iRacing sim questions

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zslane

zslane

82
United States
Los Angeles, CA
I am fascinated by iRacing but not sure I would be any good at it, so I haven't taken the plunge to try it. I've never played any racing games (I don't even own a game console; I'm more of a PC gamer...MMORPGs mostly) and never had much of an interest in watching racing on tv until very recently. I'm watching the current NASCAR Sprint Cup series and am a bit obsessed with it right now, hence the curiosity wrt to iRacing (I'd be mostly interested in oval racing, naturally).

So while I read forum threads, learn what I can, and ponder a possible iRacing stint, I have a couple of questions about the simulation engine itself. The service seems to go to great lengths to provide super accurate car and track physics, but a couple of things seem missing:

1) Where is all the environmental shadowing? I see the contact shadows from the cars and the occasional fence-post type shadows, but in side-by-side comparisons with the real tracks that I see in some videos, the lack of shadows from grandstands, overpasses, signage, trees, etc. creates a peculiar unreality for me. On oval tracks, for instance, the presence of cloud cover can significantly alter track temperature which dramatically changes tire grip. If there is no environment shadowing, then I presume there is no simulated cloud cover either.

2) The collision fx seem vastly oversimplified, i.e., I see no evidence of crash debris physics. Running into debris, not just walls and other cars, can have a significant impact on oval track cars because perfect aero is such a critical aspect of race performance. One little tear on a front quarter panel (from running into a flying piece of someone's blown tire or rear bumper) and you are lucky to remain in the top 20, and even after pitting and "repairing" that tear, it is usually a struggle to finish top 10. Without debris and debris collision detection, none of this will get simulated. Or is it being simulated and I just can't see it in the videos?

Thanks in advance!
 
Well, if you seriously thinking about Iracing don't worry about shadows. Worry about what wheel you gonna buy. I think you don't have that. and nope there is no debris.
 
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1. temperature and humidity were just added in the most recent update. right now tracks do not change temp during a race, but most races you will run will not be long enough for this to have even mattered. all the shadows that should be there are there. you may be seeing someone run iracing not at full detail.

I guess long story short. there is no "true" cloud cover. and temps do not change, but they are set different from a night race to a day race and so forth (elevation is also taken into consideration)

2. collision fx is vastly oversimplified. this is not a crash simulator. this is a racing simulator. we are all humans, and this is a hobby not a profession. iRacing is not a simple game you pick up and just win, or even FINISH a race. no one wants to spend hours in practice and qualifying just to have someone crash infront of you and their debris ruins your chance to run competitively. i know i would be very frustrated with the system if it was this way. finding a good solid group of people to race with is hard enough.

i wouldn't expect this type of physics to ever be implemented.




side note. i think most people here are gear heads and love most all racing. there is always going to be oval vs road. i personally race both and LOVE both. you concerns seem to be more to do with the game being "pretty". i agree with maxitsu. if you are really interested in iracing. you need to worry about wheels peddles, shifters and racing craft.

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another side note. iRacing isnt cheep. i would advise you really figuring out a plan of attack for iracing. i know i have spent over $500 on tracks and cars. i dont use them all. and some things i wish i didnt get, and somethings i couldnt live without.
 
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Do very many people come to iRacing without any background whatsoever in racing games (like me)? Will my complete lack of prior experience be a problem or an advantage? On the one hand, I haven't logged any time with any sort of driving sim or racing game, but I also don't have any bad habits or expectations to unlearn.

With regard to controllers, how do the different shifters impact the experience? Is it important whether one uses a sequential or an H shifter? What should be guiding my choice there?

And is there any particular advantage to an F1 style wheel versus a round wheel?

How many laps do races typically contain? If races aren't long enough for track temperature to have an impact, then I'm guessing races aren't 160-200 laps like in real life? And without cloud cover simulation, qualifying on iRacing ovals isn't like the actual NASCAR circuit where every driver prays for a big fat cloud to fly over during their lap around the track.

Which naturally brings up the question of weather, in particular rain. Does iRacing have anything like endurance racing (Le Mans) where rain can play a major role in the outcome?

I admire iRacing's attention to detail and am grateful for everyone's insights into the boundaries of the simulation.
 
I would say most people have some experience in another racing sim/game.

You can get a 3-month trial, but more important than just the game would what's your budget for wheel/pedals, do you need any computer upgrades and so on.

Also, be aware of the pricing model. You pay monthly and pay for cars and tracks. When signing up you get a few cars and a few tracks, but after you get out of rookie class if you want to race every week, or every other week with people you'll need to get some more tracks and a new car here and there.

Shifter type is up to you. You can just use paddles on the wheel, a sequential, or the h-pattern. It's up to you. Some people wanting to be a real as possible will use what the car does in real life.

MX-5 = H Pattern
F1 = Paddles
Riley DP = Sequential

F1 Wheel Versus Round wheel is probably more about preference.

Most races starting off are around 20-30 minutes. There are longer races as well. I'm only class D road/rookie oval so not sure how long the oval races get.

Iracing does not simulate rain. It's not listed on their forum topic of "what's in development."

They do run some 2.4 hour races I think.
 
I'd invest some time playing a cheaper, more accessible sim-racing game first if I were you. iRacing is pretty expensive for what it is and takes a lot of time and practice, even coming from other racing games you can't just jump in and win races without investing some time (we're talking at least a couple of hours practice just learning how to drive again after playing games like GT for 10 years or more).

Start playing Gran Turismo, Forza or whatever your preference is and running long races (like 20/30 laps or so) and start learning to race using less and less aids (first try using manual gears, then turning off traction control, then turning off ABS, etc).
GT especially can start teaching you some basics in car setup and tuning and the license tests are very good at teaching you racing lines.
Ultimately what you need for iRacing is a good understanding of all the standard racing stuff (racing lines, car setup, how to handle different car characteristics, etc), patience, focus and awareness. A lot of this can be picked up playing games like GT, especially running longer races against other humans where you need to focus for long periods of time.

Then if you're still enjoying yourself and want even more of a challenge, get iRacing. But to jump to it starting from zero is asking a lot in my opinion.

By the way, there are no or very few racing games out there that simulate cloud shadows affecting track temperatures and very few games/simulations have debris on track.
iRacing isn't about throwing in as many flashy features as possible like rain, fully modelled damage, etc. It's more about making as realistic a physics engine and racing experience as possible. I think a lot of us especially like playing it because of the community too and the license system helps promote clean racing (something that is rare to find on most popular racing games).
The feel of the cars (force feedback is awesome), the challenge of driving them and the detail in the tracks (not necessarily graphically, but the surface and how car handles each track) are why I play.

I think by the sounds of things you would love iRacing, but it is quite an investment of time and money to be jumping into as your first taste of racing games. Like I say, I'd suggest you find out if racing games are for you by trying cheaper options first. Despite what some might say, GT is not a bad place to start and is reasonably realistic compared to many racing games out there - many of the lessons you learn are applicable to iRacing too.
 
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Spending some time with GT5 sounds like a pretty good idea. Unfortunately, I do not own a PS3, or any game console for that matter, and so would either have to invest in one (plus the cost of the game) or try and find a friend willing to lend both to me (not likely). The money spent on a console I don't really want seems like it could be better spent on extra iRacing tracks or something.

My approach to iRacing was to avoid actual races until I know what I'm doing behind the wheel, regardless of how long that takes. I am in no hurry to compete, but I am itching to see what the virtual driving experience is like and to learn the fundamentals of track driving at speed. If my ambitions are more modest, isn't iRacing as good a platform to start with as GT5?

My controller budget is undecided at this point. I figured I'd start with one of the commonly used Logitech wheels, but the lack of a good bench to mount it to may scuttle this whole idea before it even gets started.
 
GT is an example, there are plenty of PC sims out there too. I think GT has a great system with the licenses and things because it goes into quite some detail with racing lines, etc. But really you can learn all that in iRacing just as well.

I think you could just jump straight into iRacing. My only concern is that its a lot of money only to find out its not for you, especially investing in steering wheels, etc.

As for wheels, I use a Logitech DFGT - it's the best value for money wheel you can get. It's cheaper than the top wheels but its still got decent FFB and build quality. It's also handy with the extra buttons.
The only downside is that it doesn't have a separate shifter.
As for stands, I'd recommend these:
http://wheelstandpro.com/

I've got one and its good enough. The only problem with the DFGT is that it doesn't grip especially well when you put the FFB high and it can slide off. But generally its good enough.
 
A lot of people get frustrated with iRacing and have trouble getting out of rookie. I would bet for many of those, iRacing is their first sim experience. You have to understand how iRacing works. There are two measures of ability in iRacing, irating and safety rating. Your iRating is kind of a measure of how skilled you are and safety rating how safe you are. iRating determines who you race with. iRacing tries to match you up with racers of similar iRating. When you are a rookie, iRacing won't tell you your irating but it is still there. Basically your iRating increases if you finish in the top half of a race and decreases if you finish in the bottom half. Safety rating determines when you get promoted to higher licenses so it determines what series you are allowed to race in. There is no fault system with safety rating. Even if an accident wasn't your fault, it will negatively effect your safety rating. Things like running off track or losing control of your car also negatively affect your safety rating.

So this is where people go wrong. They enter races before they are ready and race too hard. The harder you race, the more likely you are to get into accidents even if it is someone else's fault. So you end up losing safety rating because you get into too many accidents and because of the accidents you finish the race in the bottom half so you lose iRating. Since you lose iRating, the next race you will be matched against less skilled racers and they will be more likely to crash you out. Thus you lose more iRating and Safety rating. You can get into a vicious cycle.

The right way to do it is to not race until you can do laps without incidents at a relatively fast pace then take it easy in the race. For example, in my first race, I started in the pits to avoid the first turn mayhem and raced at a good pace but avoided racing anyone. I ended up on the podium in that race without passing anyone on the track. I gained positions from other people crashing and running off the track.

If iRacing is your first experience, there will be a larger learning curve to get ready to race but it's not undoable. There are practice sessions where you can drive with other cars and not worry about safety rating. Another feature that I really like is that you can spectate races and actually join in. The other cars can't see you and will drive right through you but it is still fun and a way to see if you are close to being on pace or not.
 
Yeah, iRacing certainly sounds like the way to go, at least for me, especially with all the learning/practice options available. The trickiest part would probably be getting a decent wheel set up (I don't have a convenient space for one of those driving frames or "stands"), calibrated, and configured optimally.

I've watched a number of very good videos on handling the rookie category. The "Surviving Rookie" videos were especially insightful and encouraging (the notion of anticipating crashes and slowing down to avoid them feels very intuitive to me). My instinct going into this would be to treat the simulator as though I am in a real car rather than driving an arcade game car. I figure that this attitude alone would help me get through the rookie stage with minimal frustration. I know I can't avoid every crash event I encounter, but I figure I can minimize the dumb, avoidable crashes by simply driving patiently and smartly.

More questions about the simulation engine itself; does it simulate:

1) Blown tires?

2) Overheating engines?

3) Burning out the engine or gearbox due to shifting mistakes (e.g., accidentally downshifting into 1st gear prior to applying full throttle entering a straightaway)?
 
zslane
Yeah, iRacing certainly sounds like the way to go, at least for me, especially with all the learning/practice options available. The trickiest part would probably be getting a decent wheel set up (I don't have a convenient space for one of those driving frames or "stands"), calibrated, and configured optimally.

I've watched a number of very good videos on handling the rookie category. The "Surviving Rookie" videos were especially insightful and encouraging (the notion of anticipating crashes and slowing down to avoid them feels very intuitive to me). My instinct going into this would be to treat the simulator as though I am in a real car rather than driving an arcade game car. I figure that this attitude alone would help me get through the rookie stage with minimal frustration. I know I can't avoid every crash event I encounter, but I figure I can minimize the dumb, avoidable crashes by simply driving patiently and smartly.

More questions about the simulation engine itself; does it simulate:

1) Blown tires?

2) Overheating engines?

3) Burning out the engine or gearbox due to shifting mistakes (e.g., accidentally downshifting into 1st gear prior to applying full throttle entering a straightaway)?
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1. No
2. Yes
3. Not sure, but I've seen it happen.

And it's great that you've watched the Surviving Rookie videos, that alone puts you ahead of 90% of people who are new to iRAcing. Another thing to do is watch all the driving school videos, they really helped me when I was starting out. And read the sporting code.

As for a wheel, I would reccomend a Logitech G27. Has tons of buttons, flappy padles, an H pattern gearbox and clutch. It's well wort the extra $100 to upgrade from the DFGT if you have the money.

iRacing is a great place, with a great community and awesome racing. If you like to race, you'll like iRacing.
 
I would definitely go through all the documentation and tutorial videos I could get my hands on before starting. I am completely new to racing, period. I mean, I know what they mean by "hitting his marks," in that I think I know what the marks are, but I don't know the first thing about how to properly accelerate/decelerate from one to the next. Do I use breaks or just use a combination of lifting off the throttle and downshifting? It's all that very basic stuff that I would be starting off with having to learn. And I imagine that the answers to many such questions are track and car specific, at least when it comes to the finer details. But I don't even know the first thing about taking a turn "properly". That's how much of a race newbie I am (and I'm 48 years old, if you can believe that)!

As for the wheel, I could probably afford a G27, but I'm not sure I would be into this enough to warrant the extra $100+ investment. Besides, from reading other threads, I get the impression that the G27 is harder to get set up properly than a DFGT. Is that right? Or is that just a false impression I'm getting?
 
Hey zslane, I've been reading your post here and if you do decide to start iracing maybe we could learn together when time permit's. I'm older also and just learning this sim myself, and I still need alot of practice before I start racing.... I just joined last month and I really like it alot (just not to good yet) :-) Anyway I'll watch and see if you would like to get together sometime. If you are interested just send me a PM.... Thanks.....


Ol'stone
 
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I think everybody here has good points. Having no racing experience in either sim racing or real racing and jumping onto iracing is going to be like jumping into the deep end. Its doable and not impossible, but like the other guys said iracing is a bit of an investment to find out you don't like it.

Here is one thing you could do. Get a 1 month membership if they still offer them it was only $5 or 3 month for $15 if they don't do those anymore. That will give you access to the iracing forums. Since you live in LA Im pretty sure there are quite a few iracers in your area. Try putting up a post explaining your situation and Im sure you will find somebody that's close that will let you come and try it out. That way you could see if its for you or not. Its worth a shot for $5 or $15 I think.
 
Just so you know. Lap times in iRacing don't "fall off" with tire wear. The tire wear in iracing is completely unrealistic and doesn't penalize you for over driving your car. This "new tire model" has been in development for 4 years and tear wear still isn't properly modeled. Either is multiple tire compounds or flat spotting. It's a joke really.


Plus this current build is full of all kinds of garage screen bugs, people getting black screens, net code issues. I say wait awhile.
 
Just so I understand the phenomenon properly, the reason tire wear in the real world reduces lap times is because the lost grip forces the driver to take turns at lower speeds so as to avoid sliding or spinning out (or blowing the tire), correct?
 
zslane
Just so I understand the phenomenon properly, the reason tire wear in the real world reduces lap times is because the lost grip forces the driver to take turns at lower speeds so as to avoid sliding or spinning out (or blowing the tire), correct?
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Pretty much.

I'd recommend watching some road racing on TV or the net.
 
zslane
Just so I understand the phenomenon properly, the reason tire wear in the real world reduces lap times is because the lost grip forces the driver to take turns at lower speeds so as to avoid sliding or spinning out (or blowing the tire), correct?
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In most series that aren't F1, it's not so much tyre wear as tyre heat. And a lot of F1 teams have more trouble with heat than wear still. But in the series in iRacing, it's generally not so much an issue with wear as an issue with heat. You're only running races ~1 hour long max and not on particularly soft tyres.

Each tyre has a temperature sweet spot depending on the type of rubber and the load on it. If it goes above that temperature, it will lose grip and slide more, which creates heat from friction, which makes it slide even more, and then more heat, and so on and so on.

Good drivers can go fast while not sliding the car as much, which means they can keep temperatures down and grip high without slowing down too much.

You'll see some series or track day drivers shave their tyres in real life. This makes the tread blocks shorter so that they can't flex as much in the corners. But in races of any length the effect of the variance of the depth of the tread is far overridden by the effect of temperatures. Unless you have no rubber left at all.

Maybe this is useful information, or maybe I'm just spouting dribble. Hope it helps though. :)
 
You can definitely blow the engine by mis-shifting!
I thought tyre blowouts were modelled but incredibly rare. Don't know the rules but you are unlikely to see them.

You can learn a lot about racing lines from trying road racing and watching track tutorials on YouTube.
 
When you pit in iRacing, can you make all the same sorts of adjustments that pit crews make in real life? Things like tire pressure changes, track bar, wedge, front grill tape, etc.? I'm trying to get a feel for the extent of the racing "realism" in the simulation, and to what extent it covers pit activity beyond simple tire changes and refueling.
 
tumbleweed
You can definitely blow the engine by mis-shifting!
I thought tyre blowouts were modelled but incredibly rare. Don't know the rules but you are unlikely to see them.
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Tyres blowout when they hit 0% tread remaining. It's quite hard to do. Park nose into a wall with a reasonably powerful car and just smoke your tyres for a few minutes. You'll eventually hear a pair of bangs. From memory I don't think it's represented visually, but I could be wrong. You definitely notice if you go to drive afterwards.

zslane
When you pit in iRacing, can you make all the same sorts of adjustments that pit crews make in real life? Things like tire pressure changes, track bar, wedge, front grill tape, etc.? I'm trying to get a feel for the extent of the racing "realism" in the simulation, and to what extent it covers pit activity beyond simple tire changes and refueling.
Click to expand...

Depends on the car. Generally yes. There are also a certain amount of in-car adjustments that you can make on the fly while you're racing, again depending on the car.
 
iRacing might put you off racing or driving because it's actually more difficult driving in that sim than it is in real life in my honest opinion. With stock cars i.e. the Mazda Cup Car during mid corner if your back wheels start to slide then you're pretty much done for unless you have super reflex, even then it's a challenge saving a car in iRacing. I'm in D class at the moment so I can't tune my cars, I want to tune this Mazda Cup Car to see if I can successfully drift without a spinout.

BTW, i'm curious, are there any guys on iRacing that can drift? and if not, why not? because every other sim there is a group that drift and have online drifting sessions.

zslane if you don't mind graphics so much there are demo's you could try, here's some links to some I can think of.

http://rfactor.net/web/rf1/buyonline2/ this game shines because of the modding community

http://rfactor.net/web/rf2/rf2dl/

http://www.lfs.net/

this one is going for 4 euros and is a very good sim plus you get a code to try out Assetto Corsa Tech Preview http://www.netkar-pro.com/main/

If your on steam there is a free to play game by Simbin called Race Room Racing Experience and they also have a demo of an older tittle by the name Race 07.

The sim's to watch out for in the coming months are, Assetto Corsa, Project C.A.R.S, rFactor 2 and Race Room Racing Experience (AKA R3E)
 
To be fair, it's more difficult going fast in *every* decent sim than it is in real life. Not just iRacing. The lack of seat of the pants feedback, the limited field of view (unless you have triples) and the never-quite-there state of all the current tyre models means it's just harder.

You can tune the Mazda Cup, regardless of your license class. Go to a test session. If you want to do it in a racing series, Grand Touring Cup is your choice, or inRacing News has the Roadster which is the same car in RHD with a 5 speed.

I don't want to pooh-pooh your opinion about the Cup because it does have known handling issues, but it's not really that hard to catch. If you haven't got it, consider getting the Skip Barber car. It's a complete bastard, and intentionally so, because it's a trainer car. Once you adapt to it, it really makes a lot of other cars much easier. Seriously difficult cars are the Lotus 49 and the V8 Supercar.

I've never seen a drifting club on iRacing in the same way as something like FM or GT has drifting clubs. This may be down to the price, it's not really any better for drifting than something like LFS, NKP or rFactor and in some ways it's worse.

It is relatively easy to drift some cars, the Mustang comes to mind as the prime candidate. The V8 is also actually a good one for drifting, the locked rear diff and huge power means you can just stomp the throttle and it goes sideways. Hard to be fast, but easy to get sideways. :)

The difficulty is that most of the cars are race cars and thus have serious aero and/or sticky tyres, which make drifting at big angles more difficult. Still, there's plenty of videos on Youtube showing that it can be done. You'll never find D1 style full-on sideways and reverse entry stuff, but some people seem to do alright.




Really, iRacing's simulation isn't particularly notably ahead of the other major players apart from the laser scanned tracks thing (which I happen to find a relatively big deal, but it isn't for everyone). What you're paying for is the online experience. The servers, the safety rating, the protest system, the easy to use drop in racing series, the regular sessions at known times and so on. It caters very well for everything from those who want to come home and jump into a race without much practice to those who practice all week and do one or two SOF races.
 
MaDHaX
BTW, i'm curious, are there any guys on iRacing that can drift? and if not, why not? because every other sim there is a group that drift and have online drifting sessions.
Click to expand...

Simply jump in the KIA Optima, select a track with high speed sweepers and throw the car into the corner on the first lap out of the pits on cold (rear) tyres. There you have easily save-able and sustained FWD drifting (simply counter steer and mash the throttle).

The thing is, most people run very "pointy" setups or very safe, understeer setups. Neither of which really help drifting.

But its certainly possible to drift and its not that hard once you've got a handle on the cars. I've for sure successfully drifted these cars when I've pushed a little too hard:
Mazda MX5
KIA Optima
Skip Barber
Lotus 49 (pretty much always drifting really haha)
Lotus 79
Star Mazda
Street Stock

The Star Mazda in particular I've 4-wheel drifted a few times when I've taken too much kerb or thrown it too hard into the corner, its usually catchable if you know you've made the mistake early enough. It's pretty satisfying to hang on to those ones in the high-downforce cars because they don't like breaking traction mid-corner.
The high powered cars like the 49 and 79 are all down to throttle and steering control.
 
Typically, not always, the kind of person who has time and patience, and asks questions before diving headlong in to iRacing or knows that practice takes time before racing is the kind of person who should Join iRacing.
In the iRacing promo codes thread is a code for daytona talladega and a cup car and 3 month subscription for $12 (I don't know if it's been updated for new daytona and the gen 6 car or not) but it's something to try.
A used DFGT goes for $70-$85 and for a stand I just bought a $20 computer desk from fred meyer. It did the trick but I soon realized I needed an upgrade to a G27 down the road. So the cost is something you're going to have to decide though.
 
Well, I sold some things on eBay and used the funds to score a used Fanatec wheel/pedal/shifter set. Now I gotta get a stand for it all and I can get started. I figure I'll go for the 3 months for $12 offer they have going right now. Are there any promotional codes that still work that I should be aware of?
 
Can anyone recommend a stand that works with Fanatec wheels and shifters? Seems like compatibility with the shifters is a sticking point for most stands.
 
Wheelstand pro makes a great stand for fanatec wheels that puts the shifter in a decent spot. And it's remarkably sturdy. I use one myself, but currently I'm on a G27. You can find one on ebay for about $180, well worth the investment unless you want to buy a sim rig.
 

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