You can't imagine how many hours I spent on GP4 and GTR2, my goodness. Watching the AI battle was so incredible. If AC could reach that level, I might go back to racing.
I think AC's FFB has only one small flaw: the gravel it's practically glue... In theory the car tends to sink as soon as it loses speed, but as soon as you touch it it's an automatic handbrake 👀
RF2 has the worst UI ever, but it's a good sim
RF2 ui is so god awful that it completely ruins that sim for me. I don't know why but it often loses my FFB settings occasionally... without any reason.
GP4 was amazing. I had at least 1000 hours of playing with that one back in the day. Great AI. I just recently installed it back but uhh... it looks very outdated and the driving is not comparable to AC1. And there's that annoying pedal issue with Thrustmaster which always requires tweaking your FFB settings before switching to it.
But F1 2020 (by Codemasters) has absolutely SUPERIOR ai to any sim. It handles DRS, ERS, rain, tyre wear, qualifying (no idiotic outlap slow cars slowing you down), blue flags, dynamic weather, tyre rules, Q1->Q2-> Q3 QF, safety car and pit tactics perfecly, AI difficulty can be made impossible (at least for an average sim racer like me), driver skill realism (always the correct AI drivers getting/fighting for the poles and wins)... you name it. Looks great and has very good presentation.
It only has a bit too aggressive ai position defending and they make your overtaking unrealistically difficult and are a bit too eager to crash you. But other than that the AI is mind blowingly good and it doesn't get enough credit from the sim racers how good and complete F1 game actually is (or was... as it's no longer on Steam). 2023, 2024 and 2025 are crap in comparison. I don't understand how it is a "simcade" as 90% of the things are way better done than on the "real sims". I guess the only criteria of a "sim" is how good the FFB is, huh?
Sure... some modern F1 cars by RSS or VRC probably drive better and AC1 FFB is superior. We don't really know... as we have no idea how the real F1 car FFB feels with all that modern electronics. Maybe that "lifeless" FFB on F1 2020 is pretty close? But either way, AC is not capable to simulate modern F1 rules and it has way too many handicaps for me to even consider of creating or playing any post 2012 seasons. How is that even a "simulation" if it misses half of the modern F1 rules? We can't even have flying starts and creating a Indycar is impossible too.
I don't race anything but F1 most of the time. I only hotlap other cars on AC but I've done a few races on other sims too. LMU ai is pretty decent. AMS2 too. ACC ai is not horrible, either. But generally we don't have great ai's on any of the "real sims". EVO ai is an afterthought at the moment. It's ridiculously bad and of course it will improve a lot (hopefully).
Still... it's strange as the ai's haven't really improved much in 10 years. FFB has just gotten worse. So much emphasis is put into the graphics which don't really matter to me after certain quality was achieved with AC1 and RF2. That 3% extra eyecandy just creates performance issues to many people with a bit older PC's.
AC1 is still overwhelmingly the most popular sim on the daily Steam stats by a huge margin which proves that most of the sim racers play offline. LMU doesn't even have offline championship and hotlap modes... it's all about online stuff to challenge iRacing. Not acceptable for that price, imho.
If Kunos just updated AC1 issues it would be the only sim we ever need.
Sure in the early 80's you'll see Keke sliding on the rain in Monaco on several occasions. In the 70's probably even more. We also remember Schumi and Kimi occasionally sliding... and sometimes even modern F1 cars have occasional slides... but aLWAYS in very slow speeds. 
www.overtake.gg
thracing.de
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