iRacing vs. rFactor 2

Hi guys!

I've been back with iRacing for the last 2 months. I agree 100% with Dale. There are THOUSANDS of drivers racing every day! I got all four licenses to class D. My two favorite series right now are the offroad truck PRO 4 (class D) and the Dirt Street Stock oval racing (rookie and above). The Skip Barber series is at Nordschleife right now, which is also fun. Honestly, today's iRacing is the most fun I've ever had in racing since I started in 2005. You can race all day, every day with close competition, and not just sunday nights.

iRacing ID: Jonathan Hill7

Road License - D 3.72
Oval License - D 2.42
Dirt Road License - 2.70
Dirt Oval License - 2.83

Thanks for checking in Jonathan, glad to hear it's working out for you.

www.iracing.com/membership/


"170,000 sim racers" 

Makes sense. My old laptop that used XP got to the point where I couldn't do anything online with it because of newer code on websites and Chrome browser, and it was too old to upgrade to Win7 at the that time.

Your going to be in the same situation with Win7 as time goes on.

Yeah, my bad there... I picked a series that's popular with Euro guys. Don't take those times as true for all series, there's lots of racing to be had at evening NA times. That said, there are some niche series where you have to wait/find the peak times.

rFactor/rFactor2 will always be the better value and provide more flexibility for hosting.  You're not going to get practice starts and technical/Lap 1 issue restarts in a private league iRacing session and you certainly don't have the same range of tracks available.

I gotta throw out there that a double-edge sword situation involving overly excited, out of control, self-centered drivers whose ambitions exceed their talent, experience and/or skill level.

Here, we password protect and boot or ban 'em.

IRacing they ruin your safety and skill (?) rating but I assume that they either learn and improve or realize that they don't have the required skills and quit.

On a personal level, it'd be great to have someone else dealing with them instead of distracting me from my race; it'd be nice to just worry about me.

I signed up for two years of iRacing @ 50% off so $100, standard content only. 

So far so good with Windows 7. I was getting a "something is wrong" message but everything seems to work and that message seems to have ceased. Maybe I only get the message when I install new content.

After about a week and maybe 10 races, I have some early impressions gleaned mostly from the iRacing Mazda MX-5 global spec car and Laguna Seca.

iRacing tracks evolve with both rubber and debris. I'm not certain of the grip level difference but the appearance of evolution is superior to rF2.

I think that I'm getting better feel of oversteer in slow corners with iRacing but overall rF2 is better feel.

The rFactor virtual mirrors are vastly superior out of the box with a single monitor. Hopefully I can make the iRacing ones better with more testing and adjusting because as it is I'm having to rely on the audible spotter to tell me where a competitor is. With rF2 there is a very brief window of uncertainty. With iRacing, the only time that I am certain is when someone is clearly behind me or clearly in front of me.

iRacing simulates real world racing much more closely than rF2 in many ways but is actually much more lenient than I was led to expect.

Contact and tires in the dirt is displayed during practice but doesn't count against your safety rating.

A single tire off in qualifying voids the lap, contact with say a wall slows you down but I don't think it scrubs the lap. Qualifying so far has been private so I don't know how contact with another racer would be handled.

During races, I've seen "0X" incident for contact with another car instead of 1X or 2X (or more) so obviously some rubbing and light contact is allowed. I hope that bump drafting is allowed de facto by the zero multiplier. In every race, the limit of how many incidents you can have before you are DQ'ed is displayed. Even after I've gotten caught in a bad pileup, my safety rating increased a bit post race.

Track cutting is penalized immediately. I've only been directed to slow down X seconds but I assume that a black flag is probable for more major transgressions.

I've gotten taken out more in a week of iRacing than in a year racing with us but for most if not all of the iRacing "championships", it makes little difference, you can easily nullify a bad race with a good race. With the Mazdas there are 24 (!) races a day at the same track all week. I think that iRacing tabulates your championship standing by averaging your top 25% results. 

I've had someone to race with almost every race which is the crux of why our racing would be so much better if we had 25+ drivers, someone for everyone to race with. Despite zero championship pressure/motivation, every race has been very immersive due to the competitiveness and every mistake affecting my safety rating or iRating.

rF2 has far more content, cars, tracks, most of which is free. iRacing does momentarily have cars and tracks from more forms of motorsport (especially dirt track) but you only get 20 cars and 20 tracks for free.

I'd say that the appearance of the best cars is equal or rF2 is better.

The tracks are potentially equal or iRacing is nicer (because evolution).

iRacing has no paddock traveling circus club friends racing feel but it's possible with the private leagues that are available on iRacing. One may host races on iRacing but it's not cheap.

With iRacing, there might be a way to join a race with a friend but even without you can practice together and talk about the races you just had. It's not as good as enjoying the same race like we do but there are more opportunities to talk about races that you had and the other person can empathize without having been there because he knows what it's like. Less social on Sunday but more social during the week than our Sunday series but that's not an rF2 limitation as one could probably find a private rF2 league to race with every day of the week.

iRacing has an official rule book, guide, instructional videos. rFactor 2 has Google search.

I need to stop but I'll be sure to add more.

Tom, if you use CREW CHIEF, and turn off the iRacing spotter, you will have a much more detailed spotter.

EXAMPLE: "Tom, you gotta car inside... still there... hold your line... ok you're clear"

EXAMPLE: "Ok Tom, you are at the half way point now. Tires and fuel look good."

EXAMPLE: "The gap behind to [actual player's sirname] is decreasing. You need to push."

it works flawlessly, and has hundreds of real names to use in game. it also gives track temp and other info audibly at start.

it does NOT lag the game at all. it runs in the background and gives you audio feedback in real time.

thecrewchief.org/


EDIT: never tried it with windows 7 - good luck!

I learned how to watch replays with iRacing, during and after a session (without leaving the server). It's different than rF2 and probably a little better except that a plugin or utility seems to be required to save and watch replays.

iRacing penalizes drivers immediately for track cutting with a time penalty. Superior to rF2 which would require a review by a human post race.

Both iRacing and rF2 are inconsistent with track limits.

We make it real simple: never any tires in the dirt, grass, gravel, etc but two tires touching curb is always legal.

Our league rules are superior to iRacing. iRacing Laguna Seca, for example, would call a track cut with a tire barely in the dirt at the Corkscrew but allow two tires fully in the dirt elsewhere and at T11 (last corner) with curbing and green runout area after ~100 laps I am not certain what the limit is.

The quality of drivers seems to be up to luck except that drivers with higher safety ratings seems to be more interested in close racing than finishing as high as possible. I had some dipshit contest from behind Laguna Seca T5 and run me wide on exit after I left him room at the apex. Safety rating be damned, I repaid him at T10. I was happy to see after the race the he had lost 0.50 of safety rating while mine still increased incrementally.

Well here I am. I signed up for 1 month just to check it out again. Just did the testing last night with the Mazda and the off road truck. I'll enter some Mazda races tonight. Because my VR is always plugged into the PC it defaulted to that, so just went with it. The VR looks good in the Mazda at Summit Point Raceway.

I have been doing iRacing for a few weeks now and have to say it's not bad and other then FFB it's better then RF2 in a lot of ways. I have had my ups and downs in the many 10 lap Mazda races, some my own fault and others exceeding their talent. I've also had some very close tight racing. I have tried the offroad trucks and some Legends cars but the Mazda's are where I'm putting my effort right now in trying to move up the ratings.

I have gone through the setup of the FFB and it is a lot better now. Also just last night I configured the graphics for VR, I did try some testing in single monitor which is my normal mode for RF2 and like the VR better in iRacing.

I'm going to continue my subscription after the 1 month to give it some more time. I do like that the Mazda races are every hour on the hour, so I jump on if I have time 5-10 mins before the race to warmup, then qualify which is a 8 minute session( Only get two laps), then a 10 lap race. You end up finishing racing about 20 minutes after the hour. If it works out I can get 1-3 races in a night. There is also Time Trial which is you by yourself and have to complete 5 clean laps, if your nicked for a off track at any point it will null and void the session. These take place every two minutes.

Sorry didn't see this Tom. I'll try to be on some time this week but I'm busy with some projects so not sure when.

Interesting Tom I was going to post something there also before I seen this, so now I have under you.

Not that this will be read by Studio 397, but I will add my thoughts. First I totally agree with Stratoliner and Tom Lory above, full disclosure I race in the same league as Tom.

I have been loyally on RF1 since 2007, bought into RF2 when you first could as a beta in 2012, struggled though many flawed builds and upgraded my PC twice just to try and keep up with what was required to even run RF2 decently. Sadly hoping that now after 9 years RF2 would have progressed out of what has always been a beta. The on track driving experience is one of the best sims but flawed by the functionality to get to that part.

I was excited when Studio 397 took over from ISI thinking they would fix it and get the core functionality, user experience working solid. But that has not happened, while there has been some good work done by them it's still clunky and not intuitive, some of the issues are still from ISI years ago. The old UI had it's flaws but it did work, the new UI talked about for over a year was released and unbelievably not one tester pointed out any basic function and missing features? I found all kinds of things wrong in the first 10 minutes, how could this have even been thought to be ready for the public, extremely disappointing.

Studio 397 needs to stop with everything else and put their effort into getting a basic solid core functional sim, logical user experience then add updates to make that even better, then new content can just enhance the base sim. The new UI has split so many functions to different pages that require many clicks to get to or put something where it makes no logical intuitive sense, for example setup Camber is on the tire page and not in the suspension section. Put more functions on a single page and if needed can be scrolled vertically and not side to side, no one is using the UI on a tablet or phone!

I really hope that changes will take place after the Road Map for January that I read, or like Tom above I'm going to give up and move on to another Sim.

KJ. iRacing has a rule book (Sporting Code?), I downloaded it and skimmed through it when I signed up, have a copy on my game PC's desktop.

It explains the license classes and how to advance. I've forgotten the numbers but advancement (and demotion) are based on the Safety Rating. If you reach a number anytime during a season (or whatever they call it) then you move up immediately. There's a lower number that you need to have at the end of a "season" to move up.

As I mentioned above I'm on D licenses with paved road and dirt road, want to get oval dirt and paved oval up to D before I focus on the road racing license. I intend to be serious about the road racing license, the other three just for fun.

We won't have to buy anything to move up from D but there might be some weeks when the car(s) or track(s) that week are paid DLC.

Next to the "sign up (or whatever)" button for an iRacing session there is a symbol (green arrow pointing up?) that indicates whether that session counts towards license advancement.