The online racing simulator
iRacing
(13603 posts, closed, started )
Quote from AndroidXP :But the beta testers say it is absolutely smooth with no warping whatsoever. Which doesn't mean "few errors" but "no errors" regarding the car position rendering. Which only leaves my proposed method #1, if I'm not overlooking something

See above

Also don't forget that iRacing has unlikely been fully stress tested yet, at least to the same extent as LFS. It's not abnormal to be on LFS with players from opposite sides of the earth on all types of connections (wireless, dialup, etc) so in that regard its remarkable we don't see more problems.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't iRacing endevouring to keep players local as well. This would eliminate alot of the potenial lag problems straight off
Quote from Glenn67 :Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't iRacing endevouring to keep players local as well. This would eliminate alot of the potenial lag problems straight off

Not for now I think. Remember that the servers are still exclusively US based, which means all packets would have to travel to the US and then back to the client, even if you're racing your neighbour. I doubt they have a P2P setup, so racing locals would have no benefit other than a similar timezone.
Quote from Glenn67 :Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't iRacing endevouring to keep players local as well. This would eliminate alot of the potenial lag problems straight off

Consider yourself corrected. All the iRental servers are stateside, so with a field full of Euros or Ozzies, everyone will have higher pings due to the longer relay.
[edit] slooww.. curses Android
Quote from AndroidXP :Not for now I think. Remember that the servers are still exclusively US based, which means all packets would have to travel to the US and then back to the client, even if you're racing your neighbour. I doubt they have a P2P setup, so racing locals would have no benefit other than a similar timezone.

Ah ok

But still that is better than LFS for most of the out of the way places as in terms of the internet the US is the centre of the world so hence is likely to have less problem laggers than if it were located in Europe.
My pings to US servers are about 200ms to Europe they are 380 - 400ms...

It's not better for you Euro's though
I get a roundtrip to iracing.net of 169ms. That's probably adequate for racing, though it's on the outside of what I'd be comfortable with in LFS. I don't know whether their gameservers are located similarly though.
Quote from Ahriman4891 :Surely some of you Euro guys heard of Opel GT.

surely no european ever thought to himself "yes i do want to spend 500$ to drive an opel in my free time"
even an isetta would have been a better choice as the entry level car

Quote from brianmcd :Heh well they said it has something to do with different racing lines crossing. There's 2 different lines that people take through there, and the bumps are in the part where they cross.

sounds like bs to me...what would the lines have to do with a laser scanned 1:1 representation of the track surface?

Quote from DarrenMarsh :The advanced solstice and the tracks for it's series come in the base subscription. It cost $48 to get all the content needed for the Skip barber series. Easily covered by the $60 free credits you get with a 12 month subscription

great so ill have to pay 50$ + whatever the formula mazda costs + whatever the subscription will cost me to get through those 3 series just to be able to drive the radical whenever kaemmer allows me to?

Quote from DeadWolfBones :The graphics, if your computer can handle them, are pretty great. That said, this is a sim that will require a lot of people to upgrade. I have a P4 2.53ghz, 1gb PC2700, and a Radeon 9600XT, and the game is virtually unplayable for me even on the lowest graphical settings. The developers recommend at minimum a dual core processor and preferably 2gb+ RAM. For people who've bought a computer recently this will be easy, but for those of us riding out a 4 or 5 year-old system it's kinda crushing.

not impressed at all considering what it looks like:
http://forum.racesimcentral.co ... d=456419&d=1212740316
the shadows are quite nice but theyre nowhere near gt5/crysis in the quality of the shadowmaps (looks like they still use stencil shadows and overall it doesnt look that much better than lfs

Quote :There are also some odd quirks in the collision model. Parts of the car body will go through the track, and if you manage to get a car on its side, it will continue sliding for quite a while, as if it has no friction. Cars in general feel sort of "spongy" compared to LFS. If you hit a wall or another car you sort of sink into it a bit rather than hitting it hard.

great so its at least as bad as lfs in the only department where lfs does have major issues
and seeing this doesnt give me much confidence that the collision detection is any better than in lfs
http://forum.racesimcentral.co ... d=456409&d=1212732037
Each beta tester gets 10 nominations for the first stage of the iR rollout, anyone who seriously wants to get iR, drop me a PM and I'll give you a nomination.

edit : forgot to mention, can you also include, first name, last name, and email address

edit 2 : better make it doubley clear that this isn't a nomination for a free beta account, this is to be nominated to be in the first wave full release rollout.
Quote from Shotglass :great so its at least as bad as lfs in the only department where lfs does have major issues

This is kind of a bold statement.
It's nowhere near as bad as LFS in the collision detection department, fact.
Quote from SamH :Consider yourself corrected. All the iRental servers are stateside, so with a field full of Euros or Ozzies, everyone will have higher pings due to the longer relay.
[edit] slooww.. curses Android

*They have, however, stated their goal to build server farms in each region.
Quote from danowat :It's nowhere near as bad as LFS in the collision detection department, fact.

I'd say it's better in some ways and worse in others.

LFS seems to try to go for more realistic collisions and as a result has lag crash issues and problems with the barriers. iRacing seems to fudge the collisions a bit (i.e., the spongy feel of the walls/other cars) in order to bypass the lag wreck problem.

Or at least that's how it feels to someone who has no idea how either sim's collision physics work.

edit: And I dunno about you, Danny, but I saw a whole lot of cars flying up into the stratosphere at Legends @ South Boston.
TBH, I never got into the seat of the legends, spent far too much time in the Soltice and the Skippy!!!.

It's not perfect, nothing will be, but in terms of collision detection, is it better.

BTW, the nominations are going REAL fast, so best get it quick if anyone wants one.
It seems that the irregular pricing scheme and race structure is a godsendt in terms of LFS fans.

Based off the early reviews, if iracing had a traditional pricing structure, it would be a very easy sell.
Quote from srdsprinter :It seems that the irregular pricing scheme and race structure is a godsendt in terms of LFS fans.

Based off the early reviews, if iracing had a traditional pricing structure, it would be a very easy sell.

Yes, but then every tom, dick and harry would use it, regardless of them being a "serious" simmer or not, and that is not iR's demographic
Quote from danowat :Yes, but then every tom, dick and harry would use it, regardless of them being a "serious" simmer or not, and that is not iR's demographic

I'm definitely not in iR's demographic, despite the fact that I take sim racing (and even structured sim racing) pretty darn serious. I'm in the demographic that won't rent access to something I've paid for, on principle. That's just one of the reasons, but it's overriding at this point.
Which is why I wished (and had a big post about it on the beta forum) they had a demo, just so people could see just how good it is
yeah, Danny and I actually got into some shit on the iR board for saying maybe they were foolish for not offering a demo.
For fear of letting in the riff-raff sim racers?
Well, the issues are:

1. They're afraid of having the official servers (where people's safety ratings and success in the ongoing championships are at stake) swamped with people who don't have a financial stake in the sim and thus don't have any compulsion to drive safely or sanely. 95% of demo drivers might drive acceptably, but the other 5% could ruin things for the rest.

2. An offline/testing demo was suggested, to which the forum old guard and the powers that be replied that the most important feature of iRacing is the online element, and that to leave that out would defeat the purpose of a demo.

3. A segregated (demo-only) online demo was suggested, but they said it wouldn't properly represent the quality of driving that iRacing produces. This is reasonable, and it obvious to everyone from looking at the LFS demo.

4. Finally, it seems like they just don't care that much about having huge user numbers at this stage in the sim's development. John Henry has no shortage of capital, and they legitimately seem more concerned about quality of service/quality of driving than having a huge userbase--ergo, a demo is unnecessary. "Real" sim racers will be attracted via word of mouth/specs and it doesn't matter so much if not everyone is driving it.
Really, it all sounds exactly as it was set out quite a long time ago, and you can't argue with sticking to a business plan if it ain't broke A long time ago, they said that it would be priced in a way that would attract real racecar drivers and, more specifically, not be appealing to casual simmers. At least that's how I read their website, anyway. They've remained true to that.

They're in the enviable position where they're not busting for money, and clearly the uptake (or potentially not) of iR is not in any way make or break for them. Quite frankly, those are the best projects. LFS is very much like that, the way I see it, too.. and the product, at the end of the day, is more oriented to being very good rather than being mass-market appealing. iR have the same philosophy (but obviously a lot more manpower/resources) and it does sound like that permeates the product.

Despite the fact that I'll almost certainly never participate in iR, because the money politics are offensive to me personally, I can comprehend the reasoning behind it and it sounds like it could work, provided there is enough uptake - something that could happen initially and fall off later, too.. we are headed for tight times. It may never make a cent of profit (despite asking us for lots of them), but I don't think that's the mission with iR anyway. I hope they succeed
That's essentially the way I feel, too, except that if my income rose quite a bit I'd definitely try it for at least a few months.
Quote from SamH :Really, it all sounds exactly as it was set out quite a long time ago, and you can't argue with sticking to a business plan if it ain't broke A long time ago, they said that it would be priced in a way that would attract real racecar drivers and, more specifically, not be appealing to casual simmers. At least that's how I read their website, anyway. They've remained true to that.

They're in the enviable position where they're not busting for money, and clearly the uptake (or potentially not) of iR is not in any way make or break for them. Quite frankly, those are the best projects. LFS is very much like that, the way I see it, too.. and the product, at the end of the day, is more oriented to being very good rather than being mass-market appealing. iR have the same philosophy (but obviously a lot more manpower/resources) and it does sound like that permeates the product.

Despite the fact that I'll almost certainly never participate in iR, because the money politics are offensive to me personally, I can comprehend the reasoning behind it and it sounds like it could work, provided there is enough uptake - something that could happen initially and fall off later, too.. we are headed for tight times. It may never make a cent of profit (despite asking us for lots of them), but I don't think that's the mission with iR anyway. I hope they succeed

Thats it in a nutshell Sam
Quote from SamH :I get a roundtrip to iracing.net of 169ms. That's probably adequate for racing, though it's on the outside of what I'd be comfortable with in LFS. I don't know whether their gameservers are located similarly though.

Sam, I get a round trip to the UKCT servers of 159 (formerly 180 prior to server move) and did I have a problem with LFS?
Quote from DeadWolfBones :"Real" sim racers will be attracted via word of mouth/specs and it doesn't matter so much if not everyone is driving it.

Damn, I'm obviously not a "real" sim racer any more as i don't want to buy into iRacing.

I'm feeling a little inadequate now i know I'm just a pleb.

It's all so damn elitist.



Nice to hear your very balanced views on iRacing DWB, good job! Some of the gushing I've heard on some forums makes me want to hurl, you'd have thought no one out there had raced a decent sim before .
I'm in the same boat as Sam, I could afford it if I really wanted to, but on principle I won't touch the thing because I don't like how the payments are set up.
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iRacing
(13603 posts, closed, started )
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