OK, I'm thinking about trying iRacing for a month or two. Anyone here think they can persuade me it's worth it?

Quote from Gentlefoot :

OK, I'm thinking about trying iRacing for a month or two. Anyone here think they can persuade me it's worth it?

It's like all these things, you suck it and see. I sucked it, saw it and spat it out.

Quote from Doorman :

It's like all these things, you suck it and see. I sucked it, saw it and spat it out.

I just don't want to pay £20 for a suck. So I need some persuasion.

Quote from Gentlefoot :

I need some persuasion.

You mean you need someone else to blame if you don't like it

Take the leap and try it out. At least then you'll know for yourself if you share the opinions of others or not.

Quote from Gentlefoot :

I just don't want to pay £20 for a suck. So I need some persuasion.

This has been said many times in many forums (forii?) iRacing tracks are the best! No getting away from it. Car physics is a subjective thing. For me. slightly better than LFS and not as good as nKPro. The single thing that has put me right off is the bloody iRating/Safety Rating thing.
I DO understand the reasoning behind it, I DO understand it goes some way to keep racing clean but it iRritates the hell out of me to be penalised by putting a wheel on the grass or for having the temerity to be punted up the ass by someone that doesn't know where the footbrake is! I tried to swallow it and go along with the 'if you are crashed IRL you'd have to pay for the damage regardless of whose fault it is and this is iRacings way of making you pay' brigade but I can't. I can't put up with races timed to suit Americans. I can't put up with not being able to race against friends. So sadly, despite being daft enough to buy every goddam track and car on offer, most of which I'll never be able to race on, I gave up on it.

/draws breath.

....and relax.

I've had it for 2 months and bought cars and tracks for it but I'm just not playing it anymore. It's too serious. When you get in a car in real life you really go for it although you take care at the same time but in iRacing you are afraid to make mistakes. It 'ent fun! I also found it too boring - the races werent very exciting becuase people are afraid to race although tihs may get better the higher up you get. but the worst thing is it costs so bloody much and if you're not playing it you feel guilty so it feels more like a chore. Bloody realistic though - the first time you play it you are blown away. But I'm going back to lfs even though its less realistic - it's more fun!

I *cough* bought an early version, somewhere on the wide interwebs. It's a fun game, but far too serious. Just one wheel on the grass gave me a penalty already.

Most cars disappoint me too: only the Solstice, Radical and Skip Barber were good fun to drive, and great fun finding their limits. The tracks are great though, except for the fact that most of them are ovals

I was bored of it after messing around for a few hours.

Quote from hrtburnout :

I *cough* bought an early version, somewhere on the wide interwebs. It's a fun game, but far too serious. Just one wheel on the grass gave me a penalty already.

Most cars disappoint me too: only the Solstice, Radical and Skip Barber were good fun to drive, and great fun finding their limits. The tracks are great though, except for the fact that most of them are ovals

I was bored of it after messing around for a few hours.

you can't even begin to give it a real review by torrenting it and playing off line

Quote from spanks :

you can't even begin to give it a real review by torrenting it and playing off line

It's not a real review. Just some things I noticed, playing that version.

The seriousness and drivers being scared to make mistakes sounds like just my kind of racing. I was one of the more cautious drivers in LFS I think except when I'm wheel to wheel with a fellow racer I know I can trust.

Decided to take the plunge and have bought a months subscription. Will try it tonight and let you know what I think.

Quote from Gentlefoot :

I just don't want to pay £20 for a suck. So I need some persuasion.

Whether you'll like it or not really depends on what you're after. As far as physics (I call it feel) goes, it gives me way more than LFS and I don't think anyone who's ever tried it will rate it below LFS, most think it's better. Tracks are really awesome due to the high detail.

But the thing that puts most off are either the somewhat restricted schedule or the safety rating. Personally, I like both a ton. It's just the right mixture between pick up and league racing for me.

Unlike in pick up racing, every race really means something to me and is a small event. And unlike league racing, I can find several races each day and don't have to race on a certain day at a certain time.

iRating and SR I see as a challenge and an incentive to do the best I can each race and each official session.

I also like the fact that there's only one track for each series on the schedule each week. I practice for those few races I can squeeze into my schedule, do Time Trials, qualys and will always find a full race on the track I practiced for within that given week.

The fact that everybody else is working on the same track also means that people have the same focus, which is great for forum activity. You'll find threads on the forums each week of each season where people are discussing the combos that are currently on, and I can always pick up a lot from there.

SR imho does way more good than bad. Racing is still rough sometimes, especially in the Rookie series, but that's to be expected, as people are learning there. It gets better in D license series, although if you hit a streak of bad luck and get punted from behind in almost every single race on lap 1 it can get a little frustrating sometimes. But generally, reckless driving is really not the norm, but the exception. I don't think I got into a single wreck that wasn't a genuine mistake. Overall it really forces people to think more about their actions on track.

Personally, I think I have learned more about racing in those few months with iRacing than in my entire LFS career.

And btw, it's $20, not £20. Or is the pound that low already?

Edit: Should have refreshed, I guess. Would have saved me a lot of typing.

Quote from Linsen :

Edit: Should have refreshed, I guess. Would have saved me a lot of typing.

Still good info so thanks mate

For me, any game that does not come with a trial or demo, I don't give it a look... Just walk past it and move on to other games... that offer you a try on it so you know what it feels like.

Quote from sam93 :

As you cant really tell how good the graphics are from videos, I was just wondering are the graphics as good as those in LFS or better or worse?

Way better for some.
I've had to turn down my settings in an attempt to get it running smoothly so it looks worse than LFS for me.

would it work on mine?

Fujitsu siemens scaleo 600

Intel pentium 4 3,05ghz
1512Mb DDRam
Ati radeon 9600 DDR (256mb)
250GB hard disk
windows XP.

i'ts from 2003 and still working great! only with large games like Test Drive unlimited for example, you can feel the pc has it difficult at some busy places. the games starts to shake then or lag.. don't know how to call it in english.

Quote from henrico-20- :

would it work on mine?

Fujitsu siemens scaleo 600

Intel pentium 4 3,05ghz
1512Mb DDRam
Ati radeon 9600 DDR (256mb)
250GB hard disk
windows XP.

i'ts from 2003 and still working great! only with large games like Test Drive unlimited for example, you can feel the pc has it difficult at some busy places. the games starts to shake then or lag.. don't know how to call it in english.

I ran it almost fine on my old comp, amd xp3500, 2gig ram and 7800gt but on some occasions I got low fps. No idea if it runs on your machine though, might be a bit low on fps, maybe too low for racing dunno

I dunno, 20$ isn't that much to try it although I agree that a free demo would be nice as well as more content for that 20$...

Quote from hrtburnout :

, except for the fact that most of them are ovals

I was bored of it after messing around for a few hours.

What? Most ovals, in iRacing?

9 Road Tracks.
16 Oval yes, but 5 of them has Road Courses in them too..Daytona, Homestead, Atlanta, Phoenix and Lowe`s.

Quote from henrico-20- :

would it work on mine?

Fujitsu siemens scaleo 600

Intel pentium 4 3,05ghz
1512Mb DDRam
Ati radeon 9600 DDR (256mb)
250GB hard disk
windows XP.

i'ts from 2003 and still working great! only with large games like Test Drive unlimited for example, you can feel the pc has it difficult at some busy places. the games starts to shake then or lag.. don't know how to call it in english.

you might need more ram for the bigger tracks like silverstone, just to be safe when racing online.

Quote from richard dk :

What? Most ovals, in iRacing?

9 Road Tracks.
16 Oval yes, but 5 of them has Road Courses in them too..Daytona, Homestead, Atlanta, Phoenix and Lowe`s.

No matter how you turn it, a bit of tarmac slapped onto the infield of an oval isn't a road track...

Quote from hiroshima guy :

For me, any game that does not come with a trial or demo, I don't give it a look... Just walk past it and move on to other games... that offer you a try on it so you know what it feels like.

+1 To that, no demo - no purchase in my opinion.

But they are called Road Courses and I`m enjoying racing on the Daytona Road Course as they do IRL.
And the other INFIELD Road Courses are also very great..

I like Lowe`s Road Course in Skip Barber.

Daytona has different track layouts as Silverstone has different track layouts.

What about Rockingham - is it only a oval track? Or a Road track? Or just a track with different layouts..

http://www.rockingham.co.uk/about/circuits.asp

But saying that iRacing has most oval ttracks is not right.
If you remove the oval tracks with infield road track layouts, you have 11 pure ovals. So saying that iRacing has mostly ovals is not right.

9 pure Road Courses
11 pure Ovals

Road courses to come is

Road Atlanta
Mosport Park

What should we then call Kyoto in LFS? It uses the oval in the config. Is that an oval or a road course? Ok the oval is called an oval and the road course is called..ehmm an Road Course, no?


Edit:
In the LFS manual is written: Kyoto Ring - In this Japanese environment, the atmosphere is set by the tri-oval, the "ring", which links together all configurations. It has one oval and two road configurations, plus reverse.

Quote from richard dk :

So saying that iRacing has mostly ovals is not right.

9 pure Road Courses
11 pure Ovals

Now I don't know what kind of mathematics are taught in denmark, but 11 is still more than 9 almost everywhere else.

He wrote most of them. Thats why I reacted. There are two more ovals - I would not call that MOST OF THEM. If he counted the ovals with road courses in them for ovals, then most of them is ovals.
It depends on how you count the word MOST. Two more oval tracks than road courses is not what I call most..
Sry mister i can count..
Its sounded like there was very few Road Courses in iRacing. But 9 out of 20 is a very high number. How many has we in LFS?

Quote from richard dk :

But 9 out of 20 is a very high number. How many has we in LFS?

40 out of 960
(I think that's the way the tracks, I mean configs, are calculated nowadays. After all, 1 out of 6 sounds kinda "less" )

The ratio is totally meaningless. What actually means something is the amount of race tracks, road courses and oval venues, the amount of different corners.

With iracing the amount of tracks is not an issue. Enough ovals, enough roads and enough short ovals for now.

---
It's kinda funny though, cracking LFS is the biggest sins you can do around here but at the same time cracking other sims is just convinient way of testing their product

found this news letter on rsc forum!

November 14,2008 - Prize Payout Program and First Win Awards
We thought about hiring a cheesy game-show host to help us announce the new iRacing Prize Payout Program, imagining some hair-sprayed, leisure-suit-clad character from 1970s daytime television exclaiming: “It’s a brand new car!” to the applause of the studio audience and everyone playing along at home.

For some reason, that idea didn’t win unanimous approval here at iRacing HQ.
Nevertheless, as of now, iRacers are running for more than just bragging rights, and champions can, in fact, win a brand new car.

Okay, so we’re not actually planning on shipping out several hundred new Pontiac Solstices. But 2008 Season 4 Championship winners, including titlists in every non-Rookie series and every Division, will earn $15 in iRacing Credits – enough to add any one of our racing vehicles to your collection.

The details of the program are as follows: At the conclusion of this season, Overall and Divisional Race Champions from each series – except Rookie and Advanced Rookie series – will receive $15 dollars in iRacing Credits, while second and third place finishers will receive credits worth $10 and $5 each, respectively. Meanwhile, 2008 Season 4 Time Trial Champions (overall and in each division) in each series – except Rookie and Advanced Rookie series – will receive $10 in iRacing Credits.

Rookie license holders with a 4.0 or higher Safety Rating who “race up” in Class D series are eligible for prizes, and all drivers can win multiple awards, both within a single series (such as a driver who takes second overall and wins his or her division in the same series) and across multiple series. Rookie and Advanced Rookie series have been excluded from the program to maintain their educational emphasis.

In total, iRacing will be awarding more than $4,000 in credits as part of the prize payout program this season. While adding some excitement to the competition side of our service, the new awards program is also intended as a test in preparation for an iRacing Pro Series, which has been the subject of much discussion in the forums and is scheduled to launch in 2009.

In addition to winning iRacing Credits, top-finishing iRacers will again receive award certificates commemorating their season-long individual and club performances, as was the case last season. And a new certificate is being added to the iRacing Recognition Program: the First Win Award. We’ll be keeping track of all race results and creating awards for any member who scores his or her first win. All iRacing members – including Rookies – are eligible. Drivers can earn a maximum of two First Win Awards, one for each category, Oval and Road.

If you’re already a race winner and wish to receive your pdf award, please email us at [email protected]. We’ll be happy to confirm the details of your victory and commemorate it with a customized certificate.


Good news for the Iracers! in this way you don't have to buy tracks/cars you earn the money by winning.