I'd recommend the Silverado over the radical, it is just more fun to drive imho. The radical is too snappy for my taste. It's fun but it is also very tiring car to drive. The silverado feels almost like a heavy road car with loads of power, the body roll makes it challenging to drive though and you can really feel that the suspension is made of 2tonne lego bricks
I don't think i'm going to buy anything at all in the near future. I actually thought about the radical, but it's not what i want. I've watched videos of it, and i'm sure it's a blast, but as i said... i am interested in road cars.
The car i would probably buy next is the skippy. I always loved the FOX in LFS, but never liked the F08 or BF1... GTR cars, etc. I don't like racing cars with surreal grip. I prefer something that feels like a normal car.
If you just want to get around the track then sure, its as easy as driving slowly around a road course...If you want to go as fast as possible, be ready to spend a longgggg time testing and tweaking setups. All I read from oval guys is how much they test and try new things...its pretty competitive over there.
I never raced ovals before iracing...and they're fun, and the racing is very good. However, not so great that I'm gonna go buy everything
You can, but you'd be wrong.
I've done my fair share of oval racing in LFS and iRacing to personally judge it as boring. I'm sure it involves endless effort to munch off the last few miliseconds off of PBs in oval racing and that there's alot of strategy involved... but that's where oval racing stops and track racing continues. Track racing is all of that, including the many different corners and BRAKING that creates a whole new experience.
I guess this just the well known difference between Europe and the USA.
It depends what you grew up with and what tracks are available. IMO, the best racing tracks are in Asia and Europe. The best ovals are in the USA.
Dont know about oval racing in LFS, but in iRacing the last thing i would call it is boring! It absolutely awesome. I'm a convert, that's for sure
It's so intense at times i forget to breath for laps at a time
I can imagine that it's quite good in iRacing actually. The races i've done felt really intense. I dunno what it exactly is, but in IR you just don't want to crash. It's the SR, the (exaggerated) damage you get from crashes, the feeling of actually driving a car (dunno, works for me in a way that makes me cautious), etc.
That's something i felt very clearly in IR. People are paying attention and behave very well (i'm sure there's lots of idiots aswell... i've already seen the occasional crash and argument between the involved drivers afterwards). Everybody tries to be careful while still driving fast and having a good race. This results in a very intense racing experience for me, which is a big part of the fun i have with IR so far.
Something else is the web site, and how it's integrated into the sim. I understand this might feel very weird to some people. I like that system a lot however. It's done very well, and most of all, it works (as far as i can see).
The scheduled races feel good to me. In LFS i used to do race after race, which could be quite exhausting. In IR, in the series i am driving right now, there is a race every hour. It takes about a good half of an hour to complete the race, including warm up of a few minutes. Then you have to wait half an hour if you want another race. It's a perfect balance IMO. You can use the time to relax, do something else, test your car, practice, do some qualify laps, etc... It didn't feel like something i'd call a bad system.
The late model around the short tracks is pure fun! It can be nose to tail for full race and to make a pass you need to set it up and be able to make it stick, which might be more than few laps side by side while people behind you are waiting their chance. At best it is comparable to best road racing. And unlike in road racing, the tracks are easy to memorize
PersonallyI didn't really like the legends on ovals but the late models had me hooked. It's been long since I drove ovals last time and liked it but I'd say you need to try ovals to know if you like them or not. You might be surprised
I used to wonder what the attraction of oval was, after trying it out in iRacing I now realise that it's insanely intense and good fun and an altogether a diffirent kind of racing to road. Still prefer road tracks but the round in a circle tracks are interesting.
I had my first race without any incidents today. Rookie class, Pontiac Solstice at Lime Rock. Finished 2nd, best lap was an 1:05:5XX, average of 1:06:0XX.
I was lucky because there was a little accident between two other drivers in front, pretty early into the race. Somehow nobody managed to catch up again. The leader however... i managed to stay in close sight for about 7 laps, then he "drove off"... i came in 2nd with a plus of 15 seconds.
However, it felt very rewarding and exciting. I've managed to drive 20 constant laps while going fast (for me it was fast anyway, i'm still learning), which felt like a little victory for me.
I also disabled the steering wheel in the car now (I never did this in LFS, i should give it a try again maybe, but i don't remember it as feeling much better than with the wheel enabled.), and it feels even more amazing now.
I would explain it a little like this... In IR, you really feel like you're driving a car (except that you are sitting in a chair in your room... blabla, yes.). It feels so much like driving in a car, that the wheel on the screen actually bothered me. I can't remember any game or sim where this has ever happend to me before.
I better stop... I must sound like they are paying me money to write this.
However, it is hard with the cars there are right now (meaning it would require a lot of training and perfection to do it right). The driver in the video is Toni (aka Matrixi) from the well known LFS drift team Saiko D... that might explain why it looks easy.
Nevertheless, it sure is a lot of fun to try (when testing the car alone on a track). And if you manage to catch a nice drift, it feels great. It actually compares quite good to real life...
I had two RWD cars in my life so far. One was a Miata, and the other one a 944 Turbo. When i was lucky to find a safe place to try, i always attempted some drifts. With the miata i had the luck to train on a racetrack in france for two days.
While the miata was able to get sideways, it was still not exactly well powered for drifting. The 944 however, with a chip, had plenty of power for getting the rear end out (which was still tricky because of the boost). I had the chance to fully explore the limits with the miata on the race track, while i only had a few moments with the 944 where i could safely try to drift with it. And those few times, it was not as easy as in lfs, and not as smooth as with the miata. It was powerfull, pretty raw, quick happening, kind of nervous, easy to mess up... And this is exactly how it feels in iRacing. At least it feels more real than anything else i've tried before.
Something else about IR, in regard of those two days on the track with the miata...
You cannot really compare the solstice to a miata. The solstice is way heavier basically. While the miata handles more like a go-kart. But the car concept is more or less the same, aswell as the power to weight ratio (more or less). So you could say that if it's a good simulation, the driving would have to feel similar to what i've experienced in those two days at the track in real life. And this is where i got so excited about it... because it actually made me feel like i was back there on the track again in my miata. All the driving techniques work, the car feels like a roadster and behaves like expected... from what i've learned in my miata back then (about 6 years ago now). And sometimes i smile like a kid when driving in IR, just like i did in the miata for those two days (ok, there it was non-stop).
Anyway, i think i've lost the point a little bit... lol.
I've tried to say, that drifting in real life, is not as easy as it is in LFS. And IR made a good step into that direction. Even more, since it's quite realistic, you would want a car that is drift "friendly"... which would not exactly be a race car. It's possible to drift a racecar and have full control while doing so, i'm sure. But it is also hard and most likely not a lot of fun, compared to actually racing the car (it was made for that anyway).
Give me a stock M3 in IR... trust me, the first thing i'll try for hours with it won't be racing.
PS: Please don't let this be the start for a race/drift argument... iRacing is clearly a racing simulation (look at the cars), and it's very good at that. It's made for racing, really.
So, as my one month test subscription runs out in a few days, and I won't really have time to play much till after christmas, I gave it another spin.
Funnily, FF did feel smoother and gave more feedback than on my first try, which I really can't understand as the only thing I changed was my operating system, but I used the very same Profiler Settings as before.
So now to my new verdict: It's drivable, it looks reasonably well, but it's still not worth the 20 bucks per month (or less if you subscribe for longer at once). The car (meaning the Solstice) still feels too slippery, much like the stock cars in rFactor or GTR Evo do to really enjoy myself. Unlike others in here, I still can't feel the cars limit very well in game, and slides are nearly uncatchable, once you actually start noticing you slide.
I for one still feel more connected with both the car and the road in LfS, making driving more enjoyable here.
Also, while the online racing is on a higher standard than in CTRA Race 1, I still got bumped off the road in every race I took part in, once even by a driver that lapped me on a straight with me being off the line.
iRacing isn't a bad sim, but I still am not convinced that it is better than Live for Speed. And that's just physics wise. If you add the very restrictive racing system, the not really better racing etiquette (at least on rookie level races), the monthly fee, the additional payments for content (in addition to some not so nice functions of the iRacing website: as a standard, it shows you races to take part in where you have to buy content, races with the content you already have are hidden in a submenu).
So conclusively: iRacing is above average, but harming itself by features I personally don't like (while, admittedly, others might do), and it isn't the Holy Grail of Sim Racing that others make it out to be. By far.
Thinking back on this test month, only playing it twice and having to force myself to do so the second time says a lot really.
While the FF in iRacing is great, you need to get the setup a little right before you really feel it.
First, turn off the profiler. The profiler will hose up your settings, and you will end up with different settings game to game. Since the profiler is a process that has controll of the device, running said process in the background behind a game meants you have a process with limited CPU time trying to run the game. Some games it helps, but games that are developed correctly for FFB, it messes up. iRacing is the latter.
It's funny that you say the Solstice is loose, when most people say it drives like a dumptruck. Usually a loose solstice means you're turning on the brakes... which that car seriously does not like at all. Also, keep in mind the rookie solstice has a very "ugly" setup on it... it's meant to keep the pace down so that the races in the rookie class are tighter, and you don't have people taking off on the field so easily.
I don't get your "races you have content for are hidden" ... they are all listed on the series page the same...
Also, look on the forums for 2 things. 1, good settings for your wheel FFB for iRacing. If you have a G25 or other Logi wheel, that will be easy to find. 2, if you can (depending on OS and wheel, and hardware) set your wheel to be on a different processor / core than your main core... it helps the performance alot...
Lastly... I'm not trying to convince you of anything... as I've said before I know its not for everyone by far. I just want to make sure that people aren't getting the wrong impression for the wrong reason!
Sorry but I think this is BS. The profiler doesn't "hose up" my settings in LFS so why should it in iRacing? The profiler is in fact the only way to set up all the effects in a way you want, instead of just letting the driver do whatever it feels like. Without the profiler you might have an automatic force reduction at the centre ("to prevent oscillation") and other things like automatic returning to centre or steer damping, which do NOT belong in a proper sim.
Android, like I said, depending on the implementation of the game... Mention FFB problems with a logi wheel on the iRacing forums and the first thing you will see is "turn off the profiler"
They went above and beyond when it comes to the FFB in iRacing, and it shows in it's use. While you might not get the auto force reduction in the profiler, the game does it for you. Like a real car, the forces are varied depending on how close to center you are... and it's different for each car... The problem with the profiler is that it tries to normalize everything, which is counterproductive when the game simulates the different "feel" of every car. The solstice with power steering is very different from the skippy without it... for example.
Picking up on this last sentence, about IRacing not being for everyone and people getting wrong impressions, and coming back to what Mattesa was refering earlier on this thread and that Moose also aluded too, let me quote a post that was made today in RSC: ( I´ve highlighted one of the sentences, because is absolutely precious...)
If IRacing was only targeted to race drivers they shouldn´t have gone public, this way preventing us "little gamers" from disturbing the "ubber, dupper, super hardcore simracers" in their quest for virtual glory. I believe that this kind of attittude that some IRacers have, altough may boost their ego meters, doesn´t do any good to Iracing and their reputation, and seeing that they chose to keep their forum private, these are the kind of things that someone who hasn´t tried IRacing reads. Don´t know if they have someone to go trough what is posted about IRacing in other foruns, but I think that they should be quick in responding to these kind of posts in a place like RSC, that is problably one of the places that most simracers go to.
Just a quick note, before I get interpreted the wrong way, to say that the sentence I quoted doesn´t reflect at all the kind of attitude I´m talking about, and that I just used as an introdution to my post, because it refered to the fact that Iracing isn´t for everyone...
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