My ideas for the future of HSO (Part 1 - Choosing the right simulation)

Hello guys ,
As I already announced in my other post, during my break I collected a few ideas on how things could continue successfully for the HSO in the future. I would of course like to hear your opinion afterwards, but here are my ideas first:

Back to rFactor 1 - Here is my explanation why:
I have been driving rFactor 2 myself since 2015 (over 2500 hours) and it is also a good simulation, but in my opinion there have been decisive problems over the last few years.

rF2 is still being developed to this day, which sounds great first, but over the past year it has repeatedly caused major problems for organizers due to the poor work of Studio 397 and the fact that the quality control was a bad joke. There were always new unknown problems with each build that were only slowly resolved. Now Studio 397 has also been sold and only the future will tell whether it really gets better or everything gets worse.

rF2 is becoming more and more difficult to mod as Studio 397 actually only wants to sell its official content and the few remaining modders receive insufficient or no support at all. That is why there is hardly any content outside of modern LMPs and GTs and the appropriate tracks are often missing for the little historical content. To edit the tracks and mods you often need very expensive programs if the files are not completely encrypted.

The weather and the dynamic track grip are great developments in rF2 if you want to drive in a league as realistically as possible, but it makes it difficult to just drive for fun. The effort to drive somewhere is significantly higher, the behavior of the car can change significantly from session to session and even without rain. In addition, depending on the server settings and the quality of the tracks, the ideal line builds up too much grip, which makes the vehicle's driving behavior very difficult, as it sometimes feels like driving with slicks on a dry ideal line. If you come just a little off this line, the vehicle breaks out as soon as you turn in.

In my opinion, the tire model from rF2 takes a lot of getting used to because to be fast you always have to drive 90% of the vehicles with minimum tire pressure, which is the fastest option but often leads to strange driving behavior due to the deformation of the tires.

The damage model in rF2 has become significantly worse than in rF1. Both the visual as well as the physical damage model has clearly deteriorated in comparison.
In addition, there are no more punctures in rF2 to this day.

The system requirements of rf2 are partly immense due to the graphic improvements of the last few years, since Studio 397 put too little emphasis on the efficiency and only on the good optics. I know simracers who drive with expensive 2500€ PCs and still have fps problems on some tracks.

And now the most important thing in the end: rF1 has a great and active moder community to this day, which still brings new good content to this day. rF1 runs on every system and is therefore really accessible to everyone. HSO has had its best time in this simulation and I still think a lot of experience. And in some parts of the world, rF1 is still used very actively today, for example in South America or in European countries such as Spain. And with rF1 we ​​have a fully developed platform which may have its quirks here and there but which are all known and can no longer change every week.


But of course that's just my opinion and of course I would like to hear your opinion on it too..

Hello Jan

It's cool to see you here and still passionate about HSO!
Going back to rF1 is indeed a very valid possibility. I haven't raced rF2 myself, but I have read the points you make multiple times before. I am too far from the simracing world now to tell if rF1 would still bring enough people on the grids, but what HSO is lacking now is motivated people ready to put some serious work to get the league back on its feet. It's even harder now that drivers have left to get their shot of historic racing elsewhere.

As you may know, myself and Matthew Sibanyoni went off to do our own league at the end of last year using rFactor 1, called Classic Motorsport Hub. We've been doing our own shot at racing historic cars and we've had a good time so far and are planning our 2022 racing season, albeit we somewhat struggle with attendance. Not surprising if you see the fact that many people who still race rFactor 1 are racing in leagues riddled with low-quality mods and low-quality driving, but that's besides the point.

What I'm saying is that unfortunately, with the switch to rF2, HSO has sort of gone off the deep end, and people talk it up to be dead, which, if you look at the activity, isn't far off, no offense. As you know, I loved racing here and I'd have stayed here if it weren't for the split in 2019 and the switch to rF2.

CMH is what I'd call "HSO if the switch to rFactor 2 never happened" and as such, we received praise alongside the words of "the spiritual successor of HSO" which, to me personally, means a lot because I admired this place almost every day I've been here.

My point is, it may be difficult to get HSO back on its feet period, even if the switch back to rFactor 1 may happen. Many people from here who were here for rFactor 1 either left or abandoned the platform for rF2; or went to ISO with Automobilista. (by the way, AMS1 should be a thought in the back of everyone's head, too)
Gui made an amazing point which I basically just reiterated, but my thought is, since HSO has been dead in the water since the middle of 2020 (IMO, feel free to correct me), I think it may be time to move on. But let's move on together, because obviously all who want to keep this racing and this spirit alive, CMH may just be what we look for.

If you feel like I'm full of s and feel like I just wanna plug my place, feel free to let me know too. I'm just giving my two cents. It hurt when I saw this place go down the drain, hence why I hold my arms open for y'all to come and contribute for (hopefully) a brighter future coming in classic sim racing.

I won't post any links from us here because I don't feel it's appropriate at this point, but if allowed, let me know. The door is always open for everyone from HSO.

back to RF1 should be a good start

The return to rF1 might not be a bad move, at least there's loads of historic content available. The same goes for GTR2 but for some reason that game seems a bit temperamental, on my system anyway. If you feel adventurous, throw in GPL and NR03 and you've got yourself several years' worth of races

Anyway, there are some things I *really* need to address and work on in the real world so I'm likely to be out of action till who knows when

Having been a racer here and at other venues for many years I see this problem everywhere and it boils down to TIME. No one seems to have enough to constantly manage all that it takes to run a Sim Racing organization. I'm not talking about successes like iracing. That is a business and has paid employees. This and others like it are Hobbies and rely on volunteers who have time.  Things change and it still takes time to play.

HSO may come back to form but I'm sure Frank and Gui are busy so who's going to run things with their guidance? I took a look at "Brand X" and it seems organized enough but still not very big turnouts.

I'll compare HSO with the group I helped with years ago. We had 25 cars easy every week and yes we used rF1. The thing I loved about HSO were the technical points needed to race competitively and the driver diversity. Car setup and driving skill was crucial but if you fly with the best you too will become better. In the group I helped with we modded the cars to be almost if not completely identical under the hood. We also made them easy to "arrive and drive". People with no time to practice could jump in at qualifying time and get in the show. 2 hours or less once a week kept the guys with their racing "fix" and mama happy.

Less people have the time to get into this with both feet so turnouts won't be crazy but for me the immersion here even with rF1 is what kept me coming back.

The future depends on the league principals and it's not up to me to spew advice they've probably already heard. These guys know what they're doing and someday when the stars align we'll be grinding gears here again!!!

We had a discussion along those lines (back to rF1 for 2022) six months ago with Jukka, Paul et al. So we're on that same page on that Jan as I totally agree on the various points you make about rF2 .

But as Gui says it's an uphill struggle. Paul makes some great points too, but on the admin side I think it could be manageable if we're talking about something like two races per month or so, tops. Also whatever we might run we probably have already run in the past in one form or another so a lot of the admin work is already done (rules, pictures, forum posts, testing tracks, ...etc.)

Having gone back to GPL as a driver myself and seeing first hand how healthy the GPL community is considering how old the platform is, I am convinced we could gather enough Happy Few to make a cool rF1 series at HSO.

But on the other hand what was (is) great about rF1 regarding HSO type races (enough content in cars and tracks for 20 HSO seasons of historically accurate racing) could also be the problem. Because if we chose to do some rF1 stuff it will only be with one mod or two at most. And although there still are a lot of people on rF1, their taste in mods are very diverse so I'm not sure there are many historic mods that still have a strong fan base. TCL ? An F1 mod (1991 ? 1979 ? 1967 ?) ? F5000 ? Group C ? Something else ? Hard to tell, really.

But to make it happen we would first and foremost need to get a server, set it all up, ideally also re-up the site. That is a lot of work. Truly, this could work without the site. But the process of setting up a race server from scratch is not something I want to go through again. Like ever . So either we manage to rent a "ready to go" one from someone, or we find someone to set up a dedicated server we would rent from one of the big gaming server providers. Outside of that I don't see anything happening in 2022, really.

I am also working on maybe organising a GPL series at HSO next year. Some of the guys I have been racing with this year have expressed an interest in participating in a "100%" 1967 series so I'd thought I'd take care of it through HSO. Here again the server is the main issue. I am exploring options at the moment, so we'll see what gives.

Anyways, always nice to see you guys still have HSO at heart Let's do this !

F1 79          

F 5000          

HTCC        

TCL    

Salut à tous , un retour à rF1 me conviendrait car mon pc commence à dater et bien rF2 me pose problèmes quand il faut joindre un serveur avec du monde , en solo ça va mais courir en ligne ça rame . Je viens de remettre en route GPL et je redécouvre une vrai simu (qui ne pique pas trop les yeux en 60 fps) . Bref rFactor1 et Grand Prix Legend c'est tout bon pour moi . PS : Automobilista tourne bien aussi sur mon pc

J'approuve le choix de Greg

C'est un peu plus récent, mais le mod Cart 98 était/est vraiment top. Ainsi que la version Cart 88 pour rFactor.

Timo

Timo Vermeersch wrote:

C'est un peu plus récent, mais le mod Cart 98 était/est vraiment top. Ainsi que la version Cart 88 pour rFactor.

Timo

+1 CART 1998

Oui ces mods CART sont très bien, le 1994/95 aussi d'ailleurs.

Et la F1 1991 ? Au moins y'a pas de neutralisations au drapeau jaune ^^

Frank Verplanken wrote:

Et la F1 1991 ?

Un mod qui pour moi était un peu un GPL moderne... C'est dire

Frank Verplanken wrote:

Et la F1 1991 ? Au moins y'a pas de neutralisations au drapeau jaune ^^

+100000000000000000000000  ( oui je sais , malgré l'age suis toujours dans l'excès  )

Frank Verplanken wrote:

We had a discussion along those lines (back to rF1 for 2022) six months ago with Jukka, Paul et al. So we're on that same page on that Jan as I totally agree on the various points you make about rF2 .

But as Gui says it's an uphill struggle. Paul makes some great points too, but on the admin side I think it could be manageable if we're talking about something like two races per month or so, tops. Also whatever we might run we probably have already run in the past in one form or another so a lot of the admin work is already done (rules, pictures, forum posts, testing tracks, ...etc.)

Having gone back to GPL as a driver myself and seeing first hand how healthy the GPL community is considering how old the platform is, I am convinced we could gather enough Happy Few to make a cool rF1 series at HSO.

But on the other hand what was (is) great about rF1 regarding HSO type races (enough content in cars and tracks for 20 HSO seasons of historically accurate racing) could also be the problem. Because if we chose to do some rF1 stuff it will only be with one mod or two at most. And although there still are a lot of people on rF1, their taste in mods are very diverse so I'm not sure there are many historic mods that still have a strong fan base. TCL ? An F1 mod (1991 ? 1979 ? 1967 ?) ? F5000 ? Group C ? Something else ? Hard to tell, really.

But to make it happen we would first and foremost need to get a server, set it all up, ideally also re-up the site. That is a lot of work. Truly, this could work without the site. But the process of setting up a race server from scratch is not something I want to go through again. Like ever . So either we manage to rent a "ready to go" one from someone, or we find someone to set up a dedicated server we would rent from one of the big gaming server providers. Outside of that I don't see anything happening in 2022, really.

I am also working on maybe organising a GPL series at HSO next year. Some of the guys I have been racing with this year have expressed an interest in participating in a "100%" 1967 series so I'd thought I'd take care of it through HSO. Here again the server is the main issue. I am exploring options at the moment, so we'll see what gives.

Anyways, always nice to see you guys still have HSO at heart Let's do this !

GPL