iRacing Motorsport Simulations

[Ghosn]

Just thought I would spread the word for those that don't know but ...

If your into sim racing and love your V8 Supercars, iRacing.com have just officially released the Ford FG01 V8 Supercar.

http://www.iracing.com/cars-and-trac...d-v8-supercar/

The V8 Supercar release also coincided with the release of the Philip island race track.

http://www.iracing.com/cars-and-trac...sland-circuit/

If you haven't heard of http://www.iracing.com/ then have a quick read here ... http://www.iracing.com/overview/description/

Here's a couple of vids to tantalise the tastebuds :o)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVBbYfXAaj0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmbZ21LoCEE

Some member uploaded vids:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FSI6kHKLfs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GsTJMWLt9M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a63avgFSKPY

Any questions, feel free to ask.

P.S. I'm a Holden man, so a little disappointed Holden were too tight to allow the Holden variant to be licensed by iRacing =(

P.S.S I'm in no way employed or associated with iRacing in that regard, just a paying customer who is spreading the word to Ford enthusiasts.

[DBourne]

Thanks bud, will check it out now.

[Ghosn]

Another one for the Ford fans.

Car should be released mid June along with Mid-Ohio Race track.



Engine:
Aluminum, 4.6 liter, V8

Bore/Stroke (mm):
90.2x90.0

Compression Ratio (in/mm):
9.8:1

Power:
325 bhp

Transmission:
Six-speed, Tremec T6060 Ford Racing/Torsen limited-slip differential; 3.73:1 rear axle ratio

Weight:
3,600 lbs (with fuel & driver)

Power to weight ratio:
11.08 to 1

Hope to see more Aussies on track!

[Rodp]

Bump.

iRacing is being updated as we speak. If you can't afford a car to track or afford to track your car, this is the next best thing. It's the closest you can virtually run a car around a track to the real thing.

Check it out, iracing.com

[XDV800]

rFactor FTW
One time only fee of $50ish and all the mods you could ever want for free here http://www.rfactorcentral.com/

[Rodp]

Have both, iRacing slays it for realism and online racing.

[XR6Runner]

How does iRacing compare, simulation wise with the FIA GTR series (GTR2, GTR Evolution, ect)?

[Rodp]

Originally Posted by XR6Runner

How does iRacing compare, simulation wise with the FIA GTR series (GTR2, GTR Evolution, ect)?

The realism is significantly better and I just logged into iRacing and there's ~2700 people online - if I had GTR2 installed, I'd look and maybe see a dozen or so. Yesterday a new tyre model was released on a number of cars that bumped the realism up another notch. There are officially sanctioned racing series with prize money. Unlike other sims where you can jump in any old car and race online, you need to gain licence levels which is measure of your safety rating. Leave the track often or continually punt other competitors and you won't go up in level. You actually have something to lose which is the incentive to race clean.

The tracks are laser scanned and are accurate to within 1mm and the cars are modelled as close as possible to the real thing. There's a Ford V8 Supercar in game, unfortunately no Holden and at the moment only Phillip Island in Australia. I believe Oran Park has been scanned and may be released at a later date.

[XR6Runner]

Tracks are laser scanned? Wow, I think I'm going to check this one out! I've been a die hard racing sim fan for a long time now, and thought the GTR series, especially 2 and Evo where by far the greatest when it came down to vehicle mechanics and road handling simulation, especially the ability to tingle with every possible car setting.

Can I buy iRacing at a shop, or is it exclusively download only?'

[Rodp]

Originally Posted by XR6Runner

Tracks are laser scanned? Wow, I think I'm going to check this one out! I've been a die hard racing sim fan for a long time now, and thought the GTR series, especially 2 and Evo where by far the greatest when it came down to vehicle mechanics and road handling simulation, especially the ability to tingle with every possible car setting.

Can I buy iRacing at a shop, or is it exclusively download only?'

Subscription based service, but if you purchase in the next day or two, you buy 1 month and get 2 months free - I believe the offer ends August 1st. I think it's ~$12. I held off for a long time because I loathe micro transactions in sub services but now I've played it, I'm kicking myself for not getting it earlier.

Be aware, there is no AI. It's practice by yourself or race online. The focus for iRacing is racing humans.

It's download only, I have a couple of additional cars and 1 or 2 additional tracks and it comes in at around 1GB.

Check out iracing.com, there's info about what you get in the starter pack and what's available for purchase. I have to admit, racing the MX5's are pretty fun and the vehicle dynamics feel spectacular.

[Rodp]

Here.. Shane van Gisbergen and his thoughts on iRacing - and him in a battle in the MX5 below.

While you’re all familiar with my rivals in the Australia V8 Supercar championship – names like Jamie Whincup, Craig Lowndes and Rick Kelly – you might be surprised to learn that some of my fiercest competition this year has come from guys named Down, McLeod and McLaughlin. With the exception of my “junior” teammate at Stone Brothers Racing – Scotty McLaughlin — you won’t find their names in the results of the V8 Supercar Championship Series or Fujitsu V8 Series.
Instead, you need to go to inRacingNews or the “online series” portion of the V8 Supercar web site, where you’ll learn about some of the best racing on the planet or, I should say, in cyberspace: the iRacing.com V8 Supercar series.

iRacing.com is the world’s leading online racing service, with digital versions of more than two dozen types of cars (including the Ford Falcon FG) and nearly fifty of the world’s great race tracks – from Indianapolis and Daytona to Spa, Silverstone and Phillip Island. All you need is a computer, gaming steering wheel and pedals and high speed Internet and you can be racing against top sim racers from all over the world, not to mention guys like Dale Earnhardt Jr, Will Power and Simon Pagenaud who use the service.

For those of you in Australia and New Zealand, checking out www.hyperstimulator.co.nz is a great place to start. These guys will hook you up with some awesome sim parts to get you started.

When my “day job” permits, I compete in iRacing’s version of the V8 Supercar championship. Although I’ve enjoyed some success, believe me, racing against the top sim racers in Australia and New Zealand – there’s a few of them who can pretty consistently dust me! And I take it pretty seriously.

Most of the front runners in the iRacing V8 series are young guys and any of them could have a shot at a professional career if they got that opportunity I reckon. There’s some great potential there and you can see guys like Madison Down and Mitch McLeod already have great race-craft and great car skills. That’s all thanks to the sim racing they’ve done and how accurate the simulation is. I’ve seen where another iRacing champion named Greger Huttu got the chance to drive a real race car and he did pretty well, so maybe one day for these guys . . .

Speaking of accuracy, one of the features iRacing recently added is McLaren Electronics’ ATLAS Express data acquisition system. You read that right: Sim racers now have access to the same telemetry data as F1 drivers. I’ve been using ATLAS Express quite a bit in my efforts to improve car setup and driving style in the iRacing V8s. As with the MoTeC system we use in the V8 Supercar Series, you try different things and overlay the traces versus your previous laps and see was it good or not. You can teach yourself with the system and it certainly makes you a better driver.

In any form of racing, your most direct competition is your teammate. And just as I do in the V8 Supercar Championship Series with my SBR teammates Tim Slade and Alex Davison, on iRacing I compare my data with Scotty McLaughlin and a couple of others for a look-see at how our different driving styles work, where what you’re doing is a little quicker than your teammates and vice versa, then make some changes where it’s necessary and – ideally – blend the best of both. 
From an engineering point of view, if you have access to all your teammates’ setups and driving styles, you can learn what people are doing to help their car – or maybe you’re doing something better that they can learn from.

Atlas Express is a feature of the second generation of the iRacing system – iRacing 2.0 – which is being introduced in its entirety in August. Along with Atlas Express, iRacing 2.0 includes a whole range of major improvements including new cars, new tracks and enhancements to the system.

I’ve been pretty heavily involved in the development of one of those enhancements – iRacing’s revolutionary new tire model — as it applies to the Ford Falcon FG. Up until now, race simulations have based their tires on a sort of “reverse engineering” process, where they take the performance numbers of real tires and try to mimic them as closely as possible. Instead, the iRacing people have made a massive effort to understand the fundamental physics of tire performance in order to create virtual tires that inherently behave like “real” tires rather than as the result of “artificially” tinkering with their performance to make them match-up with a set of arbitrary numbers.

As you can imagine, the ATLAS Express data acquisition system is a critical part of the testing process, as I can actually overlay the data from the iRacing V8 compared to my real V8 at Phillip Island. Unbelievable! The effects of changes in tire pressures and temperatures, camber, toe, ride height, dampers and springs; aerodynamics; different driving styles . . . it’s all there. The notes I’ve made comparing the sim car vs the real car are all backed-up by the data, which really helps develop the accuracy of the new tires.

The new tire model has such huge potential and is already a massive step forward. There’s a bit of work to do yet, but it’s definitely more realistic already. You can feel the tire and the road, the gripping and when it slips away . . . the feeling is definitely more positive. We need to make it better and make the car a little better as well, but it’s definitely going to be awesome when it’s finished. I can’t wait!

The new tire model is currently only available on iRacing’s equivalent of the NASCAR Nationwide Series car. Myself and a few development drivers are working with the Ford Falcon FG. A few of the guys from the iRacing V8 Supercar series are in the process of getting into it and all the iRacing cars will be equipped with the new tires in August. Also, a few of the other Championship Series drivers are in the process of signing up — so come on, join in the fun and take us on!

Note: After several seasons as an emerging star of Australia’s V8 Supercar Series, Shane van Gisbergen is enjoying a breakout season in 2011. Driving the Stone Brothers Racing SP Tools Ford Falcon FG, the 22 year old New Zealander scored his first V8 Supercar Series win at the Hamilton street race in April and backed that up with another win at Darwin’s Hidden Valley Raceway in June. “The Giz” currently occupies third place in the overall series standings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T39lwo1Nw28

[BA GT-HO]

I have long wondered about this, being a huge fan of GPL and the NASCAR series by Dave Kraemmer. Spelling?

Those games are the most realistic sims I have ever played.

Seeing as iRacing is made by the same team I might just have to get the credit card out..

[XR6Runner]

Gee thanks for that insight Rodp, I think I'm the same as BA GT-HO, I'll be pulling my credit card out very soon Can't wait to try it out. Cheers!

[BA GT-HO]

Hrmmmmmm well I have installed it, but it runs really poorly, 5-10 FPS on Laguna Seca with graphics set to low. Seems that I may need a better graphics card? This sucks.

Intel(R) G33/G31 Express Chipset Family Memory 256 MB is what I have now, I don't think that is really made for games.

[Rodp]

Originally Posted by BA GT-HO

Hrmmmmmm well I have installed it, but it runs really poorly, 5-10 FPS on Laguna Seca with graphics set to low. Seems that I may need a better graphics card? This sucks.

Intel(R) G33/G31 Express Chipset Family Memory 256 MB is what I have now, I don't think that is really made for games.

Well, err - no. It's not. :(

What CPU do you have in your machine? A GTX560ti should get you near the 60fps mark if the rest of your box is no older than ~2 years.

I run dual GTX570's in mine, though it's specced up for Battlefield 3 coming out. Just a nice advantage that it runs iRacing at 150fps with graphics at max.

Prior to iRacing, I thought I was a pretty decent sim pilot. Near the top of most leaderboards among guys I raced. Get into something more realistic and you realise what bad habits you learned from games you played in the past.

[BA GT-HO]

It's all good now, put a card in and it cruises along at 85 fps.

I love it, very realistic, love the little legend car, sideways action.

I think the menu system is a bit clunky and hard to understand for a rookie, but I will get used to it. It's not a game at all, it's not dumbed down at all like f1 2010 and I think it smashes Gran Turismo.

[Rodp]

Originally Posted by BA GT-HO

It's all good now, put a card in and it cruises along at 85 fps.

I love it, very realistic, love the little legend car, sideways action.

I think the menu system is a bit clunky and hard to understand for a rookie, but I will get used to it. It's not a game at all, it's not dumbed down at all like f1 2010 and I think it smashes Gran Turismo.

Excellent. I'm going between the MX5 (where there's a race every 30 minutes) and practicing in the Skip Barber car which I may race in a series in a few months. But I haven't joined any official races yet, I just join practice sessions that allows you to race along side other cars without affecting your safety rating and getting up to speed with driving in traffic.

It's 'Week 13' which I understand to mean that the races at the moment are sort of unofficial. Series are 12 weeks long and the 13th week are a little more informal. For the next series, I'm just going to run pickup races to get my safety rating up and hopefully get into a D class licence which will allow me to race the Skips in an official series.

iRacing is ever evolving. There's a new tyre model that has been released on some cars and in the coming weeks, should hopefully make it onto all cars so the level of realism will increase again.

The menu system does take a little to work out, but you do figure it out pretty quickly. Initially I was annoyed that it launched from a browser but now I can understand the advantages behind it.

[BA GT-HO]

I might try the Skip cars they look fun.

I can't seem to find a Legends race at lime rock, I think it would be fun.

Qualifying confuses me a bit as in do they run multiple qualis for the same race? Need to spend more time working it all out. Also my default setup fails tech inspection sometimes? What the?

[Rodp]

Originally Posted by BA GT-HO

I might try the Skip cars they look fun.

I can't seem to find a Legends race at lime rock, I think it would be fun.

Qualifying confuses me a bit as in do they run multiple qualis for the same race? Need to spend more time working it all out. Also my default setup fails tech inspection sometimes? What the?

When the new season starts, there will be more options for racing. There's a season 3 schedule available on the front page of iRacing's site.

I haven't qualified for a race yet but I believe if there's a high participation rate, it'll split the races up so they're balanced. I've just gone straight to race so I start from the back of the grid so I can work on my racecraft and not screw someone else's race up based on my inexperience with the car.

I've had default setups fail inspection too, I think if you load the setup again or back out and go back in, it'll solve it. I think they're aware of the problem, but not got a fix yet.

[Rodp]

Looking at the schedule, looks like the legends only race at two tracks;

Week 1 (2011-08-02) South Boston Speedway Full course cautions disabled, Single file restarts, Rolling start 40 laps

Week 2 (2011-08-09) Lanier National Speedway Full course cautions disabled, Single file restarts, Rolling start 40 laps

Week 3 (2011-08-16) South Boston Speedway Full course cautions disabled, Single file restarts, Rolling start 40 laps

Week 4 (2011-08-23) Lanier National Speedway Full course cautions disabled, Single file restarts, Rolling start 40 laps

That's not to say there won't be any other races. You can create hosts on iRacing which I've seen several people do which allows you to race whatever car you want on whatever track (at a cost). You'd have to get lucky for a Legends race at Lime rock though.

[BA GT-HO]

Thanks for the advice.

I am starting to realise more and more that I am way out of my league. I thought I was OK at these driving sims, but this is a reality check.

I can put together a fast time but its doing it consistantly is what I struggle with at the moment. Oh well, off to testing mode..

[Rodp]

Originally Posted by BA GT-HO

I am starting to realise more and more that I am way out of my league. I thought I was OK at these driving sims, but this is a reality check.

Exactly - I've come to the same realisation.

With the last patch a few days ago which you'll have, they have included a few new drivers aids. Best line, ABS and traction control which you can turn on in test sessions. They'll get you up to speed on a track and help you hit your braking points and guide you to the apex.

Each of the cars drive a lot differently and I'm having most luck with the MX5. Low power, understeer tendency and can take a fair bit of hamfisting before it'll get out of shape. Surprisingly makes for some good racing, too and there's no shortage of people participating in practice or races. There's also some driving school videos under the resources tab that I learned a thing or two from.

I probably spend as much time studying, watching videos and reading as I do out on the course which I've never had to do with any other sim. Turn a few laps in any car and I was competitive in any sim I've owned previously - this one, I'm just happy if I can string 10 consecutive laps within a second of each other.

[BA GT-HO]

I just won my first race in an MX5 at Laguna Seca!

Talk about pressure, the bloke that came 2nd was always about 0.5 - 1.5 seconds behind me the whole race.. one little stuff up and I was gone!

Starting to get my head around how it all works now after some reading in the resource area, I like how it is constantly evolving.

What gets me is I put in a lap time, my best at Laguna in the MX5 was a 1:43.00, then someone goes out an does a 1:41.5 or similar. I just don't understand where that extra time is going to come from, practise I guess. Glad I finally took the plunge and bought into it, well worth it.

[Rodp]

Congrats.

I was practicing a little Laguna yesterday, only managed a 1:43.6 though my optimal was 1:42.2. Cooked it a few times on the dipper trying to drop down too many gears too quick for my feet to heel toe. :(

I find with the MX5, the extra time comes from carrying speed through some of the faster corners and not washing off too much speed from excessive turning. Try hitting TAB, and it'll bring up the deltas of your splits and tell you if you're going quicker or slower in each sector.

You can also try iSpeed which will give you better deltas and if you also grab the analyser, can compare your laps against a decent sized database.

[BA GT-HO]

Thanks for the delta tip, that is really handy, it shows you where you are losing speed. The MX5 is fun, especially at Lime Rock, that is a fun little track, lots of fast corners.

[XDV800]

Originally Posted by Rodp

Looking at the schedule, looks like the legends only race at two tracks;

Week 1 (2011-08-02) South Boston Speedway Full course cautions disabled, Single file restarts, Rolling start 40 laps

Week 2 (2011-08-09) Lanier National Speedway Full course cautions disabled, Single file restarts, Rolling start 40 laps

Week 3 (2011-08-16) South Boston Speedway Full course cautions disabled, Single file restarts, Rolling start 40 laps

Week 4 (2011-08-23) Lanier National Speedway Full course cautions disabled, Single file restarts, Rolling start 40 laps

That's not to say there won't be any other races. You can create hosts on iRacing which I've seen several people do which allows you to race whatever car you want on whatever track (at a cost). You'd have to get lucky for a Legends race at Lime rock though.

The tracks get rotated every month or so, i can't recall exactly, so expect a change in the availability. The legends cars mostly get oval tracks.

[EEVILL]

Originally Posted by XR6Runner

Tracks are laser scanned?

I can confirm they are ... was asked by iRacing to quote on scanning PI a couple of years ago at a previous job...

[BA GT-HO]

The thing that gets me is that you do a lap in the V8SC and then watch the replay and is looks like a V8SC, just the way it moves through corners, reacts to the bumps etc.

Very impressive.

[Rodp]

Originally Posted by BA GT-HO

The thing that gets me is that you do a lap in the V8SC and then watch the replay and is looks like a V8SC, just the way it moves through corners, reacts to the bumps etc.

Very impressive.

There's now an officially sanctioned iRacing V8 supercars series.

http://www.v8supercars.com.au/newsar...0/default.aspx

Some of the videos I've seen posted of V8 Supercar races look like televised events. Would be nice to get the Holden in there though.

[XRFutura]

i have been looking at getting into this, which way have you gone the subscription?