Well between GSCExtreme, Formula Truck and now Automobilista and yes Project CARS and Assetto Corsa, as well as old favourites, GTR2 and RACE 07/Evo/Injection, I have what is possibly, my most complete world of sim racing. See... I was a four year member of iRacing and I emphasize the word "was", because it's through the aforementioned sims, that I cancelled my membership to iRacing. That, and the fact I'd lost the "enjoyment factor". Now I'm not going to run iRacing down, as a racing sim, there's nothing really to run down about it (well maybe there is, but I'm not going to do it here), but... When I have the choice to come home from work, switch my sim racing PC on and jump straight into a custom race or return to a championship within 10 minutes of walking through my front door, or having to wait up to an hour to join a race that I want to do in iRacing, to then risk getting punted off by someone else, be it intentional or just pure stupidity, I'd rather take the first option. The thing is, I hate schedules and again, not run iRacing down, when I am on a late shift (2pm-10pm) and don't get home until close to 11pm, a schedule is really no good to me when I have to wait around to do the race I want to do. Hence the sims mentioned at the start of the post. Racing against A.I. over the years has got better and better as sims and games engines have improved, the coders find new ways to improve the all round look, feel and game play of a sim. GSCExtreme is right now, in my opinion, the benchmark for all sims in terms of A.I. Automobilista, by the time of the full release, will no doubt be another step further on in improvement. And that for me, is where the "enjoyment factor" comes in. If you have good A.I. in offline racing, like that in GSCExtreme etc, then why would you pay a subscription to a service racing against "real" people? Not only that, but my opinion also is that GSCExtreme and Automobilista are the two best value for money sims on the market today. Lots of great content, cars no sim racer has probably ever raced before and tracks they've probably never heard of (except for Curitiba which was on RACE/RACE 07). So with all that said, well done Reiza Studios, VERY well done indeed! A great product(s) breeds great success and may both continue long into the future.
SCE/AMS is my favoutire sim and Reiza content is perfect but talking about the AI part only: honestly I never understood why people say it has the best AI. There is a long time I don't drive offline (I mean full races, did a few laps here and there to tune plr options, etc) but as far as I remember a well done mod/AIW in GTR2 and rF will give you the same experience. NR2003 AI (except for Datyona and Dega) is also just as good. They all are decent, just that, considering how other game genres improved in this area too. If your AI can't at least do something like changing line to defend position against a human player it can't be called " benchmark for all sims in terms of A.I". The only AI that I really saw improvements over the years and made me want to play with it was the one in rF2, but I don't drive that sim much due to not finding yet a league that I can join and not liking the direction ISI is taking. Never tried RR so can't talk about the one there. Not saying they are bad or complaining about Reiza job, the AI is just decent. But a benchmark.. nope, not really. Just my 2 cents
Thank you, Bobby, for your testimonial about our sims. We do a great effort to have something that can be enjoyed by any kind of simracer... i think that the most interesting thing about simracing today, is that you can find a bit of everything; differents products, that have differents features. So many ideas that became a good way to people from anywhere can just have a great time. We do this in our own way and it's great to hear from the community that they are happy with what we offer. It won't stop here, there is much more to come and that's our fuel, to know that people like you will be happy to enjoy it.
