iracing.com

[Imari]

Well, I have sadly filed my first protest today. I'm usually pretty tolerant of whatever goes on in a race, you get over it and go on with your life.

Today I had the pleasure of being rammed twice, by the same guy, before the green light of a rolling start. On a road course. This is to me, the definition of wrong.

It's a bit of a shame really. I've already had a bit of a rough week incidents wise and my SR was looking pretty shabby. This (plus the other random people bashing into me during the race, for which they apologised) cost me -0.91SR. I'm down to 1.xx for the first time ever.

I think some SR grinding is in order to avoid dropping out of A class. I don't really want to miss the F1 race next week.

 

[superbike81]

That's what TT's and Qualifying sessions are for. Just do some safe consistent laps until you can get back up there. Or hop into one of the known safer races, my fallback lately has been the inRacingNews Challenge, normally it stays pretty clean there for whatever reason.

 

[swiftwilly]

If you participate in at least 8 weeks/12 week races for official series in a season you can earn $4 of iracing credit (C and D class) or $7 of iracing credit (A and B). This is for each series, too!
tbh, I don't follow this closely but I think someone here said the max you can earn each season is $10 iracing credit?

This personally is just utter useless. I am sorry, if they lowered prices of cars and tracks then maybe these credits are worth it. I wouldn't mind either some bigger prizes for division winners or top 3 etc. Like another $10 in itself.

Ooooooooo, Tony Gardner just did a live interview with the PSRTV guys and said that they are trying to get the NTM on the rest of the cars for the April update. He also said there is a "big graphical update" coming in April as well! I don't know what that means, but I sincerely hope it's a DX11 update. Doubtful, but I'm excited for April.

Yea NTM update is good, but for me. I thought the graphic update was a little down later down the track? I doesn't sound plausible for such a team to pull off a major graphic update +NTM on all the rest of the cars when they have only been pushing a few NTM a season. Unless they sandbag.

Also the live racing is awesome, but they need to allow archiving to work. Currently you can only watch it live and there is no other way. Not sure why its so difficult to have a archive of these vids, how about an interim solution of using youtube and having something like F1 1/5, F1 2/5 etc....not everyone can watch these live and it'll be a great promotion for iracing for the ROW to see these vids.

 

[HouseChampion]

This personally is just utter useless. I am sorry, if they lowered prices of cars and tracks then maybe these credits are worth it. I wouldn't mind either some bigger prizes for division winners or top 3 etc. Like another $10 in itself.

It's interesting you think that way swiftwilly. I currently own pretty much everything I want/need and these credits will get close to purchasing new cars/tracks as they come out for free, or it'll pay for 50-80% of a membership renewal (depending on the deals they have going). Oh, combine this with the $5/yr loyalty credits and a referral or two and it covers a nice chunk of what I need. It's not like it's a chore to race too hehe

 

[superbike81]

I don't think it will be anything as major as a completely new DX11 graphics engine, but I'm hoping they at least implement some of the optimizations for improved performance. The game looks fine to me now, but optimizations and little changes here and there are always welcome.

I think there should be rewards for the iRacing Division Champions, maybe all the way down to Division 10 or so, just depends. It doesn't even have to be much $2 in iRacing credits is better than nothing, and it gives people that sense of accomplishment to want to race more and do even better. I don't need to be rewarded for doing well, but it would be nice. But if that happened they would really have to monitor sandbaggers very closely.

PSRTV hasn't been very good for their live broadcasts and you are right about the archiving. I think this (among other reasons) is why iRacing has contracted much of their live coverage for 2012 out to GlacierTV. If you go to their site you can download major races and even minor league races, like the one Eric and I race in.

 

[swiftwilly]

It's interesting you think that way swiftwilly. I currently own pretty much everything I want/need and theses credits will get close to purchasing new cars/tracks as they come out for free, or it'll pay for 50-80% of a membership renewal (depending on the deals they have going). Oh, combine this with the $5/yr loyalty credits and a referral or two and it covers a nice chunk of what I need. It's not like it's a chore to race too hehe

I take it back, I didn't know there was a $5 loyalty credit. So if that is the case, then it pretty much means if you race normal for a year, you can get yourself a free car and track? that seems pretty good.

 

[livemusic]

I'll finally have time to try my new CPU on iRacing tomorrow. Got a Core i5 2500K last thursday but I didn't have the chance to log on iRacing since then. I didn't race at all this week, so tomorrow I have to do at least one race with the Skippy on Lime Rock and another with the HPD on Spa. And Spa is one of the tracks I hope to see some good improvement on framerate. With my old CPU I would get 40 fps or below in some sections of the track.

 

[superbike81]

Get a good CPU cooler if you don't already have one, and then overclock that 2500k to 4.5GHZ or so. iRacing is very CPU dependent, and a healthy overclock can really help.

 

[livemusic]

Get a good CPU cooler if you don't already have one, and then overclock that 2500k to 4.5GHZ or so. iRacing is very CPU dependent, and a healthy overclock can really help.

Can't it run well enough with the stock settings? I mean, my previous CPU was an Athlon 64 X2 5200+, so there should be a huge improvement already.

 

[superbike81]

Yes there should be a big improvement, but there is always room for more.

If you feel it's running well enough without the overclock, leave it be, but if you feel like you could use a few more FPS to smooth things out, try a mild overclock.

 

[livemusic]

Yes there should be a big improvement, but there is always room for more.

If you feel it's running well enough without the overclock, leave it be, but if you feel like you could use a few more FPS to smooth things out, try a mild overclock.

Yeah, I went for the unlocked processor with the idea of doing some OC eventually but I never messed with this before. Let's see how it goes.

 

[superbike81]

Depending on your motherboard, it can be really easy or you might have to do some research. I've got the ASROCK P67 Fata1ty Pro motherboard and it's got settings in there that automatically do "safe" overclocks at specific settings, all I do is pick how many GHZ I want and the BIOS automatically adjusts all the little settings. I'm at 5GHZ on my 2600k and I saw a noticeable improvement over stock settings.

 

[swiftwilly]

Anyone give me an idea what the tow car for Rookie and D Class vs C class and above?

I read that for Rookie and D you get the tow car, but in C class your stuck with the damage? What if your in C Class, can't you still pit for repairs? Are you unable to call for the tow car at all in C class etc?

A bit weird, I know in the Skip if I get damaged, call the tow, I will be in pit with the tow truck penalty + repairs penalty. What is the difference? How do you even drive back to the pit without a tow with the car going all over the place?

 

[redreevos]

It's not reusable, unfortunately.

A league I run in got these bonus codes from the iRacing staff but it was just for members of the league, otherwise I'd hook you guys up.

Thought I would ask just in case:sly.

Congrats on your new computer. I bought a Dell refurb I5 last year, threw in a ATI 6870 and everything has been running great. I let the game(iRacing) choose my settings, but I am pretty sure everything is on/max.

I have never noticed any issues, so I have never bothered messing with overclocking, or extra cooling measures. I have also run BF3 with no issues. I am only running this computer to my 52" HDTV, so the card only has to run at 1080p resolution. Not sure how it would be if I hooked up some of my higher resolution computer monitors.

 

[superbike81]

Instead of typing out the response explaining a "fast tow" I'll quote this from a user at the iRacing forums:

I agree with the OP that the "Fast Tow" terminology is slightly wrong IMO.

The Tow (whether fast or not) comes when you hit the Quit button. I think you get back to the pits in something like 2-3 times the time you could have driven it carefully. So a tow is good if the car will not drive or is on its roof (or stuck in the catch fencing as happened to me once)...
As said...a tow is slower than you an drive...so try and drive it if you can.......but if the pack is bearing down on you, your competitors will appreciate you "escaping" off the track.

now the way I look at a "fast tow" is that they actually fix your car whilst they are towing you. A "normal tow" will dump your damaged car back in the pits and only then will they start repairing it.

So two scenarios.
You end up on your roof at L1 T1 when you are in a series that allows fast tow. You hit escape and within 90 secs or so you will probably be driving a brand new car out of the pits to start lap 2.
If you end up on your roof in a series with no fast tows, 90 seconds later you will start having your car repaired and eventually drive out with the steering at 90 degrees and wondering if you can fire your iMechanics....

So basically, with the "fast tow" you get a pretty much instantly repaired car if you drive to the pits yourself, or you get an instantly repaired car after the simulated towing time if you hit reset after a crash. Once per race in rookie and D class, none at all in higher classes.

 

[superbike81]

Not sure how it would be if I hooked up some of my higher resolution computer monitors.

Higher resolution monitor? You one of the lucky few with a 2560x1600 monitor? I want to do 3 of those, but right now, at $1000 each, not gonna happen. I think the highest resolution in a decent priced monitor is 1920x1200, so it should run virtually the same as your 1080p TV.

 

[Eric.]

Instead of typing out the response explaining a "fast tow" I'll quote this from a user at the iRacing forums:



So basically, with the "fast tow" you get a pretty much instantly repaired car if you drive to the pits yourself, or you get an instantly repaired car after the simulated towing time if you hit reset after a crash. Once per race in rookie and D class, none at all in higher classes.

In my experience when getting a regular tow, go ahead and get all new tires. I don't think I've left the pits with screwed up steering when doing this, but I have when I have not replaced the tires.

It wouldn't hurt having a popup of sorts come up in the pits that tells you what is damaged and if its minor or not, and an estimated time value to fix it.

Could be nice if pit repair times varied just a little bit too. +/- 10% maybe just for realism.


GlacierTV will be doing a tape-delayed broadcast of our Continental Endurance Sports Car Series race on Sunday at approximately 18:30GMT after the IndyCar broadcast. Quite a lot of drama and yellow flags during the first half so it should be good to watch. It won't be as full featured since its not live and using all their software.

 

[superbike81]

I finally figured out why I was so far off of my normal pace in that race we had at Barber. I was slower by about 1.5 seconds per lap than my practice pace!

I rolled my ankle pretty bad a couple days before the race, so heel-toe wasn't going to happen. So I went ahead and used auto-clutch and switched to left foot braking. Normally I don't rest my foot on the brake, so I didn't have a deadzone calibrated. After watching my replay, I was resting my foot on the brake much of the time without even knowing it, so I was at about 5% brake for around 75% of each lap.

Fixed it now, calibrated in a small deadzone.

I still did about as well as I expected, but I think I could have been at least 1 position higher had I not been riding the brake.

 

[redreevos]

Higher resolution monitor? You one of the lucky few with a 2560x1600 monitor? I want to do 3 of those, but right now, at $1000 each, not gonna happen. I think the highest resolution in a decent priced monitor is 1920x1200, so it should run virtually the same as your 1080p TV.

Yeah.. I have some very high end monitors for trading. (I am a professional "day trader"). But I always keep my trading equipment separate from everything else... In the past I had a few issues with a multi-use computer "tripping out" when I was in some large positions. So I really like to keep my trading equipment single purpose.

The I5 I use for gaming, HTPC, and browsing.The resolution of 1080p on the HDTV seems like plenty for these purposes. Plus, this way, I can run everything through my 5.1 system.

But yeah.. it seems like monitor resolutions have gone down in general. Even the 1200s are a little harder to find. The 1080 thing has seemed to have taken over. I assume because of the HD marketing?

In my experience when getting a regular tow, go ahead and get all new tires. I don't think I've left the pits with screwed up steering when doing this, but I have when I have not replaced the tires.

Wait.. What?? You can choose what is being replaced when you are in the pits. I really need to read the iRacing manual to see all the things I am missing out on. I have just used the stock setup, no extra info, or buttons used. I need to learn some hot keys.

 

[swiftwilly]

Well over the weekend I have clawed some what back from my Brands Hatch disaster. I am +200 irating for this week at one time +300 for the week. I could race more but to be honest, I feel like going out on a "high" at LRP. I still am able to race at least twice tonight with potential to claw my entire irating loss from last week OR on the other hand, I could easily be back to where I started. Therefore, taking some time out and just relaxing until next weeks race I think will do my health some good!!

I think I will be better placed next week as I will NOT qualify this time around.

Also, I need to cool off a bit and reflect things I have learned this week that may help some newbies out...

1. TURN OFF YOUR EGO. I say this to myself at the start of the race a few times but guess what? Pretty much forget it when lights go green. What do I mean by this?
Don't get cocky, take it easy in turn 1, let people past you if you must, if your good enough, you will always catch up. As long as you don't have mistakes, you will end up what you should have ended up.

Example:
Last race, I was 2nd amongst a much higher SOF (I was #2 when my car was #11 out of 11). I got off to a GREAT start. Turn 1 I was first. Prior to the race, I saw the SOF and said to myself "just finish this, place top 5 and it'll be like a win in a lower SOF". Guess what? At #1 my ego kicked in, I started saying I could win this.....exit of turn 1 I hit 2nd place, had to pit. So what happened? End of race I realised with my average lap time I could of placed #3 at a SOF that was double my current irating. What should have I done? Be less cocky, let the faster car go in turn 1, let all the other aggressive and faster cars get ahead, just keep driving.


Anyway, the above is much harder when your going to race. I am pretty sure I will make the same mistake next week, hopefully over time I will learn.

P.S Skip series is still bloody hard and I am sure it contributes 60% to my crashes in itself. If I am racing in another series I am sure my DNF will be a lot less. Open wheels + slight knocks = end of race.

I won't be racing the Skip after this season. I think I will race until the end as I am in a good position to finish #1 in my time trails.

Release the MP4 next season iracing, PLEASEEEEeeee...

 

[superbike81]

We won't see the McLaren next season. They have already said the CTS-V is coming for S2, and they probably aren't going to release both together.

 

[swiftwilly]

We won't see the McLaren next season. They have already said the CTS-V is coming for S2, and they probably aren't going to release both together.

Argh...problems with when the company is American and caters for American tastes. 👎

Enough muscle cars seriously, would be a nice breathe of fresh air to get some kind of sports car/GT car. I am sure McLaren would be the first? I cannot think of anything similar thats not in Rookie class.

 

[Eric.]

If the Caddy comes out next season, I'll probably be driving one.


Edit: Its little to do with taste and more about availability. They don't get much access to the McLaren, and some of the CAD data that was sent to them was in the wrong format. They've also got to finish up the Lotus 49. As for tracks, I believe Motegi is in the works (which I sort of hope they include the Super Speedway).

 

[swiftwilly]

If the Caddy comes out next season, I'll probably be driving one.


Edit: Its little to do with taste and more about availability. They don't get much access to the McLaren, and some of the CAD data that was sent to them was in the wrong format. They've also got to finish up the Lotus 49. As for tracks, I believe Motegi is in the works (which I sort of hope they include the Super Speedway).

Makes sense. I'd like to point something out and want to know your thoughts on this:

If they create more cars, it'll create more options for people to drive. With iracing population growing at X%, and with limited time (theres only 24 hours in a day), wouldn't it mean that series will get smaller and smaller? If series gets less participation, that can create a massive issue (I already cannot race in a few series because of limited participation at my peak time - I cannot race Radical or Riley).

I mean..keeping it simple, if theres 2 series/2cars, 30,000 users, thats 15k each (assuming everyone is online). If theres 10 series/10 cars, thats 3k each...I think you get my drift.

How to combat this: more multie class races.

But thats another issue in itself. Some cars are not suitable at multi races.

So...as much as I love iracing putting more cars out there, if their participation rates don't pick up, they could seriously stuff their own game up.

 

[superbike81]

It's understandable that you are concerned with that potential issue, so am I, but I am confident that the iRacing Staff has a master plan that will keep that from happening.

As far as the Cadillac goes, it is a GT car, a very good one supposedly, it will start racing this year in the SCCA. http://jalopnik.com/5729425/cadillac-cts+v-race-car-first-luscious-live-photos . But the reason we are getting it before the other cars is because Cadillac is paying iRacing (likely a substantial amount) to have it in the game as a way to advertise their newest entry into the motorsports world.

 

[redreevos]

As far as the Cadillac goes, it is a GT car, a very good one supposedly, it will start racing this year in the SCCA. http://jalopnik.com/5729425/cadillac-cts+v-race-car-first-luscious-live-photos

That does look like it would be a fun car to drive. I might have to purchase that one if/when it becomes available.

 

[swiftwilly]

It's understandable that you are concerned with that potential issue, so am I, but I am confident that the iRacing Staff has a master plan that will keep that from happening.

I hope so, because I can tell you right now theres only 4 series that I can compete in because others lack participation issues:

Skip - daily
V8 - 2 nights
Mazda - i think a few
HPD - only 1 day

Another car, one of my above series will get affected.

I think they did try to fix the issue with multi class, lets see what else they have planned....Its like playing a MMORPF yet you can only use 4 out of the 12 or something races. You'd love to try one of them but you can't


On another note, I am officially 3rd in time trails for div 6. First place has 1 more race than me and only 14 points ahead so I am pretty confident I am 2nd place right now, 7 points behind. I am pretty stoked...

My LRP Time Trail for this week is: 59.650.

 

[GTP_FastM3]

Makes sense. I'd like to point something out and want to know your thoughts on this:

If they create more cars, it'll create more options for people to drive. With iracing population growing at X%, and with limited time (theres only 24 hours in a day), wouldn't it mean that series will get smaller and smaller? If series gets less participation, that can create a massive issue (I already cannot race in a few series because of limited participation at my peak time - I cannot race Radical or Riley).

I mean..keeping it simple, if theres 2 series/2cars, 30,000 users, thats 15k each (assuming everyone is online). If theres 10 series/10 cars, thats 3k each...I think you get my drift.

How to combat this: more multie class races.

But thats another issue in itself. Some cars are not suitable at multi races.

So...as much as I love iracing putting more cars out there, if their participation rates don't pick up, they could seriously stuff their own game up.

One thing iRacing could do to combat this would be to have more than 1 car per class. Make it like some of the real race series where there are 2, 3, or more manufacturers competing in a class. IRacing would only have to make sure they run comparable lap times through ballast, etc

 

[Nastradamus87]

Just had a skippy race with a 3800 SOF. I didn't place very well lol. Gained five spots from my starting place though (15th to 10th). This race was at 19:45 GMT for those looking for high SOF race times.

 

[redreevos]

Just had a skippy race with a 3800 SOF. I didn't place very well lol. Gained five spots from my starting place though (15th to 10th). This race was at 19:45 GMT for those looking for high SOF race times.

You're not kidding Josh. I just looked at your results. That field was loaded! Most of the field ran '57s at LRP. Impressive stuff. The worst fastest lap was a '58.2.