its like WoW but then a sim-racing game with maybe awfull physics

Just remembered they have Silverstone in the game :doh:

I guess they just aint had time to model any more tracks, I would like to see the UK club circuits. Oulton Park, Brands Hatch, Thruxton, Knock Hill, Donnington etc. They are probably back at base finishing off the game at the moment...wait they can probably afford to send a team of people to every track while the coders stay back at base. I keep forgetting its not 3 guys in their living room everytime I talk about sim developers.

Hehe, here's my conditions, or stuff that I'd expect/liked iracing to deliver:

0. Cars look and feel alive
1. Bug free gaming
2. good net code and collisions
3. Physics better than LFS
4. Realism
5. Mechanical failures
6. Online skins
7. GUI that works
8. Pit strategy organiser
9. Weather & dynamic road surfaces
10. Reasonable amount of interesting content.
11. Community with people who understand the difference between looks and feel.
12. Possible to run leagues, hotlap and practise offline whenever I want
13. Official game servers, admins and banlists


And last and most importantly, no fu****ng scripted stuff in anything that has anything to do with physics.

And imho, American race tracks are defenately good ones if you want a track that is both popular and widely known. And has interesting corners.

The tracklist is quite good, lots of interesting circuits although Nurbi, Mosport and Bathurst are (still) missing . another interesting thing is the link with ski barber racing school. Wonder if that has something too...

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

The thing is that subscription games like WoW work because the entirety of the game is in the online experience. Racing sims are somewhat like that, but in the end, you can always have a trackday on your own. If the content you've paid for in a racing sim no longer works when you've stopped subscribing, I can't see many people biting.

That's a really good point.

I really think a key is some kind of persistence also constant human presence. IE proper day/night cycles, weather systems, officials etc. That'd be interesting.

Quote from Bob Smith :

I totally don't understand the subscription model. MMOs needs subscriptions to fund the massive servers. What are iRacing offering for all this cash they want?

no idea maybe a datalogging site that records all sorts of information about the races going on personal bests of a driver etc ... oh wait

13$ isnt really all that expensive if you put it in perspective though ... must be less than 1 or 2€ at the current rate

No but it is expensive when you put it into this perspective: I payed $13 for 12 months (which is $156) Last year I bought LFS for ~$48, and I never would have done that for $156. Sure they probably offer you to pay it in months or some plan of some sort... but your still contracted to pay it. Also put it in this perspective: 5000 people subscribe for a year, that means iRacing is making $65000 a month. which is a lot of money. And even in the small niche that its in, it sure has been in the waitings for a lot of people so I am sure they will have a user base > 5000. Thats going to be a lot of money, although they have been developing it for a long time. Who knows what will happen as I don't care for subscriptions and the like unless I know and feel its a good reason to be.

Bob -> I think they are using that additional money to collect data for more cars and tracks, even if the additional tracks and cars need to be bought as well. I don't know though I am just guessing. I also don't like that fact either, you get X cars and Y tracks but need to buy others.

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

Lets get prepared incase this does turn out to be little more than a Nascar 2003 mod...

Here are a few names I think would work...

idiotracing
irobbed
ibroke
igrazing
ihavemadethedevsveryveryrich

...see what you can come up with!

iwanttoknowwhattheyaresmoking
iwenttothepiratebaytogetit

Over £75 pounds for life is excessive for any piece of software, but PER YEAR!

At least with World of Borecraft you are paying for them to run servers and have paid human admins on the servers - what will iWenttothepiratebaytogetit have? LFS has a stats tracking thing, a live TV thing and practically a moon in a ice cream cornet - with no monthly subscription.

Also, they can (and so can FILSCA, who won't recognise the sim with the highest number of drivers on at any given point IIRC) grab their world governing body and put it up where brown stuff comes out, preferably with a pineapple.

And I'd rather have the first ten metres of Thruxton than most American tracks.

Quote from Hyperactive :

Imho sim racing is still dirt cheap if you compare it to any other hobby.

Quote from nihil :

Dogging is much cheaper... Almost free.

Congratulations ... both of you have the honour of being featured in my sig

When i saw the OP and saw that price, i was like "OMG, no way!, subscription payments, for a SIM??".
I've read the pages afterward, and i still wouldn't pay $20 to "borrow it for a while".
Having said that, If Scavier came out tomorrow and said "After the next patch, you will be required to pay £6.50 per month to carry on using LFS" I would pay it in a heartbeat.
So, i guess what i'm saying is, it would be best for them if they released a Demo similar to how LFS's Demo is, so we could get a proper taster for free. Then IF it was as good/better than LFS most probably wouldn't mind paying every month.

Quote from Hyperactive :

Imho sim racing is still dirt cheap if you compare it to any other hobby.

Alright, lets be realistic. What is sim racing? It's sitting in front of a computer!

You're not accumulating assets like with a collecting hobby.
You're not engaging in exercise like with a sports hobby.
You're not engaging in mental exercise like with a modeling hobby.
You're not contributing to society like with an artistic hobby.
You're not psychologically doing much at all, like with a drug hobby.

---

Like others have said... it better be spectacular. For that price it better be a revolutionary experience that's beyond mere 'gaming'. Short of giving me a Force Dynamics motion simulator, it's not gonna happen.

Same reason why I don't subscribe to MMORPGs no matter how much I like them.

It's fun to see that they produce more that lawsuits, press releases and marketing material. Oh, this still fits the genre... Doh!.....

It's actually a bit cheaper than I expected (but comes back to what I expected considering extra content that "you just heve to own") I payed eur80+eur160 in total for MCO (to put things in perspective).

But it will have to be awsomely good for me to spend anything since I don't like them after they killed the nr2003 mod scene. (Were talking physics better than nkPro)

These lawsuits/threats were partially against a website which is not violating the law in the country in which it was based. Maybe it's part of the "We own the internet" complex a lot of US companies have. The UK invented the web, and if Russia claim sticking a flag somewhere counts as it makes it yours (so what if I did that in the Kremlin ) ... er ...

Quote from Mattesa :

Alright, lets be realistic. What is sim racing? It's sitting in front of a computer!

You're not accumulating assets like with a collecting hobby.
You're not engaging in exercise like with a sports hobby.
You're not engaging in mental exercise like with a modeling hobby.
You're not contributing to society like with an artistic hobby.
You're not psychologically doing much at all, like with a drug hobby.

You dont consider simracing a mental exercise? Then youre doing it wrong.

As for physical exercise crank up the FFB and do some offroad, paint some skins for arts.

Quote from heson :

You dont consider simracing a mental exercise? Then youre doing it wrong.

Well... alright. It is mental exercise. Although it's still 'virtual' and in front of a computer.

stupid game... rather play drift city, atleast i would know people there....


Note: i do not and will not play DC ever, people are lame ricers that think drifting is the fastest way around in straights and corners. i know someone who sucks at lfs after i introduced it to him. he decided to become "a dwarf among midgets" and go play with ricers

Quote from RMachucaA :

As long as wreckers\drifters dont exist on their servers, im in. Even if it means paying out the nose for it

Since when have drifters been any kind of problem? Surely it is small group that makes bad name for the drifters?

I'd pay some extra to get rid of some bigots

it's not drifters i hate, it's the arcade games that "simulate" drifting. those games are made by businessmen who want money because of the new "scene" it's kinda like hyundai or kia or proton, they are shit made by businessmen. i am infact a supporter of drifting. and it's shit like NFS and drift city that gives drifting a bad name, it's good that they made a score counter for drifting, but they just need to make huge improvements to the physics engine.

but... they are businessmen and they wouldn't make it more realistic because they might loose customers who suck at driving and needs help with it.

ok ok ok I have got it...not the game, the nickname...

i-tracing

...its almost as good as Rtractor, and its a reference to their laser track models!

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

Lets get prepared incase this does turn out to be little more than a Nascar 2003 mod...

Here are a few names I think would work...

idiotracing
irobbed
ibroke
igrazing
ihavemadethedevsveryveryrich

...see what you can come up with!

iPricing!

Wait, wait, wait...

Personally I could dish out that amount of cash in a year if following requirements were met:

1) It would be teh bestest multiple car class racing simulator with tracks consisting right and left turns.
2) It would have wrecker free online play and racing would be hard but fair.
3) It would give me morning blow jobs.

Now LFS gets two out of three with 24£ so iRacing has to deliver something really special.

Quote from spankmeyer :

Wait, wait, wait...

Personally I could dish out that amount of cash in a year if following requirements were met:

1) It would be teh bestest multiple car class racing simulator with tracks consisting right and left turns.
2) Wrecker free online play and racing would be hard but fair.
3) It would give me morning blow jobs.

Now LFS gets two out of three with 24£ so iRacing has to deliver something really special.

They haven't released the details of what you get yet .

Quote from Tweaker :

If you have any knowledge of previous Papy sims, you'd know that they feel and play great, always.

As for car selection. I could complain that Nr2003 had big stupid/ugly stock cars, but they were fun to drive in that game! What's to say the driving experience will be worse in this game?

The ONLY downside I think is the payment plans they have. Doing annual payments for a simulation is obviously what they are expecting to get from customers after all their work. If they didn't just throw all these pricing plans on us right away at a higher rate, I think their customer base and buyer-interest would rise. However, if you think about their pricing, it isn't all that bad if you are a working individual with some income:
....

I don't understand how that is a response to my post(s).

The tracks look well modeled judging by the video on the main page. That is a plus in my book. Unfortunately it happens to be the only plus I see.

The pricing is ridiculous, as it is unprecendented in the sim-racing market for an unproven product. I understand the Papy sims are fun, I've owned a few and played many, but so what. I'm not going to dish out tons of money for some good looking tracks... leading to negative point two.

The cars have no appeal to me. Just as the NASCAR games did. I see a:
-Pontiac Solstice. Somewhat neat spec racer, lacking the soul of the spec Caterham, E30, or Factory Five Cobra spec series though.
-Legends Car. Neat little machine, I've driven one in real life. Pretty simple in terms of engineering, and not exactly fast.
-Dodge Formula car. Formula car with road tires and a neon engine right? woohoo.
-A couple of recycled late-model/modified NASCAR cars. Again, nothing screaming "BYE ME!"

In closing, I never said anything about the fun of driving, merely I already have an incredibly entertaining sim that has set the benchmark for physics realism, online racing, and (apparently) untouchable value for the money.

Well, apparently if you pay for it, you get a nice anal thrashing.

you have to pay for drift city, what do you think of that?

anal prolapse?

No, you just get little people dancing poorly in your arse.

Quote from srdsprinter :

In closing, I never said anything about the fun of driving, merely I already have an incredibly entertaining sim that has set the benchmark for physics realism, online racing, and (apparently) untouchable value for the money.

The iracing has not yet said what cars and tracks are included in the base product. I'd be saddened if the car selection really was what you just described and for a 100€ per year it would be quite awful. After all it is a full product and as such it should have enough content without relying purely on paid addons. After all, it is not a demo what you are (not ) buying, or so I'd like to see it... I'd guess it has more tracks than LFS but less cars but that is just a guess...

@dustin. A sim. SIM, not anal trashing (I hope).