rFactor
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Publisher: Sniper Entertainment Genre(s): Sports / Racing Home Page: http://www.rfactor.net/
Visuals: Capable, But Not GroundbreakingUnder the hood, two components of the engine contrast quite heavily, namely the physics and graphics. The handling model, discussed above, is more than capable. Graphically, however, rFactor is lackluster in comparison to contemporary racers (arcade and simulation alike). Strangely, the game's art assets - vehicles, tracks and textures - don't live up to the capabilities of the gMotor 2.0 graphics engine. This same graphics engine (with some modifications) is used more effectively in GTR 2 and RACE '07. SimBin's games add weather (in the form of rain), more varied lighting and better special effects, and the production values in rFactor (with regards to vehicle modeling and track design) don't match the associated production values in the SimBin offerings. Finally, the detailed visible damage modeling in both GTR 2 and RACE '07 is leaps and bounds above the crude representation of damage in rFactor.
It may seem unfair to compare second-generation commercial products to a relative retail newcomer, but SinBin's releases are the closest competition to rFactor. Visual details which receive special attention in a commercial release still need work. The interface and menu system is amateur-level, and there's no proper aspect ratio adjustment for widescreen displays, which reduced the usability of the cockpit view (a field-of-view setting can be adjusted, but no value would give the desired results on a 16:10 display). And when viewing in-game replays, it's clear that drivers' arms aren't connected to the steering wheels, an omission that just looks silly. For what it's worth, ISI's game does offer an option to turn on soft shadows, which slightly blurs the edges of car shadows for a more natural look. Scales Well, But Not That WellGiven the rather average graphics package, it's unsurprising that rFactor runs well on older hardware. However, ISI's minimum requirements are a bit off the mark: don't attempt to play the game on a system matching the minimum hardware requirements listed on the box (a 1.4GHz processor with 512MB of RAM and a either a 128MB ATI Radeon 9200 or 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 4 4200). That hardware is a generation or two older than the geriatric hardware gathering dust in my closest, but I did give rFactor a spin on an AMD Athlon 64 (clocked at 1.5 GHz) with 512MB of RAM and a 128MB NVIDA GeForce FX5200. The results: not pretty, and hardly playable.
The good news is that it doesn't take much of an upgrade to bring visuals and performance up to reasonable levels: an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ or Intel Pentium 4 530 with 1GB of RAM, combined with either a 128MB ATI Radeon X800 or a 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT, give a greatly improved experience over ISI's minimum specs. In single-player time trials and test sessions with a YouGamers minimum system, I was able to bump the resolution to 1280x1024. With multiple cars in one race, however, the resolution was best left at 1024x768 at moderate visual settings.
 The jump in visuals between the publisher's and YouGamers' minimum specs is immediately noticeable
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