What's The Best Racing Sim For Beginners?

[Music] hello fella some racers apologies to anyone that expected on assetto corsa competency on a video today but obviously the update hasn't been released so no video instead I'm responding to one of the more common requests I get and answering what I think is the best racing simple people getting started in sim racing in 2019 [Music] so I'm going to talk about five popular sim racing titles that would appeal to beginners starting with the title that I think is the least beginner friendly and ending with what I think is the best racing Symphony comers to the Hobby this isn't meant to be a comprehensive list of all the pros and cons of each of the sims just an overview of some of the key considerations for those that are just starting out moreover it's not a list of what I think in the best racing Sims overall as a side note all the racing Sims have high points and generally speaking they all have massive drawbacks so I've tried to be as honest as I can with my appraisal of each of them and of course this is all just one person's opinion so the list starts with our factor 2 which is the undisputed king when it comes to physics and for me at least the driving experience is second to none as a very detailed simulation there's a lot of depth and complexity available to anyone that wants to explore it on top of that the newest content in the form of the GT cars and the Sebring track are absolutely top-drawer in fact when I asked viewers to name their favourite car on track of 2018 Sebring and the endurance pack for rf2 were the runaway winners but as much as I love our factor 2 it has some pretty hefty baggage especially from the perspective of a newbie to sim racing first and foremost it's the content or more accurately the lack of content well on us DLC for rf2 is top-notch it all starts to get a bit more problematic when you step away from the official releases there is a reasonable amount of variety of more content available but its quality varies massively next up is the user interface which a best is unhelpful but worse than that it doesn't enable you all that much control over what you race and how for a complex and powerful sim this is pretty frustrating thankfully a new UI is in the works and it's expected within the next few months another aspect that's not that great at the moment but should improved with planned updates is the online side of things which as it stands is pretty much limited to organized league racing which isn't a problem in and of itself but is necessarily the best option for absolute beginners all in all our f2 has a lot going for it but it still feels a bit incomplete and thanks to the steep learning curve significant complexity and unfriendly UI I would struggle to recommend it to an absolute beginner right now to be completely fair to Studio 397 they're putting in a lot of effort to improve the sim implement new features and bolster the available content and from what I've seen I fully expect to revise my opinion on this as new features are implemented erasing offers what is unquestionably the best competitive online racing of all of the sins and if that's everything you want from a racing sim then this is probably the title for you with a strong emphasis on ranking the safety and speed of its drivers iRacing produces a fantastic matchmaking system and a strong regular player base in its most popular series for a rookie getting started in iRacing there's plenty of great racing to be had and if you're into ovals it's pretty much the only game in town when it comes to content the laser scan tracks and the high quality cars are absolutely excellent and the physics engine behind the game is refined though not above criticism when it comes to content there are a limited number of series to take part in so the variety of cars is much lower than all of the other Sims in the list and all of this comes at a cost by racing is a subscription service meaning that you have to keep paying to use it and then you have to pay for individual pieces of content as well and they're not cheap as a beginner it makes sense to buy a short subscription and only purchase the exact content you need for the series you want to compete in in order to keep the cost down while you're finding your feet but it's not just the cost that's keeping iRacing from being higher up my list of recommendations my biggest gripe about iRacing is the UI or to be more accurate the UI's much of this is handled through a website that's pretty dated and in my opinion at least not very intuitive there's also the beta launcher that they introduced around a year ago and are slowly improving but this really only includes a very small portion of the features you need at the moment when combined with some of the more complex rules and vague explanations of how of some of the behind the scenes stuff works in iRacing it can seem pretty imposing for beginners but if it's regular closed ranked online racing you're after and you're willing to pay the costs involved then iRacing has a lot to offer if you're more of an offline racer then this isn't the sim for you regular viewers may have expected assetto corsa to be at the top of this list but while I see is one of my favorite Sims there are a number of aspects that make it difficult to recommend to a complete novice but before we get into that let's talk about what's good about assetto corsa in stock form the selection of cars available is perhaps the best of the bunch with everything from 1950s road cars to modern f1 represented this is further enhanced by the modern community which produces almost endless new content for the title the underlying physics behind the title are widely praised with a force feedback and tire model in particular being high points for me though the things that make assetto corsa really stand out at the moment are the mods and add-ons and they're not necessarily all that beginner-friendly first up to get the most out of the game you really need to replace the stock user interface which is pretty average with a program called Content Manager which opens up a whole host of great user functionality to enable night driving with lights and a whole host of other new features you need to install the powerful shaders mod and to get the most out of the visuals the soul weather system mod is a must-have on top of all that there aren't many stock tracks so you'll need to turn to the modding community for those some of which are excellent but there's also a lot of rubbish out there as well finally when it comes to online racing you have three options public server racing which offers a wide variety of opportunities to drive gt3 cars at Spa privately gracing and a service called simracing system which is sort of erasing light for me assetto corsa is probably the most flexible of all the sims giving users the opportunity to do pretty much anything they want be it circuit racing drifting toga or cruising but a lot of this is enabled or enhanced with the help of a hefty number of mods all of which need to be sourced installed and learned so it's pretty far from being a turnkey solution and anyone wanting to get the most out of assetto corsa will need to be willing to dedicate a fair bit of time to that side of things to paraphrase something Jimmy Broadbent said in a recent video when project Kyle's 2 gets it right it gets it very right visually speaking it's stunning as far as atmosphere goes it's almost unrivaled the selection of cars and tracks is extensive and there's a lot of decent on and offline racing to be had for me this is the title that bridges the gap between the more gameplay focused titles like Forza and Gran Turismo and the more simulation focused offerings in the list as an introduction to sim racing project cars 2 has a lot going for it and on top of that it's very polished and user friendly but a wild product cast reaches some dizzying highs there's also some equally impressive low points my biggest gripe is with the driving experience which varies wildly from car to car much of this may be down to the stock setups which seem to range from totally unworkable to that'll do for an experience simmer a service is an annoyance but from a newcomer to the Hobby it makes some of the cars a miserable experience to drive in their stock form that being said when you do find a car that behaves as it should the driving experience is pretty decent on that note I'm not gonna get into a debate about the project cars physics engine here other than to say it does have more detractors than it has fans but in my opinion at least offers a decent point of entry into the sim racing world project cast who has always had a bit of a dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde problem whenever I load it up I'm never sure whether I'm gonna be getting the greatest sim racing experience of my life or end up ragequitting 20 minutes in through sheer frustration for me it's a sim that tries to incorporate a bit too much and as such some of the fundamentals haven't been properly taken care of all in all though thanks to its user-friendly nature selection of content and decent single-player modes project cars - is a decent place to start for beginners very much view as a stepping stone to other Sims so then race room is the sim that I'm most happy to recommend to beginners well it's not my favorite sim overall and I don't think it absolutely excels in any one particular area it's consistently good across everything that matters competitively priced and it gives a great introduction to the world of sim racing let me break that down a little race room is free-to-play and comes with a small selection of tracks and cars to get you started as you would expect the additional cars and tracks are chargeable but they're reasonably priced and good discounts can be had by purchasing the various packs from the race room store this offers a very low-cost entry into sim racing which is pretty compelling if you don't know whether you're going to stick with it or not the game itself is user friendly and pretty refined these days and is still being constantly improved by sector 3 it offers decent offline and online racing with good physics force feedback and what I would describe as the most aggressive AI in any racing sim overall the driving experience in race trim is very enjoyable and will prepare new sim race as well for many of the other Sims when it comes to content race room covers a significant number of racing series and has dozens of circuits available it's worth mentioning however that the game is more focused on tin top cars and single-seaters what the online racing is very solid in my experience the game offers a lot to offline only players as well with custom grids custom championships and a plethora of game modes and tweaks allowing users to set up things exactly as they please but like the other Sims race room isn't without its flaws graphically the game is pretty dated there's no mod support so you're stuck with whatever content sector three decide to produce and the selection of cars and tracks may not be to everyone's taste furthermore the race room store system that compels you to pay for items using their own special currency called VRP is pretty universally disliked not because it's problematic but because it's totally needless so all in all I think race room is the best place to start for beginners because it has the lowest barrier for entry it's free to start with and offers a fairly polished overall experience moreover I think it's the sim that has the least number of weird quirks and it's devoid of any major drawbacks which makes it an excellent introduction to the Hobby [Music] personally speaking putting together this video was an interesting exercise that forced me to think about the racing simulators that I play on a daily basis from a different perspective and I was surprised to find that the racing Sims that I enjoy the most are probably the hardest to recommend to newcomers for a wide variety of different reasons as I said at the beginning of the video this is all just my opinion and it shouldn't be taken as gospel in fact I'd encourage anyone that disagrees with the conclusions I've come to to leave a comment telling me and everyone else why I'm wrong so that about brings us to a close it hopefully my next video should be about as I goes a competency only builds six and but all bets are off at this stage I hope you enjoyed the video if you did then it'd be great if you could hit the like button and subscribe to my channel and if you think the video will be helpful for others then please consider sharing it as always thank you for donating your precious free time by watching it is very much appreciated that's all that's left to say is goodbye thank you for watching and enjoy the rest of your day [Music]

Channel: Chris Haye

Views: 757,034

Keywords: best racing sim, best racing sim for beginners, racing sim, sim racing, racing sim for beginners, new to sim racing, sim racing newbie, sim racing noob, starting out in sim racing, start sim racing, best starter racing sim, chris haye, sim, simulation, starter sim, assetto corsa, raceroom, raceroom racing experience, r3e, rfactor 2, iracing, project cars, project cars 2, simracing, best sim

Id: j76QQSWxmWQ

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 22 2019