New to iRacing & PC gaming

[Dren Hendy]

Hello everyone,

I have been console racing for many years on the xbox. I took part in the Race Pro league here at RD but following the disappointment of Forza3 and repeated encounters with kids playing bumper cars i decided to search for my ultimate sim. For a year now i've been reading up on all sims and games and have finally decided to go for iRacing.

This is a big change for me. I have never owned or used a windows PC! This weekend coming my PC will be set up and my subscription for iRacing complete. No doubt i will be pestering you guys for advice real soon:wink: as i have some steep learning curves to overcome.....as well as sorting out my malfunctioning ClubSport brake pedal.

The RD forum for Race Pro was the friendliest and most helpful forum i found on the net so i'm glad to be back amongst you.

I look forward to meeting fellow RD racers on the track and joining up with any RD leagues/races.

Dren

 

[Abdul Al-Amry]

Dren, welcome to RD iRacing. Be prepared to lose a chunk of your life in iRacing. I have played plenty of sim racing games, but none have captivated me as much this game has. Well I'll also say that the upcoming rFactor F1 league and GTR Evolution ATCC league are right on top of my list when it comes to sim racing these days.

You start as a rookie with 2 cars to choose. Road or Oval depending on your preference. My advice is to use the Test Track session before venturing to the races. We will always be a post away if you need any assistance.

Abdul

 

[Stealthy]

my advice for road racing is practice practice practice before you race , whether its private or with other people , practice until you can do clean laps repeativly . with ovals same as above but be able to run multi lines and be able to get around the track without spinning on exit , also when running ovals listen to what your competitors are saying they will tend to tell you when they are passing you and what line to hold . nothing worst then getting taken out by someone who cant run laps get into Time trials and run until you can run clean for 30 minutes , the threat of losing points is good reason to run clean , just remember theres nothing wrong with running slow just dont get in the way of other drivers , also remember it takes alot of time to get the rating up so have respect for other drivers and you should be fine

 

[Onno Naber]

Hi Dren,long time no see (I still remember the mini races we did every sunday evening on the xbox LOL) how is live ?
I switched over to the PC 3 months ago and its briljant ,the only tip I would recommend for the PC is first read than do,its not plug and play like the xbox and some things take a bit off fiddeling,which is usually described in the installation file or takes a bit off google to find out if it will work on your PC.
As for Iracing concerned I think its what you are looking for and it will definitely put a smile on your face

Cheers
Onno

 

[Kevin Watts]

Welcome Dren, I'd echo Stealthy's recommendation of practice, practice, practice. Coming from Forza you'll likely know the layout for Laguna Seca so concentrate on the other tracks which are relatively easy to learn. Keep doing practice laps until you are happy you know the track and can run without incurring penalty points. Don't start each race thinking you must win, this will potentially be your downfall. Its more important in your rookie season to learn to race cleanly and without incident and the system rewards that just as much as a win. Even if you drop a few places and finish lower than you started but finish with no incident points your rank will increase.

Keep racing! don't sit back once you get your rating to the required level to be promoted. In my rookie season I got my rating up to 4.99 even though I only needed 3.00 to be promoted. Upon promotion you have points taken away so when I had 1.00 points taken off my rating for being promoted I was still as 3.99 and therefore all I had to do was complete the required number of races or time trials and I already had the rating to be promoted. Its easy to gain safety rating in your rookie year so build it there and build a solid foundation that will pay dividends later in your iRacing 'career' as SR becomes harder to build but easier to lose.

If your safety rating is close to getting you promotion and its near the end of the season use time trials to boost your rating. As long as you can run a few clean laps you'll increase your rating easily and you don't have to worry about any other drivers around you. Don't just do the required number of laps though, if a time trial requires you to run 4 clean laps, run 8 and then pit and go out again and do more. You get far more points for a time trial doing that than just running the required amount of laps.

Above all, have fun!

 

[Dren Hendy]

Thanks for all the advice guys. Onno, it's good to chat to you again. I remember the Sunday nights on Race PRo well and that was the first time i realised that Forza2 was not the 'sim' i thought it was ;-)

Spent all yesterday installing and upgrading the PC (thanks to a very patient mate on the end of the telephone). Have ran a few test laps in the Solstice, wow, this sim feels great! Need to do some tweaking to my rig to fit the PC, keyboard and mouse but i'm 80% there.

I am back to using the XBOX pedals (without clutch) because i need fix my Fanatec Club Sport Pedals. Fanatec have told me to flash new firmware to them but i am struggling to find a good guide on how to do this. I am a total PC noob, can anyone point me in the right direction to a good online guide to help me complete this task?

Time to get back on the track so i'll chat to you all again soon.

(a very excited) Dren

 

[Mark A Warmington]

Wow! Steep learning curve indeed... Well done for jumping in .

Yep - practice is the key that unlocks all doors. And feel free to ask as many questions on here as you like. Add us to your friends or studied drivers lists and then PM us if you have any questions: I've been sim-racing for around two decades and still have loads of questions, so don't ever feel like you're bugging anyone.

 

[James Yates]

Just a bit of advice on controller/game setup:

Not sure how strong the FFB is on the Fanatec wheels, but I'm running 9 FFB on the Solstice. 12 is about the highest you should go. Make sure you set up your brake curve properly using the measure option. I'm running 2.45 on G25 pedals (3.45 on the C6R). Measure it and see what you get, you can tweak it a bit but iRacing usually gives you the best curve.

Make sure you bind a key to mute voice chat. Have it turned on and then if you don't want to listen, mute it. Quite often people are helpful - especially on oval races.

Other good advice is make sure you use the relative screen (F3) while driving to show where the other cars are and if you're not comfortable using the real mirrors, put virtual on. The mirrors in iRacing are excellent - very realistic but can be hard to see in some cars.

 

[Onno Naber]

Thanks for all the advice guys. Onno, it's good to chat to you again. I remember the Sunday nights on Race PRo well and that was the first time i realised that Forza2 was not the 'sim' i thought it was ;-)

Spent all yesterday installing and upgrading the PC (thanks to a very patient mate on the end of the telephone). Have ran a few test laps in the Solstice, wow, this sim feels great! Need to do some tweaking to my rig to fit the PC, keyboard and mouse but i'm 80% there.

I am back to using the XBOX pedals (without clutch) because i need fix my Fanatec Club Sport Pedals. Fanatec have told me to flash new firmware to them but i am struggling to find a good guide on how to do this. I am a total PC noob, can anyone point me in the right direction to a good online guide to help me complete this task?

Time to get back on the track so i'll chat to you all again soon.

(a very excited) Dren

have you tried to connect your pedals to your PC by USB cable (I have a fanatec + clubsport pedals to and the work beter this way )
if you made the right connections ( USB cabel wheel ,USB cable pedals ) your PC will find the hardware and (flash) update them.
Dont forget to always read the install Instructions (just to be save)
if you have any more questions please PM

regards Onno

 

[Sander Hogendoorn]

What exactly is the issue with your CSP?

 

[Dren Hendy]

I think my problem with Flashing the pedals have been a conflict with 64 and 32 bit computers.... it only works if you use a 32bit PC.

@Sander - The pedals worked ok for 6 months, recently while racing the brake applied itself without input from the pedal. When you view the telemetry the brake is constantly on, if you tap the brake pedal it resets and is ok for a few seconds before braking by itself again. The amount of pressure it is applying is relative to the pedal load setting knob near the brake pedal. I have tried increasing the deadzone setting within Forza but the problem still occurs.


I ran my first 3 races in the Solstice on Lime Rock Park yesterday. The first thing i noticed was how nervous i was at the start grid, i've had some tense races in consol racing but this was different. The safety rating really does it's job by making you more aware of avoiding contact and wheels on the grass.

I missed quali for race 1 but still made it to 6th on the gird. In my eagerness for a good start i jumped the green light, doh!, and received a black flag. Not the best way to start my career but i served my pit stop/go penalty and after an exciting 20 laps pulled myself all the way up to a 4th place finish. With my confidence building i went for race 2 and 3. in race 2 a spinning car ran into me..after trying to drive back to the pits with a damaged car for far too long someone told me i could reset and get taken to the pits automatically, i came in 11th out of 12. Race 3 i qualified 4th and by lap 4 was up to 2nd. But we caught some back markers having a battle...again one of them went off and came back onto the track and stopped. just as i was driving past the stationary car he moved and knocked me off the track...think i ended up 7th.

Can't wait to get the CSP back as i'm sure this will improve the experience even more. So far i'm very impressed.

 

[Sander Hogendoorn]

I had almost the same issue a few weeks back. After some e-mails they sent me a new electronics set which fixed it, you can contact them following this link. Can be pretty hard to put them in place if you're not too handy with stuff like that.

About the Quali in iRacing, you understand that you don't need to do a Q everytime before a race? After you've done 1 Q your fastest time will always be used to put you on the grid. You can ofcourse try to beat that time to move up the Q rankings

 

[Dren Hendy]

I had almost the same issue a few weeks back. After some e-mails they sent me a new electronics set which fixed it, you can contact them following this link. Can be pretty hard to put them in place if you're not too handy with stuff like that.

About the Quali in iRacing, you understand that you don't need to do a Q everytime before a race? After you've done 1 Q your fastest time will always be used to put you on the grid. You can ofcourse try to beat that time to move up the Q rankings

How much skill is required to change the part? Does it involve soldering for example? I managed to flash the firmware but that has made no difference.

Thanks for the info on quali times, did a 1:05.2xx i think so that should see me in the top half usually i reckon. I thought you had to quali each race or go to the back of the grid...much better knowing that time will always count.

 

[Sander Hogendoorn]

Nah, check the Q rankings and see where you're standing now. Every race the grid is made up on the Q times from the entered drivers, the drivers who didn't do a qualify are lined up on iRating rank behind the ones that set a Q time (iRating only becomes visible after you promoted to D Class).

About the pedals, if you turn them upside down you can have an insight of what's needed to switch parts. No soldering is needed, it's mostly a case of replacing the 3 chips on the throttle, brake and clutch, at least that's what I did, I think doing it only for the brake pedal would've been ok too. I also got a new loadcell, which is a bit harder to replace.

Check this video from Thomas from Fanatec to see how to open the pedals before replacing stuff (if you haven't done that before).

 

[Randy Wolfgram]

Dren, not sure if you got your CSP brake problem fixed yet or not, but I had the same problem back in January and it was the load cell that was bad. Fanatec sent me one and a whole new set of electronics, but I only had to replace the load cell to fix my issue.