This time I want to talk about "The Ring". Now depending on your preferences, that might be a mediocre horror flick series (slightly better in it's japanese original), or the place where a great Xbox-FPS, yet mostly mediocre PC shooter is set.
But for those of you who have at least virtual gas guzzling through your veins, it's the infamous Nürburgring Nordschleife, aka the Green Hell. This interesting and unique curcuit kindled my intrest while I played Gran Turismo 4, and pretty soon became the only track that I could get enjoyment out of. Soon after, I discovered Ben Lovejoy's site on the Ring and I was completely drawn into that 20 odd kilometers of asphalt in the presumably lovely Eifel.
Now as I can't afford a trip to the Ring, let alone a car that is worthy driving on it (and most likely to be repaired after that), I try to get my Nordschleife-Fix virtually. Now, already hinting that my funds are quite limited, I have two choices, using my PC and my old, trustworthy, fat Playstation 2. I heard that there's the Ring in the Forza and Project Gotham Racing series, but as I don't own an XBox or Xbox 360 and an adequate TV set, that will have to be postponed until I either come to money miraculously, or someone will more miraculously donate one of them to me.
So, with what I got, I have surprisingly much to chose from. The PS2 offers the Ring on GT4 and Enthusia, while on the PC, I can go for a spin with either GTR Evolution or rFactor (which offers 4 different versions to download.)
A while ago, I made a quick video comparison using the same car in both Enthusia and GT4, to be found on youtube. Please excuse the crappy voice over. It was tediously enough to get it audible that I won't do something similar soon. But I digress. A summary of the video: while I prefer driving Enthusia for it's better physics (a shame that it was such a flop), I like the Nordschleife better in GT4. Which is annoying, because no matter what I play, I crave the other for it's merits.
So let's go to the PC. As already mentioned, I used GTR Evolution and rFactor. For the latter, I solely used The Ring 2007 v 2.2a, as that one seems to be the best version of the Ring.
Concerning details, no matter what game, they are ahead of the PS2 Rings, allthough both GTR and rFactor, sharing basically the same engine, lack in the track lightning department, making the Nordschleife look quite sterile. They have some advantages though. GTR has full dynamic weather, allowing any track condition from bone dry to monsoon rain and also features changing weather during a long race. The rFactor track comes in four flavours (summer, fall, winter and wet) and allows night racing with realistic change of daytime and light. To be honest though, I did not ever finish a lap in both rain and night, making a combination of those two both awesome and aweful.
Now, as I didn't use comparable cars this time, it saved me from doing another split screen comparison. In rFactor I used Niels Corvette C6 with Real Feel, with is pretty much the only way I can get to grips with rFactors physics.
To sum things up: I like GTRs driving better, and the Ring feels more polished. The Ring in rFactor feels more raw and brutal and is a lot less forgiving, even with Niels changes to the grip-level and bumpyness, so I imagine it to be the more realistic simulation of the sensation. Again, I can't really give a definite answer on which Ring is the best, until I actually go there and take a car around it myself.
So conclusively I can just say that whatever you chose to get your Ring-fix, it will do, as there is no version that's outstanding in all aspects, at least from the four I tried. If you want to take a look for yourself without having to buy, install and play four games, you can see a lap of each game both from the cockpit and a TV-cam replay on my Youtube channel.
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