Sim Racing Megatopic

Protest that. Even if it seems like nothing happens it’s a record of an incident.

It builds SR slower, but if you’re close to a promotion run some time trials.

Just reading this gives me nightmares. I really dislike iRacing’s system with a passion. I ‘get’ it, but it removes so much fun from the experience. The time investment is just not worth it. Plus the handling model I really didn’t gel with, at all.

Or, be faster than everyone else in your split. You will spare yourself a lot of pain by starting in front of everybody else

The licensing seems kind of pointless to me. It just gatekeeps you from cars (which, I guess, is the point). Getting the licenses is actually pretty easy if you game the system and don’t actually race hard. Like @Richard_Jacques rold me, literally start from pits, stay the heck away from everyone, finish race. Do this a few times and Bob’s your uncle. Unfortunately Bob is isn’t, TJ or Warren. Bob is a meth addict who sells suspect kart parts from the bed of his El Camino and is not to be trusted. Welcome to D class.

Btw I am amused by you being in the same boat as us normal race plebs. Nice to see intl pro suffering the same way we all do. Makes me feel better, somehow.

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Haha yeah it works, you’ll usually finish somewhere mid field after you’ve cruised past all the muppets taking each other out on lap 1 :grin:

If we had signatures here, this would definitely be in mine :rofl:

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I seem to win or be disqualified :sob::sob::sob:

As you cruise up it gets more interesting, the driving, better. When I did those 500 races I started in division 7 and ended up div 3, I believe. I had lots of good races and the driving was really pretty respectful and decent.

I’d say at around the 1500 mark you’d expect decent racecraft and situational awareness. Anyone lower than 1100 was given room and observed. We had 3 splits typically, pretty decent but smallish. I’d see folks as high as 5-7k sometimes. Mostly I recall racing the 1500-3000ish gang.

There’s a sort of flow to iracing that seems to occur to me where I have periods where I do really well and then plummet afterwards. Like I would hit 2K and then drop back to 1.7k. Then I’d get it together and rise back up. I think it’s mostly risk management and some luck, too, that differentiates the good periods from the bad.

What’s kind of fun though, is if you screw up enough you get dropped a split. It’s funny going back to a previous split and being like, why is everyone so slow? You typically win or podium at least.

@tjkoyen i found a toy for your son!

He could “sim” alongside you.

Automatic transmission, though. Gonna have to find another solution for heel/toe studies.

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When it comes to bass shakers, the main challenge is mounting them.

Here’s something I saw on Etsy. It allows you to install Daytons on a playseat challenge.

Etsy has all sorts of cool stuff for sim:

DD may not make you faster, but it helps keep you pointing the right way

In the penultimate turn, the high speed right sweeper, I have a moment. The rear of the kart has some “unanticipated rotation” due to me being sendy and trying to use a lot of track. This results in the back stepping out and me going full lock to manage the karts exploding trajectory, forcing me super narrow, sideways.

Somehow, I was able to wrestle it back and maintain the lead, finishing strong. This is the beauty of Direct Drive. It may not be faster but it sure allows you to maintain control under duress.

On a side note, my simming these days is very limited. I am ostensibly going for sub 45 KZ at amp, but I’m being chill about it. I tend to drive only 1/2-1hr these days and take days off.

Need a video card?

Nvidia says they are having a sale.
Here’s some examples:

Meta Quest Pro

This is an interesting development. The meta VR helmet seems to move the ball by being substantially lighter/smaller. It appears to be high resolution and also has some new stuff like eye tracking.

This looks very nice but at $1500 it is not cheap.

image

“Meta Quest Pro is designed with an open periphery, letting you use your peripheral vision to stay present in your environment while you multitask between the real and virtual worlds. If you want to be more immersed while using Meta Quest Pro, you can snap on the magnetic partial light blockers that are included in the box. For a more traditional VR experience, you also have the option to purchase full light blocker attachments when they release later this year.”

Some scuttlebutt:

Another expensive VR unit

Forgot to mention this one but I shall, in case anyone here is contemplating high end.

This one wasn’t made for gaming, but it can be used as such. In addition to cutting edge refresh rate and resolution, it offers some new tricks. The part that I find most compelling is the active cooling. Airflow is forced through the headset, dramatically improving comfort. Most of us simmers have to use fans next to us as a solution.

Unfortunately it is $2000.

Finally, there’s the Pimax 8k which is a beast. Folks seem to like it, a lot. This company started small and was a kick starter, I believe. This is perhaps their third iteration.

Pimax is known for high detail and extremely good field of view.
The FOV means that the unit is huge. See image below and you can see how huge it is and how it vaguely resembles a hammerhead shark or malevolent alien life form. The other thing to consider is that it takes a heck of a lot of digital horsepower to run these badonkadonks.

Also, not cheap, but at 1200ish (sale), it’s the cheapest of the three we have looked at.

" The Pimax Vision 8K X is, in our opinion, both the most impressive and most frustrating virtual reality headset we’ve tried. It ticks all the boxes for those who demand a specs-rich and powerful device - and only falls down because of how much faffing you have to do with the software to get it working perfectly"

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It occurs to me that we live in exciting times as sim enthusiasts. What used to be really expensive (direct drive) has become mainstream accessible. Simultaneously, as these technologies mature, VR is getting much more capable, comfortable, and convenient (at every price point).

Video card wise, NVDA is releasing the next generation of 4000 series gpus. These are supposedly quite good but the general scuttlebutt is that the 3000 series is already so competent, the 4000 series doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If you can run big triples or vr at full tilt with a 3090, the 4090 is overkill. Unlike a ridiculously powerful lambo or ferarri, it’s not like there’s a “look at me” reason to rock a 4090.

The early benchmarks from the 4090 are for sure impressive. For sim racers the utility of a 4090 will be determined by the sim they run (with ACC being more demanding on the GPU), and number of pixels being driven…triple 4K monitors is a different beast compared to triple 1080p, or most single monitors for that matter.

It will be interesting to see how the 4080 performance numbers stack up, as well as what 30-series pricing does in the coming months.

I ended up scooping a 3090 on a great Ebay deal, and it should cover my needs (mostly iRacing) until the end of time lol

Ooooh. How much if it’s not too touchy a subject? The 3070ti is almost in my guilt free range. Almost.

One think that is interesting is that I haven’t tried a single game that takes advantage of the 3000 series stuff like RTX. I suppose, over time, that will trickle down.

$800 shipped (plus tax), so far from cheap, but seemed attractive given that I was looking at new 3080’s. This was an open box listing, so still a brand new card.

A nice price! And to think folks were paying 2x that last year.

To celebrate your purchase, here are some memes: