The online racing simulator
iRacing
(13603 posts, closed, started )
hehe! I just figure "I did it myself because I'm leet!" = ego, but "The leet sim I wrote did it!" = revenue

I hope iRacing really is all it's cracked up to be. There's no reason why the sim itself can't be. I do get the impression that, like LFS, they didn't follow the FITYMI philosophy that SimBin and ISI have done. I worry that they're overselling the product, and writing cheques their sim may not be able to cash, but we can't know it until we see it for ourselves. I want them to succeed, but the value for money aspect is my biggest concern, and seeing those nice big 42" screens etc doesn't dispel that either.
Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :Indeed, and the point wasn't learning the track, or what caliber of competition had also run the same combo over those years. The point is developing driving ability and skill - which since he's not a real life competitor should be zilch according to many opinions here. Whether it made him a driving god or just "better than he should be given his experience level" is debatable; the fact that it made him better is not and that's the point.

Obviously he had the ultimate track walk when they scanned the track in and was able to dissect it to bits in a way that you won't just driving it in RL or in a sim. I don't think we can exactly assume this is unbiased though, obviously he has a rather large interest in saying the sim helped him and did he do any testing, track days, racing schools (all of which Lime Rock offers and pretty extensive school/testing is required before entering Skip Barber as a novice) before hand?

Added to that some people are very very fast out of the box. There's was a story about somebody in Motorsport a while ago who didn't do karting (a driver who had potential but never really got anywhere whose name I can't remember) beating the lap record set by professional instructors by 2 seconds on his first day of getting in a racing car. Racing sims may help in some areas or they may even be a hindrance but there's no way of telling how good someone naturally is
edit: @Sam, balls, I thought I could get away with not quoting

Yeah I want it to be great for sure, but I have no idea what to really expect. I do know a few things behind the scenes that make me excited about the end result, and I think it's tunnel vision to think that just because nKPro failed or other things have failed mean anything. First of all, none of those failures had previously written two of the best sims ever made. Whilst I may be naive expecting a great product, it's equally naive to think that Kaemmer is not capable of blowing us all away. And what's the deal with 42" screens? I don't get worried when I see Scawen's 3 20" CRTs! (IIRC), besides, most of that is all write off / capital expense anyway. I'm sure they are doing much more expensive and important things
Quote from ajp71 :Obviously he had the ultimate track walk when they scanned the track in and was able to dissect it to bits in a way that you won't just driving it in RL or in a sim. I don't think we can exactly assume this is unbiased though, obviously he has a rather large interest in saying the sim helped him and did he do any testing, track days, racing schools (all of which Lime Rock offers and pretty extensive school/testing is required before entering Skip Barber as a novice) before hand?

Added to that some people are very very fast out of the box. There's was a story about somebody in Motorsport a while ago who didn't do karting (a driver who had potential but never really got anywhere whose name I can't remember) beating the lap record set by professional instructors by 2 seconds on his first day of getting in a racing car. Racing sims may help in some areas or they may even be a hindrance but there's no way of telling how good someone naturally is

Did you read the snippet? There was no scan back before N2003 was even made

And yes, as I said in the first place - maybe he's just a natural. But someone with that kind of talent is rare, and perhaps he also just happened to be a sim developer / math guru, perhaps he's just the best at everything in the world. (no he's not).
Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :Did you read the snippet? There was no scan back before N2003 was even made

And yes, as I said in the first place - maybe he's just a natural. But someone with that kind of talent is rare, and perhaps he also just happened to be a sim developer / math guru, perhaps he's just the best at everything in the world.

Well having read the snippet it says nothing about racing that car or track in N2003. Whether a sim can help develop real racing skills and techniques is completely different and doesn't require real tracks or cars, but that's not what I read the original comment as being about.
FFS, The original comment that I made was that simracing can helping your driving skills - I never said anything else. I didn't say he raced the same car or track in the sim did I? (no I didn't)
who cares: iracing = epic fail
there's so much hate for iracing for many different reasons, i dont know how warrented these reasons are... I'd like to try it out once its released. hopefully we will get a hefty LFS patch before then.
I want to try it out first, read reviews, see more game play videos, see if the karts have chassis flex lol, and THEN i would give my opinion about iRacing.

Right now i feel its nothing compared to LFS, but could be proven wrong.
I'll try it a year after release when it has a decent sized community, some cars that actually interest me and some European tracks.
Quote from Gabkicks :I'd like to try it out once its released.

i think everyone here does
but i also think the number whod like to pay 20 dollars to try a game is a lot smaller (and for that youll get 2 amazing tracks that afaik haven been specified and a stock car almost no one here gives a damn about plus some horrible looking pontiac... sorry but this game here has more to offer for free and judging by that video physics that compare just fine)
so far the most accurate description of the game has been that the logo looks like a racer getting mugged
Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :FFS, The original comment that I made was that simracing can helping your driving skills - I never said anything else. I didn't say he raced the same car or track in the sim did I? (no I didn't)

Yeah your right sorry I just mid read your post. I don't disagree that N2003 could well have helped him, as could GPL and LFS, but it didn't help him learn the track or car, so even if the claim is true it doesn't help the laser scanning/real tracks/cars argument one bit

Quote from The Moose :I'll try it a year after release when it has a decent sized community, some cars that actually interest me and some European tracks.

Silverstone is the only European circuit on the list atm. I'll try it when it's got Spa and Oulton Park.

Quote from Shotglass :i think everyone here does
but i also think the number whod like to pay 20 dollars to try a game is a lot smaller (and for that youll get 2 amazing tracks that afaik haven been specified and a stock car almost no one here gives a damn about plus some horrible looking pontiac... sorry but this game here has more to offer for free and judging by that video physics that compare just fine)
so far the most accurate description of the game has been that the logo looks like a racer getting mugged

Hopefully we'll be allowed to drive the stock cars on the road courses, but with all this structured racing format I don't think a server running those combos could be publicly available, unless iRacing themselves host it, that is of course if they allow it in the first place.

I'm also getting increasingly worried about all the servers being in the US, for Europe it may not be that bad but for the rest of the world it could make it a non-starter, which would hugely reduce the population of a game which has already sued members of its target market and now seems determined to milk them for all they've got. Couple this with no demo and I think a lot of non-US racers will just be put off paying to find it's crap and even worse if those that do pay come back saying it's crap.
What's the fascination with european tracks? Looking at that track list you can see names like Laguna seca, Virginia, Road america, Watkins glen, Infineon etc which all are great tracks, at least from from my simming experience. Or are would you like to compare the tracks to their real versions? There are great tracks in UK but american road tracks are very enjoyable as well. Most of the known european tracks are F1 tracks anyway, wide, boring, dull and uninteresting.

What's the reason? Tell me or silence for evah.
Laguna Seca has massive appeal to me, but apart from that I guess I don't really know the US tracks well enough to get excited about the prospect of them. It's different for the iRacing target base because they race those tracks IRL, but they may as well be purely fictional, for the amount of relating to them that I'll be able to do.
Quote from ajp71 :I'm also getting increasingly worried about all the servers being in the US, for Europe it may not be that bad but for the rest of the world it could make it a non-starter, which would hugely reduce the population of a game which has already sued members of its target market and now seems determined to milk them for all they've got. Couple this with no demo and I think a lot of non-US racers will just be put off paying to find it's crap and even worse if those that do pay come back saying it's crap.

luckily there will most likely be other option to try it
but with their current business model it would have to be more than brilliant to make me pay all that money for a game that makes it impossible to get pings lower than 100-200ms by developers with that sort of history
I think it is squarely aimed at the American market & thats why its taking a such a lot of stick in these here forums. Only time will tell.
if they can develop a strong base in america, I'm sure they'll move onto other countries, and the library of cars and tracks will grow. one of the 1st places that comes to mind for me overseas is southkorea, since they have pretty strong net cafes and gaming gets alot of attention there. I
Games in a south korean internet cafe has hardly anything to do with high end race sims.

what you will find there will be some FPS and korean made MMORPGs.
And StarCraft.

kekekeke ^_____^
Quote from Hyperactive :What's the fascination with european tracks? Looking at that track list you can see names like Laguna seca, Virginia, Road america, Watkins glen, Infineon etc which all are great tracks, at least from from my simming experience. Or are would you like to compare the tracks to their real versions? There are great tracks in UK but american road tracks are very enjoyable as well. Most of the known european tracks are F1 tracks anyway, wide, boring, dull and uninteresting.

Spa is dull and uninteresting? Most of the European F1 tracks are crap and a sad reflection of their former greatness, we do have some very good tracks though, some big names like Donington and the full Brands circuit and some less well known but still very very nice like Cadwell, Pembrey, Snetterton, Knockhill and Mallory in the UK and there are other little circuits around Europe that are gems to discover it is one of the nicest things about rF.

Add to that a lot of second class circuits around Europe, some of the F1 tracks and some club circuits. There are only have two rovals in Europe, both of which are awful and unpopular with just about everybody the current lineup from iRacing features 4 rovals all, none of which are likely to be good tracks. Added to that lot you've got a couple of real American equivalents of European airfield track day type locations, flat boring and slow, ok for racing schools track days and a bit of local racing but when you've got the choice of any track in the world not exactly first choice material.

There are some very nice circuits on the iRacing list, Mid Ohio, Laguna Seca, Road America, Sears Point, Long Beach, Virginia and probably the best club circuit in the world, Lime Rock.

Quote from Gabkicks :if they can develop a strong base in america, I'm sure they'll move onto other countries, and the library of cars and tracks will grow. one of the 1st places that comes to mind for me overseas is southkorea, since they have pretty strong net cafes and gaming gets alot of attention there. I

But they've been insisting that it's real motorsport and appeals to racers not gamers all along. Traditionally I think it's fair to say that proportional to their population Europeans (particularly British, Germans and Scandinavians) have shown far more serious long term interests in circuit racing sims than the Americans, who never really seem to make up that much of active sim racing communities. Maybe iRacing is using the US emphasis to try and help draw in more serious racers from the US who currently aren't racing other sims seriously, meaning they don't have to rely on converting current sim racers.
Quote from Hyperactive :What's the fascination with european tracks? Looking at that track list you can see names like Laguna seca, Virginia, Road america, Watkins glen, Infineon etc which all are great tracks, at least from from my simming experience. Or are would you like to compare the tracks to their real versions? There are great tracks in UK but american road tracks are very enjoyable as well. Most of the known european tracks are F1 tracks anyway, wide, boring, dull and uninteresting.

What's the reason? Tell me or silence for evah.

Because it's obviously question about prestige. Ironic that possibly most of the best tracks in the world right now comes from 'Murica, from the promised land of turning left...

ps. Lime Rock is being repaved right now... And some chicanes will be added See PDF

-
Conversation with a friend (and extremely quick LFS driver) who got to try iRacing at a recent trackday:

Quote :(3:59:16 PM) Friend: i racing blows lfs away
(3:59:31 PM) Me: Already tried it?
(3:59:56 PM) Friend: yes a friend has it...its amazing
(4:00:04 PM) Me: hmm.
(4:00:09 PM) Me: how does it run on older machines?
(4:00:18 PM) Friend: im not sure
(4:00:30 PM) Me: well, what's his machine like and how does it run?
(4:00:37 PM) Me: which cars did you drive and on what track?
(4:01:28 PM) Friend: i dont know about the machine it was a porsche tech session and he brought his simulator and computer.....i ran on vir and summit point....i drove a pontiac solstice, formula mazda, and stock car
(4:01:48 PM) Friend: they also had a legends car
(4:01:53 PM) Me: Cool.
(4:01:56 PM) Me: How does it blow LFS away?
(4:02:00 PM) Me: Like, what specifically is better?
(4:02:13 PM) Friend: physics and everything
(4:02:21 PM) Friend: car sounds are so real
(4:02:30 PM) Friend: the track is just like real life
(4:02:56 PM) Me: Iiiiinteresting.
(4:03:01 PM) Me: Now I just need a new job so I can afford it.
(4:03:36 PM) Friend: yea it will be pricey for cars and stuff, i saw on the site it looks like you have to buy each car
(4:03:46 PM) Me: Yeah.
(4:04:03 PM) Friend: dude it was awesome like 20 people were their and i showed up late cause i was at the autocross setuping up the course
(4:04:48 PM) Friend: and the guy was talking about his time (1:58) and in 3 laps i got down to a 1:53
(4:04:54 PM) Me: hehe
(4:04:55 PM) Friend: 1:58 he ran
(4:05:03 PM) Friend: then i got down to a 1:51
(4:05:15 PM) Friend: but yea point being its cool
(4:05:16 PM) Me: Which car?
(4:05:27 PM) Friend: formula mazda
(4:05:52 PM) Me: Nice.
(4:05:54 PM) Me: @ VIR?
(4:05:59 PM) Friend: yes
(4:06:12 PM) Friend: and the sterring and force feeback is cool
(4:06:17 PM) Friend: feels good
(4:06:25 PM) Me: Steering looked a bit laggy in the videos.
(4:06:47 PM) Friend: it isnt
(4:06:55 PM) Me: k.
(4:07:20 PM) Friend: ok man i g2g just wanted to tell you
(4:07:39 PM) Friend: one thing that was interesting
(4:07:49 PM) Friend: he got the cars and stuff off the website
(4:08:03 PM) Friend: its like all on the website in a members area
(4:08:21 PM) Me: hmm.

Take it for what it's worth.

edit: and FWIW, the times for last year's Star Mazda field at VIR ranged from 1:47.5 to 1:56.0 in race trim, so that's in the right ballpark.
Quote from DeadWolfBones :Conversation with a friend (and extremely quick LFS driver) who got to try iRacing at a recent trackday:



Take it for what it's worth.

edit: and FWIW, the times for last year's Star Mazda field at VIR ranged from 1:47.5 to 1:56.0 in race trim, so that's in the right ballpark.

times aren't a bar for realism. i could make a car and track for rFactor and get them roughly running the right times...
Hence the FWIW.

And anyway, this particular friend is someone whose impressions of sims I trust implictly because a) he's extremely quick and experienced in simracing and b) he's also extremely quick in various kinds of real world racing.

Edit: all I'm saying is that as someone who's been (I think) fairly neutral about iRacing so far, this makes me legitimately excited/anticipatory.
lol is there any place in the tristate area where i can try iracing?
This thread is closed

iRacing
(13603 posts, closed, started )
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