Racing games - GTR, Race07, Rfactor, etc

Games
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I had a Renault 5 turbo. I hit a bird one day and the car fell apart.

Speaking of cars with terrible plastic bodykits, Race Room Racing Experience, (RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRE for short), released its Classic Group 5 pack last week.

Seven cars : Greenwood Corvette, Chevy Monza, Zakspeed Capri, Fabcar 935, Nissan Silvia, Nissan Skyline, BMW 320i.

The two 'MuricaBoats are normally aspirated monsters, while the other five have less power, but have varying amounts of turbo boost to make up for it. This makes for a pretty entertaining pack to drive, where all the cars are different. The AI is still learning to drive these cars and don’t work so well at tracks with a big stop, (like the Corkscrew at Laguna), but are fine elsewhere, like the Slovakia Ring.

The Greenwood Chevy sounds like the end of the world, corners roughly as well as the country it was made in and features brakes that are mostly just a suggestion. Meanwhile, the turbo in the Fabcar (Porsche) 935 takes three to five business days to deliver the boost you requested and then gives it to you all at once, meaning if you get corner exit wrong you powerslide into the Sun.

Here’s a short video of me trying not to die in the Corvette, which I offer mostly so you can enjoy the sound. Strap yourself in for lap three, (camera on the engine cover), so that you don’t shake your teeth out.

622

I gotta say I am not impressed with the car list for Project Cars. I was really hoping for more variety.

I guess I have to give credit to GT and Forza for securing some really broad car lists. So far, it’s the one area all these PC car sims haven’t been able to match.

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GT and Forza have that market locked up though. But a limited list makes more sense for a sim. pCARS is in that strange halfway point between arcade and sim.

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Launch trailer: https://youtu.be/pPnPJXE2fhw

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I’m very confused. I thought I was a pCARS junior member, but I can’t order the game (with discount) because it says I already own it, and I have all the highway tracks unlocked.

I see on the forums they are doing pre-load and I just installed the game tonight. Maybe this is a glitch from that process? I should probably get my wheel out and play as much as I can the next couple days, then wait for a sale…

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Never mind. According to their forums, it will eventually get removed from my library and replaced with a discount. That post was from the 27th, so they must be having trouble with it.

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This weekend, June 26-28, RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRE is going to be totally free with all content and all tracks unlocked for anyone to try.

See!

Since Sector3 rose from Simbin’s ashes the game has gone from strength to strength, with more content, more detail and more refinement. The a la carte pricing is still expensive, meaning you should shop sales, but buying wisely can fill up your stable of cars and tracks pretty easily.

Recent patches have included a new transmission system, which gives the physics some more personality and some of the rougher edges have been sanded off the AI - you can actually get the Group 5s around Laguna Seca now.

The sounds remain the star element of the game and you should try driving the BMW M1 ProCar in this game, because the straight six sounds magnificent. The same car is in Project Cars and while that version sounds good, the R3E car also includes the whines, pops, squeaks and backfires that add all the flavour and raise the immersion level.

You also owe it to yourself to try the DTM92 cars. Each races and handles differently, from the powerful v8 Mustangs and Audis, to the more agile, lower powered, 4 cylinder Mercs and BMWs. The AI knows how to drive these cars and will give you a fair challenge, without punting you off the road and the sounds are great here too. Driving my Opel Omega here, you can hear that classic 1990s GM build quality shine through as the body squeaks and rattles like the door on my Dad’s shed.

The game always downloads all its content, (even if you don’t own it, so that if you ever do buy something it’s instantly unlocked), which makes the file size pretty huge. As a result, if you want to try this this weekend, (and you should), then you might want to start downloading now.

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All right, Bismarck, I tried your free-to-play boondoggle. I was 4 hours too late for any of the free weekend content, but that’s okay.

You’re definitely right about the sound. The S7R sounds dreamy. I’m a transmission noise geek so the sound design is right up my alley.

There’s something so simple and pleasant about SimBin games. The graphics are clean and bright. The cars are cool. This feels like GTR2 in 2015. I could talk myself into a couple cars and tracks here. Or since the freebies are so challenging, I could probably get a lot of mileage out of the base game. It took me 30 minutes just to record a valid lap at Portimao driving a few inches off the ground in the Saleen. And I can barely get the “hillclimb” car around the hillclimb circuit without jarring my teeth loose.

629

Wasn’t RIDE supposed to have some sort of open worldish free ride mode in it? I could’ve sworn I read that somewhere, but that’s nowhere to be found on the product page. I must have imagined it.

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The finish of my iRacing league race this week…

IwvzO6M.png1913×968

That’s me being pipped to the line by eight one-thousandths of a second.

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Project CARS is like the Far Cry 4 of racing games. There’s a ton of stuff to do and it looks great, but it doesn’t do anything really well.

I’m definitely still a hotlapper at heart. I’m going through the career but I don’t have the patience to learn new cars. I’d rather master one or two things. I feel like those people who say they don’t have enough time to play new games, so they just play another round of a deep game they know and love.

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I had to give up on pCARS because of the AI punting me off the track all the time. I don’t have enough time to completely learn the track, so I’m toast as soon as I enter a corner a little slowly. If I’m going to hotlap I might as well play something else.

The game is really beautiful though. That Dubai circuit is quite something, and the rain effects are the best I’ve seen. I’m not sure I’ll be able to stay away forever.

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So, the Reiza Studios/Stock Car Extreme indiegogo reached its $70k funding goal, which means we’re getting the following over the next year or year and a half:

  • Aussie V8 cars
  • Mitsubishi Lancer Cup
  • Copa Montana (Brazilian truck racing)
  • 2000s-spec V10 F1 cars (engine noise)
  • A Montreal modern layout, plus some Interlagos updates and new layouts for other tracks to support…
  • Supertrucks, with ramps and offroad portions
  • Rallycross
  • A dirt track
  • The rest of the 2015 Brazilian stock cars (which I really like)
  • Formula 3 updates to cover the Brazilian series
  • Graphics and audio updates
  • Physics developments, including tire damage, better FFB (and I think it’s already awesome), and realistic drivetrain modeling
  • Endurance racing support
  • Automatic steering wheel adjustment, a la DiRT Rally has now
  • Custom offline championship builder; race however you want
  • Hotlap leaderboards
  • 4 dedicated online servers running championship seasons

If you contributed, thanks for letting me freeload. GSCE is awesome.

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V8 Supercar knockoff, but no licensed series! Come on sim devs, get on it.

RRE is doing another free weekend. I just discovered they have a 1992 Mustang. I have one in the garage so that’s an instant purchase for me, even though the interior is horrifically low res so there’s very little connection to it. The in-game car has plenty of charm: it’s a bit of a boat with just the right amount of controllable oversteer under braking and acceleration.

The problem is finding a good track to match it with. Bathurst seems appropriate, but I’ve done that to death. I’d love to pair it with a blue collar US track like Mid-Ohio, but I’ve never been a huge fan of that one. I could also purchase the European track pack (70% off) and tour the '92 DTM series tracks in central Europe. I don’t know. RRE is the opposite of most sims for me because I’m more excited about the cars than the tracks. Let me know if there are any good lesser-known / smaller tracks I should consider.

A la carte pricing is really sucking me in too.

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Paul Ricard is a decent track for all sorts of cars, because it has several layouts. One of them is essentially two airport runways with a twisty bit at each end… I’m running the classic tourers in that and desperately clinging on in the BMW… massively outpowered by the Nissans and even the Volvos in a straight line and then trying to elbow back past in the corners.

That would work for the DTM92 set, with the Mustangs, BMWs, Mercs and that Opel thing.

The only problem with Paul Ricard is a lot of it is flat, with the course marked with bollards and cones, so you don’t always have scenery to act as braking points… some of the corners are just use the force, Luke.

636

I just realized something obvious.

If I want GTR3, I just need to buy one of these DTM or ADAC GT Masters packs from RaceRoom. The AI seemed fine. So now I really can bring my favorite race sim into 2015!

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If you’re looking for something modern, then I’d get one of the ADAC packs. The 2013 pack has more cars, including the Ford GT3 and the right hand drive Nissan GTR, but the 2014 pack has the McLaren MP4-12C GT3.

For DTM, get the 92 pack. The modern DTM packs are fun, but it’s a silhouette series, so all the cars are essentially the same under the bodywork, unlike 92 where the cars are all significantly different.

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I’m trying to be your friend in RRE. :(

Looks like a solid platform, but I must set this aside for a while. I’ll be back for GTR3!

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I haven’t signed into RRRRRRRRRRE for a while, as I’ve been having this sort of fun in iRacing and then this week the update to Stock Car Extreme came out that includes the Aussie V8 Supercars. Which are absolutely mental.

Tons of fun, but I do have to wonder if Australians sit about thinking “well, I haven’t been killed by a spider yet this week… what can I do? How about a family car on skinny tyres with 650 horsepower!?” Before the brake temps are up over a thousand degrees the middle pedal is more of a suggestion.

Tonight this happened.

640

I can’t quite tell, but I think you may have been over the pit speed limit a little.