities and of course some weaknesses (some more weak than others), but why do the weaknesses still exist? All of these titles have been around for some time, why don’t developers’ cherry pick features from other titles to make their title great?
Recently in chat following a great battle in RaceRoom we started talking about it and building our perfect title. Software developers, take note!
Lets break it down title by title to build our own perfect sim racer. We are going to skip graphics, sound and all those things because some of that depends on equipment and some on personal preference.
IRacing does a lot of things right, their track modeling and available tracks is second to none, followed closely by RaceRoom which includes some tracks that aren’t high profile circuits like Knutstrop Ring and Blister Berg while Automobilista 2 bring even more obscure and virtually unknown tracks. Track diversity is key for a great title! We always want and need more of them. This is where rFactor and Assetto Corsa (not the Competizione version) come in as players/developers can build their own and add them for download which is great but the end result while being good, is far from great. Of course, there is the expense of mapping, scanning and developing tracks. It’s unrealistic to expect iRacing to be able to do it but we’d love it.
Car selection is a big deal, having cars of all sorts makes any title attractive, this is something that RaceRoom does very good, there is huge diversity in the types of cars and the liveries available for each car, the details of the cars, their characteristics and feel are top notch as does Automobilista 2. But again, compared to iRacing they do fall a bit short. This is again due to the time and money that iRacing put into development. For the broadest selection of cars, you have to look at Assetto Corsa because of the titles ability to add cars like tracks, this means that if you can think of a car, someone has designed and added it to Assetto to be downloaded. The problem here and again just like that tracks is that they are vague, they are modeled off of another car in the game and just don’t feel right.
Dialing in a car for your personal driving style, the track and conditions is very important, it should be a focus for any sim developer but for some reason, many titles largely ignore it and make the tuning a bit of a joke and then there are titles that make it so unrealistic. Sure DRS, Push to Pass and various drivers aids are nice but having them available on vintage cars or even modern cars that don’t have them in real life is ridiculous. While infinite tuning is nice for some of us, some of us just want the basics like those in Gran Turismo where you can easily set a car up in a few minutes and race without dialing in the car for 30 minutes prior. The titles that get it right, and we are starting to repeat ourselves a lot are RaceRoom and iRacing. Both titles offer all the appropriate setting changes to cars and stay true to the car you are driving. The tuning is so in-depth that keeping set-up notes just like real life racing is a good idea. But for those that want a quick tune having a simple menu or a Crew Chief suggested option would be nice.
Now for what really matters, the actual racing. And like very topic previously in this article, the ones that do it best are iRacing and RaceRoom. First let’s talk about online lobbies, for what iRacing costs you’d think that those paying to race would have their stuff together, but the truth is that even with the iRacing license/ranking system your fellow racers on iRacing are no better than the kids playing console, games like Gran Turismo, it is bad! Which ends up costing you as your license/ranking gets effected but the actions of others. One the positive side of the online racing with iRacing is that it is never hard to find a race to join. For racing against AI, RaceRoom has it dialed to a near perfect science, it is so good. The AI drivers like real people, they make mistakes, and each have their own unique style, some will rub on you, some late brake into corners. The AI in RaceRoom is so good and realistic that you often forget that you aren’t racing real people.
With the good comes the bad, iRacing’ s AI is pretty standard and a bit boring, but AI is relatively new to iRacing, it’s only been available since 2019 and they are always enhancing it. With RaceRoom the bad is a small (comparatively) online community it is sometimes hard to find a race with enough drivers to make it fun. But this is to be expected because the general public is less aware of RaceRoom compared to iRacing and the Assetto Corsa titles. But that’s not a bad thing, those racing online are usually dedicated to racing and not the havoc.
Not everyone uses or likes VR, for those that do, the hands down best experience is Automobilista 2, iRacing and RaceRoom. The Sensation of speed, the ability to follow head movement, the level of immersion in those three titles is as good as it gets!
Assetto Corsa Competizione and rFactor have barley been mentioned throughout his article but they do deserve some credit. Both titles are great sims, but both are also horrible. rFactor is great and really compares to RaceRoom in many ways, where it shines is maybe the best physics engine of any title, but the infrastructure and the open-source content make it the most frustrating title. Assetto Corsa Competizione is great but because it was developed to be focused on the GT World Challenge series, the selection of cars and tracks is very limited. Should you own it? Yes.
So now let’s create the Frankensim. We want the car and track selection from RaceRoom and Automobilista but produced to the level of iRacing. With the spotter/crew chief from iRacing. Tuning like that of iRacing and RaceRoom with a simple tuning option like Gran Turismo. The online lobbies of iRacing with the AI of RaceRoom. Essentially, we want iRacing but with a LOT more content or we want RaceRoom with better modeling. iRacingRoom anyone?