Project Cars official trailer: http://www.youtube.com/embed/zBLMscFP5ec?
I didn’t watch that at first because I figure I’ve seen every trailer made by now. But that was pretty good!
I think we have a CARS thread elsewhere.
Anyone else playing RaceRoom Racing? (worst title in history?). http://game.raceroom.com/
F2P, from simbin. Looked through the thread, didn’t see it, apologies if I missed it. Just downloaded this last night and started playing. The driving feels really really good to me, and other than the slightly confusing menu jungle, seems really solid.
I like R³E, but don’t play it too much. The free track the game comes with is really well designed, considering it’s a fantasy track, but it’s telling that it’s the free track. The weakness of the game being that it was apparently designed by someone trying to complete a bingo card of all the worst parts of F2P games. You get one track and three(?) cars and everything else is then paywalled, including individual liveries. iRacing is put forward as the sim most likely to empty your pockets, but R³E are trying really hard to take that throne, without even offering multiplayer.
If we got some time trial hotlapping going, then I’d definitely join in.
I know its not a racing sim by any means, but I’ve been playing the heck out of the first Grid game lately. I love how straightforward and easy to jump into it is. What I don’t like is how aggressive some of the AI is and how often they spin out. I also wish it had time-trials, since that would make learning the cars and tracks much easier. Still, the game is a lot of fun and I’m really looking forward to Grid Autosport releasing later this month.
FINE. I’LL START.
I put some time into the Grand Prix layout of the free track last night in the Canhard R52 and managed to get my time into 1.24’s, which currently puts me 534th for that car at that track.
That’s a whopping five seconds off the interdimensional being currently topping that particular leaderboard, so there’s plenty of space to get yourself higher up the leaderboard than I am.
I feel I can go faster - I haven’t quite nailed the line through the super slow hairpin before the final turn onto start finish, and I could carry more speed through the right hander out of the tunnel, but the idea I could ever be five seconds faster than the lap I put in last night is laughable. I’m pretty sure I smelled electrical smoke from my wheel from all the counter steering I was doing flooring the gas exiting the right hand turn that leads into the tunnel and through the second chicane, stomping on the brakes uphill and turning right leading into that turn.
However, position #499 is only 0.108 seconds faster than I am, so I definitely feel I can crack the 500.
Feel free to add me as a friend if you’re on R³E, or post a laptime with any other car/difficulty level for me to chase.
I’d bet he’s running in expert (or whatever they call it), that allows you to tune the car. Being able to change the gear ratios is huge, and really vital on any track you are even moderately serious about hot laps on.
Nope, I’m looking purely at “amateur” levels. I have run the “Get Real” level too and I think I’m also about five seconds off there, but it’s a different leader.
I actually spent money on the game this weekend, because the Koenigsegg CCGT and the Volvo Brick were both 79 vRP, (read “unnecessary in-game currency”), which works out to be about a dollar. The Koenigsegg is a bit of a monster and my fastest lap in it has a serious wiggle under power coming out of the first chicane. I think I can still find almost a second in the CCGT/Raceroom track combination, which will put me right on the border of the top ten.
Here’s my slow fastest lap, featuring exciting countersteer action, as I learn to deal with that power. 795 horsepower is like a tambourine - some people just can’t be trusted with it.
They also have a competition going this weekend for the GT3 cars at Indianapolis- I took the McLaren MP4 12C GT3 out, but there are also two BMWs an Audi and a Chevy to choose from. I got up to 255th ranking in the competition with a gap to the leader of, wait for it, five seconds.
Game Stock Car EXTREME!, (née 2013), released another free content update recently, featuring two Formula cars that couldn’t be further apart if they tried. Firstly there’s the Formula EXTREME! which is what you call the 2014-regulations Formula 1 car when you don’t have the license to actually call them that.
I’ve only spent about five minute in that car thus far though, because I’m absolutely in love with the other new car - the Formula Vee. The Vee is one of mankind’s best ever drunken ideas, because it’s a racing Formula that starts with the premise “take the running gear from a pre-1963 Volkswagen Beetle…”
At the back of the car, behind all that super modern 1960s German technology is the air-cooled, 4 speed, flat 4 engine which also has to come from a pre-63 Beetle. I would like to think that some racing enthusiasts came up with the idea after they got utterly bladdered the night after watching Herbie, but the idea predates those movies by about 5 years.
You end up with a car that costs about eight grand to start up and then about $700 a race meeting. Most of which is to replace all the seals you blow and all the oil that falls out of the engine over the course of a race.
Having played with it a bit, the GSC version is fantastic. It’s a low-power, momentum car that runs well in a big pack and can be steered through corners with the throttle. It does provide just enough power to oversteer a little bit on acceleration from third gear corners, (which is virtually every corner in this car), but it’s not a sharp movement and it’s easy to countersteer against. It also has power off oversteer, which is an interesting combination.
It’s an absolute delight to throw about and very forgiving if your right foot has more modes than just “on” and “off.”
With the AI tuned just right for your talent level you can have ridiculous fun like this.
That was after spending nine laps on that silver guy’s exhaust, trying to keep him from running away from me. Also, he has the best Formula Vee livery ever.
That video has me ready to drop $30…having just spent $20 on Assetto Corsa yesterday and still having great fun on my free trial of iRacing. :-)
The good news is that there’s a new demo version available!
Previously, you downloaded the full game and you could either buy it, or play it for 60 minutes of game time with everything unlocked. Now there’s a third option, GSC Lite where you get a full 30 days free, but it’s limited to five car classes and three tracks.
StockV8
Camaro SS
Mini Challenge
Formula 3
Kart 125ccCascavel
Interlagos
Interlagos Kart track
You could previously use up a bunch of your 60 minutes just getting through the menus and getting a race going and then getting used to the driving model… now you have a lot more time to dip your toe in before you part with the $30.
After playing the demo for 60 mins last night I bought it. :-)
I’d definitely take it over Assetto Corsa at the moment, which suffers frame rate issues on my PC. Only downside so far is I couldn’t get the Australian V8 Supercars mod to work quite right (force feedback was very odd/broken) and I had to convert the rFactor Mt Panorama course using a utility which wasn’t 100% successful (minimap missing) .
Still, I’m enjoying the variety of cars on offer and the host of Brazilian tracks I’ve never even heard of before!
Any recommended mods/tracks/cars I should look into (although there’s more than enough to play with at the moment)?
The BlancPain mod is really very good and you can convert pretty much any RFactor 1 mod over using the tool, so something like CartFactor would be probably be a good place for yet more open wheelers.
Thanks, will check them out.
I love the Formula V. I do not have GSC (need to try the demo) but there is a very good rfactor1 Formula V mod that our group did some online races with. Very fun.
Slight derail, but why do they stick with an old VW engine that requires a $700 rebuild every race? I mean it seems like there has to be a wide variety of more modern, reliable choices these days. Maybe a small Honda bike engine with the desired HP rating.
I think the $700 per meeting is an average of everything, including new tyres and parts, along with all the seals and oil and so on. People at the front of real life Formula Vee races are now using things like carbon fibre inserts on the inside parts of the front wheels to tidy up the air flow, which probably pulls up the average. Not 100% certain though.
I believe that the shrinking quantity of genuine VW parts means that you’re now allowed to replace bits and pieces with modern parts, provided they’re mass produced from the same materials with the same weight. Last I checked the list of bits of the engine you could replace with modern parts was almost 20 deep. Reminds me of the old boom dad joke - I’ve been using the same broom for 20 years. It’s had ten new heads and four new handles, but it’s the same broom.
Yeah, that makes sense. Its like karts. A good kart is not that expensive, and is realible. A front-running cart needs new tires and engine rebuild every race ($$)
I picked up Grid Autosport yesterday from Steam (its on sale! buy it!). Basically, if you liked the first Grid, then you’ll love this. If you hated the first Grid, then you won’t like it either. It is definitely not a racing sim, but neither is it an arcade game either. It sits somewhere in between the two, and for me personally, this is great. I can sit down with this for an hour, play through a couple of events (practice and qualifying are now included too, which is great!), and have an overall fun time doing it. The interface and graphics are slick, and there are lots of options and setups for race events. I can’t say how the racing physics are, but they feel good, though perhaps are not as realistic as a full-blown sim. Anyway, long story short, I’m loving what I’ve played so far. What I’m not loving are all the racing elitists who post in the Steam forums telling people not to buy it because its not “realistic enough” or because the AI cheats (all racing AIs in every game cheat in some way).
GSC really needs to release on Steam. It looks interesting, but the installation is kind of a pain. Also, can’t find the ‘lite’ version on their website.