Hey all! I came across this game a while ago and had a go of the demo. Its a very good RC sim and seems very popular. I was thinking of buying the licence that was there then I saw the price and thought "WOAH!". Heres a link to the game's page: http://www.virtualrc.com/default.aspx. Its called VirtualRC btw

holy...
well at first i thought you were talking about LFS due to the title

i was looking at the prices of this game a few months ago, and i still think it is outrageous, it is more expensive than Warrock is.. freaking $100 for 6 months and 10 tracks... thats rediculous

You really scared me for a moment with the thread title. I thought you were starting yet another "LFS is too expensive" thread, LOL.

RC sims are quite expensive. I know from the RC flight sims. Mostly because they generally come with an RC controller for your computer, which are quite expensive. LFS would be expensive as well if you got a wheel controller with it too.

Oh yea, and the market for RC sims are not the general public. They are marketed towards people who either race real RC or fly RC, thus they are used for training. Hey, if you can afford thousands and thousands on RC stuff, surely they think hundreds for an RC simulator will be a steal.

I didn't hunt for a price, but I know RC flight sims can run $250-300 US.

yea but usually for most R/C sims its only a 1 time fee.. this is.. every few months

retarded! you even have to pay to drive a certain level car

40$ is the most expensive, 23$, then 13$
and thats just for car licenses

either way the pricing system for that game is rediculously confusing

<waits for the developer who plays LFS to show up...>

I did however enjoy playing it for the time that I did play, I just found it ****ing expensive.

More @ mike, tell me about it, my dad (as he is a dealer) has many of them, and the stuff that comes with them (USB -> Trainer plug) and a bunch of addon packs are amazingly high price, and some of them aren't very realistic. Hell, I remember one, back in 95, that had the most annoying sounds and shit, was funny as hell.

todd seems to be able to make a living off of it so either way people buy it

Seems to be cheaper to buy a RC car for real.

All i can say is ........duDE; This is utterly stupid. its wayyy better spending 100 dollars in a real r/c car not on some stupid racing game ripoff which they make look like its cool but i ain't :irked:

Sure, you can get a fun RC car for $100, but if you want to compete, it's going to cost you a lot more than that. Lets say you want to race 1/10th Electric cars. Using really approximate figures, you could spend $200-400 on a chassis, $50-300 on a speed controller, $100 or so on a motor, $150 or so on a few batteries, $100 on a battery charger, $100 on a transmitter, however much for receiver, servos, few sets of tires, spare parts etc etc etc. It's been 10 or 12 years since I've been in the RC scene, so I don't know how much you need to spend to compete now, but even if you just look at the basic costs there you're looking at close to $1000 once you take all the little things into account. If you want to buy secondhand I'm sure you could get set up for a fair bit less, but at the same time I'm sure a lot of the top guys spend thousands....

I haven't bought the game itself (using demo) but got the USB receiver adapter so I can use my RL RC radio with PC games. Works really good with VRC btw (not so good with Re-Volt unfortunately). Speaking of which, I should dig it out and try it out with LFS!!!




VRC is a niche sim...you expect higher prices for items like this. I wouldn't say it's overpriced; I'd say it's priced for the market. If the devs expected that over 1 million people would be interested in this then I'm sure they'd lower the price. But I'm sure market research says otherwise. Could Volkswagen mass-produce Lambos for far cheaper than what they go for now? Sure, but would they sell millions? No.

Quote from Michael Denham :

Sure, you can get a fun RC car for $100, but if you want to compete, it's going to cost you a lot more than that. Lets say you want to race 1/10th Electric cars. Using really approximate figures, you could spend $200-400 on a chassis, $50-300 on a speed controller, $100 or so on a motor, $150 or so on a few batteries, $100 on a battery charger, $100 on a transmitter, however much for receiver, servos, few sets of tires, spare parts etc etc etc. It's been 10 or 12 years since I've been in the RC scene, so I don't know how much you need to spend to compete now, but even if you just look at the basic costs there you're looking at close to $1000 once you take all the little things into account. If you want to buy secondhand I'm sure you could get set up for a fair bit less, but at the same time I'm sure a lot of the top guys spend thousands....

if youre talking the cars vrc mainly simulates (1/8th nitro) you can easily spend 600€+ on the engine alone

Quote from undertech :

I haven't bought the game itself (using demo) but got the USB receiver adapter so I can use my RL RC radio with PC games. Works really good with VRC btw (not so good with Re-Volt unfortunately). Speaking of which, I should dig it out and try it out with LFS!!!




VRC is a niche sim...you expect higher prices for items like this. I wouldn't say it's overpriced; I'd say it's priced for the market. If the devs expected that over 1 million people would be interested in this then I'm sure they'd lower the price. But I'm sure market research says otherwise. Could Volkswagen mass-produce Lambos for far cheaper than what they go for now? Sure, but would they sell millions? No.

Well, if I could buy a lambo for 50,000$ I would for sure make it my #1 pick compared to a Ferrari or Mclaren at several Million.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Well, if I could buy a lambo for 50,000$ I would for sure make it my #1 pick compared to a Ferrari or Mclaren at several Million.

I think the point undertech was trying to make is that only a small proportion of people are even interested in that type of car. If you look at people who have spent say a total of $50-100k on vehicles, a large proportion will have a fairly luxurious car and an SUV or truck, or some similar combination. A smaller proportion of people desire an unpractical, uncompromising sportscar. Of course, members of a forum like this are certainly members of the minority, as a lot of us would choose a sportscar over an SUV or luxury car...Just as people who are really into RC racing and spend lots of money on that will be happy to pay for the game.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

<waits for the developer who plays LFS to show up...>

Quote :

todd seems to be able to make a living off of it so either way people buy it

Interesting. I didn't know he was the one who owns it.

Quote from -dawedust :

More @ mike, tell me about it, my dad (as he is a dealer) has many of them, and the stuff that comes with them (USB -> Trainer plug) and a bunch of addon packs are amazingly high price, and some of them aren't very realistic. Hell, I remember one, back in 95, that had the most annoying sounds and shit, was funny as hell.

Oh yeah, I forgot your dad has an RC shop. BTW, you were suppose to swipe a GWS E-Starter, some brushless motors, ESC, mini-servos, and a DX6 for me, remember? LOL

Afaik Todd did the physics, but doesn't ''own'' Virtual RC. Anyway, if you find the price is too high, don't buy it. If you're serious about RC, and consider the chance of practising somewhat realistically on loads of real tracks, perhaps its worth it for those folks..

an RC sim is technically ideal as in 'reality' you don't 'feel' the car or plane, as you're not in it. So compared to a 'real' driving sim with real cars, an RC sim can get a lot closer. For real racing, a PC sim might / can help, but for RC I'm sure it can be a really good training tool.

Quote from Michael Denham :

if you want to compete, it's going to cost you a lot more than that...

... unless you race something like Mardave cars, which are made for racing not posing with

I used to be into large scale stuff (gave up when I realised I could race a real car for the same amount of money), but to be honest you can have more fun with an indoor circuit and a full grid of 1/12 scale electric cars - and if you break them the bill will likely be £5 rather than £500.

Personally, if I were into serious competition I'd be practising in a local car park rather than running an expensive sim, but each to their own

Quote from JamesK :

Personally, if I were into serious competition I'd be practising in a local car park rather than running an expensive sim, but each to their own

But you can't practice by yourself out in a parking lot (sorry, car park ) against 20 other folks who are very unpredictable on how they run.

Of course on RC flight sims, the practice is a very different story. Practicing RC flight can cost you $500 in 5 seconds as your plane plumets to the ground into a million little pieces. Same can be said with RC cars/trucks as well though. With RC, you have control reversal orientation confusion, where the vehicle (be it car, truck, or plane) is coming towards you and the controls are reversed. You move left to turn it right. This is very confusing for folks new to RC. With planes, it can mean turning into a 100 foot pine tree and have it stuck up there forever or with cars/trucks it could mean turning it at a high rate of speed right into the tire of a parked car or into some other "barrier". It can be quite an expensive learning experience.

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

an RC sim is technically ideal as in 'reality' you don't 'feel' the car or plane, as you're not in it. So compared to a 'real' driving sim with real cars, an RC sim can get a lot closer. For real racing, a PC sim might / can help, but for RC I'm sure it can be a really good training tool.

then again missing 3d perception is a huge drawback when youre trying to figure out ho fast the car is

Quote from mrodgers :

With RC, you have control reversal orientation confusion

i dont think the market for rc sims consinsts largely of people who are _this_ new to rc

cant seem to go fullscreen which means 4fps for me.

VRC is quite expensive but it depends on what you call expensive.
For me it is an invaluable tool to help with testing setups and general practice.
At one of the big international RC races last season the Serpent team drivers used VRC to test between "real" track time.
The TQ time in the game and the TQ time in the game were only a couple of hundredths apart.
I only started racing 1/10th Nitro this year and i got VRC and the USB adapter to help me get used to driving a RC car. It sure has helped me a lot. Well worth whatever it costs if you ask me

Quote from mrodgers :

Interesting. I didn't know he was the one who owns it.

Quote from dawedust_12 :

More @ mike, tell me about it, my dad (as he is a dealer) has many of them, and the stuff that comes with them (USB -> Trainer plug) and a bunch of addon packs are amazingly high price, and some of them aren't very realistic. Hell, I remember one, back in 95, that had the most annoying sounds and shit, was funny as hell.

Oh yeah, I forgot your dad has an RC shop. BTW, you were suppose to swipe a GWS E-Starter, some brushless motors, ESC, mini-servos, and a DX6 for me, remember? LOL

Sure mike, after I recieve the cheque for several hundred dollars I'll swipe them for yah.

I saw this a while ago and I thought 'oooh, a funky little indi developed racing game, i'll play that'. I like to support indi developers, these days I only ever buy indi games. Then I saw the price and the second word was 'that'.

Clearly it's not aimed at the corner of the games market that I sit in, which is a shame, as it looks like a lot of fun.

Oh well.

tooo expensive!

I was like Becky - saw the game, thought it sounded like fun, thought about having a knockaround with it, then saw the price and laughed all the way to the Close Window button.

Now I appreciate that if it has real manufacturers and tracks to license it could get expensive, but you'd think they'd have dealt with that before making it available to the public, rather than (as I see it) making it and then forcing the fans to foot the bill.
Especially if the kind of people they want to appeal to are also the people who pay to race real RCs.

People spend more money on flying sims than VRC.

At the end of the day it's a good game for practicing between race weekends. Especially if you are traveling around the world racing at tracks you may have never been to. £60 to put in good practice and setup work before you set off travling 100s/1000s of miles seems fine to me...

Keiran