What would you recommend?

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While the graphics are important, the most important thing about a car simulator is its physics. If it doesnt drive correctly, its not worth the simulation tag.

PC sims are highly scalable graphically. Ive got a very very old athlon 64 3500+ processor in my pc, with 1GB of ram, and run iracing almost exclusively now. Granted, i have to turn off the shadows that turn it into one of the best looking sims out there, but its the feel im after. The track accuracy is second to none, laser scanned to capture nuance that just isnt there in most sims.

The subscription model will and does turn a lot of people off, but if youre hardcore enough to spend time on it in the week, and like the idea of being placed into races only with drivers of a similar rank to you, then you might like it. Youre paying for the league structure that is the backbone of iracing.

Theres no F1 car in it yet (a williams f1 car is currently being put together), but it does have a gt1 corvette if youre looking for a big n meaty sportscar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLCmYo-7wvk
 
I ended up getting into iRacing personally, been at it for about 6 weeks now. It's unpleasantly expensive but the competition is just awesome, the whole race experience really is simulated nicely online. Unless PD totally botches the online functionality in GT5 I suspect it will be easy to cancel the subscription so I'm considering it just a temporary hobby, but it's hard to say.

Blogged a lot more detail and comparisons to GT here: http://rm-rf.ca/blog/iracing-review

I didn't particularly like the feel of rFactor, and didn't spend enough time with LFS to really get to know it. For some reason I'm drawn to real tracks and real cars.
 
CerealKiller
I ended up getting into iRacing personally, been at it for about 6 weeks now. It's unpleasantly expensive but the competition is just awesome, the whole race experience really is simulated nicely online. Unless PD totally botches the online functionality in GT5 I suspect it will be easy to cancel the subscription so I'm considering it just a temporary hobby, but it's hard to say.

Blogged a lot more detail and comparisons to GT here: http://rm-rf.ca/blog/iracing-review

I didn't particularly like the feel of rFactor, and didn't spend enough time with LFS to really get to know it. For some reason I'm drawn to real tracks and real cars.
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Good choice :). If you are considering it a temporary hobby would i be safe to assume you won't be buying much content?... I ask because for some people they may despise purchasing a lot of content for something which they are only going to try out for 6 months. People may come on with a big budget buy alot of stuff and then resent the fact that they have to stay around because they have $400 worth of virtual cars and tracks.

I came onto it with a tiny budget thinking a month would be enough for me... I now own a hell of a lot of the content purely because i know it is the sim for me and that i don't plan on leaving anytime soon. I have made purchases even the best accountants couldn't justify :). And im happy... Hope you have fun which ever way you decide to go.
 
scoobasteve
Good choice :). If you are considering it a temporary hobby would i be safe to assume you won't be buying much content?... I ask because for some people they may despise purchasing a lot of content for something which they are only going to try out for 6 months. People may come on with a big budget buy alot of stuff and then resent the fact that they have to stay around because they have $400 worth of virtual cars and tracks.

I came onto it with a tiny budget thinking a month would be enough for me... I now own a hell of a lot of the content purely because i know it is the sim for me and that i don't plan on leaving anytime soon. I have made purchases even the best accountants couldn't justify :). And im happy... Hope you have fun which ever way you decide to go.
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I grappled with that quite a bit, I'm only into road racing and I found the default set of content to be just too little to keep me interested. Looking through the series I'd like to get up to around the Covette GT series, but I decided to start with 7 pieces of content get me the Skip Barber and most of the interesting tracks in the series. That's working out pretty good, I'm probably not cut out for the higher license classes and 6 good tracks is a whole lot of racing to master.

How long have you been at it? I'm hoping that one batch of content will be enough to hold me but I guess it all depends on how long GT5 is and how involved in the seasons I get. :) I missed the early weeks this season so will have to see how it goes. I'd love to get through the Radical series and up to the Corvette. Youtube vids make those look pretty awesome.
 
CerealKiller
I grappled with that quite a bit, I'm only into road racing and I found the default set of content to be just too little to keep me interested. Looking through the series I'd like to get up to around the Covette GT series, but I decided to start with 7 pieces of content get me the Skip Barber and most of the interesting tracks in the series. That's working out pretty good, I'm probably not cut out for the higher license classes and 6 good tracks is a whole lot of racing to master.

How long have you been at it? I'm hoping that one batch of content will be enough to hold me but I guess it all depends on how long GT5 is and how involved in the seasons I get. :) I missed the early weeks this season so will have to see how it goes. I'd love to get through the Radical series and up to the Corvette. Youtube vids make those look pretty awesome.
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I have only been a member since the start of December. I was mainly a road racer when i started, didn't have any interest in ovals. That soon changed as i found it easier to learn the oval racing to get used to the physics and a bit of car control and of course in legends a lot of accident avoidance :). I got out of rookie quite quickly luckily as there was licence upgrades the week after i joined.

My first purchases were made after looking at what hosted sessions were being run as i didn't mind racing the official rookie sessions for a month as i got used to the basics. Moved out of the rookie series after i was able to win 4 races in a row. After that my purchases became slightly erratic :scared:, I bulk bought quite a few to get discounts when i was drunk coming home from the pub which was quite fun waking up the next morning and having a new car and 5 tracks to learn.

I tend to race the skip barbers, and am still getting to grasp with them, my concistancy is awful :indiff: (well not awful but i hate 1x's) Have had a hell of a lot of fun with club england hosted races and try to do an oval race every other week at either C + D.

It is great fun and i havn't played another game since i registered. I will buy GT5 as iRacing is in my eyes a different thing entirely, There are a lot less game aspects in iRacing, it is more serious and not something you can just jump on if you are not familiar with the track. GT5 career mode is different in every way to iRacing (apart from still having 4 wheels) and is less serious just as fun.
 
Nsane1
Ok, to start, sorry for the double post but here's the deal...

So far I have downloaded the demo's for LFS, rFactor, RBR, and GTR2. Of all of these I find RBR and GTR2 to be more to my liking and I'll explain why. All games were played on hardest physics setting with all aids off and difficulty (where applicable) on hardest settings.
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If you are interested in a rally game, go for RBR. I have both PC and PS2 versions. It's a hard game to find, I had to import it from Italy but in a good price (probably you will see some price abuses).

PC version has the posibilty of install mods and there are a lot. There are new stages an a big list of cars. I recommend this game to everyone who is interested in rally.
 
Hi All

Thought i would bring this thread back to life as im looking to start some PC sim racing at the end of the month after getting a T500rs and cockpit and getting bored with GT5 :grumpy:. So im looking for any new opinions on what is the best PC sim racer to get (iracing, rfactor, GTR Evo or any other one you can suggest).

:)Thanks in advance:)
Steve
 
Well Steve, I can only give advice about iracing.

PROS:
The graphics in iracing are awesome considering you have a pc or laptop capable enough. The physics are hands down best I've played and its only going to get better with the iracing 2.0 tire model upgrade which is coming to all series soon. The racing is pretty top notch also. I've only ran into a few people that don't seem to care about their SR rating.(Safety Rating- simple way to explain is it is a turns per incident calculation which is the backbone of iracing as far as licensing goes.) You do have to start out in lower tier cars first and work your way up. However, it doesn't take that long to get to Nascar, Daytona Prototypes, F1, and Indycar. Thats another nice thing about iracing is you can drive a multitude of series whether it be road or oval track.

CONS:
I guess this may not be a con, but it is a pricey sim racer. You don't have to purchase anything as far as tracks or series if you don't want to, but believe me if you get into iracing you will. That another thing is you don't own anything in iracing. When you purchase track/car you're only buying the right to use it. So if a track/car was taken off of iracing you would be out of the money paid for it. Its never happened as far as I know, but there is always a chance it could. I believe the only con for me atleast, is I can only play after 12am est during the week and maybe on the weekends and can be hard to find enough people to race against. Theres always people in the rookie cup mx-5 races, but I'd like to race in the higher up series since my license allows it.

So in all, I absolutely love iracing. I just wish my schedule allowed me to race at a different time frame. I will add that iracing does take some time to get used to. When you go out onto the track for the first time you'll notice that there is no aids or help on learning tracks. So the best thing to do is learn the tracks before entering any races. You can do so in time trials or your own personal practice sessions.

Here's a short read about what to expect that I didn't mention

http://www.onlineracedriver.com/2010/06/23/what-to-expect-in-iracing/
 
steve_cfc7
Thanks for all the info plate88. Gonna give it a try.
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No problem. If you're looking for that hardcore sim, iracing will fill that void for sure.

Also forgot to mention, there are some fixed set-up series so you don't have to spend a bunch of time tuning. Its just driver vs. driver.

Tuning no big deal really. There is plenty of places to find some tunes to get you started in the right direction.

Hope you enjoy iracing Steve and welcome to the community.👍
 

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