One thing:

After watching some (not all ) ingame videos (mostly cockpit/ onboard), I have trouble with the car movement on the track, it just looks odd to me. For me the car doesn't look really connected to the suspension, making just random movements. Is that just me? (Apart from that: When the car is supposed to be vibrating: shouldn't the surroundings also vibrate for the viewers eyes? I don't think the brain is able to filter all vibrations out.)

Maybe someone could help me here

Quote from wsinda :

I look at the pricing scheme, see that it bears little relationship to the cost that they must have made to create their product, and I get the feeling they're trying to swindle me out of my money. Decision: no thanks.

30 people, 4 years, $75000 a year per person? = 9.000.000
Sending people to race tracks and the scan equipment.. pfff 100.000 per track? Assuming no licensing costs have been paid makes 2.000.000
Housing (rent), heating and other fixed costs of a substantial building, whats that another 200.000 a year? make that a million for the total time, aka 1.000.000

Soft and hardware investments, advertising, website hosting etc etc.. lets add another 6 figure number.

Of course I'm just guessing but they've likely spent between 10 and 15 million bucks in 4 years. The cost doesn't stop either, they will have to remain a fair portion of the staff for new tracks, updates, new cars etc. You need a few million per year to sustain it I would imagine.

Thats quite a few $13 a month paying simmers before you can even think about breaking even!

Absolutely Niels, but the mentality of some seems to be we want the most realistic tracks, the most realistic cars, the most comprehensive Service and development for years to come for a maximum one time purchasement of €36

And there are 40 people working at iRacing by the way excluding the experts that work with the (borrowed) scanner when visiting the tracks. For what we are getting in terms of Quality, iRacing is dirt cheap, if accuracy isnt important to you, your opinion may vary.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Jesus Christ, dude.

im serious... the only possible selling point for iracing would be interesting tracks and cars... and i dont give flying -insert favourite swear word- if its real content or not
but what youre getting is a solstice and tracks that are even more unimaginative and boring to drive than the ones in lfs
id wish that it would impress me and revigorate my interest in sim racing... but it doesnt even begin to achieve that

This track thing to me is a red herring. The real tracks exist in reality. If accuracy is SO important save up and go race on them for real instead of some cheap substitute on your PC.

Due to the G forces NOT acting upon your body, and inaccurate phsyics (which they will be) finding a good set up with a sim is totally pointless as you won't drive the same leaving the data invalid.

It's merely a vanity thing to have BANG on tracks. Yes it's nice to drive a 'real' track in a game, but it's nothing more than icing. If you paying this fee to pay for laser scanned tracks thats pointless. IMO I would rather not. In fact I find it VASTLY more interesting, and challenging driving newly designed tracks from scratch than apparently 'expensive' laser ones. SIm racing gives you the oppurtunity to challenge yourself in new ways, rather than driving tracks that ALREADY exist.

The real meat and two veg is the driving model, and online racing. iRacing does deliver on merit I am in no doubt (from what I have heard), but so what? NetKar, when working, is supreme, and LFS is just as good.

If people are happy to invest in iRacing so be it, but if your prepared to invest THAT MUCH on sims then surely why not just go the whole hog and do it for real?

Ok, so for me to race a Solstice in real life, I'd haffto move to an area where there are tracks to race, spend x amount of $ on it, and remortgage my house so I can afford fuel... OR I can spend ****ing 13 - 20$ a month, and drive whenever, whereever, however.

Why bother real racing, when you could do it virtually for less money?

Seriously, a used spec miata is $13k which is fairly cheap. Still, that's no where near the cost of actually racing it. $13k will pay for 83 years of iRacing

Quote from Intrepid :

If people are happy to invest in iRacing so be it, but if your prepared to invest THAT MUCH on sims then surely why not just go the whole hog and do it for real?

Where can you race for a full year for £73 a year, I'm never going to have the chance to race in a series in real life in the forseable future, and to be honest I doubt I will. So why is it so bad for me to want to do the next bext thing after real reacing???

Ok, can we stop about the price now? Some of us will pay, and pay gladly, some others won't. We're not going to agree on this. So just stop. Please?

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

Of course I'm just guessing but they've likely spent between 10 and 15 million bucks in 4 years.

Quite possibly. But that would justify a high price to buy it. Instead, they decided to sell a product as if it was a service.

Quote :

The cost doesn't stop either, they will have to remain a fair portion of the staff for new tracks, updates, new cars etc. You need a few million per year to sustain it I would imagine.

Don't think so. The only recurring cost they have is keeping the servers running, and fixing the bugs. Those are their only obligations. New content is not part of it: it must be bought by the subscribers, at a price that should cover the cost of development and licensing.

Neither should you count new releases in it. AFAIK there have been no promises about new features. Plans, yes, but no guarantees. Suppose that, for whatever reason, development of iRacing goes the way of nKPro (i.e. none). People who bought nKPro at least have the consolation that they can keep the sim that they paid for. With iRacing, you'd have the choice between continued payment of your subscription, or losing all of it.

Anyone thinks that pricing horse has been beaten to death already, maybe we could discuss about the physics or tire model? I mean, does anyone actually care if person A thinks price is fine or person B thinks it's outrageous?

I've already made my decision about the pricing and would like to know how the physics and overall driving feeling is compared to other racing sims we have on the market right now (LFS, rFactor, GTR2). Also other stuff like do tirewalls deform, what kind of damage model suspension has, is aero damage implemented and so on...

^ Yes, I'd be very interested in physics discussion, too. So far there is nothing to find about it, other than "they are good" from Moose and "they are fantastic" from the RSC folks who for the most part have no frame of reference regarding physics anyway. Actual discussion in detail is nowhere to be found.

Quote from Shotglass :

wow finding a real track that is as smooth and boring as aston must have required a special effort... actually its even more boring being built almost exclusively from 90° turns

ElkHeartLake is one of the most admired and respected tracks in the US. Don't be such a dumbass

Quote from Crommi :

Anyone thinks that pricing horse has been beaten to death already, maybe we could discuss about the physics or tire model? I mean, does anyone actually care if person A thinks price is fine or person B thinks it's outrageous?

I've already made my decision about the pricing and would like to know how the physics and overall driving feeling is compared to other racing sims we have on the market right now (LFS, rFactor, GTR2). Also other stuff like do tirewalls deform, what kind of damage model suspension has, is aero damage implemented and so on...

We would love too, but there's just isn't a damm demo to even try it out!

as a big critic about this way of selling stuff to people who do not have a clue what they are buying, i have read now a lot of stuff in the net about iRacing.

most of the things i've read really turned me on. and i said: wow, this is nice, that is nice and this is nice too... all the stuff makes pretty much sense


then the price: you pay 150$ for one year and get 60$ in return either to buy new cars or tracks or you can spend it on your next annual 150$. you probably won't need new cars/tracks in the begining as you do not have the right license/level to drive them anyway and the content in the basic package will keep you busy for a time. btw. every extra car and track does not need to be re-licensed after one year. you just own them once you've bought them.

what i do not like is: why didn't they put it the opposite way: buy the basic game for 60$ and you own it, and pay monthly fees for extra cars and tracks?

i think all the people who are willing to pay and play more often will buy exactly the cars/tracks they are going to race. and all the others can stick to the basic two cars and 8 tracks (with their individual configurations)-

but thats marketing and pricing is one of the most important part of it... how can i get most out of the pockets of my customer without losing my attraction to them.


for my part, i will spend those 150$ more likely on a guitar effect pedal and OWN that thing then for something that can be gone from one day to another - which actually can happen pretty easy.

Quote from Shotglass :

wow finding a real track that is as smooth and boring as aston must have required a special effort... actually its even more boring being built almost exclusively from 90° turns

Come on you're picking holes for no reason. Road America is a very good fast, smooth track with just the right mix of elevation changes and corners to make it a really good power track.

There is a glaring issue with that video though that you failed to pick up on, in typical LFS fashion it appears that taking the run off matting is the quickest route.

Just wanna say: You got to love iRacing engine sounds

Quote from ajp71 :

Come on you're picking holes for no reason. Road America is a very good fast, smooth track with just the right mix of elevation changes and corners to make it a really good power track.

There is a glaring issue with that video though that you failed to pick up on, in typical LFS fashion it appears that taking the run off matting is the quickest route.

Some real life tracks are actually driven like that, though. Including Road America: http://youtube.com/watch?v=s-xlHUxOYlY

Another that springs to mind is Road Atlanta, with that huge curb following the esses.

Quote from Fischfix :

you probably won't need new cars/tracks in the begining as you do not have the right license/level to drive them anyway and the content in the basic package will keep you busy for a time.

not quite since you can get past the solstice in less than a week apparently which means youll have to pay 15$ for the skip barber
now assuming you just want to move up to something thats interesting to drive quickly it seems you can get through the skip barber stage in less than a week as well
if youre lucky the series is currently at a track thats contained in the basic package... if youre unlucky you can either wait till next week or pay 15-25$ for the track
same thing with the formula mazda
so by the time youre in the radical youve ideally spent 45$ on cars and nothing on tracks... considering youve paid that much and the only option to keep being able to use the content you paid for is to keep paying the subscription kaemmer now has a very firm grip on your balls (he may run out of hands if youre a karter)
after that you can race the radical on a couple of tracks that will cast you extra in races that afaik are at least 45 mins long... so youd better not be interested in good old fashioned pick up racing

Quote from ajp71 :

Come on you're picking holes for no reason. Road America is a very good fast, smooth track with just the right mix of elevation changes and corners to make it a really good power track.

it has a a whole 7 90° turns... even tilke on a bad day would have more creativity than that

Quote :

There is a glaring issue with that video though that you failed to pick up on, in typical LFS fashion it appears that taking the run off matting is the quickest route.

i did pick up on that but ive already come to the conclusion that the track surface modeling in terms of grip differences is nothing worth metioning... which is probably why its mentioned nowhere

Quote from Shotglass :

it has a a whole 7 90° turns... even tilke on a bad day would have more creativity than that

...and yet it's nearly universally acknowledged as one of the best old school race tracks out there, North American or otherwise.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Some real life tracks are actually driven like that, though. Including Road America: http://youtube.com/watch?v=s-xlHUxOYlY

Another that springs to mind is Road Atlanta, with that huge curb following the esses.

I didn't even see the black matting in that Audi video, certainly didn't see a prototype running with its loaded wheels on the matting on the outside of the corner without any issue. Rumble strips are different and yes there should be some chance of holding a car on the matting but it should never be desirable to drive on it.

Quote from Shotglass :

it has a a whole 7 90° turns... even tilke on a bad day would have more creativity than that

Copse, Becketts, Stowe, Club, Woodcote all roughly 90 degree nearly flat right handers and they used to make up a world class racing circuit.

Quote from ajp71 :

I didn't even see the black matting in that Audi video, certainly didn't see a prototype running with its loaded wheels on the matting on the outside of the corner without any issue. Rumble strips are different and yes there should be some chance of holding a car on the matting but it should never be desirable to drive on it.

Note the part where the commentator says "you use all of the curbing here and sometimes the rumble strips outside the curbing," or something to that effect.

More:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=duNKaCRm89c
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CyyETei8qPs

And anyway, the curbs in iRacing are scary. I speak from experience here.

edit: and from that Junquiera video, it looks more like a new (darker) asphalt patch, not any sort of matting.

thanks DWB. Loved the full lap of road america! I think its a great track as long as you have the car to really push it!

Quote from ajp71 :

I didn't even see the black matting in that Audi video

It isn't matting. Either they've painted those curbs black or they've formed them out of tarmac or something.

Here's a photo
http://murphoto.smugmug.com/ga ... YZR7#228510343_Bb9Uy-O-LB

I think it's fairly new because I don't remember seeing it in the champ car race last year.

EDIT: found a better picture. Looks like they're just made of tarmac

http://murphoto.smugmug.com/ga ... YZR7#228513373_kwtPM-O-LB

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Note the part where the commentator says "you use all of the curbing here and sometimes the rumble strips outside the curbing," or something to that effect.

More:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=duNKaCRm89c
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CyyETei8qPs

And anyway, the curbs in iRacing are scary. I speak from experience here.

edit: and from that Junquiera video, it looks more like a new (darker) asphalt patch, not any sort of matting.

Clearly it is a strip of smooth asphalt (not ridged like in the photos someone has posted bellow). Upon closer inspection the iRacing appears to have a ridged run off like in the photos, which apparently isn't bumpy?