How are we going to put your perspective into perspective if you claim "the last time I tried it, it sucked"? When was this? Things do change and since you'd rather not state when it was the last time you tried it I'm tend to believe it was a while ago. So stick to your guns but I won't put much weight on your words if you "stay the course"
Well not to those of you who would like to think that iRacing sucks and is not worth the money. I guess it's one way of reasoning to yourself that you should not invest in it. Call it the worse ever so you won't have to think you might be missing something.
I'm sure you can do without iRacing, there's plenty choice. For me personally they do put quality into to the product. The tracks are excellent as are the sounds. Tyre physics are improving and I can have a hoot in the RUF RWD monster.
Compared to AC, which isn't running nearly as smooth with my aging HD5850 in triplecreen having to drop anisotropic to measly 2x and everything else to low or off to get a steady 60fps, I can run iRacing 84fps solid with 16x aniso. Aniso usually does not tax the system that much but in AC it hits you hard. Hopefully my new 4Gb R9 270x will improve this somewhat. Apart from that I do like the more responsive cars in iRacing as in AC you sort of need to be really heavy footed to get the cars out of hand. I do feel that the tank slappers happen too often with iRacing but as they are constantly working on the title and improving it I do have faith in them.
iRacing isn't that expensive if you purchase in bulk, buy iRacing credits etc you will easily drop the expense in half. And you don't have to buy all the content to enjoy for what it is. And I don't think they can offer the quality for much less as there are not enough subscribers to do that. It's not selling like the GT series as it lacks a lot of "gameplay" which I do miss.
LFS is still excellent but it's falling behind on so many levels it's not even funny.
The fanboys would descend from the heavens, and try to come up with all kinds of reasons why I'm doing it wrong. They'd claim my wheel is setup incorrectly or that I'm driving it wrong or some other kind of nonsense. They're able to somehow convince themselves that iRacing has decent physics, is it a stretch to think that they wouldn't also fabricate some kind of rationale as to why my correct opinion is wrong.
To be fair, you could probably do the same thing in a 250hp FOX at Lime Rock with LFS physics, except the tires would really start to overheat and lose grip after half a lap.
No, just a general point that usually 16x aniso shouldn't be affecting perfomance as much as it does in AC. If I'd wanted I could lower the iRacing settings even more and get 124fps with reasonably good graphics. In comparison AC looks like utter crap with the lowest possible settings at 60fps. Of course AC is still in development and hopefully can be optimized further. iRacing just does it in a very efficient way, but you wouldn't know that since you like to think it's utter crap.
Yes the Star Mazda footage looks very strange. Some say this is because of the open diff and low gearing (mouse driven?). I haven't put many laps into the new build and I tend to drive more realistically with a wheel. Some members like it and say it's fun and some say its' a total fail.
So, when was the last time you tried it? Simple question really. Or is it just the Star Mazda that made you think your opinion is valid for the rest of the cars? But I guess your reasons are valid to you, I just don't share your views.
I think IR physics are good enough to have fun, even if they're too unforgiving over the limit. I just think the subscription payment model needs to go before I'll be playing it again, charging for content is totally fine.
To be honest, whenever people come with the subscription model, I get a seizure in my stomach. Now that you mentioned paying for content is fine, even more. The sub price is nothing compared to what you spend on the content and is reasonable, thinking they are maintenacing a system with tons of servers for hundreds of races everyday.
Which is also the main reason why there shouldn't be any subscription cost. I don't really feel like paying them 100 bucks in subscriptions just to hotlap alone (public racing is meh, private hosting costs even more money) so instead all they will get from me is $0.
Server maintenance costs in the scale of IR hosting is nothing. For it to become a factor, you'd need something like an MMO number of players to not cover them with the already very high content prices.
It is a clever business model even if it has kept the more casual sim-racers away from it. They obviously decided there weren't enough sim-racers in total to only take a small amount of money from a larger percentage of them.
You subscribe, you need more content, you buy more, you continue to subscribe because you want value for money from your content purchase, you need more content...etc etc
Signed up Dec 2009 and membership expires March 2015
Have spent a total of A$554.96 which includes all road content and very little of the oval content.
Therefore the Yearly average is A$110.99 or $9.25 per month
It should also be noted that I haven't participated in official racing much at all so have not received any participation credits which would reduce the spend a bit for active simmers.
The initial purchase of content is the biggest hit so for someone that buys it then discontinues with it after six months it is expensive no two ways about it, however if it remained an interest for a long period of time it becomes more reasonable.
I have had a good run at it now and feel I have had value for money. If I were just signing up for iRacing now with AC going multiplayer it wouldn't be the same equation though..
Except it's not profitable for them to have users that buy little content and stay for a long time. That's why the schedules are designed how they are. To get as many new people in the system "for cheap". Then they feel limited/restricted by the current content available. They buy stuff out that fit the schedules that they want to drive. Then they shortly realize that iRacing isn't the right fit for them, and then they abandon it.
THAT process is how iRacing makes money. Then, for the people who do stick around for longer than 1 season, they shuffle the schedules around to ensure that everyone eventually ends up needing to buy all the content (or sit out a week with their game effectively dormant.)
That's why they set introductory prices so low. To get more casual scrubs in the door, spending money, and then ignoring iRacing for something superior.
to be fair they aimed for something and got it, online racing without as much crashing and bad driving once you get out of the rookie license. their content is freaking great and everything else is minimal effort. they couldn't make all that content with their expensive and detailed processes if they didn't charge what they do. as stated the server costs are not that big for sure.
it's totally an opinion thing, but i can't stand to listen to iRacing for long. you can hear the lack of engine inertia modelling on every shift. that and the way other people's cars move relative to yours give the iRacing world a feel like paper cutouts with no weight.
certain cars in LFS can give you a headache from a monotonous drone, but the whole sound environment is organic. LFS just has more suspension of disbelief for me.
we can't really say one is better than they other. LFS aims for great physics. iracing sort of mentions physics and they're not that bad really depending on what you're looking for, but they aren't out there saying they aimed for physics as top priority and they have the best physics and their physics physics physics. we are the ones making that battle.
LFS almost overdoes the "pushing to the limit" thing. you're always on the limit without much effort. if you want you can set up your car to be more dangerous and fast, then you have to have more skill but you get extra tenths. kind of like tightrope walking.
in iracing you're guaranteed a nice stream of content. v8s at bathhurst wasn't there when they launched. and why should it stop now?
if you want the hardest challenge and you want to find your inner racer, LFS is for you. if you want to have "fun", then maybe iracing is better.
I always loved those kind of discussion. Not to be hard for anyone, but at the end of the day that's all down to personal opinion of everyone having an idea of how a racing car should feel. At the end of the day, do all bear in mind that a driver is not only using his eyes, ears and hand to feel a car. Most of his feeling is down to what he feels with his ass, especially car's yaw and ofc all the transient effect that occurs on brake attack, brake release, turn-in,...
I would actually be quite interested to know how the vehicle model are done in several games, because what I see when looking at some telemetry data is actually quite far from what happens in reality...(not even talking about tyre modelling because this one, obviously even Pirelli don't really know what they are doing).
Remember also that LFS and all the video games are made for public entertainment, so the aim is that everyone can control the car, there is a reason why I'm engineer and not racing driver (unfortunately that's not only money)...
I agree it is very much personal opinion along with how much you are willing to commit to a particular sim in time behind the wheel and in getting your hardware configured into that sweet spot where it feels just right.
I have had the same feeling of being connected to the road in LFS, iRacing and AC, so that satisfaction can be achieved from any of these simms with time, effort and knowledge gained.
After several years away from LFS on returning for a few short test sessions I feel like LFS is ice racing (the very criticism many LFSers have of iRacing), but I know if I put the time into retuning my hardware setup and putting in seat time to retune my brain to LFS dynamics I would feel just as connected to the road again in LFS as I used too.
The same is true of iRacing after months away from it I find it difficult if not intimidating to feel the grip dynamics of the cars and struggle for the first session or two before regaining the feel I am accustomed to.
The difference with AC and what excites me most about it is after the initial issues of getting the hardware and software configured just right (which did take more effort than most simms) it doesn't need the same seat time to feel connected to the road (no ice feeling) it feels connected immediately. In both LFS and iRacing I am constantly struggling to feel grip initially until I regain a comfort level with the sim whereas with AC I don't have that struggle.
At the end of the day each of the sims has some very strong points that make them unique and I have really enjoyed my time in all of them. I don't think the ultimate decision on where you end up has as much to do with the physics (however physics has always been important to me) as it has to do with the interface or format of racing that each provides.
My wish though has always been to have a sim that is very accessible in its format of online racing (LFS is the best at this imo) and doesn't feel like ice to those that try it for the first time or return to it infrequently (i.e. I feel comfortable recommending it to real life race car drivers) thus far I haven't found such a sim although iRacing has got close and AC is very promising.
I think Assetto Corsa uses force feedback effects to telegraph tire behavior. I've locked up the tires on a number of cars, and I have never experienced the severity of wheel shaking that Assetto Corsa has.
At the end of the day, whether or not Scawen completes his tire model, the LFS team is too small to do what other teams can do. At least, they can't do the same things in the same amount of time. Fortunately, there are things that LFS can do that other products will never be able to do (unless manufacturers stop caring about how their products are presented in games).
Back on topic... well, I think my point was that the tire model is largely irrelevant if the rest of the product is not up to contemporary standards.
people may believe one or the other is realistic because they can drive good/fast laptimes, i dont think i could drive as well in real life on a track than i have done in lfs or iracing
