Most Played Racing Games On Steam In April 2024

mcroshaw said:

It's not better FFB, the FFB has always been good. It's the physics tweaks that are making it better as they gain a finer understanding of the madness engine. The latest versions of the stock cars and the Formula Ultimate Gen2 showcase what's coming, and it's very good. But then I've liked the physics since 1.5 tbh, even if it sometimes feels too forgiving. I always have fun in AMS2, which I think is something sim racers think is some sort of negative point. It's a great balance of a serious sim that is fun to drive.

That's just my opinion anyway. And tbh I still play iRacing even though it drives me up the wall as I feel it's a great learning tool. But when I want to leave the rig with a smile rather than contemplating throwing the wheel out of the window, I choose AMS2.

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How long will it takes to understand the madness engine? How often did they mention this "reason" and a "revolutionary update" as they now found out how it works...?

It is like AMS2 became the PC2 (more or less) professionalizied modding team and ongoing updates which are never finished destroy the playability TBH. Due to 5 years learning the madness engine? What a joke.

Somehow it is like Assetto Corsas Modding Community with paywall ;-)

Berghe said:

How long will it takes to understand the madness engine? How often did they mention this "reason" and a "revolutionary update" as they now found out how it works...?

It is like AMS2 became the PC2 (more or less) professionalizied modding team and ongoing updates which are never finished destroy the playability TBH. Due to 5 years learning the madness engine? What a joke.

Somehow it is like Assetto Corsas Modding Community with paywall ;-)

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5 years on Madness is not much compared to the 13 years they spent on gMotor2, 10 if you only count their time as Reiza and not their prior time as independent modders.

Why are people defending AMS 2? After what is nearly five years of development is still the same physics and handling model which is flawed right to the core, what Reiza need to do is developing a brand new sim and drop the Madness Engine and use something like AMS 1 where is fun to drive and easier to mod too.
It's ridiculuous how oblivious or forgetful some people are to not realise how much of great sim AMS 1 was and if it did have the same mod support as much as AC did it would still be popluar to this day.

JoshCaminski said:

Why are people defending AMS 2? After what is nearly five years of development is still the same physics and handling model which is flawed right to the core, what Reiza need to do is developing a brand new sim and drop the Madness Engine and use something like AMS 1 where is fun to drive and easier to mod too.
It's ridiculuous how oblivious or forgetful some people are to not realise how much of great sim AMS 1 was and if it did have the same mod support as much as AC did it would still be popluar to this day.

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Well said... AMS1 was gold and is far more advanced in the physics on many fronts...

They've worked hard at garnering the small team/small business sympathy votes over the years... Something that every dev team does now... Plus years as sim racings physics darlings has a lot of people just living with the "it's more realistic if it's easier" marketing... However...

At this point it's like defending Metallica's choice to make St Anger the way they did...

For anyone not familiar with St Anger or Metallica, it was a rushed money grab on what was popular at the time where what made Metallica famous, solos and many riffs was replaced by simple repetitive riffs, no guitar solos and terrible production values, the famous St Anger snare sound...

Much like AMS1 vs AMS2 where they went for eye candy over physics and rushed the production of the DLC they put out along the way...

Another key part of the comparison is that both lost foundation members of what made them great... Cliff Burton was lost well before St Anger, and Reiza lost their tyre guru to the AMS1 modding community...

Unfortunately it's most likely Reiza will be "working" on AMS3 with Ian Bells next mess of an engine... Or should I say "cleaning up"...

JoshCaminski said:

Why are people defending AMS 2?

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Why is anyone defending any title? Most probably because they enjoy it.
There is a lot to enjoy using AMS 2, as is demonstrated every month in this most played racing game on steam thread. Not the what SIM has the best (your favorite) feature thread.
What you enjoy, what I enjoy, what anyone enjoy will vary wildly. Lots of factors are at play, many priorities.
Fact is, more people enjoy AMS 2, every month on Steam, than AMS 1 or most other "older" titles.
Fact is, some people still enjoy those older titles, for all kind of reasons.

What would be refreshing and interesting, to me, would be if those in the second group, like @M D Gourley did about BeamNG earlier in the thread, explain what they enjoy in the titles they like.
You do not get AMS 2, we understand that, we don't care, let us know about what you like, it might be contagious, you never know and at least like @M D Gourley did, it is going to be entertaining to read, even if we have very little interest in what he seems to get a kick out of.

Now here is a reverse challenge: if AMS1 is so good, its physics so golden, its FFB so unmatched, its mods so perfect...why it's not being played? Why it has always been less popular than what AMS2 is, which is regarded as a failure?

To me, AMS1 is the sim everybody liked but nobody played, and the usual argument against is "but I raced it at X league with a full grid and it was so good!"...which does nothing to dispel these claims.

And this comes from somebody who loved AMS1.

pai said:

Now here is a reverse challenge: if AMS1 is so good, its physics so golden, its FFB so unmatched, its mods so perfect...why it's not being played? Why it has always been less popular than what AMS2 is, which is regarded as a failure?

To me, AMS1 is the sim everybody liked but nobody played, and the usual argument against is "but I raced it at X league with a full grid and it was so good!"...which does nothing to dispel these claims.

And this comes from somebody who loved AMS1.

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How are you quantifying failure?

Obviously some people don't like AMS 2 but it must make sense from Reiza's point of view to carry on supporting it.

I'm sure they would have rather had more people praising it but it seems to have a decent following and we don't hear the same financial horror stories from Reiza that we get from some other sim racing companies

Wreckoning said:

How are you quantifying failure?

Obviously some people don't like AMS 2 but it must make sense from Reiza's point of view to carry on supporting it.

I'm sure they would have rather had more people praising it but it seems to have a decent following and we don't hear the same financial horror stories from Reiza that we get from some other sim racing companies

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@pai is not the one regarding it as a failure, please read his post...

pz666 said:

Well said... AMS1 was gold and is far more advanced in the physics on many fronts...

They've worked hard at garnering the small team/small business sympathy votes over the years... Something that every dev team does now... Plus years as sim racings physics darlings has a lot of people just living with the "it's more realistic if it's easier" marketing... However...

At this point it's like defending Metallica's choice to make St Anger the way they did...

For anyone not familiar with St Anger or Metallica, it was a rushed money grab on what was popular at the time where what made Metallica famous, solos and many riffs was replaced by simple repetitive riffs, no guitar solos and terrible production values, the famous St Anger snare sound...

Much like AMS1 vs AMS2 where they went for eye candy over physics and rushed the production of the DLC they put out along the way...

Another key part of the comparison is that both lost foundation members of what made them great... Cliff Burton was lost well before St Anger, and Reiza lost their tyre guru to the AMS1 modding community...

Unfortunately it's most likely Reiza will be "working" on AMS3 with Ian Bells next mess of an engine... Or should I say "cleaning up"...

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Yes "St Awful" was a terrible album!!

Luciano Santos Filho said:

@pai is not the one regarding it as a failure, please read his post...

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"Why it has always been less popular than what AMS2 is, which is regarded as a failure?"

My initial reading of the punctuation threw me off here

I applied the question mark after "less than what AMS2 is" and read the second bit after the comma as a statement , apologies.

pai said:

Now here is a reverse challenge: if AMS1 is so good, its physics so golden, its FFB so unmatched, its mods so perfect...why it's not being played? Why it has always been less popular than what AMS2 is, which is regarded as a failure?

To me, AMS1 is the sim everybody liked but nobody played, and the usual argument against is "but I raced it at X league with a full grid and it was so good!"...which does nothing to dispel these claims.

And this comes from somebody who loved AMS1.

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To me it seems AMS was just to late of a release. Dropped in 2016 with DX9 graphics. ACC was released just 2 years later. It seems AMS may be suffering from... just being an reskinned "X" simulator (not that I feel this way). I think for their future they should just build there own stand alone physics engine and then they can find the graphics engine that suits their needs. This seems to be the main issue with the older good sims. The physics is tied to the graphics engine and its near impossible to unravel and plug into an updated game engine. I think this is why kunos did the ACC thing. Narrow focus car wise. They were able to build a physics engine that now can migrate to new game engines as the industry moves fwd.

If they put half the effort in AMS1 as mentioned in AMS2 it would be twice as good I think.

But while AMS1 is a finished product with a nice modding community AMS2 is work in progress which is still dependend on modding regarding skins to be joyful. And it always feels like driving through a highway construction site and you never know where the story ends... ;-)

DB_1973 said:

To me it seems AMS was just to late of a release. Dropped in 2016 with DX9 graphics. ACC was released just 2 years later. It seems AMS may be suffering from... just being an reskinned "X" simulator (not that I feel this way). I think for their future they should just build there own stand alone physics engine and then they can find the graphics engine that suits their needs. This seems to be the main issue with the older good sims. The physics is tied to the graphics engine and its near impossible to unravel and plug into an updated game engine. I think this is why kunos did the ACC thing. Narrow focus car wise. They were able to build a physics engine that now can migrate to new game engines as the industry moves fwd.

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Thank you for your reply. This is a plausible explanation, and one I do agree with. Personally, my reasons why I don't play AMS1 anymore is VR support first and foremost, I was never able to make it run reliably with CrewChief plugin, plus last time I tried, I had perpetual CTDs, probably related with my OS install (I moved to Win11). While I could double down my efforts to make it work, I don't see the need: even with its flaws, AMS2 works well for what I want to drive on a simracing title.

It just goes to show how hypocritical simracers can be. The supposedly hardcore crowd votes with their activity when AMS2 numbers drop because nothing matters more than physics and FFB, with things like graphics and current hardware support not mattering because said users are not trendy...but same arguments don't apply when rF2 activity drops, or AMS1 users are nowhere to be found.

Berghe said:

AC is the King of Sim. It is a perfect example for what´s it all about. (and I really do not need to drive in rain - even if it is possible)

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Its not if you are a single player looking for good AI and a ready made package.

JoshCaminski said:

Why are people defending AMS 2? After what is nearly five years of development is still the same physics and handling model which is flawed right to the core, what Reiza need to do is developing a brand new sim and drop the Madness Engine and use something like AMS 1 where is fun to drive and easier to mod too.
It's ridiculuous how oblivious or forgetful some people are to not realise how much of great sim AMS 1 was and if it did have the same mod support as much as AC did it would still be popluar to this day.

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it’s really fun to drive, handles well, has a very easy to use interface, loads of cars and tracks and runs and looks beautiful in both vr and 2d. It’s a great title am2 snd is getting better and better.

'Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder, that 'old saying' stands true for most things in life and quite possibly for Racing Simulators as well. (only personal opinion).

While there is no perfect Sim, (old saying above applies) there are always aspects I personally enjoy in each and every Sim I still fire up when wanting something different.

When firing up these not so perfect Sims I forget all the negatives and gravitate to all aspects of that Sim that brings a smile to my face and while that may seem like being an Ostrich burying it's head in the Sand, don't want to see it, this leaves me ending the season with pleasant thoughts...again personal opinion.

I could complain, mention problems that I see and I have in the past, even showing screenshots of this problem years ago....this problem still exists today as of this post....so my take on that is c’est la vie.

This is not to say that other more obvious and important issues are generally fixed within most Sims.

I will still enjoy all the Sims I have installed or part there of...lol...as this brings great enjoyment.

...just my 2 cents

P.S Would not be right to leave without adding a screenshot or two

Trying out a Mod for the 'Moonhawk' car which is a long standing core BeamNG vehicle.
This adds a 'Sedan' and 'Wagon' variant from RyanCookie

pai said:

but same arguments don't apply when rF2 activity drops, or AMS1 users are nowhere to be found.

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The same argument applies from me... Too buggy...

It's one of the major reasons the physics of those titles don't get the love they deserve anymore... It's easier to load up AC, iRacing or ACC where there are still competition bugs (just not as punch you in face about it) but getting on track isn't as painful for many...

rF2 has it's bugs, AMS1 as well... However they are far more PC set up related than the competition bugs in the Madness, which apply to everyone in an online situation with green lights and disconnects...

The difference is in the driving for me, as shown this time last year I can jump through some crazy bugs if I enjoy the driving... And as my comments from this time last year on RD show I still called a spade a spade... It's the bugs that keep AMS2 and rF2 lower than they should be given the content...

DB_1973 said:

To me it seems AMS was just to late of a release. Dropped in 2016 with DX9 graphics. ACC was released just 2 years later. It seems AMS may be suffering from... just being an reskinned "X" simulator (not that I feel this way). I think for their future they should just build there own stand alone physics engine and then they can find the graphics engine that suits their needs. This seems to be the main issue with the older good sims. The physics is tied to the graphics engine and its near impossible to unravel and plug into an updated game engine. I think this is why kunos did the ACC thing. Narrow focus car wise. They were able to build a physics engine that now can migrate to new game engines as the industry moves fwd.

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I completely agree on AMS1 and where the industry should move forward...

Add in the eye candy only titles like Forza, GT and pCARS and the marketing that was done on them... And you get the results that shaped AMS1s time as a physics darling that was left on the sidelines by many gamers... Raceroom had the best tyre update of 2023 and still sits low on the player charts for similar reasons...

It's also one of the reasons I'm positive about the future of Rennsport even though I've yet to be convinced of the Unreal engine as a sim racing engine, they are looking to do what SMS didn't and properly merge the ISI physics code into a different graphics engine...

Every sim racing developer should be doing something similar as most, like Reiza, are using some form of the ISI physics code, even if there's a lot of Shift 2 code in the Madness still...

Berghe said:

If they put half the effort in AMS1 as mentioned in AMS2 it would be twice as good I think.

But while AMS1 is a finished product with a nice modding community AMS2 is work in progress which is still dependend on modding regarding skins to be joyful. And it always feels like driving through a highway construction site and you never know where the story ends... ;-)

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Another opinion I'm completely onboard with...

Instead of having to figure out why things get corrupted in the MyDocs folder or why their MP craps out so often or why the AI follows each other rather than go for overtakes and is slower with some engine types than they should be (which causes massive differences between player and AI lap times)... They could of been upgrading the AMS1 experience with their tyre guru still actively working in house on the tyres... As S397 have shown with LMU it's possible to make things look better on the ISI engine and that's something that Reiza have talent in...

I'm still of the opinion that Reiza would of been far better pouring their energy into the ISI motor (AMS1 or rF2) than any other engine... They knew what they were doing, they had the skills to improve it and built themselves a great reputation out of it... Following Ian Bell's lead of marketing physics over producing great physics hasn't led to a great end result... AMS1 was never thrown in the same bin as Forza or pCARS as happens constantly with AMS2 even when it wasn't as easy to drive as it is now...

To me it's a little more than an arcade racer, as it has some decent simulation aspects for the player side physics... It's a casual motorsports title where you shouldn't get too serious about it, otherwise the bugs will make you go crazy about the inconsisencies of the maths involved... Online or offline... It sometimes takes more suspended belief than I can mustre, but you have to treat it like a WWE event where you know it's not realistic but it's fun anyway...

Disney motorstorm beating le mans ultimate

Just found this video this morning, thought I would share as this short video says it all to understand why is AC so much more popular than almost anything else, sometime by a factor of 10 or more, and still grows and grows in popularity.

What! Forza gained 4.8 players?!?

pz666 said:

... It's the bugs that keep AMS2 and rF2 lower than they should be given the content...

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It's a good thing to remark this, and I agree. Bugs can be worked around though, but only if you really like the endgame to be found behind. And perhaps this is where the ugly truth surfaces: the deep end of simulation is something that very few people care about, and most of those who say that care, don't. Easy access trumps metagame, even in simracing communities.