Best driving game?

davetrace1 said:
ok thanks. wat do u mean each season lasts 12 weeks??
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If you want to take part in a race, youve got a few choices, Iracing run sanctioned championships 4 times a year that last 12 weeks a time. At the end of the 12 weeks, they release their next build with lots of new features etc, often new cars / tracks, the 13th week is normally more of a fun week, with unofficial races outside the championships.

The Iracing ran championships are based on a ladder scoring system, so you earn ( or lose) points depending on the strength of field of the other drivers, this reflects your skill level and is called Irating.

Each track / car combo lasts a week and you can race at anytime depending on the scheduling available, i.e. some races are on the hour, some every 2 hours, at the top license levels some series only run particular days. Practice servers are available 24/7. After week 2 of the season, racers are split into divisions based on your Irating i.e. your skill level and you can then try to do well in your division if you so wish.

When you race in a Iracing race, there may well be more racers than can fit into that particular race, it will then split the racers into individual races dependant on your Irating, i.e. skill level to ensure a more even playing field.

Youve no obligation to actually pursue a championship, you can just pick and choose when you race as though its normal "pick up" racing, or you can concentrate on a particular car / championship. I.e I own most of the cars, so i might race different cars on different days, my points still go towards the championships for each series, but i've no obligation to run every race or worry about wether i'm doing well within my division or championship.

Besides that, this season Iracing have introduced Hosted Racing, i.e. more like private ran servers, the servers are still rented through Iracing, but they allow individual members to run their own one off races or leagues that dont count towards the normal Iracing sanctioned championships.
 
Richard Burns Rally is my favourite but with realistic damage it is one of the most unforgiving games I've played.

Also enjoy an occasional spot of rFactor but that because there's so many mods available for it.

Both will require you to have a wheel though.
 
neil473 said:
If you want to take part in a race, youve got a few choices, Iracing run sanctioned championships 4 times a year that last 12 weeks a time. At the end of the 12 weeks, they release their next build with lots of new features etc, often new cars / tracks, the 13th week is normally more of a fun week, with unofficial races outside the championships.

The Iracing ran championships are based on a ladder scoring system, so you earn ( or lose) points depending on the strength of field of the other drivers, this reflects your skill level and is called Irating.

Each track / car combo lasts a week and you can race at anytime depending on the scheduling available, i.e. some races are on the hour, some every 2 hours, at the top license levels some series only run particular days. Practice servers are available 24/7. After week 2 of the season, racers are split into divisions based on your Irating i.e. your skill level and you can then try to do well in your division if you so wish.

When you race in a Iracing race, there may well be more racers than can fit into that particular race, it will then split the racers into individual races dependant on your Irating, i.e. skill level to ensure a more even playing field.

Youve no obligation to actually pursue a championship, you can just pick and choose when you race as though its normal "pick up" racing, or you can concentrate on a particular car / championship. I.e I own most of the cars, so i might race different cars on different days, my points still go towards the championships for each series, but i've no obligation to run every race or worry about wether i'm doing well within my division or championship.

Besides that, this season Iracing have introduced Hosted Racing, i.e. more like private ran servers, the servers are still rented through Iracing, but they allow individual members to run their own one off races or leagues that dont count towards the normal Iracing sanctioned championships.
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It sounds good but does the realism stretch to night racing/weather effects?

Thanks
 
Lyon85 said:
I think your X1950 trumps your PS2 mate ;) You could try Gran Turismo on your PS2 if you dont mind blurry last gen resolutions though.


SimRaceWay is the website to replace rfactor central, it currently uses rFactor and GTR2. I would recommend getting either of those games and trying out SimRaceWay. It has thousands of cars and tracks to download (only available for rFactor at this time), has lots of competitive and fun severs that download and install all the content you want with one click. It has live feeds of some of the servers, people to chat with and advanced stuff coming soon like telemetry. They are currently running a Subaru rally server (previously a sort of Dakar rally server, they mix things up from time to time).
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I am going to give this a go, thanks, will probably get a new wheel & pedals - G25 still one of the best?

How does Forza 3 compare with the PC racing sims?
 
ThorpedoUK said:
I am going to give this a go, thanks, will probably get a new wheel & pedals - G25 still one of the best?

How does Forza 3 compare with the PC racing sims?
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Well in terms of price:performance ratio you can't beat G25 and there's some good deals going around too (few weeks ago it was selling for £99.99 and that was brand new!).
 
ThorpedoUK said:
It sounds good but does the realism stretch to night racing/weather effects?

Thanks
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No not yet, Night Racing is coming soon to Ovals, but Road night racing hasnt been mentioned.

Weather might be a way off if ever, the downside of running a ladder system with different drivers on different timezones is that its got to be a consistant playing field all the time, having changable weather makes that tricky and am guessing thats the main stumbling block to why it wont get into Iracing.

Theres still a huge list of things people are asking for, i'd imagine weathers near the bottom of the list for Iracing, but you never know.

Forza 3 is pretty good physics for a console, but its not really upto the likes of Iracing / LFS / Rfactor etc in terms of realism, its probably capable but still slightly dumbed down for the mass market. The main difference for me with games like Forza is that its all bump and grind bashing cars out the way without a care in the world, once you get to the realistic sims, you cant get away with that against humans, youll just end of banned from everywhere. The racing then becomes much more intense and patience really is a virtue in racing.
 
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GRID is the most fun I've had out of a driving game. All the types of races are enjoyable, drifting being my personal favourite. Graphics are top notch too!
 
ThorpedoUK said:
I am going to give this a go, thanks, will probably get a new wheel & pedals - G25 still one of the best?

How does Forza 3 compare with the PC racing sims?
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If you're gonna give it a go here are a few things to consider:

Yeah the G25 is still a belter for the cash.

Don't buy GTR2 retail (almost impossible in the UK now anyway), at the moment it is incompatible with SRW. They are having issues with people with retail copies joining their servers. Instead you can subscribe to pro membership (about £3 a month), this will get you unlimited mod downloads, entry into some cash prize competitions for free and all the extra funky features like telemetry when they go live. More importantly this will give you a downloadable copy of GTR2 free as a promotion. You can unsubscribe afterwards if you like, but that's GTR2 for £3, cant go wrong. This downloadable client is a SRW version and will only connect to the SRW servers (I'm told by staff this wasn't actually intentional, but their partner SimBins fault), but the key supplied works with retail copies as well. So you could install both versions if you wanted to connect to retail servers, you just have to get hold of the retail disc from a friend or a more shady place!

Servers are currently located near the west coast USA, this isn't ideal. There are plenty of UK drivers on there, and it is race-able, but the rFactor servers in particular sometimes suffer from large lag spikes. Cars will warp around slightly online, this rarely causes any incidents, it just looks stupid. We are told the lag spikes are issues with SRW uploading data for telemetry in real time and a fix is in the works. They have so far been excellent with providing what they say they are working on. This is a live feed of some of the races for reference.

GTR is great, but rFactor is where the real meat lies. All of downloadable content is for rFactor alone, the GTR servers just use stock content. They have implemented a new one click install feature which is a god send. Sometimes you still have to do a little work after its installed because of something strange the moder did to the content, but normally it works a treat. So I would recommend buying rFactor and subbing for at least a month for the free copy of GTR.

Hope this bit doesn't sound patronising, not sure about your experience level. If you're not a sim racer then be prepared to get frustrated, sims wont flatter you like GRID does, small mistakes can turn into big crashes, however SRW is a good way of getting into sim racing as it has a friendly community with newbies and pros to learn from. If you are completely new to it then GTR2 has a fantastic training mode that teaches you the art of driving fast on a circuit, a good place to start, you will learn everything else you need to know by watching and imitating people online. As for rally, Richard Burns Rally also has a tutorial mode that will teach you the art of driving fast sideways and on the loose stuff. Or you could just get stuck in and try your luck.

Lastly, there is a lot of fun to be had on rFactor and co, everything you learn will naturally carry over to sims years down the line. It feels like a much larger investment than most video games, and its a highly satisfying hobby.

That turned out a bit longer than expected.
 
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miss out on rFactor, will fins time to give it a proper go, got bored when i last tried with mesing about finding trhe right mods/ servers etc..

live for speed is a realistic, quick to play online racing game, demo available www.lfs.net
Richard burns rally is the best rally game by far, but is old so availble for a fiver!
iRacing is spectaclar but i find it a bit annoying all the faffing about to get to race against someone else, needs some just for fun mess about races i think!
 
If you want something to just drive around on open roads check out Test Drive unlimited. Its got some flaws but its great to just turn on pick one of your cars/motorbikes and drive around Hawaii. :)
There are chalanges/races you can do to earn cash.
 
I love my Wii, but you're never going to get a game with great graphics or awesome racing gameplay on it :p

I like the game Grid

It's a decent mix of the following..

Gran Turismo
Need for Speed
Destuction Derby (purely for the damage)

It's a very arcadey game though, no ridiculous power slide boosts or anything, but it's not a realism game
 
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