897na

iTrader: (3)

Another vote for lfs here. It has definitely helped me with my driving skills. I autocross my FC occasionally and LFS has a car that's pretty similar:
http://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/Cars:FR#XR_GT

LFS tracks are all fictional. The above car is very good for learning car control of a RWD car because it reacts fairly slowly. It will seem like it doesn't have a lot of traction, but it's fine for learning. The faster cars stick better and react more quickly. The sound effects aren't the best.

I hear iRacing is better, but it costs a lot more. Somewhere between $19/month or $256/year. I tried the Pontiac Solstice at Laguna Seca for about an hour, and it does seem like it's a good way to learn the track,
but I'm not sure it is any better to work on car handling skills, though I think it's supposed to be. LFS has a free demo, ~$20 for half the cars & tracks, ~$39 for all. You'll need a decent PC and a wheel though ($80-250).
https://members.iracing.com/membersi...tionChoices.do

I also have GPL(Grand Prix Legends), EA's F1 '02, and the GTR2 demo.

It doesn't take the place of driving a real car on a track, but it's MUCH cheaper.
I haven't tried drifting, but that's mostly what's going on in the evenings Pacific time. LFS seems to be mostly used by Europeans. To get really fast, you have to study other peoples fast laps, get a fast setup yourself (download one) and get good at tuning the suspension - it's a lot of work to be really competitive in on-line racing. There are tools to analyze laps and car setups though. It's amazing how much there is. Here's the main lfs stuff:
http://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.lfsworld.net/
http://www.lfsforum.net/
http://www.lfs.net/

And I agree that you want a "racing sim", not a game; and that the shifter doesn't have a good feel - I just use the paddle shifters and auto clutch as I'm just working on driving and car handling skills.

LFS has really helped me with throttle steering, correcting oversteer with a quick countersteer, looking ahead, aiming for the apex, etc...

skir2222

You should def get Rfactor, I use to play lfs a lot but then tried out Rfactor and bought it and it's truely a great game with so many mods to choose from.

Mahjik

iTrader: (1)

Here's a comparison using the SRF:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ6TEbtyO_A

dgeesaman

iTrader: (7)

Resurrecting this,

I just picked up iRacing and a Logitech G25 wheel last month. Been logging a few hours / week on it, 90% just doing laps of Summit Main in a Solstice. (I started there because I have driven it in real life and the Solstice is similar to my stockish FD). In any case, it's great. Yes, I shunt often when trying to run one hot lap after another, but each night I sit down to practice I shave another second and my offs are much less wild and frequent. Once I get into actual racing I'll slow down a bit and drive much more conservatively so that I can finish the races and not destroy my rating.

If you expect that asphalt experience will make you a good sim racer, it's unrealistic. The sims are pretty accurate,but the user needs to understand the feedback within the sim. That takes some time.

Brent Dalton

iTrader: (31)

Thanks for the review. How do you like the G25 wheel? I'm pretty much lost like last years easter egg when it comes to this stuff, but I'm considering doing iracing.

dgeesaman

iTrader: (7)

Someone told me it's the one to buy and it's working well. I haven't used a lot of it's features but the force feedback is reasonable, shifter works good and the pedals are good too.

Dave

Mahjik

iTrader: (1)

The G25 is the best wheel for the price with force feedback. If you want a non-FFB wheel, you can look at ECCI:

http://ecci6000.com/6000_combo_01.htm

For me, I need the FFB. Since I'm not in a real car, I at least need some simulate feeling even if it's not "real".

iRacing is decent however it has some things that bug me which other games do simulate like transmission modeling. You can button shift the Solstice like it's an F1 car. Even the new Need For Speed Shift will bite the driver in manual shifting mode if the revs are not "somewhat" matched. :/ There are several mods in rFactor which do this as well. It's a shame that a simulation like iRacing feels it is not as important as some of the other recent features they have implemented. If you drive the Solstice like you should in real life (i.e. using your G25 clutch pedal and rev matching your downshifts), you'll be at a disadvantage to the people who aren't doing those things. They did at least make it possible to blow the engine on the Solstice to keep people from trying use the crazy engine breaking that most games allow (and iRacing used to allow).

iRacing does excel at creating an environment for good clean "pick-up" races. It also excels at creating a stable platform for people who just want to "drive" without having to track down mods and figure out how to get the game to run properly.

NFS Shift: http://www.vimeo.com/6606607

CJarrett

I've been playing Shift quite a lot on my G25 and love it for the most part, have not tried iRacing yet though.

There are a few simple mods for Shift on PC that seem to have made a nice difference, the 'real' mod 2.0 works wonders and the AI is so much better. With the right setup on my G25 I feel like i can really place my car exactly where I intend to and when, which has been a lot of fun. I'm slowly improving on carrying more speed through the corners.

I've been playing a lot of time attack by myself and just going for fast lap times, anyone have a lap time competition? Might be fun.

dgeesaman

iTrader: (7)

I can't comment on that because I've run the Solstice using the clutch pedal, and it sure does spin out if I change gears without rev matching. So in my mind if there's a fault to the game, it's not that the transmission modeling is missing. It's the fact that those laws of physics aren't applied to all drivers.

If you want to post lap times, I can say I've run 1:35.XX on a solstice on Summit Point main circuit. You get these with the base iRacing package. I suggest you give it a try, worst case I think it costs $10 for the first month. I was concerned my PC would not run it, but I have reasonably good graphics detail and 65fps on mine. It hasn't been upgraded in 2 years and even then it wasn't top-of-the-line.

David

Mahjik

iTrader: (1)

You don't have to rev match. A little steady throttle will take care of that. Most of the "aliens" will LFB using only the gas and the brake (driving everything like a go-kart) . They will basically have some amount of throttle applied 100% of the time. You can look at some YouTube videos and see the accelerator won't blip during the downshifts, but just be steady at say 20%.

I've been a iRacing member for over a year. I haven't driven it much in the last few months because I can't decide if I really like the Radical or not. The only road car I don't have is the Riley Prototype. I'm trying to hold out for the Vette.

skir2222

The G25 is suppose to be a great wheel for the price! A wheel with a clutch and gated shifter for 200$ and under is a great deal, but it is in the same price range as another great wheel maker in the market... Fanatec.

Fanatec produces a awesome product like the G25 but some say when you wrap your hands around a fanatec wheel you feel like your really about to drive a 911. Fanatec produces some very HIGH QUALITY pedals, vibration feedback for the brake, adjust the travel, change the springs, and you can tune just about anything on these pedals.

I just built myself a sim rig for the g25 I ordered so I can play on my 42" HD tv, I am interested in iracing but I dont know... Rfactor has a really tight grip on me, I really love rfactor in many ways!

dgeesaman

iTrader: (7)

I do notice this more closely now. It seems that as long as you do something with the throttle it just rev matches the downshif perfectly. The reality is that a good rev matched downshift is a delicate skill operation and I'm not that good at it.

Hmm, now that I'm enjoying this sim racing thing I'm very curious to see what they offer. The shape/angle of the pedals is not entirely comfortable to me.

David

BryanH

Hi guys.

I'm a long time sim racer and former RX-7 owner (I also co-drove a 2005 RX-8 this year in national autocross competition). I stumbled upon this thread and then realized I had signed up here at RX7Club back in 2002, but never posted. Better late than never, right?

I have no doubt that sim racing has contributed to my car control in the real world. While simulated racing will never replace the experience of getting out there physically, it is coming of age and there are definite benefits in my opinion. It helps develop correct muscle memory for various vehicle dynamics situations, it can be a great tool to experiment and learn the art of setting up a car, and there are two additional benefits that are unique to iRacing.

1.] Every track in iRacing is a laser-scanned copy of a real life track. Without going into too much detail the scanning process is very expensive and accurate, down to the centimeter. Every bump, every camber change, the angle of each curb, even locations of trackside objects down to tree trunks is as close as technologically possible to the real thing. This means you can essentially drive any track in iRacing and get a very real feel for its rhythm and idiosyncrasies. In this regard iRacing stands head and shoulders above everything else as far as training for the real thing.

2.] The systems iRacing has in place to encourage realistic driving work. The Safety Rating system and ability to protest malicious driving to the Chief Steward weeds out the bad apples. The result is the most competitive, realistic wheel to wheel racing experience available. Forget "racing" with computer-controlled AI. Try to steal a position from someone equally as fast as you who doesn't want you to get by. iRacing forces you to learn real racecraft if you want to be competitive, and for me personally this has been a huge benefit and tremendous learning experience. I don't race wheel to wheel yet, but when I do I will be so much more prepared than I would have been otherwise.

iRacing is by no means perfect. As mentioned, there is currently no clutch/transmission damage model. But this is on the horizon. The software is continually improving since it is a subscription service rather than a one-time outlay. Updates occur every 13 weeks - it's come a long way in the past year.

It's never been $258/year to run iRacing. It's $99/year at present. When you put that into perspective with cell phone bills, cable/satellite TV, and such, it seems like reasonable value to me.

As you can see I'm genuinely enthusiastic about iRacing in particular. I still race in rFactor in a couple weekly leagues as well (using the Historic GT & Touring Cars mod, as well as Porsche Carrera Cup). rFactor is showing its age but it's still good fun if you find a like-minded group of people to race with.

As mentioned a good quality wheel/pedal set is paramount to a proper simulated experience, and beyond that getting them set up correctly is important as well. rFactor is notoriously bad out of the box with its cheesy canned force feedback effects. Thankfully, a plug-in was created called RealFeel that does away with these forces and instead outputs the forces directly from the car's virtual steering rack. RealFeel has made rFactor so much better.

I personally wouldn't run out and buy a Fanatec wheel just yet. The early batch of GT3 RS Clubsport wheel/pedal sets have been having issues, and customer support is hit or miss. I've got my eye on a set if they get their quality control sorted. For the past few years and countless hours logged in virtual cockpits, my Logitech G25 has been doing a mighty fine job.

The lack of seat-of-the-pants feel in sim racing is less of a hurdle for some than for others. In real life I'm very much a 'feel' driver and can adapt to a new car very quickly. However, in the sim environment, without the feeling of a real car underneath me I tend to struggle a bit at first, until I practice the heck out of a car. Other people can be fast right away in a virtual car, using their alien-like brains to instantly figure everything out by visual and auditory cues, and subtle kinetic feedback through their fingertips.

897na

iTrader: (3)

Hi Bryan!
Oops... Thank's for the correction. I thought I got that from their site? Anyway... Looks like iRacing is $14 a month or $99 per year. That's a lot better, and looks like the way to go for someone trying to improve their driving on a real car (which is very expensive!).

Great to hear your opinions about sim racing and the sims. I really think they help, and it's good to hear it from someone that knows what they're talking about. It's also good to know which sim is best, because it takes a long time to get to know one. There are a lot of opinions out there...

897na

iTrader: (3)

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that this wasn't a good recommendation. After your rec, I spent a lot of time looking into rFactor, but it was about to become simraceway, and there was a lot of talk about boycotts and that all mods would be lost, so I decided to wait. Now, I'm not driving much so I'll stick with what I've got for a while (LFS).

Mahjik

iTrader: (1)

Just to clarify: rFactor is a game made by ISI. Simraceway is a hosting site which hosts mod downloads and races for rFactor. It is NOT owned or operated by ISI, nor does rFactor require it. You can own and use rFactor without dealing with Simraceway. There are many other places which display and host rFactor mods.

skir2222

Correct simraceway and ISI have no affiliation. Simraceway is a site dedicated to hosting mods data and races for multiple race sims including GTR series and RfaCtor.

Some of the mod developers are very unhappy with simraceway because they are making money off of what they have developed for the community to be downloaded for free and for someone else to be making money off of someone elses work IS NOT COOL

mikeric

iTrader: (20)

Well, If you have an SMG transmission, it would be a pretty accurate sim, now wouldn't it?

CJarrett

Finally got a sub to iRacing, really enjoying it so far, only done about 20 laps trying to get my wheel set up properly.

What are your guys' names on iRacing? Would be fun to see you out on the track. I'm 'Carl Jarrett'

Cheers,
Carl

Mahjik

iTrader: (1)

<--- "Kyle Pearson"

I don't play it often, but I do enjoy it when I can get a race in here and there.

Mahjik

iTrader: (1)

Here's what the new Mustang looks like in iRacing:

http://www.vimeo.com/12881671

Sorry about the jittery video. My machine was not in a happy state when I recorded the replay.