Subaru Enthusiasts Car Club of the Sierras - View Single Post

sperry · 2010-01-11, 12:51 PM

After going so long w/o getting to race my WRX, I broke down and signed up for iRacing.com. It's an online racing service that's got arguably the most realistic racing simulator yet.

The biggest thing the service has going is that every lap you run during qualifying, warmup, race, or time trials is recorded. Any incidents you're involved in are compared to the number of corners you've completed and are averaged to give you a driver's rating. This rating is then used as the basis for a licensing system. This way, clean drivers are rewarded, and all the nonsense that normally happens with non-league online racing (idiot crashing on purpose, crashes in turn-1/lap-1, etc) are generally avoided.

At least generally. Today I ran my 1st ever race in the sim at Laguna Seca, and I got rear-ended on pit lane on my out lap for warmup. So, I got 4 points on my record before my first corner ever, just putting around in 1st gear.

Then I got dinged for 4 more points (contact is the worst offense) when two people wrecked in front of me in T4. I did a pretty good job IMO of avoiding the wreck and getting through it, but the simulator decided I was close enough to the incident that I must have been involved.

The replay shows clear daylight between me and the other cars... but I guess that's not good enough, especially since there are no appeals.

But the good news is, the game is pretty damn fun. The driving is pretty hard. Almost to the point where it's more like work than fun to get good at it (it's actually pretty similar feeling to NASCAR Racing 2003 for those that remember that game). There are both road course licenses and oval track licenses. The tracks are all laser scanned from the real course, so the fidelity is very high in the game. And cars are very well modeled. But the drawback is that because it's so much work for them to add cars and tracks, there are not that many to choose from, and you have to pay extra to buy additional cars and tracks over the 3 cars (Pontiac Solstice, 32 Ford Legends, Spec Racer Ford) and 7 tracks (Lime Rock Park, Lanier Speedway, Lowes Speedway, Laguna Seca, Oxford Plains Speedway, South Boston Speedway, and Summit Point Raceway) you start with. On top of that cost, it's also a monthly service, and you need a decent wheel/pedals setup.

So it's not for the casual gamer... in fact I'm afraid if work starts to get busy again that I'm just going to be wasting my money on this.

But for now it's pretty cool, assuming I can get into some races w/o getting screwed on incident points and get my rating up high enough to step up from the Rookie license.

2010-01-11, 12:51 PM	#1
sperry The Doink Real Name: Scott Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 20,335 Car: '09 OBXT, '02 WRX, '96 Miata Class: PDX/TT-6 The way out is through	iRacing.com After going so long w/o getting to race my WRX, I broke down and signed up for iRacing.com. It's an online racing service that's got arguably the most realistic racing simulator yet. The biggest thing the service has going is that every lap you run during qualifying, warmup, race, or time trials is recorded. Any incidents you're involved in are compared to the number of corners you've completed and are averaged to give you a driver's rating. This rating is then used as the basis for a licensing system. This way, clean drivers are rewarded, and all the nonsense that normally happens with non-league online racing (idiot crashing on purpose, crashes in turn-1/lap-1, etc) are generally avoided. At least generally. Today I ran my 1st ever race in the sim at Laguna Seca, and I got rear-ended on pit lane on my out lap for warmup. So, I got 4 points on my record before my first corner ever, just putting around in 1st gear. Then I got dinged for 4 more points (contact is the worst offense) when two people wrecked in front of me in T4. I did a pretty good job IMO of avoiding the wreck and getting through it, but the simulator decided I was close enough to the incident that I must have been involved. The replay shows clear daylight between me and the other cars... but I guess that's not good enough, especially since there are no appeals. But the good news is, the game is pretty damn fun. The driving is pretty hard. Almost to the point where it's more like work than fun to get good at it (it's actually pretty similar feeling to NASCAR Racing 2003 for those that remember that game). There are both road course licenses and oval track licenses. The tracks are all laser scanned from the real course, so the fidelity is very high in the game. And cars are very well modeled. But the drawback is that because it's so much work for them to add cars and tracks, there are not that many to choose from, and you have to pay extra to buy additional cars and tracks over the 3 cars (Pontiac Solstice, 32 Ford Legends, Spec Racer Ford) and 7 tracks (Lime Rock Park, Lanier Speedway, Lowes Speedway, Laguna Seca, Oxford Plains Speedway, South Boston Speedway, and Summit Point Raceway) you start with. On top of that cost, it's also a monthly service, and you need a decent wheel/pedals setup. So it's not for the casual gamer... in fact I'm afraid if work starts to get busy again that I'm just going to be wasting my money on this. But for now it's pretty cool, assuming I can get into some races w/o getting screwed on incident points and get my rating up high enough to step up from the Rookie license. __________________ Is you is, or is you ain't, my con-stit-u-ints?