iRacing.com

[sperry]

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.

[A1337STI]

how does it compare to the GTR / legends games for realism, possibly better?

Sounds interesting maybe i'll give it a whirl.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by A1337STI

how does it compare to the GTR / legends games for realism, possibly better?

Sounds interesting maybe i'll give it a whirl.

I think the SimBin games look and sound better. But iRacing really feels more real. I'm not sure how much of that is the quality of the simulation, and how much is that you simply have to approach the driving in a much more realistic manner because every lap online counts towards your career... but either way, iRacing makes you put your game-face on when you're behind the wheel unlike any of the SimBin offerings ever did.

That said, I've got no plans on ditching my copy of GTR2. There's something satisfying about hustling a 550 Ferrari around Spa.

[MattR]

Dude, sounds awesome, but couldn't this potentially lead to a divorce before you're even married?

[sperry]

Originally Posted by MattR

Dude, sounds awesome, but couldn't this potentially lead to a divorce before you're even married?

Lisa is distinctly not amused by me spending more time on my computer playing games.

On the other hand, this doesn't cost $1000/hr in race tires, brake pads, and fuel.

[sperry]

Here's the video from both incidents:

YouTube- My first experience in iRacing

YouTube- My first experience in iRacing

YouTube- iRacing Laguna Seca close call

YouTube- iRacing Laguna Seca close call

[MattR]

You brake checked that guy coming out of the pits. But your near-miss was awesome...That shouldn't have counted as an incident.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by MattR

You brake checked that guy coming out of the pits. But your near-miss was awesome...That shouldn't have counted as an incident.

I was actually trying to get some heat in the brakes, but if you watch the replay... dude actually accelerates right into me, you can hear the rpm's go up.

[Dean]

I always do a brake test in the hot pits or entry lane at Laguna before going on track. He shouldn't be accelerating into that uber tight corner anyway.

It doesn't look like the cars have working brake lights. That doesn't help.

And you totally missed that crash. Nice job. It is kind off the normal rule of stay on line, and/or am at the crash, and hope it won't be there when you get there.

[sperry]

Last night, I ran another Seca race and was able to finally get my SR up over 3.0 making me eligible for a road-racing license promotion starting Feb 1, so I decided to see if I can't get my oval racing SR up over 3.0 as well by running a short track Legends race.

I've forgotten how much fun the roundy-round stuff is! It's so much lower stress compared to running the road course races, you can just settle in and crank out decent laps, then push for a bit and catch up to people. People actually had time to bullshit over the radio the whole race... at the road courses, getting every turn right feels like life or death... at the oval, it's more relaxed by a lot. Also, the guys there were very aware about letting faster cars by cleanly, even if it's for position.

Plus there are a ton of people in the races. The race I ran at 10pm last night had 31 people signed up (though they broke it into 3 races to keep the races with less than 12 people each for rookie racing) so there's a ton of competition out there. The best part was that even though it was a rookie race, it was actually about as clean as the league races I used to run back in the NASCAR Racing online era (which was more than 10 years ago now! Holy crap!).

Anyway... I'm actually looking forward to running more oval track races. It's like a flashback to when I was a NASCAR fan. Austin... I know you're probably acting your age these days more than I am, what with the kid and all, but you'd get a huge kick out of running the oval tracks in iRacing.

[AtomicLabMonkey]

I'm sure I'd love the game, but breaking out the wheel setup and paying a bill for it every month is kind of a no-go for me right now.

[sperry]

So I'm trying to race in the iRacing Daytona 500...

With over 1300 entrants... it's turning out to be the Daytona 500 Internal Server Error.

[Dean]

Bummer. Did they have a 24 hours of Daytona? That would be interesting if you were allowed virtual teammates you could share the car with.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

Bummer. Did they have a 24 hours of Daytona? That would be interesting if you were allowed virtual teammates you could share the car with.

They ran a 2.4 hours of Daytona. But I wasn't good enough in the DP cars to bother running... I was a rolling chicane at like -5.0s per lap off the leader.

The good news is that the Daytona 500 ended up running, but there were a ton of connection issues right at the start, so only like 25-30 cars took the start, and the rest of the 42 cars started on pit lane.

I ended up finishing 7th. Probably would have made it to 3rd, but I lost 3 laps when I got disconnected and had to rejoin from the pits. Tons of wrecks and 10 cautions before the halfway (200 laps total), but really clean and a fun race for the second half. I probably could have threatened for 6th, as I was in the draft with the 6th place car on the same lap, but I figured after 3.5 hours of driving, I'm plenty happy just to finish in the top 10, especially since it garnered me enough safety points to ditch my rookie license the next time upgrades come around.

[sperry]

Well... that was easy. Ran only 5 races in the season, didn't win a single one, and took the Club Championship for the West club. I guess there's not a lot of competition in NV, UT, AZ, etc.

[Nick Koan]

Something something finishing every race and getting points something something.

Congrats!

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Nick Koan

Something something finishing every race and getting points something something.

Congrats!

Actually, I just looked it up. I ran 4 of the 10 races in the Skip Barber season, and scored 11 points (3rd place) in just one of the races. And I ran 1 of the 10 Jetta TDI Cup races, and scored 5 points (5th place). Since points are based on the strength of field and your position versus the position of the people you beat, all the other races I apparently didn't beat enough people that were faster than me to score.

So I'm not exactly sure what "Championship" that allows me to win. I'm getting the feeling that certificate is kinda like a "thanks for participating" award.

[AtomicLabMonkey]

Still,

[sperry]

iRacing's latest update added the Phillip Island circuit (Melbourne, Australia) and the Ford Falcon V8 SuperCar. Holy fucking shit that car is fun to drive! It's really like a Cup car on a road course... drives like a big tail-happy boat. Needs lots of planning ahead to drive fast... and braking takes forever. But goddam it's fun to drive!

And since I just got my C-class license, I'm eligible to drive in the newly created iRacing V8 SuperCar series, but I'm just not very good with the car. Practice sessions are a blast hustling around in traffic, but I'm well off a competitive pace. I think I'll be much more competitive in the Star Mazda series that's also C-class. Those cars are a ton of fun to, but in exactly the opposite way the V8 cars are.

Along with the Aussie car and track, they also added some servers in Sydney. So the Australian folks can finally run w/o the 400ms pings to Boston. They really need to add European and West Coast US servers too. But then I'd never end up on a server w/ 20 french guys like I did yesterday. Turns out my years of high school french are literally useless.

[bigrobwoot]

I know the feeling. I'll be visiting my gf while she is studying in Italy this summer, and we plan on going to Paris for a couple days. I've been trying to remember the french I learned in high school, and all I can remember is "quest-ce que vous avais comme sandwiches?" (what kind of sandwiches do you have?)

[cody]

The only French I needed in Paris was, "Parlez-vous anglais?"

[sperry]

Originally Posted by cody

The only French I needed in Paris was, "Parlez-vous anglais?"

Did you enjoy paying double for everything?

[cody]

I didn't pay double for anything. Prices were clearly marked, just like they are here. I pride myself on how little I spent on my 3 month vacation in Europe.

I found that the French would much prefer you speak English than hack their language to bits trying to speak it.

[sperry]

I ran my 1st Star Mazda race last night at Sebring. Had a terrific mid-race 4-way battle for 6th through 9th positions... even though I came out worst in the fight. I did end up finishing 4th overall after starting 17th though.

YouTube- iRacing Star Mazda at Sebring battle

YouTube- iRacing Star Mazda at Sebring battle

[sperry]

Some more Star Mazda footage:

My shortest race of the season:

YouTube

YouTube

The final race of this season, has a great fight going for 5th, but blew it for myself instead of taking us both out when the guy I was racing checked up more than he needed to in turn 2:

YouTube

YouTube