Quote from Mackie The Staggie :

Ok recently tried this out again...did'nt do anything for me last time but thought I may as well download the latest update and give it a try.

Really really good. Don't know if I feel it better now of if the feeling has improved but I eally like this now. What should i be downloading and where's the best to view sets/times and possible league racing?

I would rank the extra content like this:

Top quality tracks, must haves
Crema (included)
Aviano (included)
Prato (included)
Aosta (included)
Newbury (included)
Mugello
Laguna Seca
Adelaide 1989
Donington
Spa Francorchamps
Falkenberg
A1-Ring

Decent tracks (not too severe track surface anomalies, OK graphics)
Barcelona 2010
Interlagos
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
Lastplace Lake
Snetterton

Ones I wouldn't bother with
Brands Hatch
Dijon
Road America
Ricardo Tormo
Nurburgring
Oschersleben
Hockenheimring

Download links are over here for all of them.

As for racing: Radiators Springs (here) arrange plenty of racing. The GPC championship (here) will probably also start up soon, but nothing has been announced yet. You can also find decent pick-up racing every night now.

Good luck!

Same here. I have no idea what kind of steering wheels work with FFB > 1.0.. I normally run at 0.6-0.9. In the F2000 even 0.5 is too much for me, but sadly I can't adjust it down further..

To me it would make more sense to redefine the FFB scale. Nobody needs more than 1.5 anyway!

That just looks like so much fun!! Can't wait to try it!

Just hope it gets released before I go on Christmas vacation...

Quote from The Moose :

Spa available for pre-order. Release between 20th and 23rd of December

Bah, two days after I go on holidays!

Oh well, at least I have something to look forward to when I get back.

It's possible to jump on and race. But be prepared for T1 mayhem! It seems that NetKar is full of really fast drivers with the spatial awareness of a crab in a tin can.

Some of the new tracks are really great though! None of that weird bumpiness that was plaguing some of the older ones.

That looks great! Nice and sturdy design. And having the monitor as close as possible really is the way to go.

Wish I had room for something like this.. living on 12 m^2 you have to prioritize. But some day!!

I have an ATI 5870 card, and it seems that my AA/AF settings in Catalyst have 0 effect ingame.. anyone else have this problem? Any solutions?

Have to test more tomorrow.. initial impressions is that the front end has less grip than before and the back end is a little more "snappy" than before. I hope he made some improvement to the netcode!! Have to try that tomorrow.

Quote from The Moose :

Gonna have to find a league I guess.

... or make one! Finnglish Thursday races??

Yesterday's race: V8 Supercars Bathurst 1000 ! He's adding the whole race bit by bit.

Quote :

Staying on the community side of things, we have something very cool planned for the world’s fastest sim racer. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but let’s just say Greger is going to be making a trip here to the States very soon and he’ll get to do some very cool things. We will be capturing all of it on film to be shown on 3 Wide Life and on our website, plus it will be covered in Top Gear magazine.

Wow, that should be fun!! I wonder what they're planning.

I'm sorry, I was actually referring to the V8 @ Lime Rock combo. (Seemed like that was what Seb66, TexasLTU and TitanLS were talking about) This car seems to be extremely loose compared to its real life counterpart. More so than the Skippy, which is rather slidey in real life as well I think. But yeah, you're right.. there is no risk in sim racing, so we're always likely to push the cars further than people do in real life, no matter how good the tire model might be.

The weird thing is that when you watch these cars in real life they look like they're on rails, almost.. which makes sense, since some of the races are really long, so you wouldn't want the cars to be too "wild". Whereas in iRacing the cars are sliding around like crazy (at least in the videos I've seen on youtube). Can this be dialed out with a more conservative setup or is that just how the iRacing tires are? It just doesn't look right to me!

Quote from anttt69 :

John Henry has confirmed that iRacing will break even very soon.
Concidering they only opened thier doors 2008 looks like success.
Hopefuly it will become more affordable once they are in the green.

Really?? That's great news! Honestly this comes as a big surprise, but I'm happy to hear it! Glad to have contributed in my small way.

Let's do some maths:

10000 subscribers x ($100 subscription fees + $100 content - $50 promotions/discounts) = $1,5 million pr year income. Over two years that equals maximum ~ $3 million income (august 2008 -> august 2010)

Then the expenses:
40 employees (at present). Let's say an average of 20 employees since 2004 (assuming it's been growing at a constant pace).
20 employees x $40000 x 6 years ~ $5 million

So before we even get to all the other stuff like rent, employer's fees, scanning fees, business deals etc etc we're in the reds... even at current, it looks like they have to be losing money if the subscribers are their only source of income..

Which begs the question: where does the rest of the money come from??? What other sources of income do they have besides us subscribers?

Fantastic!!! I've always wanted to drive an MX-5. If I hadn't been so damn tall I would have bought one years ago..

Only two more weeks till I'm back in action... YAY

Quote from mcintyrej :

So here I am batting it out with a bunch of pro's on late model, doing really well considering I've not raced it at all, I'm in a solid 4th place lapping well and I come up behind the 2 last place drivers. They're blocking and swerving everywhere - bumping into me giving me safety warnings. They blocked me so much I ended up losing a place because of it and I lost .1 SR from the race - upon checking the results I see that the guy doing all the crashing has 0.55 Safety rating. Yes you read that right - 0.55. Totally appaling if you ask me.

That guy should be given a medal.

Same here! Takes some time getting used to, but once you have a decent setup it's among the most enjoyable cars in LFS I think.

Ouch.. that didn't look good Dave. He sure is fast for his age, but apparently has a thing or two to learn about race conduct.

And yeah, I was pretty disappointed with di Grassi and Daly. It seems they were just more or less thrown into this race without sufficient practice time. Which makes you wonder what the point of the whole event was, and why Dell even bothered sponsoring them with the prizes and all... I thought the idea was to have a "sim-racing vs real world show-off".

Oh well, it was entertaining to watch, so who am I to complain?

Quote from DaveWS :

For those who don't know there is a broadcast race tonight, the final of the "GP Masters", where the top 20 qualifying iracers who entered will race against an F1 driver (Di Grassi) and the current Star Mazda champ leader for some pretty hot prizes.

The stream is at 21:30 GTM here: www.iracing.com/multimedia/live-broadcasts/

And we each have a paint job / colour assigned for the event:

I'm tuning in! Good luck Dave.

10 minutes to go.. come join guys!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the vibration (during braking) is not triggered by the wheels actually locking up, but rather when you reach a certain braking %. So, for example: you define that at 80% braking, it will start vibrating, no matter whether your wheels are actually locking up or not.

Which makes the whole thing kind of pointless IMO..

I have the GT3RS too, and I see no reason to upgrade. I don't need PS3 support, so why bother?

Quote from The Moose :

Don't forget the V8 !

I'll put money on that getting a major physics overhaul in the next build/year/when they can be arsed.

If that car is right as it is now, I'm Jenson Button.

Yeah, you only have to compare the steering inputs with those of the real car.. the real car is so much more firmly planted and stable, while the iRacing version looks super twitchy with constant counter-steer.

But it sure looks super fun though!! Can't wait to try it

Your stats and purchases will still be there when you reactivate your old account.

There's a great promo going right now.. resubscribe for a year (for $99) and receive $30 worth of iRacing credits for which you can buy new content. The details are in this post by Richard.

I also raced the Solstice a lot in the beginning, and found it a lot better than most other simcars on offer (in other sims). But once I picked up the Skippy and SRF I never looked back. The power steering really kills the FFB fidelity of the Solstice in my opinion. It handles well and the racing can be good, but the other cars just give me so much more.

Speaking of which.. does anyone know if the Mustang has power steering..?

Yay! I'll be taking advantage of this for sure. Perfect timing too!

Quote :

Feel free to extend by two or three years as well, you’ll get $30 iRacing credits for each year you extend.

Seems like they're desperate for fresh capital.. Hope it's not urgent!

Quote from NightShift :

The gist of the problem is the number of active drivers is the sum of the influx of new drivers and the outflux of old drivers. To keep it growing they need to boost the first (e.g. promo codes for new customers) and cut the latter (e.g. content/system updates and other innovations)

This. I'm sure iRacing are closely monitoring this. If they weren't happy with the recent developments in membership they would be more likely to change their approach and try pushing some other levers. For the moment it seems like churning out new content is working fine, and therefore from a business point of view there is no need to change their approach. As Klaus said, also older members appreciate new content every now and then.

And of course you're right that an artist probably wouldn't do a better job at making a new aero model (or whatever) than any of us. But again -- if membership development was insatisfactory over time they could for example fire some artists and hire some engineers / math guys / programmers to work on the core stuff.

Quote from Mille Sabords :

An interesting marketing option would be a full rental option, for a series (base + series content rented for the series duration only, expires at the end of a series but updated for the next selected series) along with the current pricing system.

This would be my dream model!! I've argued for this kind of system before too. There are many positive things about this. Mainly it would mean that iRacing could change the tracks completely from one season to the next while keeping the "season subscription price" the same. This would be great for

(1) new drivers, who wouldn't face that huge "price wall" the first season (10 tracks, 2 cars, whatever... --> £££ starts flying!!!)

(2) old members, who would have more variation. At the moment iRacing seems afraid to change the schedule too much from season to season to avoid "forcing" people to buy too many new tracks at a time.

Quote from Mp3 Astra :

That was going to be a question I meant to ask... What happens when iRacing has too much content? To be honest I think it has too much already. You can only stagger races by so much. People will buy cars, expecting lots of racing, but you'll end up with rFactor syndrome with too many series and not enough competitors. Therefore iRacing will have to drop series from entire seasons (...)

My guess is that they will not drop series, but rather merge them together in multiclass races. So that people at least have a chance to be on track with other cars. Even if you're the only Radical driver in a field of DPs you can still have some fun I guess -- better than practicing alone at least. And as the number of cars increases you also get more cars which are evenly matched and are well suited for multiclass races.

However I definitely share your concerns. IMO they should be focusing on updating the core service (weather, transmission, dynamic lighting, brake wear, driver swaps etc etc etc) rather than churning out new content at a blistering pace.