There are only two things preventing me from buying Codemasters F1 2018, when it releases, and those two things are the letters 'V' and 'R' - having three excellent VR-capable racers already in hand, I am loath to part with $60 (presumed) for anything that won't bring anywhere nearly the same visceral excitement I get from the fully immersive alternatives. Until the F1 series gets VR-ified, I just can't bring myself to do it.
That having been said, I am a huge fan of Formula 1 racing. I have been watching it for decades. There are a lot of reasons, but one of them is that Formula 1 prides itself on being a dynamic racing series in both technological advancement and changes to any given year's list of tracks. It's ever evolving.
The French Grand Prix is this weekend, but I won't be able to do my almost-mandatory practice laps on any of my sims; the Codemasters F1 series is the only one I know of that keeps up with the annual changes in the rules,cars, and tracks, albeit with a fairly lengthy lag - it wouldn't have helped me this year anyway. There was no French Grand Prix last year, but even this year's is too early in the season to make it into the sim. It's at a track named Circuit Paul Ricard. I can't get that track for either iRacing or PC2, so I'm out of luck. I really do enjoy the races far better when I have experience on the track, so it's a bit of a downer.
All things being equal, I could just decide that the lesser immersion of playing flat would be worth the trade-off and I should go ahead and prepare for next year, but there are other constraints on my appetite for a non-VR title. Without VR, for example, I would have to retrieve my 48" racing monitor from the basement where it has been gathering dust since the day my Rift arrived; in addition to the far superior immersion factor, VR also benefits from having a far smaller footprint in my already crowded play room.
Still, it's nice to at least have a video.
