According to one person it is possible to grind through the solstice in about 15 sessions but aren't the licenses upgraded monthly?
Is it possible to gain access to any other car (as to be able to race online) in the first month than the sloucher and slouchest legend/solstice?
Or is it just grinding for the first month to get rid of the damn underpowered turdwagon (sorry ), which is the biggest negative for me at the moment...
Yes, I think that would be possible. Probably less. It took me 4-5 days to get into the Skip Barber cars, but I can't remember how many sessions it was. Not too far off 15 I'd say.
What you can drive is determined by the "SR" safety rating which is based on corners per incident, which starts at 2.4.
< 3.0 and you can only drive the rookie solstice/legends
3.0 - 4.0 and you can drive the advanced solstice/legends (Solstice has a softer front arb and you can change tyre pressures, camber and toe, legends has a higher rev limit and full setup options)
Over 4.0 and you can race in the next license level series. Skip Barbers and Late Models.
Each time your SR goes up a bracket it goes near the middle so that if you have a bad race you don't get demoted straight away. So from 2.9 it goes to 3.4 for instance. That's why you can jump up in a fairly low number of sessions. You also get a 0.1 bonus in your oval rating when you go up a bracket in your road rating and vise-versa.
I the early stages I was getting 0.2 per race and 0.1 per time trial/qualifying. That, combined with the way it jumps to .4 means it doesn't take long to go up.
Licenses are only upgraded at the end of seasons. The rookie season is 4 weeks, but as mentioned above, you can race the next level up series as soon as your rating is > 4.0. The non-rookie series are 12 weeks, so it will take longer to go up licenses after that. You can still race in the next level series up if your rating is > 4.0 though.
Whether you have to wait the full 4 weeks would depend on whether you joined at the start a series or not. The requirement for an upgrade from the rookie license is a rating over 3.0 and a minimum of 2 races or 4 time trial sessions. I suppose someone could join the service 1 day before the current rookie series ends, do 3 races or whatever it takes them to get their rating over 3.0 and get upgraded to a D license and be racing the Skip Barber and Late Model cars the next day
The Solstice is pretty good fun to race, so it didn't feel like grinding to me
I guess the bottom line is very simple: I am free to do whatever I want to do with my money and if that means subscribing to iRacing then so be it. I also understand and respect the opinions that it is expensive for what it provides at this point, compared with LFS/CTRA. But subscribing to iRacing would not make me an "iRacing fanboy" who suddenly sees all the other sims as "games".
And the comments about iRacing being there for the money - do you think that the LFS devs are not? Everyone needs to have money to put food on the table. iRacing has chosen a particular business model, that's all. But it is _us_ who will decide whether it will be a success or not. With our wallets.
Yeh you could buy them all and what would the end result be? An inferior product, and being stuck in the dark ages of sim racing. Maybe you would prefer tha, over spending the equivalent to your daily lunch money, a month of a new sim but I dont.
Finally, after 46 pages I realize where I've been wrong about this thread: it's not about the pricing of iRacing - it's about people who will not pay for iRacing and think others shouldn't vs people who will pay. Silly me.
It's about recognizing the wider repercussions of iRacing, and the effect it could have on sim racing as a whole. Effectively pricing many people out of the market, while reducing the overall size of sim racing. The only beneficiary would be iRacing growing in a diminishing market.
You can't stop people making choices, but you can go someway to explaining the route of the reason of their choice. I personally think people are buying into iRacing because of the illusion of legitimacy as I have stated.
I will admit this is just speculation but I have seen it before in other markets.
Ford price their cars at a certain level, Ferrari price theirs at a different level, just because Ferrari's are much more expensive than Ford's, doesn't mean Ford start charging Ferrari prices.
iR has a price point, for whatever reason,apparently they came up with a price point to recoup cost's, the LFS dev's set a price point, a price point that suits THEM, just because iR come on the scene I don't think that the LFS dev's will decide that their price point needs to be inline with iR's.
I think you are right, those people that have been striving for realistic tracks / cars / licensing will find a lot in iR, those happy with LFS will stay, and I would imagine that those that straddle both sims will play both because they both offer enough differences to warrant playing both.
There are no negative repercussions with iR in regard to sim racing in general. People who want to race iR will subscribe until they no longer wish to race in iR. Those that don't, never will.
I think the biggest loser in any/all iRental success is going to be Tim McArthur's R2P. It seems quite clear that iR goes directly, head to head, against R2P, since both involve subscription-based league-style racing. The difference is obviously the simulator used as a base.. and I suspect that a lot of rF and GT2 fans are going to be lured away from their current sim-of-choice to iR (where they weren't lured to LFS) because of the "even more real" cars and tracks in iR.
As far as LFS is concerned, I think the impact is going to be at most limited. We've got really comfortable with the idea of not paying to race. It's not a bad thing to have the option to get used to free online racing at all, but for those that don't bork at the suggestion of rolling subscriptions (anyone racing in R2P), iR is definitely going to carry lots of appeal.
I agree, and it goes to the point at the centre. danowat said it too.. iR has its price point, and it's different from LFS's. iR themselves don't believe they're going to steal every sim racer from every other sim - and more specifically, they don't WANT to.
iR and LFS will co-exist, not compete. The car market would genuinely suck if all you could buy were 2-door coupés, and there were no 4x4s or 4-seaters on the market.
TBH, it wouldn't take a huge amount of work to bring LFS up to scratch with iR, forgoing the obvious lack of real world tracks and cars, one of the most fundimental differences is the "alive" feeling you get from driving iR, it just feels so much more visceral than LFS, which feels sterile, almost "gamey" by comparison, and with a couple of phyics tweaks to LFS's engine, chuck in some mechanical failure, engine management (temp etc), and you have something that is much more on a level with iR.
We already have the (quite excellent) CTRA system for licensing, so we need not worry about their licensing system (which is possible a bit too heavy handed at times).
While LFS appeals to a wide range of sim racers (dedicated league racers, casual pickup racers, drifters, cruisers, wreckers ) iRental seems to be going for high income, highly dedicated or advertisement sensitive "latest gimmick addict" racers.
I can see Irental taking a part of the higly dedicated racers from LFS but the rest of the public will likely be unaffected. This sounds bad for LFS leagues, the impact on pick up races should however be minor.
Where I see a big difference is that standard competitors in sim racing world still "allow" a racer to use different sims, while with iRental the investment and continuous fees are so high that it will force more commitment - good for them, bad for other sims, very bad for your wallet.
I can not (and do not want to) give more time / dedication to sim racing and LFS suits me for its excellent ROI and instant pickup races, so I will not suscribe to iRental in the near future, however I would love to try it
I think, that, at least, for now, IRacing won´t have that much impact on LFS leagues. In LFS you have a great choice in terms of racing, choosing the one that suits you most, be it short races or even team oriented endurance races. In IRacing everything is pre-formatted, almost like the offline carreer mode you see in many games.
Iracing is definately going for serious sim racers but not high income. $156 US a year is peanuts for starters, many people would spend close to that just on a night out on the town. And after the basic suscription, for the price of a G25 you can buy all the content you will ever need for years. Just because the sim isnt dirt cheap like LFS or RF doesnt mean its expensive overall like your making out.
If we dont put something into sim racing we wont get much back as evidenced by the last 3 years of no progress. How many years will it take for LFS to get an updated graphic engine to DX9, a bunch of new cars and tracks ect ect? Years if ever, and thats simply because they dont have the resources. Look at the development and quality of WOW and its no coincidence that the devs are swimming in money.
And how many month you could play iRacing for the price of a new car (insert you fav. car here)...
Those who think the price is too high for the value they get won't be changing their mind by bringing up useless comparisions... On the other side I could say that a year Iracing is more expensive then 1 year mobile phone for me...
Those who want to buy it will do it and be happy. And so will be those who don't.
While I will agree to a certain extent that a years subscription is not that expensive (works out to £6.65 ish per month) and I don't beleive that it will be on a huge first payment. It's the charges which come afterwards which has turned fans of simracing, understandable, agaisnt Iracing. I myself know due to lack of skill it will take me forever to get to a level in which I need the extra contet, hell maybe I would have saved up enough Iracing dollars so that it would not cost me that much.
), which is the biggest negative for me at the moment...
