sefa01

iRacing apparently is ready to go. It just announced a race series for SCCA licensed drivers with $20,000 in prize money. Better yet, it announced pricing for those of us who just want to practice our driving skills (or lack thereof).

The list of road courses is great (I won't bother with the long list of ovals). Road courses include:

Barber
California Speedway
Daytona
Infineon
Homestead-Miami
Lime Rock
Long Beach
Laguna Seca
Mid-Ohio
Miller Motorsports
Moroso
Phoenix International
Road America
Summit Point
Virginia International
Watkins Glen
Willow Springs

Pricing is $156 per year, with 6-months at $90, 3 months at $51 and a one-month trial at $20.

Head guy is Dave Kaemmer, who developed Nascar Racing 2003 and is a racer. The money man is John W. Henry of the Boston Red Sox and Rousch-Fenway Racing.

Should be interesting and a nice way to pass the winter (as I gaze upon 8" of snow outside my window). Info at www.iracing.com

fire_n_ice

bump

It's available now if you were on the mailing list (or go to the site and register for news updates).

Tried it yesterday, Solstice Challenge at Lime Rock. Very impressive physics. Much better, in my opinion, than any of the existing platforms (GTR2, rFactor, etc.).

If anybody gets on and wants to hook up for some laps, PM me.

The Spark

kingkyle

I cant wait to try it... i'm an avid GTR2 and Rfactor gamer, its nice to hear that iracing has better physics. Where did you get to try the sim?

davidfarmer

recent article about this in PC Gamer, but it wasn't open yet. Hope to check it out, as the laser-surveyed tracks are supposed to be unbelievable.

fire_n_ice

I've been on their mailing list for over a year, so I was sent an "early bird" invitation. You can prob get it by registering for their newsletter.

More discussion here: http://www.ontrackdriver.com/general...imulation.html

The Spark

I got signed up for iRacing last night. It took a while to download the software even with DSL. Then it had a 580+MB update that took about an hour to download.

Finally got set up and spent about an hour testing the Solstice on the road course. My wife came home and I had my computer hooked up to the big screen and my steering wheel setup. She watched for a few minutes and then She was muttering something about me not letting her hook her Wii up to the big TV "because it is Y-O-U-R tv..."

It is fun. As with any computer sim/game it is hard since you don't get the seat of the pants feel and vision looking down the track. OK, I'm just making excuses for why I suck and ran off the track and wrecked a fleet of cars

If/when I am going to one of the tracks they have I can see where iRacing can really come in handy helping to learn the track more than just going in cold.

I think I'll practice alot more before I try racing against others.
It was late but at the end they did give you some feedback on tire pressures and temps. I was running Rookie Solstice so maybe they will let you do some setup on the "real" car.

RC45

For my PC racing enjoyment I use one of these....

It allows you to "look" around and see past the limitations of the screen.

http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/



http://media.naturalpoint.com/video/...mo-800x600.wmv

fire_n_ice

LOL, why not let your wife have a turn at the wheel. It will be fun until she beats your lap time

It is fun with all those Solstices on the track, even though they are dog slow. For some of us, it's as close to bumper-to-bumper racing as we'll ever get. You do get to set up the cars more as you progress. It's quite cool that way - it kind of teaches you how to set up a race car as you climb the ranks.

FYI, I wrote a blog article about iRacing this morning: http://track-day.blogspot.com/

fire_n_ice

What kind of monitor do you use this with? Have you ever tried VR goggles (i.e. 3D) ?

Poor-sha

...and what steering wheel setup are folks using? I'm debating whether to move to this from FM2.

fire_n_ice

Logitech G25 wheel, but I'm using the pedal set from ECCI. The force feedback implementation in iRacing is quite good, actually, so it's worth getting a FFB-capable wheel.

MegaAir

Been playin this for about 2 months. Decent physics, still no match for LFS.


But good times


G25 here

fire_n_ice

I never tried LFS. It's that good, huh?

MegaAir

Yeah I think so. Although it only has fictional tracks and doesn't become "sold on shelves" until it's finished (probably another year or so), it is still better than iracing. A lot more options that you can edit in your car setup.

You can try out the demo, but you're limited in cars and tracks.


If you want to see gameplay, just search youtube.

heres a little clip





and heres my setup