RENNSPORT

Subba Spiel

I've a new 5070Ti laptop. It runs my sims at fast smooth framerates. I value visual fidelity, less artifacts, cleaner image and consistent high driving/replay framerates. When you see these things all combined - you get more real immersion. I love watching replays. TLDR: I can't recommend Rennsport. I own iRacing, RRE, AC, ACC, LMU, AC EVO, AMS2, PCars 2 and PMR. Rennsport comes last place. It cannot visually match and perform as well as PC2. What's worse is, I'm using Rennsport like my others, so it's a single car hotlapping tool. The performance is crap. You'll see positive comments on Steam, but if you vlaue smooth driving, this fails. Rennsport runs up to 188 FPS, that's a touch above my screen refresh rate. So why is this not perfect? No matter what you do, Rennsport's Game Engine/gfx performs horrid. How about running way below 188FPS then? Say a locked 100FPS? That'll help? No! It judders, stutters/drops frames massively. Regardless of settings, the low spikes are visibly off the charts. Hence this review. Plus, this doesn't happen in taxing places and makes no sense. That's how broken it is. Monza's 1st corner at Monza is judder fest. Yes - one car on track! It behaves worse than some sims with rain and 20 AI cars! People in negative Steam reviews are telling you, this game runs worse now than it did for them in free beta play sessions 2 years ago. You should believe them. Rennsport's another new sim that's not worth owning. I only paid £16, but if it was free to play it'd still be junk. Racing titles look/behave more realistically when they run at high frame rates - but they NEED fluid framerates. This is its biggest failing, amongst others. This will sit on my SSD unused. The tracks are ok, but still despite new lighting changes made 2-3 months ago, it doesn't look well. Don't think DLSS will save you either. I dislike using it, but I tested it. There's some deep mess here, the DEVS can't fix. People have said - it's now in the worse state it's ever been in. If you want to see how bad it is, then buy it and refund within 4 hours. Then you can deal with the pain and forget about it. I doubt Rennsport will exist in 1-2 years. The devs made lighting changes, and to be fair - they were kind of needed. BUT, the stuttering bottlenecks in Rennsport are far worse issues. Lighting/shading rebalancing could wait. No other title (even Unreal Engine) is as disgusting as this to look at and stutters as massively. It's not a tiny issue. I can run ACC on way higher settings with AI, and it runs/looks/performs smooth. Even at 165Hz locked. LMU too, even iRacing with rain runs better and smoother. PCars2 looks real at the side of this. No Rennsport settings help. 180FPS is a jerky mess, 90FPS is the same. It looks mediocre/dated, and the worse running sim I've bought in the last 20 years. Pad control is ok. Audio nothing special. Menu's not fantastic either. It doesn't shine anywhere. I spent 3 hours hotlapping, to set the 13th fastest Goodwood Hill Climb stage time, but it's not enjoyable enough to boot up unless changes happen. If they ever do. This has been a platform for almost 4 years. If the DEV had the talent to cure it, they'd have done it already? Content can't save this sinking ship, it runs too badly. If none of this bothers you - you can buy it via Steam and refund within 4 hours. Even my fastest time I set in the time trial mode wasn't uploaded. Despite me going back into the menu and seeing the time displayed on my screen. It used a slower time. Sure that's no major issue for me. Though it might be for someone who spent 4 hours perfecting a lap and setup. I just used the stock settings. This is another issue, people mention it online - regarding it not uploading fastest times. I'll update this review IF-THE-DEV ever gets to the heart of why this game stutters so badly. It must be dropping to like 15fps in the low spikes, on a laptop that costs £1800 new today. Not good! Yes, static screen shots all look fine - but when you see this in motion, you see the cracks. TBH YouTube video's already paint a deeply problematic picture of Rennsport. This title, actually looks to me like a bad port from console! And one from the last generation at that. Stuttering mess in replays too, so sad. We've enough broken racing sims. Stick with the ones you have. Some might be still W.I.P titles, but they far outperform/outshine Rennsport. You've been honestly warned. The devs are committed to slow patch releases, but many will tell you - that sadly the fixes offer little meaningful quality of life improvements. I can see first hand why that's the case. I have the newest/best version of Rennsport for PC - it's still bottom of the pile. In 2-3 years, this small developer (their words not mine) might be able to look and find bugs relating to performance - I'm uncertain as I said earlier. You need to buy based on what it offers today, not marketing mission statements. I think PMR is seriously flawed, but even that - back to back is overall a better PC product. Why is PC racing so broken in the past 2 years for heavens sake. If you're in dire need to part with the £15.99 Steam Key, give it to a cat protection shelter instead. You'll get more enjoyment from knowing you did that, compared to buying and hating this.