Racing games - GTR, Race07, Rfactor, etc

Oh gosh, Monaco and in the rain at that. That’s a recipe for extra disaster if I ever saw one. Pushing too hard and touching or ending up in the barriers with your race over is enough of a threat in the dry.

Personally, I’ve been checking out some Assetto Corsa mods after picking up the game over the Steam Winter Sale. Been exploring some of the RallyX content that is out there just out of curiosity; while it can’t simulate joker laps, throwing it around Holjes, Sweden with the AI was some fun.

Been on a bit of a racing game binge lately with a lot of DiRT 4 and Assetto Corsa. Playing some online races and hotlapping with a small group of people lately and having a bunch of fun. Nothing quite like the thrill of competition pushing you to drive ever faster.

Dirt Rally (and Dirt 4) have RX in them with joker laps and everything, for single and multiplayer, replete with joker laps that dump the leading pair out into the same space on the final lap.

Lots of racing games on sale on Steam right now, including Dirt 4 for only $17.99.

Race Room Racing Experience (RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRE) is having a free weekend, where all of its cars and tracks are free to use.

They recently reworked the GT3 physics alongside an actual GT3 team, (Callaway Racing), and they’re also now looped into the Sim Racing System online racing and ranking tool, in case you wanted to try some iRacing-style shenanigans without having to pay for it.

For anyone interested in some modern Rally action, featuring the WRC, this weekend WRC 7 is on sale for 70% on Steam.

While the default FFB could use some work out of the box fortunately you can tweak it via the settings to your liking and come away with something much better. Though compared to the best of the best, the FFB still only comes away as decent/passable rather than amazing. The physics, sound design and co-driver are serviceable enough; if there is one thing Codemasters know how to nail fairly well it is audio so most Rally games come up a bit short compared to DiRT in my opinion.

The stages are where WRC 7 really shines though, and what the game is worth playing for. It has some of the best stage design in a Rally game to date so far, and some of the ‘epic stages’ are truly worth the title. For example, there is this one epic stage from Rally Poland which is 23.18 kilometres-long and a few stages from other events which are in the 18 kilometre range. The video below shows just how challenging the stages can become, the Tour de Corse can get proper narrow at times.

I wish I could zoom out my Steam friend activity page, because the top two screens are now “[user] now owns Assetto Corsa Competizione

Now if only work would stop booking meetings so I could go throw about in a Lambo.

Guilty as charged of being one of those people who now owns AC:C.

It’s very pretty and the day/night transition is lovely.

My favourite feature so far is that it lets me map one of my wheel buttons as a “Shift” and then I can assign two commands to all the other buttons, one regular and one Shift option.

With fuel mapping, traction control, abs, brake bias, light levels, pit limiters and other stuff as options, that’s really needed.

I ran some hotlaps and it’s hard to go fast in this Lambo. My racing league just came off the Nurburgring GP circuit in WTCC touring cars and I’m close in lap times to this Hurrican in a FWD Lada Granta.

I tried the sunset sprint race once and managed to come from last to first thanks to a pretty major accident between the leading group of AI cars, but my overall time wasn’t very good.

It felt like an endurance event though, as the game prompted me to focus on consistent laps and gave me feedback on my cornering technique. Then I had to manage my tyre temps as the sun went down. Even using the “safe” default setup the car got very skatey as it got dark.

I don’t know if it’s a bug or if I messed up my key assignments, but I couldn’t get the car’s lights to come on. Taking the back straight absolutely flat out and trying to spot the braking point for the chicane in pitch darkness was entertaining!

After putting in a couple hundred laps around the Nurburgring in the Lamborghini I had to remember how to wrangle a front wheel drive car again in time for my league’s racing around the Nurburgring Short layout in the WTCC Touring Cars.

We do two races at each event and both were really great this time, so I went back and made a post-race edit of race one and then one of the guys who broadcasts had the idea of marrying that video up to his livestream, so we have a side by side of a tv camera-style view and his onboard video.

[Click each video to start buffering both and then click the play button at the bottom of the page]

He’s in the black and white Chevy that looks (and drives) like a cow.

Race two was also bananas, (we reverse the grid, so the winner of race one starts last in race two), I just need to get time to put that video together.

I got ACC too. The wet weather effects are great. The Lambo was ok, but I am loving the Bentley in wave 2 probably because I like a car that can slide around with the throttle.

I am still getting used to these cars however. So much area, and the tires do not like to have too much slip angle.

Yeah, the weather effects are pretty crazy. Racing in a storm is no joke, you feel like you are in a literal storm both graphically and gameplay-wise. Preferring the handling characteristics of the Bentley over the Lambo at the moment around Misano.

The Misano event with the drying track is an interesting challenge as well. Easy to cook the tires as the track dries if you aren’t careful.

The third Early Access build of Assetto Corsa Competizione is now out in the wild; bringing with it the BMW M6 GT3, the Paul Ricard circuit, the skeleton for multiplayer, 3H & 6H Endurance race weekends, and a bunch of other stuff like tweaks and fixes.

I haven’t tried out the Endurance races yet, going to need to set some time aside for that kind of thing, but I did take the BMW out for a spin around Paul Ricard. Boy, that track sure is a little visually confusing at first with the miles of striped asphalt run-off either side of the track. Also has some corners that devilishly tighten on you until you really memorise the track. Enjoyed driving the BMW M6 GT3 around Paul Ricard from my very first lap around Paul Ricard. Something about that car so far jives really well with me, currently my favourite of the three driveable cars released so far by Kunos.

Paul Ricard seems to be just a large flat space covered in curbing. I think they could technically make infinite track layouts there because all the corners are created using striped paint.

My racing league had an event there this season at the “2A” layout. Race one I finished fourth and race two has a reversed grid, so I started at the back and when the lights went out I was in the wrong gear, so I got swamped and ended up last by turn one.

Tyres were a problem here, especially the left front thanks to the very long, very fast right hander at the end of the back straight but I was really stuck in traffic making no progress at all, so when the pitlane opened for the compulsory stop I went in straight away instead of splitting the race 50/50.

This meant I came out in last, but in clean air and I threw in as many qualifying-style laps as possible and because everyone else was squabbling over positions when they finally pitted I got past all of them. All I had to do then was protect my tyres to the end.

I almost made it perfectly, but on the last lap the front left was flashing red for wear and I span in the final sequence of turns. Fortunately they’re very twisty and low speed so I managed to get going again and hold on for the win.

Behind me, third and fourth were almost side by side coming out of the final turn and finished 0.007 apart:

It wasn’t my favourite race of the season, but managing to baby the tyres through what was really a 150% length stint and take the win made it easily my favourite result.

Big first for me this weekend: I am signed up to drive as part of a team for the iRacing 24hrs at Daytona. We are driving a Porsche 911 GTE.

Its a bit crazy to think about, but I will have approximately 6hrs of driving duty, and the same amount of time assisting another driver as spotter/crew chief. There will be 50+ other cars/teams in the same session competing.

Wish me luck!

Best of luck, eliandi!

Are you in a US timezone? Because if you fancy stepping back from GTE to GT3, the GWJ Racing league is about to kick off again, on Feb 10th with our season 5. Our spotter’s guide has room for more drivers in it…

Cool spotter guide!

However my dance card is full.

In between enduro events, I am also a member of the cmsracing.com iracing GTE-GT3 league as well as try to make a couple of league races using AC/ACC.

Update on our 24hr event. We picked up a 5th driver, so it makes the total driving/spotting time more bearable. And he is FAST. The key now is to run laps and stay out of the pits!

Sorry, forgot to update. We finished the Daytona24 in 14th of 40+ teams in our heat. We could have done top 10 except we have a technical issue with a VR user that put the car into the wall for some repairs.

Next up for me is the 24 Hours of Nurburgring. With darkness. Should be intense!

And the N24 WAS very intense. I completed 3x 1hr stints at the iRacing Nurburgring 24hours in a GT3 Ferrari (plus another 4-5hrs helping spot/crew chief for other drivers). 24 hours of racing at the famous Nurburgring “Green Hell” circuit. We decided to start from pit lane to avoid any lap 1 stupidity, and by nightfall we were up into the 10th place. However we had a few adventures after that and ended up in 12th place (of 55).

Having fun right now with MotoGP 19. The new AI they put in had some issues at release - a weird love for rookie rider Tom Booth Amos being the funniest bug - but they just released a new patch for a couple items that also tidied up the AI order and their overall race ability and it’s delicious…

Braking at the end of the long back straight at CotA gets real entertaining when you’ve been slipstreaming the whole way down. On these little Moto3 bikes it’s possible to get fast enough that your brakes don’t do much more than turn the back of the bike into a rodeo.

I loved MotoGP 13 back in the day. It’s more impressive than I expected.

Descenders, however, was not. At least on Xbox the frame rate is atrocious.