Looks like iRacing is 3 to 6 months away from release. If the hype can be belived, it should be the best racing sim, most realistic, good net code, good graphics, ..., but it will also be the most expensive one. I figure that 3 years of play will cost over $500 (USA). Minimum cost is $13 per month and the average is stated to be $15 or more per month, plus one time costs for component upgrades like cars and tracks.

I wonder what the trade off is between realism and price for the average race simmer? Then again, iRacing is claiming it will bring in some club level racers (apparently they have more discretionary money than the average simmer), although I recall that with GPL, that most real racers wouldn't play any game, claiming that without the real world forces, that all racing sims are just games, and on the other hand, the cars in GPL ended up being harder to drive than the real F1 cars of 1967 (then again, the real cars had real feedback), so a lot of race simmers didn't like GPL either (it didn't sell as well as expected, although the later NR2003 did sell well).

update - sorry for posting in wrong section - I thought I was in off topic section when I posted.

Quote from JeffR :

If the hype can be believed

Don't. Wait for the first reactions after release, see what others have to say, try to look at both sides and filter out the fanboys as well as the groundless bashers. If you keep your expectations low, the only thing that can happen is that you're positively surprised when it turns out to be better than anticipated.

what a rip off! $500 for three years, they won't get so far if this stays on, belive me what ive said, even if it has physics like LFS and real tracks n cars...

It has to be BLOODY good to be able to get me to sling anywhere near the kind of money iracing are asking for.

Unless it offers anything thats leaps and bounds ahead of LFS, I won't bother, however, if it does live up to the hype, and I personally don't think it will, I will be all over it, regardless of how much it cost.

Quote from danowat :

It has to be BLOODY good to be able to get me to sling anywhere near the kind of money iracing are asking for.

Unless it offers anything thats leaps and bounds ahead of LFS, I won't bother, however, if it does live up to the hype, and I personally don't think it will, I will be all over it, regardless of how much it cost.

500$ for 3 years souns too much.. but think there are bunch of people paying similar money for playing WoW

Sounds to much? yes, it does,but it works out at about £7 a month, or £1.60 a week, heck I spend more than that on magazines......

It's all relative, if it's the best sim around, then IMO, it will be worth playing it, and then, and only then, if the player base is there, because even the best sim in the world isn't worth playing if all you are doing is hotlapping.

Bottomline, there are far, FAR too many if's and but's to even think about buying it ATM, wait for it to be released, see how good it is, and wait a bit more to see if it gets a half decent userbase, and then, and only then, decide weather you think it's worth the money.

iracing.com is just one of the worst idea... its not more than mods out of nascar2003. They even terrorise all nascar2003 drivers in forums. i don't like them!

Quote from eight8acht :

They even terrorise all nascar2003 drivers in forums.

I don't follow.. what does that mean?

I think I'm too much of a "casual" sim-racer these days to be interested in paying a monthly subscription. Oh well.

man think on school kids and ppl from poor counties like me!!!
and yes, its based on N2003, cos they made it i guess... or something like that, read on AutoSimSport

Quote from JeffR :

Looks like iRacing is 3 to 6 months away from release. If the hype can be belived, it should be the best racing sim, most realistic, good net code, good graphics, ..., but it will also be the most expensive one. I figure that 3 years of play will cost over $500 (USA). Minimum cost is $13 per month and the average is stated to be $15 or more per month, plus one time costs for component upgrades like cars and tracks.

I wonder what the trade off is between realism and price for the average race simmer? Then again, iRacing is claiming it will bring in some club level racers (apparently they have more discretionary money than the average simmer), although I recall that with GPL, that most real racers wouldn't play any game, claiming that without the real world forces, that all racing sims are just games, and on the other hand, the cars in GPL ended up being harder to drive than the real F1 cars of 1967 (then again, the real cars had real feedback), so a lot of race simmers didn't like GPL either (it didn't sell as well as expected, although the later NR2003 did sell well).

It will probably demand the use of a steering wheel and pedals, rather than joysticks.

I can say right now without fear of reprisal, that I will not play iRacing.

Firstly, unless it has something utterly amazing in the physics department, I'm not interested. All the info from the site and newsletters says they've done loads of wind tunnel testing and real drivers and blah blah blah, but the Gran Turismo series claims the same thing and still handles like crap. Past tense, I've not played #5 but I don't hold out much hope for it either.

Secondly, I object to it being subscription-based. I'm betting they'll host games on servers the same way LFS does and they'll use server-based mods, meaning they employ no live customer-facing staff. So what are they using to justify the ongoing cost? Nonsense. Unless it's all hosted on their servers with new content added all the time and maintained by a dedicated team of GMs, it's all for profit.

Thirdly, less important, if it has everything they're claiming under the hood as well as up-to-date graphics, my PC may just die laughing at it.

Fourth, the content. I'm not really familiar with any of the racing series' they've shown so far. Some of them look pretty standard, but since I have no real affinity or interest in them, I have no real desire to play them. LFS on the other hand has cars which I am familiar with (or at least resemble them enough that it makes no difference). If iRacing announced BTCC or WTCC then that might make a difference. The 34 Fords are tempting, but not enough by themselves.

It's all marketing. You can only wait and see for yourself. Just read this if you want a good laugh at people exaggerate about racing games (because of course, just the other day we had a new 16TB server installed, purely for photos... :really, and yet remain clueless as to which games are realistic or even what makes a car game realisitic.

Man just look at that video on top of www.iracing.com! Those graphics are just nothing better than LFS, they are even worse...

Quote from Bob Smith :

It's all marketing. You can only wait and see for yourself. Just read this if you want a good laugh at people exaggerate about racing games (because of course, just the other day we had a new 16TB server installed, purely for photos... :really, and yet remain clueless as to which games are realistic or even what makes a car game realisitic.

Yup, read that earlier this morning, and had a good chuckle, man, what a tool

priceless:
So if you want the ultimate sim you have Gran Turismo.

WoW is 15e per moth(when i played it i bought them as 2 moth pacs what are ~30e ) so its about 440 e for 3 years. the WoW dev's are criminals

Yeah, damn those climinals

f*** chineses ^^ but yeah wow sucks anyway :P

Quote from eight8acht :

http://iwillnotberacing.com/

I was with that site all the way up until the rF link at the end

I somehow find 24 pounds for a lifetime supply of a great sim a better investment

Quote from Bob Smith :

It's all marketing. You can only wait and see for yourself. Just read this if you want a good laugh at people exaggerate about racing games (because of course, just the other day we had a new 16TB server installed, purely for photos... :really, and yet remain clueless as to which games are realistic or even what makes a car game realisitic.

THAT made me laugh... too bad I'm supposed to be working at the moment! thanks

Quote from danowat :

Yeah, damn those climinals

me and my bad english

Surely it's all about buts and ifs... but if iracing had physics and ffb feel at least as good as LFS or netkarpro, and if they had some tracks available I could actually be driving in real Life (Nordschleife, Sachsenring, Oschersleben, Lausitzring), and if they had some cars or racing series available I'm interested in, I wouldn't have a problem paying 13$/month. But only if I could try it out for free beforehand. So currently I guess I'm not interested.