Not as bad as VIR south, but still impossible to race. good luck!
I bet steve myers isn't racing the V8 this season.

Yeah, VIR and Lime Rock are not for the V8 imo. Zandvoort was the only track I enjoyed so far.

Bought the Lotus and Dallara last night (Neither of which I'm licenced to drive) and Mid-Ohio. I've learnt I nearly have all the content for a road racer. just missing Sebring, Road America, Silverstone and Barber, along with Corvette and Prototype.

Now if I could get iRacing to run more than a few launches without requiring a full reinstall...

IIRC V8 uses some track(s) of similar length, so i guess they just want to have it in calendar for that matter. But i'm with you on this, LRP sucks even in Jetta, not enough space for anything.

John Henry has confirmed that iRacing will break even very soon.
Concidering they only opened thier doors 2008 looks like success.
Hopefuly it will become more affordable once they are in the green.

Impossible!
I read in this very thread 2 years ago that it was doomed to infernal, horrible failure.

Quote from Seb66 :

I hate limerock and the V8 combo

I agree, its a nightmare.

Quote from anttt69 :

John Henry has confirmed that iRacing will break even very soon.
Concidering they only opened thier doors 2008 looks like success.
Hopefuly it will become more affordable once they are in the green.

Really?? That's great news! Honestly this comes as a big surprise, but I'm happy to hear it! Glad to have contributed in my small way.

Let's do some maths:

10000 subscribers x ($100 subscription fees + $100 content - $50 promotions/discounts) = $1,5 million pr year income. Over two years that equals maximum ~ $3 million income (august 2008 -> august 2010)

Then the expenses:
40 employees (at present). Let's say an average of 20 employees since 2004 (assuming it's been growing at a constant pace).
20 employees x $40000 x 6 years ~ $5 million

So before we even get to all the other stuff like rent, employer's fees, scanning fees, business deals etc etc we're in the reds... even at current, it looks like they have to be losing money if the subscribers are their only source of income..

Which begs the question: where does the rest of the money come from??? What other sources of income do they have besides us subscribers?

Quote from Gnomie :

Really?? That's great news! Honestly this comes as a big surprise, but I'm happy to hear it! Glad to have contributed in my small way.

Let's do some maths:

10000 subscribers x ($100 subscription fees + $100 content - $50 promotions/discounts) = $1,5 million pr year income. Over two years that equals maximum ~ $3 million income (august 2008 -> august 2010)

Then the expenses:
40 employees (at present). Let's say an average of 20 employees since 2004 (assuming it's been growing at a constant pace).
20 employees x $40000 x 6 years ~ $5 million

So before we even get to all the other stuff like rent, employer's fees, scanning fees, business deals etc etc we're in the reds... even at current, it looks like they have to be losing money if the subscribers are their only source of income..

Which begs the question: where does the rest of the money come from??? What other sources of income do they have besides us subscribers?

Do we not think that they have sponsors, like the ones that you can put on the cars, as well as the permanent sponsors on the car? Maybe not. Do we think NASCAR might be funding the development of the NASCAR content? Again, I don't know. Stuff to consider.

Quote from TexasLTU :

I agree, its a nightmare.

I'm getting faster with it, 52.4 with race fuel, but god almighty its a pain.

Extract from the forum:

Quote :

I can tell you that active membership continues to grow at a nice pace. We're in striking distance of breakeven. For a project of this scope, that is certainly a big milestone to reach.

iRacing is getting a lot of things right. And there is still a ton to do.

JH

iRacing Bristol 200 "After Dark" joke video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvLTWeRuBVQ

Quote from Seb66 :

I'm getting faster with it, 52.4 with race fuel, but god almighty its a pain.

52.5 here. And I have no idea how to do uphill properly.

Would anyone with a the Skip Barber or Star Mazda be willing to let me "rent" their account for an hour or two to test em out on some tracks? Was thinking of selling my wheel, but if I enjoy the open wheelers more I might just stick with it.

PM me if anyone's interested. Will be much appreciated! (And will only be in testing mode of course! No racing xD)

Quote from TexasLTU :

52.5 here. And I have no idea how to do uphill properly.

Turn in earlier than you think, rotate the car around the apex with the throttle, and keep it straight over the top so you don't have to lift. Some preemptive steering correction in the air usually helps you stay straight on the landing as well. My optimal is only 51.8, but those last tenths come from really keeping the rear tires slipping and pushing the car through the apex with the gas.

Lime Rock is my favorite track, but it is kind of annoying to have to float the rear end so much to be fast here...

The weird thing is that when you watch these cars in real life they look like they're on rails, almost.. which makes sense, since some of the races are really long, so you wouldn't want the cars to be too "wild". Whereas in iRacing the cars are sliding around like crazy (at least in the videos I've seen on youtube). Can this be dialed out with a more conservative setup or is that just how the iRacing tires are? It just doesn't look right to me!

There are two different skip series IRL. One is run on slicks so it may be that the vid is of that one. Your observations however are correct, racing the skip quickly is a drift fest & tho not realistic it is a lot of fun.
DK has been working on his new tyre model almost as long as Scawen if not longer, so when it comes it will be good.

minjrack if you havent tried the skip yet your missing one of the best cars in iRacing.

Quote from anttt69 :

There are two different skip series IRL. One is run on slicks so it may be that the vid is of that one. Your observations however are correct, racing the skip quickly is a drift fest & tho not realistic it is a lot of fun.
DK has been working on his new tyre model almost as long as Scawen if not longer, so when it comes it will be good.

minjrack if you havent tried the skip yet your missing one of the best cars in iRacing.

Was having the same discussion with someone last night about the skippy. A lot of the videos on youtube with the real skippy are people that are doing the racing school. While they want to be quick, I'm sure they are not going to push the car to the absolute limit all the time, like someone might in iRacing to get the best times. Part of me thinks that the "driftfest" in iRacing is as a result of there being no risk, in comparison to a newer driver within the school, not wanting to break one of the cars by drifting all the time.

Thoughts?

The tyre model allows us to, so we do. I doubt very much you'll see a pack of skips drifting around in RL. Although having said that, i have never driven a REAL skip barber race car so couldnt really say for sure.

I'm sorry, I was actually referring to the V8 @ Lime Rock combo. (Seemed like that was what Seb66, TexasLTU and TitanLS were talking about) This car seems to be extremely loose compared to its real life counterpart. More so than the Skippy, which is rather slidey in real life as well I think. But yeah, you're right.. there is no risk in sim racing, so we're always likely to push the cars further than people do in real life, no matter how good the tire model might be.

Quote from anttt69 :

The tyre model allows us to, so we do. I doubt very much you'll see a pack of skips drifting around in RL. Although having said that, i have never driven a REAL skip barber race car so couldnt really say for sure.

I don't think you'd see it anyway from most of the rookies that go to do the Skip Barber schools driving..... my point

Anyone? Really wanna test out the skippy before my 30 day return period is over for my GT3 RS

Quote from titanLS :

Turn in earlier than you think, rotate the car around the apex with the throttle, and keep it straight over the top so you don't have to lift. Some preemptive steering correction in the air usually helps you stay straight on the landing as well. My optimal is only 51.8, but those last tenths come from really keeping the rear tires slipping and pushing the car through the apex with the gas.

Lime Rock is my favorite track, but it is kind of annoying to have to float the rear end so much to be fast here...

I hate Lime Rock! Never liked it before, not going to start now!

First time with this car...
After 12 desperate laps, with no experience (at all) within this V8, I could manage a 54s286, full tank and baseline setup. Is that good??

Yes I will risk losing my account with $700 invested so you can save $12.

Quote :

A Day in the Life of a Cat Herder: XIV

August 25, 2010

It’s pretty amazing to think that this small band of merry men and women has been hard at work on this product for over six years now and our doors have been open to the public for the past two! I think its remarkable how much we have accomplished over this time period, but I also think we have just scratched the surface of what we can become.
We have finally gotten to the point in our development, at least on the software side, that we are thinking about “new” projects. It’s not exactly comparing apples and oranges, but I think it is fair to say that while we have far exceeded the quality of work that we had accomplished at Papyrus, it has taken us a while to meet the quantity of features.

I think its remarkable how much we have accomplished over this time period, but I also think we have just scratched the surface of what we can become.

It’s exciting to start thinking about new territories to explore in this code base now. We have a wish list that would blow your mind and we finally now get to start debating what to start checking off the list to build next. Sure, we still have some no brainer features that we want to work on but there are always more projects in development then what will be released in the next build. All I can say is that I think it will be an exciting few years in front of us!
We also have a lot of cool stuff going on right now of course. I will run down some of the projects we are working on. First I would like to thank two groups that have really done some terrific work over the last few months to help us “spread the word” about iRacing.

Ian Busching and the guys at PSRtv have done a terrific job on broadcasting our World Championship and special race events. We basically developed our tools for broadcasting on the fly and I think they have really done a great job in refining their process to turn out some quality broadcasts.
I want to also thank Florian Goddard and the group helping him put together the iRacingTV shows. This concept was his initial idea and I think he does a terrific job in his highlight recaps and putting together video that we shoot here in the office. We are very lucky to have passionate people interested in our product and wanting to not only see it succeed, but also figure out ways to help that happen.
Staying on the community side of things, we have something very cool planned for the world’s fastest sim racer. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but let’s just say Greger is going to be making a trip here to the States very soon and he’ll get to do some very cool things. We will be capturing all of it on film to be shown on 3 Wide Life and on our website, plus it will be covered in Top Gear magazine.
One last thank you shout out to my friends in the far east. Shuji Aratani, Toshi Deki, Toshinobu Shigemitsu, Teruaki Kato and Thomas O’Dowd have all been extremely helpful in creating some terrific partnerships in Japan. We are putting the finishing touches on a contract for a FOURTH Japanese track for our service joining Okayama International and two recently signed tracks. Once we ink this final deal we will plan to have a press release introducing all of them. Look for it around September 18th….
On to some of the development updates….
Produced by iRacing under license from Williams Grand Prix Engineering Ltd (WGPE). The Williams name and logo are trademarks owned by WGPE. Williams images © 2010 WGPE. All rights reserved.

On the content side of things we are obviously hard at work on the Williams FW31 car. It’s actually in testing already and it is getting rave reviews. Our friends over at Williams have done some driving with it and they already think it’s very good. We are kicking around some ideas here internally on how to make this car something everyone can use so stay tuned.
We are also making great progress on the Mazda MX-5 Cup car and Roadster. These cars will become the rookie road racing cars next season. You will be able to drive either car in the series with the primary difference between the two being one is left hand drive and the other is right hand drive.
We get a lot of questions about the Street Stock car and this will be the next car in development and we are hoping to have this released around the holidays. This will eventually become the Advanced Rookie oval car.
On the track side of things we are hoping to release Pocono next week. This will include five road course configurations! Dover will be the next track released and we are shooting to have that released by the end of September. With the way the art and production teams work we generally have multiple tracks in some state of development so the good news is that Spa is already under construction. The bad news is that this is probably our most ambitious build yet and we are hoping to have it also ready around the holiday season.

We are tentatively shooting to get our new forum software out to you next week as well.
One new feature that will be in our next build is actually an extension of the spectator functionality that we introduced in the last build. We are going to let you actually drive in a session that you are spectating. Essentially you will be a ghost in the world to the competitors (invisible from their perspective) but it will allow you to use the competitors to pace yourself. You obviously will not be scored in the race but maybe a ghost driver can stay with Huttu!
Our current pit crew system is not capable of doing all of the in-race functionality that we would like and needs an overhaul. In our last build we extended our damage model and we are planning on being able to fix some of that damage in the pits for this build. A much bigger project is going on to re-vamp the “pit crew/crew chief” system to allow us to expand its functionality.
We continue to work hard on integrating Fmod into our software and things are looking positive that it will be included in next seasons build. As with just about anything, things always look easier until you start getting your hands dirty with the project.
One cool project that the vehicle guys have been working on for a few months is incorporating better aero tables for our cars. We have been working with a computational fluid dynamics company to use our 3D models to create a new aero table for our IndyCar. This is kind of our “pilot” project and if it goes well we will expand it to other cars.
New tire model………………yes it’s being worked on. No, Dave won’t put a web cam in his office so you can watch.
We have essentially dedicated an engineer to work on upgrading our graphics engine for the entire year. Our product is going to really start to look “new” over the next few builds with the work Shawn is doing and the list of tasks he wants to accomplish are impressive.
In this next build we should have soft tree shadows are all collapsed and rendering as fast as the track surface lighting at Richmond night! Really there should be no need to turn off the tree shadows (which will be an option) and tracks like Road America are going to really benefit from this.
He is also working on proper light scaling on all track textures. Basically all the tracks are going to look significantly better because Shawn has done a massive project to properly scale how bright each texture should be at a track.
Of course we have many other projects going on that may or may not make the next build, but those are the highlights on the development front for what I feel pretty confident about right now.
We have had a terrific year here at iRacing and we owe it all to you our customers. Keep the feedback coming on what you would like to see added or improved and we will continue to work hard to deliver it for you.

Good stuff.