I simrace a lot. This hobby that I picked up right at the start of the pandemic has become my most significant hobby over the past 2 and a half years. I've gone from crashing 6 times in a 2 hour race at a small club of friends to claiming podiums at competitive leagues.
Over that time I've put on over 1300 hours into rFactor 2, a sim which has gone from "Literally not having an in-game UI" to "Arguably the most complete simracing experience available". At least to those on a budget anyway.
As I am "an poor" iRacing is off the table. Sorry it's just too much money, as such my main other sim that I've spent time in is Assetto Corsa Competitzione, the most frustrating sim on the market.
At time of writing I have put over 250 hours into ACC. The visuals, sound, livery creator, native ranking and competitive systems, VR support and UI are second to none.
So... Why do I find it frustrating?
The physics.
It's astounding to be able to make it 250 hours into a sim and NOT know what to expect when you boot the game. I've gone from "Fast with track guides" to "Fast through intuition thanks to just good physics" to "Slow and too annoyed to fuck around with track guides again". The current implementation of physics is, even to those I know at the top levels, fucking infuriating. Back in May I was on par with one of my partners in a GT4, someone who is now winning races in the silver category at MFR, yet when I tried the pre-qualifying for that series I was nearly 10 seconds off the pace.
Everyone I know driving in there has expressed the same frustration that a fast setup feels horrible to drive, and decent lines and inputs feel counterintuitive. If this is how it'd always been I'd excuse it, because at least every time I boot it I'd know what to expect. ACC's entire handling style will change off the back of on "hotfix", despite driving the exact same 40ish cars on the same 20ish FIA Grade 1 & 2 circuits, all developed by an in-house team
Meanwhile in rFactor there's literally hundreds of cars and tracks, from a wide a variety of creators, in a huge variety of disciplines, across 2 seperate tyre models... yet I can quite happily go from driving an Oreca LMP2 at an official content version of Sebring to driving a mod-content 2CV at an AC port of Ring Knutstorp without having to entirely readjust my head to something that not only feels completely different, but also feels completely different to how it felt less than 6 months ago. I genuinely find it easier to go from driving an rFactor GTE at Kyalami to driving a group B car in Dirt Rally 2.0 than adapting to driving an ACC GT3 at the same circuit.
Which ofcourse isn't great when rFactor's parent company seems to be circling the toilet... Womp. here's hoping that it just means that the IP moves somewhere else instead of toys being thrown out of the pram and/or I dunno, a fucking lootbox system or something.
With any luck, AC2 in 2024 is both more consistent with its updates, and retains its modding friendliness from the first. All I want is AC with slightly better physics (The drift physics can stay though)