I really wouldn't mind paying for LFS DLC, track packs and car packs for sure, if that would stimulate the development, I would be all over them.

As for the LHD issue, its never been an issue for me, I am easy about which side I drive on, doesn't make any difference.

I guess you have to look at it from the point of realism, the Solstice is a LHD car IRL, no RHD option, it's not an easy job to convert LHD to RHD, so for realism's sake, it had to be LHD and LHD only.

iR certainly isn't for everybody / most people who enjoy LFS, and it's lucky we have a choice, personally, I think we have been a bit spoilt by LFS, I mean, jesus, I have paid £24 for a piece of software I have used for 5+ years, and recieved countless FREE updates and enhancements over those 5+ years, that's really mental when you think abou it.

Quote from Bean0 :

I have no passport, I drive on the right on my holidays too.

I really am starting to think this game isnt for me.

I don't like ovals.
I don't like single seaters.
I don't like LHD.
...

Though there has been a lot of criticism of the Solstice from newer drivers (and veterans of LFS), once you get used to it and it's characteristics, it's a lot of fun when you really push it and use the power to tighten up the bend..

My suggestion is to bite the bullet and just get a month and try for yourself. If you like it then that's great. If you don't, it's only £10 down the drain. Also if you do put it away after a month, if and when you give it another go in the future, you'll be able to see all the improvements made......

I've only had it almost two days and I'm glad I got it for the month to try. It's certainly a refreshing change!

Andy..

Quote from danowat :

I have paid £24 for a piece of software I have used for 5+ years, and recieved countless FREE updates and enhancements over those 5+ years, that's really mental when you think abou it.

too true......

Hi all.

Yesterday I had a great race with 8 people. Mostly from Canada or USA (it was late). Very close racing, a few small contacts. The start was great. In Qualy I just got the 4th, but I could pass Nr 3 and 2 and get to second until someone pushed my back in T1 and I spun out. I was lucky ... no big damage and I could go for it from the last pos. If it was hard enough I could also well be finished for that race but luckily no big damage. (unlike LFS, where you're nearly always fine to continue to the box)
Very exciting but fair racing. I got the first people really fast but then it got harder. After killing 8 seconds I finally was close enough to get in Pos 4. And this dude was really fair. He said I could pass on the right on the straight and so I did. But the grip in the right wasn't as good as on the racing line and so I skidded a bit and began to spin. He braked hard and still let me in front of him.
Rest of the race I just had to fight against my tires, which were nearly destroyed But I could stay in front and be still a little faster than that fair guy behind me.

I enjoyed this great sound. Sounds like on TV. The racetrack ... very very nice. Racetracks you know and see in the real world. Very precise and lots of bumps. Its really great to break on a bumpy straight. You can acutally feel (hear) when the tires lock up or not and the car is bouncing a little, which makes it more risky and leads to skidding a bit.
Great real cockpits which do a lot to immersion.

The start is also nice. Not everyone gets away nearly equally like most times in LFS by just full throtteling, because of still wrong longitudinal grip. You have to get the right RPM not to stall, but spin a little, but also not to much.
The braking is also more exciting just because of those bumps. Its not easy to get the right amount towards the end and enter a corner clean.

You can push those cars hard without always counter steering. If you drive slow, everyone can go around the corners. If you push them you have to work a bit harder A lot snappier and grippier than LFS, where e.g. road cars feel still a bit like driving in the wet.



Then I thought, that I love the big V8 sound of my Saleen and the surrounding Ferrari, Lamborghini, BMW and Porsche and all those interessting well known real cars. Even this old 911 GT2, that was easy to get. I respect drivers who choose those cars and push them hard. They often don't finish last.

I love those great known precise tracks with all their bumps like Imola, Spa, Monza, Barcelona, Hockenheim and soon Nürburgring Nordschleife.

Get the right time and place and people will drive fair and mature, because a contact may finish the race ultimately with engine off and isn't starting. They will indicate where to pass and let you pass if you are really faster.
And it can suddenly rain and get wet ...

No costs for great races. Statistics can be done community driven, if you like it by just driving organized races. I payed only once for GTR2 and it should be cheaper than 1 month iRacing by now with IMHO much more interesting tracks and cars. It may be ISI physics, but very very well adapted so all those little details in racing are great with those cars.

*running away*

Quote from danowat :

I guess you have to look at it from the point of realism, the Solstice is a LHD car IRL, no RHD option, it's not an easy job to convert LHD to RHD, so for realism's sake, it had to be LHD and LHD only.

And the SR8 ?

I had an awesome race and the first few laps were quite exciting, but I'm really getting pissed off by the missing replay feature....
I mean come on, I have 4gb of ram, and still it isn't enough to save 20 laps of racing

Quote from Bean0 :

And the SR8 ?

Pretty sure that was RHD (from memory)

Quote from Bean0 :

And the SR8 ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TtDVBNqIMs&fmt=18

Quote from jtr99 :

I wouldn't like to buy Sears Point for $20 and then get told a few months later that it was now going for $10.

Surely anyone who buys computer hardware would be used to this happening

One big plus for me is the damage to the suspension in Iracing. T1 at Lime Rock, I have a habit of going far to fast, and end up spinning and crashing big style..., now the wall does'nt do to much cosmetic damage, but the fact is that I strugle to drive the car away from the wall, let alone back to the pits. Unlike in LFS were driving back to pits with huge suspension damage is fairly easy.

Quote from Mackie The Staggie :

One big plus for me is the damage to the suspension in Iracing. T1 at Lime Rock, I have a habit of going far to fast, and end up spinning and crashing big style..., now the wall does'nt do to much cosmetic damage, but the fact is that I strugle to drive the car away from the wall, let alone back to the pits. Unlike in LFS were driving back to pits with huge suspension damage is fairly easy.

In LFS you could have front wheels on your bonnet and still drive

Is there a total destruction in iRacing? Usually a race car doesn't drive at all anymore if crashed with >100 into a wall or something.

My driver profile can be found by doing driver lookup for "Samuli K", should come up with only one name. Currently there's only one other guy with same first name in the system and his SR is ~4.9, so that's definately not me

Quote from Mackie The Staggie :

Unlike in LFS were driving back to pits with huge suspension damage is fairly easy.

well it is... especially if youre french
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QeA6Wh46iY

Quote from RIP2004 :

You can push those cars hard without always counter steering. If you drive slow, everyone can go around the corners. If you push them you have to work a bit harder A lot snappier and grippier than LFS, where e.g. road cars feel still a bit like driving in the wet.

Yes, I agree on that. In LFS, if you push a little bit too hard, I find you often end up needing an armful of opposite lock. A small mistake can get sketchy rather quickly. A big mistake in LFS I find to be not much worse than a small mistake, if you know what I mean. If you get sideways, as long as you can get the opposite lock on quickly enough, you can almost always avoid spinning. If you run onto the grass, usually you can get back on the track and have no problems.

In iRacing, a small mistake or pushing too hard is less of an issue than in LFS usually. It's not punished so badly and you usually don't need much correction, just slow down a little and try to stay on the track. However, a large mistake can be more costly. Touch an outside wheel on the grass and it's hard to avoid a spin at times. Get sideways at high speed after bumping over a curb and you have to be very quick with the opposite lock if you want to avoid spinning.

Quote from Shotglass :

well it is... especially if youre french
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QeA6Wh46iY

I love how the Mexicans give him a police escort rather than just being boring gits stopping Makinen from driving 3 wheeled and handing out speeding tickets like our lot

The auto-balancing seems a lot better today. Yesterday I always had huge gaps to the front and back, but now I've been in a lot of close racing.

I might even say that the quality of the multiplayer races surpasses lfs quality...

Quote from mikey_G :

I might even say that the quality of the multiplayer races surpasses lfs quality...

The words "quality over quantity" could be very apt in describing the difference between iRacing online and LFS online........

@Michael Denham : Sounds good to me what I read about iRacing physics. Still I think its a bit expensive, because I race not always a lot. Sometimes I don't touch a wheel for a week or two ...

I also like the idea of punishing stupid behaviour, although it will be tough to identify it.

In LFS some things are still to linear. It seems to have one of the most complex physics modells calculated in real time. But still it feels more like a computer game to me than some of the cheated ISI physics sometimes, because you seem to hover above some road. Nearly no bumpy jumping and if the car begins to oversteer it does it slow. Instead of Grip, grip, grip and suddenly it begins, ... its just fading from grip to oversteer smoothly in LFS and smoothly back most of the time. In most situations the result counts and not the way, which may be better in LFS if expended further and further. But development gets slow at the moment. I have to say though, that Slick cars drive really well in LFS. Its more about the road going cars with street tyres.
And still as Scawen said in March 2007 there is something wrong with longitudinal grip, which leads to accelerating nearly perfect with heavy spinning wheels and also makes the differentials behave strange. Locked diffs are by far the fastest way, which isn't that realistic.
I am sure it has a lot more impact on other behaviour. If the wheels have to much grip with heavy spinning there is more movement in the driving direction when sliding, than there should be. So a correction will change all the physics behaviour a lot I think.

But to get back to topic somehow : what about iRacing? Is full throttle at start the best way or are you slower than others, who control there throttle a bit more if you react nearly equally to the signal?
And can the car be unusable if hitting a wall with high speed? This has a big effect on crash kiddies, as they can't continue to do anything. In GTR the race is over if you hit someone or something to hard. Engine off and stays off. So no movemement possible and also no reset possible, if server settings are good.
What about controlled long drifting all through the corner? Possible? (Something you can't do in GTR really but mostly because of the cars. See C6 by Niels ... it is possible with ISI to do a long drift, eventhough it is more difficult than in LFS. Not sure which one is more realistic, as drifting in real life should not be that easy and in a computer game with no feelings even more)

Quote from RIP2004 :

And can the car be unusable if hitting a wall with high speed?

I find the damage isn't really accurate at times. As I mentioned in a previous post, driving into the back of someone at the start will total the Solstice completely. I had to hold the wheel 45 degrees to the left to go straight after a 15-20mph (however fast I may be going in a couple of feet?) impact.

Quote from RIP2004 :

What about controlled long drifting all through the corner? Possible?

It's pretty easy to powerslide around the entire big bend (turns 1 and 2) at limerock in the rookie solstice so I would imagine it would be pretty easy for a drifter with the advanced solstice (where you can setup the car yourself).

This is really getting interusting.

Just some questions.

For invites, do I sign up on the website with my e-mail, name, address, etc or do people give invites to their friends?

If I buy it, it's 13$/month. Which cars and tracks do I get? Is it the Solstice and the Legends with the 7 tracks in the packages section of the website?

I think I might actually try it for a month and see how it goes. :P

@technique : Damage sounds to me like LFS damage, but just stronger.

So there is no engine damage. People will continue driving after a high speed crash. Slow but they continue. I dislike that a bit. Ok, you have to steer full right to go straight, but still you will move with a car which should be out of race and perhabs, even if you don't want that, disturb someone else with no crash yet.
If you do a hard crash it should be over. Just like Hamilton at the exit of the box Wait till race is finished or do another.

Quote from Technique :

I find the damage isn't really accurate at times. As I mentioned in a previous post, driving into the back of someone at the start will total the Solstice completely. I had to hold the wheel 45 degrees to the left to go straight after a 15-20mph (however fast I may be going in a couple of feet?) impact.

The amount of energy any car, even a low power road car get gain within a car length or two from stationary is huge. Going into the back of even the car directly in front can cause big damage to both cars and is potentially large enough to cause injuries or rupture fuel tanks.

Quote from RIP2004 :

@technique : Damage sounds to me like LFS damage, but just stronger.

So there is no engine damage. People will continue driving after a high speed crash. Slow but they continue. I dislike that a bit. Ok, you have to steer full right to go straight, but still you will move with a car which should be out of race and perhabs, even if you don't want that, disturb someone else with no crash yet.
If you do a hard crash it should be over. Just like Hamilton at the exit of the box Wait till race is finished or do another.

I think I have seen a three wheel Solstice, though I'm not sure.

EDIT - just had a disappointing race, tried to take the outside line round the first corner on the second lap and went off and hit the wall in the same place for the second race in a row. Then went and joined the qualifying session, where my computer locked up with red streaks on the screen and had to restart, not impressed.

Quote from RIP2004 :

In LFS some things are still to linear. It seems to have one of the most complex physics modells calculated in real time. But still it feels more like a computer game to me....
I have to say though, that Slick cars drive really well in LFS. Its more about the road going cars with street tyres.
And still as Scawen said in March 2007 there is something wrong with longitudinal grip, which leads to accelerating nearly perfect with heavy spinning wheels and also makes the differentials behave strange. Locked diffs are by far the fastest way, which isn't that realistic....

Would it be fair to say that it's hard to tell if iRacing has any similar physics holes because of their much more limited (...realistic) setup options? For example, you can't put a locked diff into the Solstice to see if it's faster. It's also been mentioned before that the fast setups in LFS make the comparison much harder. For example the XRG, it's ridiculous how that thing drives, completely not realistic how tail-happy it is, but that's the setup and not necessarily the underlying physics. But thanks for analysis, some really good feedback in this thread.

I just realised how much of a difference it makes when people have to drive and write on forums using their real name. That or just the subscription model is working as a barrier of entry, keeping the retards away.