Phew, been racing for 10hours... my legs demand a rest :S

Just to add a little:

For the first 20$ you get:
-Pontiac Solstice
-Legends Ford '34 Coupe
-3 road courses and 4 ovals

Download is ~160mb for client and ~580Mb if you want all tracks and cars.
You can select which ones to download, but doesn't hurt to take all since they're included in the package.

There's a limit on how many times you can reset and damage model is alot more punishing than in LFS. Bumping into others seems to be very common at the start grid since not everyone gets going soon as lights go green. In last race I had to reset right at the start due to nasty pileup up ahead, tried to avoid it but left-front touched guy in front and it was bye-bye suspension for that corner.

And as a clarification, reset button is not some instant cure. You have to stop the car and then hold it for a short period to get thrown back into pits.

Quote from danowat :

The Solstice around Lime Rock is AWESOME IMO, love the little uphill section and the way the car goes all light and squirrelly at the top of it

Try that with Legends if you're feeling suicidal

Anyways, I'm having a good time but one thing that really irritates me is lack of blue and yellow flags. Would have imagined those to be obvious for any racing sim but I guess we'll have to wait a little.

Textures are not so colorful if you compare to GTR2 for an example, but attention to detail is quite amazing, especially on cars. Overall style is very concervative and graphics are not overloaded with special effects. Interior shadows look pretty neat but can be bit of a resource hog if used higher settings. Sounds are pretty damn decent too, driving Legends Ford is so much fun.

At max settings and 1280x960, 4xAA, 16xHQAF I get ~30fps, but reducing shadow quality bumps it up to ~50fps.
Specs: C2D E6750, 2Gb ram, x1950Pro@XT

Last edited by Crommi, Thu 26 Jun 2008, 09:55.

Quote from arco :

A question, is there an option to practice offline before going online? Would be nice to get familiar with the stuff first, instead of going online wrecking everyone.

Yes, you can run Practise without having to fear for your points.

Quote from Mackie The Staggie :

Downloaded and got on to the members page...however for whatever reason I can't download the sodding updates of the cars and tracks so I can race..... Not so good so far, awaiting reply from Iracing support.

Also did anyone get the links for calibration of graphics and hardware to work, cause I didn't.

Sounds like browser issue, what are you using?
You also need to have iRacing backround service running.

And something that I didn't realise, you don't need to download all tracks and cars to get started. Could have easily dropped ovals and just grab Solstice for first impressions.

Bad thing about their updater is that it's decompressing and installing constantly and not after all content has been downloaded. I can't do much else since HDD usage is quite high.

Getting ~105kB/s which is pretty much the maximum you can get on 1Mbps ADSL even in optimal conditions.

Edit: Since I got nothing better to do for a while, I'll go bother some Firefox fanboys to figure out what do I need to do to make it little bit safer than Internet Exposer.

Last edited by Crommi, Wed 25 Jun 2008, 21:29.

Doesn't look like Opera is compatible with their system. Basically you need to have iRacing service running on backround as a link between browser and your client, but I already encountered a problem where updater cannot be started.

Edit: Yep, as I expected. Had to download FF3 until Opera issue is solved. Although "Update" in iRacing language means downloading all the tracks and cars.... that's ~600Mb package in total where gameclient was only ~160Mb. Doesn't look like I'll be playing tonight.

Got my invite and downloading the client now

Edit: Going to be past midnight before I can get online.. 20mins left on download.
I hope my neighbours won't be mad if they hear FFB rumbling all night long.
Edit2: This has to be the longest 20mins of my life...
Edit3: Actually not, longest was when I had to wait for mailguy to finish his break before delivering my G25 :S
Edit4: 30seconds left to download!
Edit5: Damn, I sound like some fanboy without even trying it yet :S

Last edited by Crommi, Wed 25 Jun 2008, 21:03.

Please remember, F5 keys have feelings too.

Quote from Bose321 :

but i think i should go for ATI?

In that case, look for HD4850 or HD4870 which have just arrived.
Sure it would be easy to blow 600€ into even faster graphics card but it just doesn't make any sense.

I wouldn't go for 160gb drives as you can get 500gb for roughly the same price. Plus you can never have too much space, I recently bought 500gb disk and I'm already in desperate need of another

What about speakers and soundcard, high fps won't really make up for lack of sounds.

Edit: Silly me for not reading whole post.

Last edited by Crommi, Tue 24 Jun 2008, 21:11.

I'm using rather cheap headphones (Sennheiser 497) and yet the improvement going from SB Live to Audigy2 was more than just "noticable". I just can't understand people who spend ludicrous amounts of cash on building a "gaming rig" and decide that onboard chip of suck with 5$ plastic boxes as speakers are good enough.

On my old Asus, HDD activity causes weird high-pitch noises on onboard chip's line-out. As for current P5K mobo, level of line-out backround noise is directly related to how many USB devices are connected. With no devices the sound is ok but life without keyboard, mouse and wheel is would be a sad one. Found this out after one of the WoW patches broke hardware sound support and had to find a temporary solution.

Yea, I understand what you mean. On consoles they have the advantage of tweaking controller configs to match perfectly with the gamepad in terms of sensitivity, sharpness and linearity.

Damn, talk about bang for your buck. That's just ~125€ thanks to weak dollar. Too bad the magic cloud dust here in EU has caused prices to rise in 160-180€ range...

Quote from Boris Lozac :

I saw that for example COD4 on PC with a gamepad is not as good as when you play it on a console, the controls simply doesn't work as good..

Well, gamepad is hardly the best controller for FPS. No point using in when you get much more out of keyboard+mouse combo. On the otherhand, gamepad should go well with sports games.

Matter of the fact is, I don't think Hamilton or any other driver would have attempted pass like that if there was graveltrap instead of smooth surface to drive through.

Last edited by Crommi, Tue 24 Jun 2008, 11:40. Reason : Cleared out my message a bit.

Omegadrivers seem to be discontinued so there's very little reason to keep using them. Omega's Nvidia drivers v1.169.25 (based on Forceware 169.25) are dated 27/12/2007...

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

I don't think there's a single deathmatch level in TF2.

I ment the gameplay style, run around and kill other people who are jumping around like bunnies. It's not so much different from CS and other games.

Played for an hour or two but didn't really get excited enough to buy it. Once you've seen one deathmatch FPS, you've seen them all.

I don't really like spending huge amounts of cash on top of the line graphic cards. Always gone for stuff that has given good performance for the price.

3Dfx Voodoo3 2000
ATI Radeon
ATI Radeon 8500LE@something
Nvidia GF6800GS@Ultra
ATI Radeon x1950Pro@XT
ATI Radeon HD4850

Last edited by Crommi, Wed 24 Sep 2008, 16:12.

Modifying UBS port frequency could cause problems. If you've done that, try resetting back to default settings.

Now when I think of it, I experienced same kind of inaccurate, but not that severe, movement with G5 until I realised to update mouse firmware.

Quote from Lost Moose :

Well I got curious the other day, and I opened the case to see what had gone on in 2 weeks of use.
I touched the card and I couldn't help but noticing it was pretty warm.

It's normal, nowdays graphics cards generate more heat than anything else inside your case.

"Pretty warm" = OK
"Oww.. my finger" = Could consider improving the cooling. First thing would be to check how airflow inside case could be improved.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

clientregistry.blob in the steam folder?

Deleted that one and now it seems to be working. There isn't many files in the directory so it wasn't hard to test which one I can delete

Edit: Nevermind, it's not. Got fooled by "26% done updating..." tooltip on notification icon as it briefly appeared.
Edit2: No idea what I did but it's working now. I'm just not too sure if I get to play it before "free weekend" is over, it's one damn big installer to download.

Last edited by Crommi, Sun 22 Jun 2008, 05:41.