Quote from SamH :

I seriously doubt any racing driver deserving of the title "racing driver" will be taught anything new by iRacing, about adjustments that they can make to their real-life equivalent racing car. They'd have to be at an extraordinarily early stage in their racing careers for that to actually happen. I realise that iRacing wants to give the impression that a sim can be a real-life substitute for the real thing, but I'm afraid I just don't see it. No question, both iRacing and LFS can provide massive insight into the effects of car setup, to lay people and people who are starting out.. but not really beyond that.

I agree. To really be a helpful training tool as far as setting up a car goes, setups would have to be more or less transferable from the sim to real life, but apparantly that's not the case with iRacing (I can't judge for myself, I'm just going by hearsay). Luckily, I don't have to worry about that, as I'm not a racing driver, so all that's important to me is how the sim feels.

I just hope that the training tool marketing scheme is close enough to reality to not blow up in their face one day. That would hurt their credibility.

Btw, wasn't there some talk about Kaemmer working on "new" tyre physics? Where did I read that?

Quote from SamH :

I seriously doubt any racing driver deserving of the title "racing driver" will be taught anything new by iRacing, about adjustments that they can make to their real-life equivalent racing car. They'd have to be at an extraordinarily early stage in their racing careers for that to actually happen. I realise that iRacing wants to give the impression that a sim can be a real-life substitute for the real thing, but I'm afraid I just don't see it. No question, both iRacing and LFS can provide massive insight into the effects of car setup, to lay people and people who are starting out.. but not really beyond that.

Fair enough .... I took "real racing drivers" as anyone that gets out on the track, including people that used to like me and noobs that are getting going...... rather than just 1337 super uber tristans!!!!!

In real world, tracks change a lot depending on temperature, humidity and how clean the surface is. On racing sims we have fairly static track conditions, GTR2 had some "dynamic" features but those really seemed to follow set pattern.

While racing sims can nowdays be used to learn layout before going to a new track, driving is totally different experience on real car and you can't really build setup for a real car inside sim. It can give you some tips on what to look for such as braking zones with elevation changes and how translates to brakes and suspension setup, but it doesn't replace driving the real thing and then getting your hands dirty back in the garage.

Sidenote about costs, I don't mind paying monthly fee for ongoing development but tracks and cars are bit expensive

Quote from Crommi :

I have no problem pointing out what flaws there are, but let's stick to facts and not make stuff up.

If you're gonna accuse me of that, show me what I've made up - you'll find nothing, so I suggest you keeping those comments to yourself...

To be honest, I don't ever want to see dynamic conditions except for when there are multiple cars on the track, or if you want them there.

There needs to be a way to directly compare yourself to other drivers, share setups and further develop them in stable conditions, and have a way to have a track record that isn't set by getting lucky and randomly having ideal conditions.

When lap records are set there are usually lots of people out there on the same day in the same ideal conditions. This doesn't happen in simracing because everyone isn't in Australia one weekend and Singapore the next..they're on their computer whenever they want to be.

During races and open practice etc I think it would be pretty neat I guess.

Damn, I get all ready for Mazda race and then it hits me in the face with "Down for maintenance."

Quote from Crommi :

Damn, I get all ready for Mazda race and then it hits me in the face with "Down for maintenance."

what sort of lap times you running on Phoenix in the Mazda Crommi>? I noticed one of the clubs must be using the same setup as they are consistently 0.2 quicker than anyone else....

Threw away the setup I've been working for past few days after downloading some random set from forums which gave me 25.690 on first session and without draft... My set was capable of running just 26.0.

i dropped in for a practice this morning at 6.30 am after work and managed 25.7 which wasn't too bad for first practice but a certain dale jnr managed a 25.398 and he was only 2nd fastest

Draft makes a major difference on ovals, especially when you're drafting with other fast guys. On Lowe's with Silverado I got my PB on practise session aswell, just cruising under Dale's draft

Quote from tinvek :

i dropped in for a practice this morning at 6.30 am after work and managed 25.7 which wasn't too bad for first practice but a certain dale jnr managed a 25.398 and he was only 2nd fastest

25.3 - buggar!!!!

Was leading my skippy race with two to go, and I ran out of fuel. FML

So much for the "30 laps" estimate, barely got half that.

Quote from Rappa Z :

Was leading my skippy race with two to go, and I ran out of fuel. FML

So much for the "30 laps" estimate, barely got half that.

The estimates are crap. You need to run a bunch of laps, and then check the "laps remaining" stats IMMEDIATELY. If you wait, the estimate will get way too high. Silly really..

Quote from Gnomie :

The estimates are crap. You need to run a bunch of laps, and then check the "laps remaining" stats IMMEDIATELY. If you wait, the estimate will get way too high. Silly really..

A small clarification: the estimate should be checked while driving, after a couple of laps with normal race pace. It's based on your recent throttle usage.

How do I find out the fuel prediction?

P.S. Does anyone else find the Skippy to be a complete pile of shit to drive?

You can assign a button to see fuel, Options>Other. It starts off on one of the F-keys but i moved it to the wheel and have forgetton where it starts. F4?

The skip is awful until you realize that to turn you have keep partial throttle applied to keep the weight over the rear, then it's really fun.

Quote from DaveWS :

Does anyone else find the Skippy to be a complete pile of shit to drive?

Yes.

Skippy is sweet, lovely, low-power openwheeler porn

It's a very difficult car to drive well..... got to do a lot of practice in it but the racing is excellent.......

Personally, I prefer the Mazda

Quote from Crommi :

Skippy is sweet, lovely, low-power openwheeler porn

I was going to list all the things that are great with that car, but the sentence above sums everything up perfectly.

It's underpowered, geared too long, unstable under braking due to the open diff, oversteery on corner entry, understeery mid corner, oversteery on corner exit, and has horrible tyres which feel like they are made from plastic.

Edit: I'm getting some stuttering with iRacing during the races, partically at the corkscrew, which makes things interesting. Has anyone else experienced this? I'm getting framerates around 70 + normally, so it's not like my PC is struggling to run it. I'm gessing it's lack of memory, and the HDD is having to muck about with the pagefile or something.

Edit 2: Regarding the Skippy, I like cars which are tricky to drive and rewarding, especially the LX6 in LFS, but the Skippy is really just a tub of crap.

Quote from DaveWS :

I'm gessing it's lack of memory, and the HDD is having to muck about with the pagefile or something.

Should be the memory, try silverstone it was practically impossible to drive if you are low on memory.

I like the skippy, well you can't treat it as a full on single seater, it's more like a MRT type of thing but only slightly bigger, and has its tyres supplied by Halford's bargin department. Actually I would love to have those tires on the soltice!

Quote from DaveWS :

It's underpowered, geared too long, unstable under braking due to the open diff, oversteery on corner entry, understeery mid corner, oversteery on corner exit, and has horrible tyres which feel like they are made from plastic.

As it should be though, it's a trainer. Worst trailing throttle oversteer ever! I've definitely found some speed in other cars by learning to deal with all those situations in the Skip first.

I've never driven a sim car that actually needed partial throttle to plant the rear tires, but it works overly well in iRacing's skip barber. Realistic or not, to go fast in that car as it is you have to left foot brake and ride the throttle a little, basically all the time. Stability and grip come alive.

I right foot brake in the Skippy and I'm still generally around a second or 2 off the qualifying record in any of the game modes (qualy, TT, or race). I'm typically less than a second off in qualy. And I use 53% brake bias. I just have to be careful with my steering under braking and then make sure I get some maintenance throttle on immediately.

One thing about live for speed cars is that you have infinite ways to adjust your car and make the "perfect" setup.

Driving a car like the skippy with massive flaws that are just there by the nature of the car...it makes it a bit more fun to just master the character of the vehicle then to tweak the differential 23 times to get the perfect preload so the rear end doesn't fly around on you on entry, but you don't understeer because you've tweaked 100 other things.