Well, my taste in tracks is a bit different - currently for example in rF just about the only track I screw around with is this one. With Niels' Corvette or the Caterhams it's quite good fun.
Judging from youtube evidence it seems that they have several motorbike layouts - some of which included at least one of the Esses and Gerrards - but anyhow, that's a moot point.
Our taste in tracks is very different, that track is pretty but it's still a flat boring track with far too many tight constant radius corners that are easy to learn and don't really present much of a challenge.
The chicanes are relatively new, they've not run bikes at all AFAIK through the Esses for several years although sidecars/3 wheeled cars don't always use the Devil's Elbow chicane and the Gerrard's chicane is new. Without any of the three exciting spots though Mallory is going to be fairly dull to drive.
Not so flat really, it has a slight downhill section with bumps that unsettle the car under braking and there are atleast two turns in it that you have to deal with as one in certain cars. The long bend before the start-finish line seems to exhibit the traits you mention in Gerard's because of the way the bumps are on it (you can't take it as a constant radius turn if you want to be fast on it) without being a full 180 turn.
Anyway, yeah - to each his own. This still does leave the whole "all rovals are not proper racing tracks" in the air though - which is what got all this track comparing started.
Focus people! Rovals are not the enemy, iLeasingw/outtheoptiontobuy and all its assorted vagaries and nda's is!
Judging by the percieved support from some (testers), and the seemingly switch of opinions by others; it would appear that the product does have something genuinly new to offer.
Any idea when the cloak of the NDA will be lifted?
From what we've heard so far not really, except that it seems to get the already existing things right...
What iRacing offers is a very dedicated sim to the sport... Everyone who's taking his simracing very seriously may love it and find the sim he's been waiting for so long...
The downside ironically is its selling point: the professionalism of it all... iRacing made sure no community can ever form within its realms, by taking away the freedom to choose whom to race when you want it... Let me explain: We got a small but vivid LfS-community in Austria. We hold our own national championship and meet regularly under the disguise of crowning the national champion. Within iRacing, we'd have never found each other... First because of the varying skill level and second even if we did, the random pairing of racers to a server would have prevented any form of getting to know each other... This system degrades everyone else on the server to a meaningless, empty shell of a name/car, as it's quite possible you'll never race this same person again...
To sum it up:
-If you take your simracing as a sport and the only thing you'll ever want to do on a server is competing, the iRacing might be the holy grail of sims for you...
-If however simracing is a way to get together with like-minded people for you, and racing friends/familiar faces is more importand to you than to compete, you'll be feeling lonely within iRacing very soon...
Hmm.. bbman, I think that's resolved the last bit of doubt in my mind tbh. I like the idea of a supersmashinggreeeeat sim, but not at the expense of the community. No thank you, sir. The community is the thing that I enjoy most about sim racing.
I cannot conceive of volunteering to be in a situation where, not only do I have to constantly pay to use content that I've bought and paid for, but I also don't get to choose with whom I use it.
I've come to know many people on the LFS forum, but I've made my friends while being wheel to wheel with them.
From what I've heard, iRacing's community is broadly divided into teams/clubs along national lines. You're more likely to race with people from your geographical area, so Austrian drivers (for example) likely would find one another. The pairing isn't entirely random.
Source? I'm no tester, so feel free to correct me... So far, there is no mentioning of any pairing selection other than skill/safety rating and server spot availability...
It is to say that iRacing plans to implement private leagues and such in the future, but when that will be, no one knows... I wouldn't hold my breath...
I appreciate that matey.. and what you said is as I understand it now, more or less. But I still prefer to retain control over who my friends are in a sim racing community. Whether I suck at racing or not, I still want the option to be able to race with folks like Moose. Not because I'm good, not because I want to leech his setups, but because he's a buddy of mine and for some bizarre, masochistic reason that my shrink hasn't yet defined for me, I feel like I'm having a good day when he's pwning me on the track.
Sounds too structured for my taste. One of the things I enjoy about LFS is that I can hop on any server and find someone from virtually every country in the world.
I am assuming a setup like that would give the option to change the nation of the servers, but to me that just puts a bad taste in my mouth. I like diversity, and segregation is not a way I would like to go, which is what a system like that does. It's saying you are from here, so you use this server, and your from here, so use this server.
Sure you can still join other servers, but from the get go a driver is channeled into national servers like herding cattle... and lets face it everyone is lazy and most people will probably just stick to their national servers because they don't want to spend the effort to find the more international servers.
I wonder how large a margin they'll have for the division because generally you need to race your betters, at least once in a while. Everyone needs a good ass whooping to get the picture back in perspective.
Ideally they should have a controlled free-for-all once in a while where better-ranked players would get pitted with the better-ranked ones of the next level and so on. Then you get the chance to beat someone much better than you - or learn how to lose properly to someone much better than you.
I wonder how the safety ratings work? If you hit someone and it's not your fault, would you still lose rating, and be eventually forced down the servers into a perpetual wrecker hell of no return?
Yeah... I've not reached the level I got now (which isn't that good anyway) by always racing people as fast as me, hence making the same mistakes and/or choosing the same wrong lines...
If it wasn't so damn expensive, it would be fun to see how low I can make my rank... 
:headbang: