Yeah it really is amazing how much of a difference they can make. Some of the idle sounds in good rFactor mods are just the best things I've ever heard from a sim, but then of course they disappear and the normal engine loop starts playing... that just kills it for me.

The sounds of the higher HP cars (less the CoT) in iRacing is where I think they need to do some work. SRF, Skip, Solstice, Legends sound fine to me. The DP, Radical and Mazda just sound like muffled bees buzzing around instead of screaming engines. You get used to it and don't notice sooner than later, but they don't bring a smile to my face like the real cars.

Oh My God!
Noobs are really dangerous at Lime Rock!!!
The first few turns you really have to be very carefull cause one can just take you out

Quote from Scrabby :

Oh My God!
Noobs are really dangerous at Lime Rock!!!
The first few turns you really have to be very carefull cause one can just take you out

yeah, totally..... but once you get past the first few corners you should be okay. You have to decide if its best to qualify and get to the front of the muppets for the start OR sit at the back and watch them take each other out

I think most of the cars in iRacing sound pretty good, but as many are saying, they haven't captured some of the meaty rawness you'd expect from some of them.

@titanLS: Thanks for the tip with the Mazda, I'll try it out, but I'd expect to sacrifise a LOT of turn in with no rear ARB.

iRacing does loop samples from real recordings BTW, just like rFactor. The difference is they are much more able to get their own top quality recordings with the extra manpower and budget they have. I'm pretty sure they use many more samples than rFactor as well, i.e. a sample for each 25% of throttle or so I guess. They've nailed it pretty well with the SRF, which sounds like a proper engine along with all the different tones and extra sounds you get with different loading and throttle level. However with the Lotus, it sounds like they've only been able to take a few recordings of the engine, away from the track and probably out of the car, and then botched the samples with an audio editor to simulate the note for off throttle / load sounds etc. It definately needs work, and sounds (pun? :razz rushed.

Edit: Listening to it again, I honestly think they've only recorded one sample only for the top 2-3000 rpm of the engine, at full throttle only. It doesn't sound like they've recorded an applied load driving the engine at high rpm while completely off throttle... At all...

Edit2: It's bloody frustrating sometimes, a whole team of professional guys supposedly work on the sound for iRacing, and they have everything available to them. Meanwhile LFS has no budget, nothing available, and is able to produce a synthesized sound to an OK level without any real life samples...

If they do use the sample based technique then they must have loads and loads of recordings for each car. I never notice any looping in the sounds no matter how long I stay at a certain rpm. Maybe they record the sound at every 50-100rpm or so. With the amount of people they have working on it I am sure that it wouldn't take too long. In rfactor they usually record large chunks of the engine sound which fade in and out, so when you stay at a certain rpm, you can hear it looping very noticeably. Hopefully the Lotus sounds are still being worked on and what has been shown in previews is not the final product. From that preview it doesn't even sound like that car at any rpm. It sounds like a radical or some kind of bike.

Quote from Gills4life :

If they do use the sample based technique then they must have loads and loads of recordings for each car. I never notice any looping in the sounds no matter how long I stay at a certain rpm. Maybe they record the sound at every 50-100rpm or so. With the amount of people they have working on it I am sure that it wouldn't take too long. In rfactor they usually record large chunks of the engine sound which fade in and out, so when you stay at a certain rpm, you can hear it looping very noticeably. Hopefully the Lotus sounds are still being worked on and what has been shown in previews is not the final product. From that preview it doesn't even sound like that car at any rpm. It sounds like a radical or some kind of bike.

You struggle to hear the loops of the samples in iRacing simply because they are able to record the engine at a consistant rpm level, but trust me, they use samples. The loops are noticable in rFactor because normally the original sample has to be edited to flatten the pitch and then added to a reversed copy and looped, which the ear can detect if not done very well.

I reckon you're right about them having many many samples though for each car, although it doesn't seem to be the case with the Lotus. :/

Hopefully it is simply because it is an aspect of the car that has not been heavily worked on yet. If that isn't the case then I shall be really disappointed considering how much money they demand for the service. I mean fair enough, if everything is flawless then fine, but that just seems half arsed. Anyway, it probably isn't the final version, so I shouldn't be ranting! I am sure it will be amazing when it is released.

Quote from DaveWS :

Edit2: It's bloody frustrating sometimes, a whole team of professional guys supposedly work on the sound for iRacing, and they have everything available to them. Meanwhile LFS has no budget, nothing available, and is able to produce a synthesized sound to an OK level without any real life samples...

Where does the no budget come from? They've made good money from LFS. How do you think they managed to include a car stereo in the FXR?

I always like the in car sounds in the GTR series more than any other game. Not sure what it was but they just seemed more raw, they sounded more like what I heard from in-car cameras during actual races.

Quote from StableX :

Where does the no budget come from? They've made good money from LFS. How do you think they managed to include a car stereo in the FXR?

LOL. Well, no real money has been spent on developing the sounds.

Quote from DaveWS :

LOL. Well, no real money has been spent on developing the sounds.

that's different to having no budget though :P

Just got myself another month for the hell of it.
Still a rookie but i'm sure ill end up better than I am now.

Another Mazda race thoroughly ruined by the bizarre snap oversteer behaviour the car has. It's definately not right, and my iRating and SR are taking big hits because of it.

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

I've posted a thread with a replay over at the iRacing forums.

http://members.iracing.com/iforum/thread.jspa?threadID=42563

Can't really tell from the vid, did you bottom it on that kerb? Crash physics are amazingly realistic

Quote from NotAnIllusion :

Can't really tell from the vid, did you bottom it on that kerb? Crash physics are amazingly realistic

No I didn't bottom it on the curb. Nor did I lose much or any traction. I barely even touched the curb, it just intiated the oversteer to the left, which I corrected, and upon doing so, the oversteer transitioned to the right with rediculous violence. It's the complete opposite of what you'd get in LFS, where transitions are pretty gradual.

Quote from DaveWS :

Another Mazda race thoroughly ruined by the bizarre snap oversteer behaviour the car has. It's definately not right, and my iRating and SR are taking big hits because of it.

To be honest, you overcorrected it and by the time you reacted, car was already going straight again. 90 degrees of correction is way too much for Mazda, you don't have time for recovery once it grips.

Your car also looked quite nervous through those corners, Mazda should be rock solid through T4 even with cold tires but you had a nasty oversteer moment there under full throttle. Same kind of drama in T3 too, although it looked like car didn't want to turn in at first. I'd take a look at tweaking setup, oversteery behavior could get worse over race distance once car gets lighter.

Quote :

you don't have time for recovery once it grips.

But my main point is that you SHOULD be able to recover from a situation like that. It's not meant to be easy, but anyone with decent car control would be able to cope with that in the equivelent car IRL, IMO.

Quote from Crommi :

Your car also looked quite nervous through those corners, Mazda should be rock solid through T4 even with cold tires but you had a nasty oversteer moment there under full throttle. Same kind of drama in T3 too, although it looked like car didn't want to turn in at first. I'd take a look at tweaking setup, oversteery behavior could get worse over race distance once car gets lighter.

I guess I could alter the set a little, but that's how I like my cars to feel, in any sim. I like it to be balanced, maybe even slightly oversteer biased, rather than understeery. I can cope with correcting oversteer in the Mazda except in situations where the oversteer undergoes a sudden transition in direction. I will have to alter my set though a little, but the fact remains, somethings not right with the physics.

Edit: I'm quite suprised at the general reaction to my replay so far. I was expecting a lot of people to agree that there actually is something that's not right about the physics somehow. I mean, I'll freely admit LFS has it's problems in the physics department. I'm not singleing you out Crommi, but some of the iRacing fanboyism is stupid.

In both videos its pretty clear that you overcorrected violently and the car followed.

Watch the steering wheel in the bottom left...it hides nothing.

I'm not trying to be rude because I've done it a lot myself.

Like Crommi says maybe instead of lashing out at the sim for you crashing take a closer look at your setup or your driving to keep it from happening again.

Like it was said in your thread, the car is well known to be aweful over 80% of curbs..just steer clear of them.

TBH Dave I agree with you. The physics in iracing don't feel right at all to me, and also to alot of my teammates. I know that you are a great racer, so if you are saying it feels wrong, then compared to alot of the commentators, I would trust your own judgement.

I have said it many times, but I can learn how to drive iracing, but it means I have to learn to play a game, rather than doing what comes naturally, which is what a sim should be about...

I think iracing is a HUGE leap forward in many ways, the tracks are just awesome, the FFB is incredible, god I wish LFS had the same bumps and detail, but sadly the physics in iracing just feel wrong to me... Shite, if real cars acted the way they do in iracing, 50% of the worlds population would be dead now

This is what is tough with the mazda. When you figure out how to do this you can drive any setup, and catch any slide.

The car acts like its on fast forward, but your hands have to be in slow motion. That doesn't mean let the car get ahead of you, it means react soon enough that you can be smooth and slow on your inputs. The slower your inputs get the faster you go.

When you get into a nasty oversteer situation sometimes your instinct to catch the slide can get ahead of you. This is when you go hand over hand with about double the countersteer you need..the front gains grip, and you shoot off into the ditch.

I don't know if this is realistic or not...but I know you have to drive like this in real life or you're going to put the car in the wall.

If you want to keep driving the mazda then I highly suggest you work on this a little bit. Slow down your steering and you'll speed up on track I guarantee it.

The radical on the other hand...you're countersteering like a wild man to keep the thing pointed straight. Its lower downforce shorter wheelbase and loads less grip all around. To top that off you've got enough power to powerslide out of any corner on the track.



I'm not trying to preach or anything...and if you know this already than just tell me to shut up and I'll shut up. I just felt like I was being a douche and figured I'd give you the time of day to write out what I was getting at.

edit - you're pretty damn fast so I guess I'll shut up, but what I wrote is true

Well Spanks, you did come across as saying that Davews is a bit of a noob and doesn't know how to drive. Give him a race in LFS then you will understand where I, and alot of others, are coming from.

I know in LFS if my car loses it, what to do to fix it, not successfully always mind you, but I still can feel what's going on. In iracing, it feels like you either drive the car the way the game says you have to, or the physics go mental on you and sends you into a crazy spin that seems to have no relation to real life physics....

I could be totally wrong here btw, but after driving approximately 300,000 miles + at least in a real car, surely I can't be that wrong?

I 100% agree that things can be, and hopefully will get better in iracing.

I am just trying to say I don't think this is a good example to start a big campaign to fix the physics

Quote from DaveWS :

But my main point is that you SHOULD be able to recover from a situation like that. It's not meant to be easy, but anyone with decent car control would be able to cope with that in the equivelent car IRL, IMO.

Initial oversteer caused from clipping the curb was only a small drift, possible to recover with very small flick of opposite lock, something like 10 degrees or even center and back. If you take a look at your replay in slow motion, your steering input peaks at almost 130 degrees of opposite lock which is way too much for so small slide.

I'm not trying to bash you, I struggled with same problem when I did the transistion from Skippy to Mazda. Not only this car has very grippy tires, it also has way faster steering and you can cut the steering work into half, especially for corrections. Curbs are still quite deadly unless you're comfortable with riding a higher suspension setup and soft ARB at rear, but it does make car feel little numb.

It's the curb, I'll repeat it until I am blue in the face.

Something about curbs in iRacing will just make you lose control rapidly. I never liked how the cars seemed to react over 80% of the curbs, so I just stay away from them now.

Quote from PMD9409 :

It's the curb, I'll repeat it until I am blue in the face.

Something about curbs in iRacing will just make you lose control rapidly. I never liked how the cars seemed to react over 80% of the curbs, so I just stay away from them now.

Would the curbs to that in real life?

On a side note, some of LFS's curbs are also ridiculous,which are obviously bugs, but not the majority