Rally sims: Richard Burns Rally, EA WRC, and DiRT Rally 2.0

For stage rally, three sims set the standard, and they sort cleanly by what you value. Richard Burns Rally (RBR) wins on physics and feel. EA Sports WRC wins on current content and stage variety. DiRT Rally 2.0 is the polished, approachable middle ground with the best VR of the three. Rally is a different skill from circuit racing — you never see the corner until the co-driver calls it — so pick by the experience you want, not by a single “best.”

Richard Burns Rally — the physics standard

RBR shipped in 2004 and the community still calls it the king. The base game is abandonware; the way you install it now is the free RallySimFans installer, which pulls down the game plus hundreds of community-made stages, the NGP physics model, VR support via the OpenRBRVR plugin, and fully custom pacenotes. What used to be a notorious all-weekend setup is now one launcher.

The draw is the driving. RBR models surface, weight transfer, and the way an AWD car loads up under throttle better than anything else, and it is the only rally title that correctly handles the handbrake on AWD cars built before the center-diff era — a detail the hardware/handbrakes page calls out for the same reason. Drivers with real loose-surface experience repeatedly say it is the first rally game where the car reacts the way they expect.

The honest caveat is the barrier to entry. Out of the box the cars can feel unrotatable until you match your wheel’s rotation to the in-game setting and start in an AWD car like the Ford Fiesta Rally3 rather than a tail-happy RWD or FWD. Damage is unforgiving — you nurse the car or you DNF. Several drivers who never gelled with it say the same thing: it only meets expectations after tweaking, and the 2000s-era textures break immersion. If you want realism without resurrecting a 20-year-old engine, that is the trade RBR asks you to make.

EA Sports WRC — current cars and stages

EA Sports WRC, built by Codemasters and released in late 2023, holds the official FIA World Rally Championship license: the modern Rally1 hybrids, Rally2, and the historic classes, on longer and more varied stages than DiRT 2.0. Its tarmac handling is the best of the modern pair — a recurring complaint is that DiRT 2.0 tarmac feels off where WRC feels enjoyable.

Two things to know before buying. First, Codemasters ended development after the 2024 content, so WRC will not get new updates, and per VGC the license has returned to Nacon, which holds the rights for 2027 through 2032 and plans a fresh reboot. The game stays playable; it just stops growing. Second, its VR is poorly optimized — if you race in VR, that alone pushes the decision toward DiRT 2.0. The community verdict is split and unusually honest: some find WRC “sterile” next to DiRT, others enjoy it fine and feel it gets unfairly piled on online.

DiRT Rally 2.0 — the approachable middle ground

DiRT Rally 2.0, also a Codemasters title, is the easiest of the three to just load and drive, with FFB and presentation that hold up well years on. It is the only one of the three that includes FIA World Rallycross — eight licensed circuits and Supercars — and its VR works properly, which is why it stays many people’s pick for headset rally.

The trade-offs are content age (no DLC since 2020) and that some find the tarmac stages less convincing than WRC’s. A common path is to buy whichever is cheaper, play it for a while, and add the other later if you want more stages and cars — they overlap less than you’d expect.

What about Assetto Corsa Rally?

The newest entry, Assetto Corsa Rally, hit Steam Early Access on November 13, 2025. It is built by Supernova Games Studios (Kunos is technical partner only) on a customized Unreal Engine 5, with laser-scanned stages. Launch content is small — around 10 cars and four stages across France and Wales — and the move to UE5 means no VR, which disappointed the RBR-in-VR crowd. Early reviews are largely positive and it is the title most likely to displace the current three. Treat it as one to watch through 2026, not yet the one to buy if you want a full stage library today.

The gear rally actually needs

Rally hardware differs from circuit racing in two specific ways.

A round wheel, not a formula rim. Rally and rallycross make you cross your hands and catch slides, so a round 300mm+ rim with full lock travel suits it far better than an open-bottom formula wheel. You can drive everything on a round wheel; you cannot easily catch a rally slide on a formula one. See hardware/h-pattern-vs-sequential for the rim and shifter discussion — older rally cars model an H-pattern box, modern ones a sequential.

A handbrake is optional, not mandatory. This is the single most common rally-gear question, and the consensus is consistent: you can be perfectly quick with left-foot braking and weight transfer alone, and a handbrake mainly adds rotation into tight hairpins. A spring/angle unit is fine for casual rallying; a load cell is nicer but not transformative. The full breakdown is on hardware/handbrakes.

Pacenotes are the other adjustment. In rally you commit to corners you cannot see, trusting the co-driver’s call. RBR lets you write completely custom pacenotes; DiRT and WRC use fixed ones, which some drivers find don’t always match how they’d phrase a corner.

How rally fits the rest of the sim world

Rally is its own discipline. None of the big circuit sims do stage rally — as the sims/ams2 page notes, Automobilista 2 has hillclimb and rallycross-style content but is not a rally sim, and the sims/overview comparison covers the circuit titles. If you are completely new to the genre, the sims/best-sim-for-beginners page is the better starting point; rally rewards car control you build elsewhere first. The simplest on-ramp is DiRT Rally 2.0 on a sale, with a round wheel and no handbrake, and you add RBR for the physics once the discipline clicks.