VirtualR – Sim Racing News
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Interesting. ARCA is a really good stock car sim which I am assuming sold well if they are releasing a sequel.

Interesting to see they are moving to an iRacinge style subscription system. They must be confidant that it will work out for them. However personally I could only subscribe to one or two sims, so I wonder how it would work out if more developers go the same way.

I assume this will be a subscription system where you will not have to pay for the content in addition to the subscription fee?

It is on the new GMotor engine, not the current one.

I will not be buying this game after the way I was treated by their “customer” support. They have really shot themselves in the foot with their extremely unprofessional manner for treating customers. Not to mention the numerous broken promises (tracks, body styles, etc).

Subscription based? No thanks… I already have one of those, iRacing.

FooAtari: ARCA is a really good stock car sim which I am assuming sold well if they are releasing a sequel.

Its a self-published title from a small team of part-time developers – I’m afraid the emergence of a sequel doesn’t really indicate it sold well.

Still it is good news and tends to confirm the expectation that the rF2 engine should be out sometime next year.

DW:
Its a self-published title from a small team of part-time developers – I’m afraid the emergence of a sequel doesn’t really indicate it sold well.

I’m aware of how it was developed. They made a big deal of what they ‘sacrificed’ when the game was released if I remember correctly, time with family etc. Which is a fair comment.

However I would have thought they might not have put in all that effort again had it not sold well based on their previous comments.

Well that’s the end of that title then. I was considering buying it if I could find out how the AI was in it.

Subscription guarantees a revenue stream, but I wonder how many sales they will LOSE going to this model? Since they’ve lost at least two. (Since a friend of mine was also interested.)

I was probably going to; buy it but I am afraid I am allergic to subscriptions.

Plus if you have very little spare time it would be much more convenient to be able to race against the AI… IMHO.

That’s a bummer for me, can’t the developers just use subscriptions for people interested in online racing while keeping it old style for everybody else?

UncleChuckle: Well that’s the end of that title then. I was considering buying it if I could find out how the AI was in it.Subscription guarantees a revenue stream, but I wonder how many sales they will LOSE going to this model? Since they’ve lost at least two. (Since a friend of mine was also interested.)

haha, funny guy, you are!

How can you dismiss something without having any information whatsoever and where have you indoctrinated this idea that “Subscription equals EVIL“?

what if it will cost you less than a CD and you will get updates every month without any additional fees for the content?

Please can you share your thoughts on that, Mr. Chuckle?

Anyways, here is a fun one http://www.thesimfactory.com/main/templates/theme410/images/comparison.gif
last line

I suppose it depends in part on the price of the subscription and how it works. I suspect it will probably work something like VGP3, where there is a subscription but you don’t lose the ability to play it after it runs out (like iRacing), you just don’t get updates any more.

Of course, a big if is whether or not you believe they will actually release enough updates to make it work out. NKP after all was a similar subscription type thing–a year of updates. We all know how that worked out, though this was changed in the end.

Depends on the price too. I’d happily pay the full sim price if I’d have the equivalent of two full sims-worth of new content and updates after two years. Either that or, say, $25-30 for a year.

(Can’t edit posts?)

My point is, that even for the offline only people, this could actually be a good thing. What they’re saying is pretty much “we will be adding new, significant content over the course of your subscription.” In a sense, that’s above and beyond the typical boxed product method, where you get what you get and all you can reasonably expect is for them to fix bugs via patches. Some do add more content, of course, but that’s a bonus.

AeroMechanical: Depends on the price too. I’d happily pay the full sim price if I’d have the equivalent of two full sims-worth of new content and updates after two years.Either that or, say, $25-30 for a year.

I’m with you on that one.

It’s kind of sad that most of the sim companies are milking the hell out of the well worn ISI engine, hardly moving forward. It will be hard for them to move to a subscription based model, with that reputation.

And specially now when IRacing has the reputation for releasing great content, with their new tire model and new graphics and sound engine coming out this year.

@ AeroMechanical well yeah, it depends on the price. Anyway we can’t do anything now but wait the release, and only then we will be able to judge if it is worth it or not.

BTW I am glad to see the online racing community growing stronger than ever, I just don’t want them (and I don’t mean just The Sim Factory) to slowly cut off the offline racing.

I smell fanboy here!!! I hate going round and round and just stopping for fuel so if ARCA comes out with a very solid base sim and many proper racing cars and not try to charge for extra cars and tracks I will buy their sim. As long as I get all updates for “free” their business model is much more attractive than Zenitchik’s sim!

Zenitchik:
I’m with you on that one.It’s kind of sad that most of the sim companies are milking the hell out of the well worn ISI engine, hardly moving forward. It will be hard for them to move to a subscription based model, with that reputation.And specially now when IRacing has the reputation for releasing great content, with their new tire model and new graphics and sound engine coming out this year.

FooAtari: I’m aware of how it was developed. They made a big deal of what they ’sacrificed’ when the game was released if I remember correctly, time with family etc. Which is a fair comment.However I would have thought they might not have put in all that effort again had it not sold well based on their previous comments.

The term “sold well” will mean different things to different people. For TSF, sales of 25,000 would probably be “sold well”. For Simbin, sales of 250,000 would be sold well and for EA sales of 2,500,000 would be sold well.

So for a small part time team like TSF it hopefully did sell well, but in the general context of racing game sales it probably didn’t.

felipe: I smell fanboy here!!! I hate going round and round and just stopping for fuel so if ARCA comes out with a very solid base sim and many proper racing cars and not try to charge for extra cars and tracks I will buy their sim. As long as I get all updates for “free” their businessmodel is much more attractive than Zenitchik’s sim!

So He’s a fanboy simply because he thinks iRacing have a good subscription model and thinks they release high quality content? Doesn’t take much to be labled a fanboy these days…

The gmotor engine IS getting long in the tooth now, I don’t know how anyone could possibly disagree. And while the subscription model for iRacing is not to everyones taste, their content is of a very high quality. I don’t see how saying that makes you a fanboy, it is quite accurate.

If he is blind to the less than perfect aspects of iRacing, of which there are many and simply refuses to accept any criticism of the service, then that might make him a fanboy, but he hasn’t suggested he thinks that way in his post.

felipe: I smell fanboy here!!! I hate going round and round and just stopping for fuel so if ARCA comes out with a very solid base sim and many proper racing cars and not try to charge for extra cars and tracks I will buy their sim. As long as I get all updates for “free” their business model is much more attractive than Zenitchik’s sim!

I smell an idiot here!!!

moppenheimer: I smell an idiot here!!!

I get the impression he’s still quite young. I’ve read him call Iracing users “rich kids” on a few occasions which suggests to me he’s not that old.

One day he’ll learn that people can have a perfectly reasonable discussion with oppossing viewpoints and that having an opinion doesnt make you a fanboy, but until then lots of tantrums and squeaky shouting await us on VirtualR.

People say ‘milking’ a worn ISI-engine but what other ‘engine’ is there?
iRacing uses parts from NR2003 and it wasn’t very new was it?
Thing is that there is only one engine (not counting iRacing and arcade style racing games) that is the newest and most used by us simmers and that is the ISI-engine.
A new engine is coming with rFactor 2 but for now we have this engine and that’s it.
Considering what TSF was at the time they started and how many they were I am surprised they are releasing a new game.
Interesting model also but if they will use the same base as rFactor 2 (which I hope).
It will be good!
Hopefully people will be wise enough to not expect EA-style support and tracks like they did with ARCA SimRacing…

P.S. Just to prevent me from being slagged from calling iRacing an arcade game, that is not what I meant with my comment above. iRacing is different from the ISI-based games and that’s why I didn’t count it in.

I think one problem is that most games that utilize ISI’s engine pretty much feels like they are the same game but with just different content (and why they often are called rFactor mods that cost money), probably due to the different development studios not actually adding much to the original engine themselves. I guess Simbin is the studio that has done the most work to add new stuff into their version of the engine and making it look/feel different.

Compare to unreal engine 3 for instance, which a lot of game studios seem to be using today. I’ve played a few different games based on that engine, but I could never have guessed they used the same base engine if I hadn’t read about it (Gears of War, Mass Effect and Mirror’s Edge for example).

On their site it says they are using the new one.

“In addition the core software package when released will contain the COT and Truck content as well as other tracks and obviously new features, UI and ultimately core component upgrades of the new gmotor engine.”

http://thesimfactory.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=90:version2-in-development-by-sim-factory&catid=45:frontpage-news

Not that I care, because I am certainly never, ever, ever buying something from these PR nightmares again…but it says so on their site that it is the new engine.

Since it won’t be released until the end of 2010, it is probably similar to the WSGT 2 project in which they said that they can and are developing their content and when rFactor2 gets released, they will use the tools to make it run with the rF2 program. So for now, the SimFactory is doing this as well and probably feverishly reworking the ‘guts’ of the game until rF2 comes out and then continuing until it is a beautiful seamless program ready to be released which they think will be well towards the end of 2010. Do I personally care? Not for me, but for those who would like this and are interested in it and of course for the ‘SimFactory’ who, whether you like it or not, are a part of our sim driving community. It’s just another step forward in the evolutionary world of sim racing… which I personally do care about.

This sounds good:

“As we have done in the past we will continue to develop each content item from real world data, which will inlcude our track design. Real-world data such as laser and GPS scans as well as real vehicle telemetry data will be used to create more realism in the racing surfaces.”

If these guys for only $40/50 per year create laser scanned tracks will be strike hard at iRacing.

There is nothing better for this community that fierce competition among game developers.

@navalhawkeye

Thanks for clarifying, that somehow slipped on me. Text has been corrected

You can’t GPS “scan” something. Further proof that their marketing is all a scam.

I like their sim vs sim comparison to iRacing. They say iRacing doesn’t use engineer level vehicle dynamics. Huh? The multiple race and mechanical engineers that code the car physics for iRacing don’t count? I guess the self proclaim basement engineers at ASR are better. How could one even question that?

http://www.thesimfactory.com/main/templates/theme410/images/comparison.gif

Quint:
I get the impression he’s still quite young. I’ve read him call Iracing users “rich kids” on a few occasions which suggests to me he’s not that old.
One day he’ll learn that people can have a perfectly reasonable discussion with oppossing viewpoints and that having an opinion doesnt make you a fanboy, but until then lots of tantrums and squeaky shouting await us on VirtualR.

Without doubt hes a hes a young ‘un.

Also, got to agree with navalhawkeye on weather I will buy this or not. If the sim is good will still need to think about it. While I had no problem myself I remember TSR support being pretty poor and actually quite rude with their customers at the time. Mod teams who are releasing their stuff for free can get away with this, but when you are selling it you need to show your customers more respect.

Is this some sort of joke??? ASR was a mod for rFactor and I was stupid enough to buy it the first time but not twice. Zippy was a complete asshat in the forums and there is no way I would give money to this group again. If that sim “is as real as it gets” then my whole opinion of stock car racing has gone to a new low.

I was lucky to get most of my money back selling that piece of crap and I am surprised they have the balls to try and do another version of it.

Checking simstats it looks like maybe 20 people race it.

Sure..everyone races it in a league. Keep telling yourselves that.