I've only had it installed for an hour or so but I think I've seen enough
to convince me this is the best rally sim I've ever tried (and I think
I've tried every demo that's ever come out... and bought a few I regretted
:-)
The scenery looks quite pale at first, but it's *very* realistic,
especially at speed, with rain on your windscreen, the wipers thrashing
frantically, and your brain screaming "did he say fast left or tight
right, and why did I eat so much breakfast?" as you struggle to keep on
the gravel and out of the ditches.
Driving-wise, there is no immediate sense of "whoa, this is just *so*
right!" for me. But then we're kind of used to sims that push the physics
fairly hard now, and the more I get used to it, the more I miss the
physical feedback from a real car... and that's true in a rally sim more
than any other for me. My body gets confused by the fact that it's not
being thrown around as ***ly as the screen.
But neither is there any point so far where I've felt the car wasn't
behaving in exactly the way I'd expect it to behave... apart from maybe
when I hit the brakes and nothing happens. But that's pretty normal for me
in any sim :-)
So don't take any of that as a negative. Once I'd managed to get the
controller set up properly (there's no mouse control in the menu system,
and a confusing extra axis to assign (or not as the case may be)) I was
very happy with the feel of the car compared to sims like GPL, N2003 & LFS
(my personal "benchmark" sims). If you go offroad the car acts as if it's
gone offroad... the obstacles feel real and have an appropriate
mass. Especially trees, which have the mass of a small black hole, it
would seem... and a similar gravitational pull ;-) Even the tape "fencing"
at the side of the track in places behaves pretty realistically when you
watch the playbacks of you making a mess of things.
Where this sim really sells itself to me is in those replays. It looks
*so* realistic. From the choice of camera views to the way the car
behaves, it just looks "right". And the overall feeling I get is that it
looks right because it *is* right rather than because they've cheated to
make it look convincing.
Whether I end up driving RBR much or not (I'm not a huge rally fan to be
honest, I prefer to see the competition) this is definitely a title for
any serious simhead to have on their shelf.
Oh, one feature I really like is the ability to save every completed run
as a ghost car you can race against next time. Much more useful as a guide
for us amateurs than watching the split times. I imagine these files can
probably be swapped over the net as well, which could be useful.
Anyway, that'll do from me. Others have made far more eloquent cases for
this excellent sim.
Andrew McP
PS I really need to work out why my Momo still won't run in separate axis
mode (even with the "report separate axes" thing sorted out in config),
because there's no *way* you're going to go fast on these circuits without
learning to throw the back end out.