Just played iRacing

[Danny Asbury]

Well, I decided to spend about 15 bucks today on iracing, just to see what it's like. I started with the Solstice, but that was SOOOO boring. For the life of me, I can't drive slow cars. But then I decided to just buy the indycar. MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That thing is the best car I've ever drove in any video game, totally worth the money.

And the graphics are top quality on iracing, I had no idea. It's the perfect fusion of both graphics and physics, simply breath taking. Driving the Indycar was pure fun, even if I couldn't complete a clean lap. :tongue:

Race 07 may have to sit on the shelf for a while as I play more iracing. The only thing that sucks is that I don't think I'll be able to race my Indycar until I get this rank thing up... booo!!!

 

[Ant Collett]

lol more fool you then tbh.

If i buy Gran Turismo or Forza @ least i know what im getting & the best thing about it would be the freedom to play my game when i want because i paid for it. ie: no restrictions on use

I can run any combo, drive all cars on all tracks without re mortgaging my house. Compared to iRacing, £40 on forza or GT every 2 years is a no brainer.

Its not that i dont understand the business model. I just dont agree with it.

Renting is a bad idea period. Do you rent your house or flat? I bet you dont.

I dont have cable, i dont have a mobile phone contract, & i sure as hell dont poney up $12 for a stupid ass movie. I bought a DVD the other day for £1.50 & i watched it on my projector @ home, when i had finished watching the film i went over to my DVD player & guess what the DVD was still there! I could pick it up , hold it in my hand, watch it again whenever & sell it to some else if i wished.

Dont get your knickers in a twist because of my views. On the same note taking the piss wont do you any favours either. I guess iRacing is just not for me as i am not a renting type of person.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

I own an iracing license for the coming year still, but i have to agree that I also disagree on some points of the payment model. As you know me I buy almost every racing game out there as a support. I spend my money on racing hardware because it makes my experience more enjoyable.

But I can´t get rid of the feeling that paying so much money for iRacing is wrong, it´s not that I can´t afford it, it´s because i don´t want to afford it.

Every car and track costs my like $15 each time. Add to that the subscription you also have to pay for (yeah yeah i know you pay for the "service") and it's quite a lot of money.

A simple calculation:

RACE Series (RACE 07, GTR Evolution, STCC, RACE On) costed me less than 100 dollars when i bought them at release. rRactor cost around $40, netkar pro is a bargain of EUR 19, TDU was EUR 30, LFS, GTR, GTR2, Toca, Dirt2, GT legends were cheap, NFS was around EUR 40 etc etc.

Those are games that offer:
1) Multiplayer for free
2) Good content
3) Lots of features that iRacing still doesnt have (weather, driver swaps, massive grids, AI, free community etc)

So when i compare one game to one year of iracing including the same amount of tracks and cars its ridiculously expensive.

Add to it that i dont have time to fully commit to iracing only it makes it a no go for me still. I don't want to race against n00bs for almost a year until i reach A or B class and have some serious good racing. Therefore i havent spend too much time on it for now as I don't want to race the ford spec, pontiac or legend cars.

 

[Kevin Ascher]

Add to it that i dont have time to fully commit to iracing only it makes it a no go for me still. I don't want to race against n00bs for almost a year until i reach A or B class and have some serious good racing. Therefore i havent spend too much time on it for now as I don't want to race the ford spec, pontiac or legend cars.

All I want to say is that, knowing your racing style, I think if you drove carefully you could own an A or B license within 2 or 3 weeks.

 

[Ingemar Petersson]

on the +side is that if youre a ovalhead Iracing is the best game there is (in my opinion) and it´s not on steam like the simbin games
- side is the rating it takes way to much time to upgrade and since you lose points if you crasched out and there seems to be a hard community , could be that you lose rating if some get you out ....
thats my thoughts otherwise i agree with you all on up and down side

 

[Mark A Warmington]

Horses for courses . I hated it and now I love it. However - it is just because I now believe I get more value for money (opinion). I don't think anyone has to defend their views because it's all about what you personally deem value for money.

It is expensive, but so are a lot of thinks. I guess for me it is mostly about the physics. I have never come to terms with the feel of the Simbin titles: I don't like the feel. RFactor feels much better to me, but even that feels inferior to iRacing. It was the same as the feeling I got from GPL and N2K3.

I suppose it is that feel that, right now, I am willing to pay for: it is bringing me more satisfaction when I race.

Horses for course .

 

[Jack B]

lol more fool you then tbh.

I dont have cable, i dont have a mobile phone contract, & i sure as hell dont poney up $12 for a stupid ass movie.

Ok, now I get where you're coming from... I don't know a single friend who has never paid for a movie, cable or a cell phone. I'd say that borders on eccentric.

Just curious though. How do you make phone calls? Do you own a phone company, because you can't use pay phones or rent phone service at your home. So bizarre.

Your posts make more sense now. Have a nice day.

 

[Marc Good]

I fully agree with all the points made regarding not owning the content and therefore you can't use what you paid for after the subscription expired. That's as well the reason why I did not join iRacing for about 1.5 years after I first heard about it.

But after giving it a try for one month (got in with the Radical promotion) I took the decision that it will be my main stay for quite some time.

Every car and track costs my like $15 each time. Add to that the subscription you also have to pay for (yeah yeah i know you pay for the "service") and it's quite a lot of money.

A simple calculation:

RACE Series (RACE 07, GTR Evolution, STCC, RACE On) costed me less than 100 dollars when i bought them at release. rRactor cost around $40, netkar pro is a bargain of EUR 19, TDU was EUR 30, LFS, GTR, GTR2, Toca, Dirt2, GT legends were cheap, NFS was around EUR 40 etc etc.

Those are games that offer:
1) Multiplayer for free
2) Good content
3) Lots of features that iRacing still doesnt have (weather, driver swaps, massive grids, AI, free community etc)

So when i compare one game to one year of iracing including the same amount of tracks and cars its ridiculously expensive.

Add to it that i dont have time to fully commit to iracing only it makes it a no go for me still. I don't want to race against n00bs for almost a year until i reach A or B class and have some serious good racing. Therefore i havent spend too much time on it for now as I don't want to race the ford spec, pontiac or legend cars.

If you add up all the sims you bought you're getting quite a sum as well. If you take them all together.

That's basically how I look at it: Since I joined iRacing I hardly dabbled in any other sim. Haven't started rFactor/GTR:Evo/LFS even once.. so since I decided to commit to iRacing only instead of switching from sim to sim all the time my total cost is quite comparable. (I took the same aproach as you, Bram. I own about every sim available)
If iRacing keeps me from buying every sim released in the future it won't hurt my wallet that much


Sidenote: Having a low license does not necessarily mean you're going to race with n00bs. When I joined I had great and clean races in the rookie class.. at least most of them. And if you get some good results in you're even driving with experienced drivers in clean races - while still only racing the slower cars.

 

[Petteri Kotovaara]

10 for iracing of course, its sim. Others are just games

 

[Nathan Robinson]

This topic kind of cracks me up. As many have said, if you dont like the model, dont race it. When i saw the iracing thread in here, i thought it would be for people who enjoy iracing and not another "blah iracing is too expensive" or "how can they get away with their business model" place.

Yes you buy the content, but once you have it, you have it for life. Plus, if you commit to a series and buy the car and all tracks in that season at once, you save 25 percent.

In the end though, it's not even about the money for me. Sure the solstice sucks, but it's free and it's aimed at teaching car control. Anyone who has some decent driving skill should be up and out of the rookie class before you know it. There is a lot of time and effort put into making these things as realistic as possible. The first time i sat down into my skip barber after getting my d liscence, i was amazed. It really gave me the feel of racing a real skip barber and on laser scanned tracks to boot. Authenticity means a lot to me and thats why i enjoy it so much. Go do some laps on Sebring for rfactor and then hit up the iracing sebring. You can really see what laser scanned does for it. The rfactor versions dont even come close.

Where iracing really got me though, was the oval racing. The legends put you on a small track where you can have some great races. Sure you have a few bad apples that screw it up, but in another hour you can try again. Contrary to what others have said, the crash detection system in iracing can actually tell who's fault the crash was. If you're racing and some idiot crashes into you, you will get an incident message, but it doesnt affect your safety rating. pretty neat. After i worked my way up to d liscence i enjoyed myself in the late models. Then came the day i was changed forever. I finally got my C class oval liscence and bought what is equivilent to the craftsman trucks. They were racing at daytona that week so i picked that up too. The next 3 hours saw me in a practice server with my jaw on the floor as i screamed around daytona in a pack of 10 trucks nose to bumper. It is unbelievable how realistic the racing is. Sure it takes time to get through the lower classes, but that's how they weed out the bad eggs.

If you are an Iracer and want to move up classes more quickly, my main advice is to drive safe. You will rank up quicker by finishing 7th with no incidents than by trying to force your way to the front and having 6 incidents on the way. You cant beat being able to jump into a live sanctioned event every hour or 2 hours or so.

If you hate the business model and the amount of money it costs, why are you even bothering with the iracing forum?? Let's make this a place for the iracing enthusiasts like myself and some others i've seen

 

[scootergeo]

Yes, that's what I say about Madden, Gran Turismo, Forza etc. They just keep coming out with new versions and they have the audacity to charge money for those.

I think you're wrapped around the axle on the business model, but you don't realize it's different for sim racing, but it shouldn't matter. It's either a value for the price or it isn't. You don't "OWN" any content in iRacing. You "license" it. You're thinking you actually "own" it, that's where part of your problem comes from...

Think about these things you "rent", "lease" or "license". We don't own this stuff either, that doesn't make it bad.

Should we stop paying for cable tv, because all I do is watch cable and they keep charging me.?

AT&T keeps charging me every frickin' month for my cell phone coverage. Does that make it "bad"?

And I just realized I went to Starbucks today. I bought a coffee and a sandwich and they charged me $10. It just now dawned on me all I got to keep was the empty cup and the wrapper for the sandwich. I'm left with nothing, but my memories of the coffee and sandwich. Does that make it "bad". Nothing to show for the food, but some enjoyment and energy even though we "bought" the food.

I pay $12 to get in to see the movie and the next time I show up they want to charge me again. And that's for the the same movie! I mean it's the same frickin' movie. I already paid to see it once. They didn't let me take it home and now when I come back they won't let me in! WTF! ;-)

See. iRacing may be more money that you want to spend, but get over the business model. It's not unusual. It's just different than boxed sims. Heck, even World of Warcraft is now charging money to "license" special mounts and weapons etc. And don't forget Xbox Live, PSN and even Nintendo and micro transactions. Microtransactions were hammered when they first came out like they would destroy the world, but it never happened and it's not even a topic of conversation anymore.

I'd let go of the business model as a reason. Too much money is a reason, but not the business model. It's front end loaded. That's a reason, but in the end you have to decide if it's too much money for too little value.

After 2 years, it's hard to actually spend money on iRacing. I have too much stuff and they don't release enough content for me to spend a bunch of money.

#1 he (ant ) was talking about rock climbing not other games. which ant made a solid point. I get into rollerblading hockey I purchase skates, stick, so on, use them for a summer decided I want to do something else... my 400$ purchase I can sell for a 1/4 or 1/3 of original price or even trade for something else. Iracing you can't do that.

#2 who the heck are you to tell him he has a axle wrapped around his head because he has a different opinion then you do. You are a real first class peice of work. I have seen you pull the same arguments over at no grip racing, if people are not iracing fan boys or have your opinion you insult them. Or try to belittle there opinions.

What I can't understand is why you call yourself jack b? to me jack b is jack backus. when really your name on iracing is lincoln minor, so really what gives? I been away from racing almost 3 to 5 months or more and I come back and on a different forum all together and I see the same ''blah blah blah'' rediculous comparisions from you.

So is iracing giving you free content or have you on the pay roll? I am sure you must have 7000 posts at iracing's forum board by now under the name lincoln minor so many post you would think you work for them. I see your still drumming up the same tired comebacks to the slightest opposition.

I tell you what I came here to look into some of the last couple years of sim bin titles and may buy them because there dirt cheap now. I got more money's worth out of GTR2 then I got out of Iracing easily. Iracing was a EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLAR COST compared to 39.00 for grt2.

Then there is the other issues...... glorified league run by a complete boob.

The Indy car is a nice ride I ran it for roughly 4 to 5 hours a day for 4 months and in the league or hosted racing it was one wreck feast after another and you could not boot the wreckers like other games.

The road track side of the indy car was way more fun then the ovals, people were clueless with the car on the ovals enough to want to pull your hair out.

Tracks were beautiful grade A! cars constantly changing physics D- (yes they constantly releasing unfinished product), quality of drivers and moderation horrid it was like the inmates running the prison in oval racing and captain klink staring as bill france.

I may have been content with 2 things iracing does not have, ability to play after sub runs out, if I could play againist AI. Neither can be done there.

GTR2 leagues, Rfactor leagues, n2002 ,2003 leagues even my worst experiences with those games were better then organized races in iracing.

I played it for 2 years so there is 2 sides to every story .... for me it was not just about the money, if it was well done the money would not matter but the game never felt like it was wow...i can't wait to play this again tommorrow. It was more like, I am hanging around because if they fix everything this will be amazing.. that just goes for just so long.

and there is no doubt in my mind that they have either suck ups or employees doing promotional/damage control on various forum boards.

those that love and enjoy it ... i am not bashing you. Enjoy it... I am glad for you it is nice when something that is your hobby feels excellent. I do not mean to dis your favorite thing but at the same time felt the need to back up ant's comments... I have not a clue as to who ant is and never raced with him before.


_____________________________________________

Originally Posted by Ant Collett
lol more fool you then tbh.

I dont have cable, i dont have a mobile phone contract, & i sure as hell dont poney up $12 for a stupid ass movie.
-ant
________________________________



Ok, now I get where you're coming from... I don't know a single friend who has never paid for a movie, cable or a cell phone. I'd say that borders on eccentric.

Just curious though. How do you make phone calls? Do you own a phone company, because you can't use pay phones or rent phone service at your home. So bizarre.

Your posts make more sense now. Have a nice day. -jack b

______________

I don't go to movies unless there blockbuster movies and I don't spend move on crap movies no matter what the price. I have cable but no contract, same for phone, i don't see where that is eccnetric? of coarse unless your of high school age? Again? it is bizarre because it is something you don't do?

 

[Jack B]

Scootergoo, thanks for your feedback.

 

[Ghoults]

I think it's all about how much you are willing to pay and how much "fun" do you think you are getting back. I've spent somewhere between 500 and 1000$ and I think it's worth it. I wouldn't compare it to telephone or eating at mcdonalds though. Those are pretty bad comparisons. Iracing is a hobby. It's sim racing. Eating at mcdonalds or having a telephone is not a hobby. Iracing can be seen as a hobby like wow.

Sure, it is expensive for something you do on your computer. It is quite limited in ways what and how you can use the software but the pros outnumber the cons very clearly for me. It is simply the best sim. I'd almost pay that amount of money just to drive the skippy . Rfactor has some nice mods I drive once in a while, nkpro is fun as well and if lfs gets something done within the next 10 years I'll probably drive that as well.

For me simracing is a hobby and "investing" 500-1000$ into my hobby during 2 years has been worth it. I don't want to use the stupid clause "maybe iracing isn't for you" but clearly if you are feeling you are not getting your monies worth cancel your subscription and look for cheaper alternatives. Or change hobby. I don't mind if people say iracing is expensive. It is but for some people it is also worth it.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

All I want to say is that, knowing your racing style, I think if you drove carefully you could own an A or B license within 2 or 3 weeks.

But you don't get promoted every week right?

 

[Nathan Robinson]

But you don't get promoted every week right?

Two ways to get promoted bram. 1 is to get your safety rating up to 3 before the end of the 13th week of the season, then you'll class up. If you dont want to wait that long, just keep racing until your safety rating gets to four and from there you'll automatically rank up right on the spot

 

[Ramon van Rijn]

Unless they suddenly changed it, no way.

Rookie promotion every month. Normal license promotion every 13 weeks.

I think that is a good thing, what is not that you are forced to pay if you want to climb the ladder. Not once, but at least 3 times.
Example;

I started as Rookie with the solstice and the legends. I focussed on road racing, so took the Solstice. Getting out of rookie was no problem at all. Learn the car and stay on track, easy enough (for most).
But then disappointment came. My license was now D, ok cool. That is were the fun begins. Skip Barber here I come. I had all those nice Greger Huttu movies in mind. Great!
Of course you need to buy the skip, $15 or so. Big deal, got it. Ok, lets try... party all the time. This car is very cool to drive. Ok, if this is cool lets try to get better licenses and better/faster cars. It is all about speed isnt it? Uh, not for all of course. So I tried to join a series for License D with my lovely skip.
Unfortunately that was not possible. I already paid once $15 for 1 month subscription and bought another 3 months to keep going. So that was around $50 for subscription plus $15 for the skip. Paying $65 was apparently not enough for the iRacing company. When I want to drive in such License D, Barber series I need to have all the tracks supported in that series. From memory I think there were 3 or 4 new tracks which costed $15-25 each at that time. Rediculous expensive paying over $100 only to drive my next license.

This is something that they don't tell you before you sign up. And it keeps on going, new tracks better cars and before you know it you paid over $500. For me, I was lucky money was no issue at all. I haven't played it for months so I don't own the last months tracks/cars (if there are), but I got all content, just because I could (lame excuse) and I still have a subscription till summer 2011 or so.

What's holding me back? I don't enjoy it anymore. I just want to pick a race when I have some time. That is just not possible in iRacing. Only thing I did over the last 2 years was picking Time-Trials and a few races (less then 5 I think). Why not races? Basicly because I have not much time to prepare for races. When I have little practice, your rating will drop like a stone in iRacing since every touch of grass is hurting you.
Then races are only every 2 hours last time I checked. I consider iRacing as in between racing when I have a free hour or so. Then it is just not possible to race, since you have to wait for races every 2 hours.

Another thing that holds me from driving is the lack of fancy features. Slowly things are added which exist on other games for years, but the development time is just too slow.

Is iRacing a success? Who knows... the insiders could maybe tell. I know their businessmodel was supplied by $20 million or so to get this thing developed. Will their business model hold in those hard financial times where money counts for lots of people? They already lowered lots of prices last year. Was it strategy or because they needed more drivers? I can't tell, i can only guess.
I hope for them it will and remain be a success. I might be back one time, I might never. It depends on my personal life too.

Currently I have enough 'sim'racing games on my mind. Not enough time anyway to try them all and still some sweet titles are coming (rF2/GTR3/F1 2010/etc.etc.) I am about the same as Bram I like sponsering racing game developers and just buy every title (almost) I see. Sometimes more then once

[Edit]
Just spotted the reply above me while I was typing this story. It seems you now get promoted instantly when rating is 4+. That was not the deal when I was racing. (or a bug on my account?)
Still a rating of 4 is not to get so fast. If you do lots of races yes. If you have not much time it still takes weeks/months.

 

[Wayne Reed]

No i have never played this game so i dont know how good it really is so this is what i see from the outside stand point what are all the poeple that play this game thinking with what i have just read (Ramon's post) i think every one is just mad all that money for nuffing i just cant get my head around it i mean is it really that much better then rfactor? i really really cant see how they are getting away with it just goes to show in this day an age there are still componys willing to rob poeple blind sorry if this post upsets anyone but thats how i see it just my 2 pence

 

[Dietmar]

What's holding me back? I don't enjoy it anymore. I just want to pick a race when I have some time. That is just not possible in iRacing. Only thing I did over the last 2 years was picking Time-Trials and a few races (less then 5 I think). Why not races? Basicly because I have not much time to prepare for races. When I have little practice, your rating will drop like a stone in iRacing since every touch of grass is hurting you.
Then races are only every 2 hours last time I checked. I consider iRacing as in between racing when I have a free hour or so. Then it is just not possible to race, since you have to wait for races every 2 hours.

Interesting one actually! I recently gave them a shot (one month promo with Star Mazda plus a track), exactly because of the constant racing thing!

Before I did mainly (only) the Race Series with races here at RD, which I love (just as a side note ), BUT lately I have less time for racing, so A) I did not want to comit to a league as I could not promise to participate in all races B) with the leagues in place the amount of Club Races on the week end shrunk. Left me mostly with my beloved Mini Friday. But when something came up (e.g. wife dating ), no race for the week. Sure I need to practice for any race before I can participate.

So with iRacing, I have a race every 2 hours (before signing up, I thought it is actually every hour, so I was a little bit disappointed by that one as well). Sure I need to practice, but that the same for other online racing as well.

So my current schedule, I try to follow the Spec Racer Series, which only includes one track that I do not own out of the box, I practice when ever I got a couple of minutes, sometimes during the week end I race. So far I actually even raced twice (one for trying, one for success).

So for me, that 'a race every other hour' is actually the unique selling point. And actually after getting used to it, I like the Spec Racer.

Will I extend my subscription? Definitively for 3 month, yes. Longer? Don't know as I hate to buy the additional content.

One more thing, though when ever I raced, I had a good grid. But what I dislike in comparison with RD, you always race other people (has to be, as the other guys never know when I am racing). So the 'community' aspect I am missing. Nevertheless, so far I only had good races.

Was only take out once, not on purpose and the guy posted a sorry!

 

[Jack B]

Ramon, things have changed since you joined. Major updates every 3 months and prices have dropped.

Instant Promotions now happen for Rookies above 4.0 Safety Rating. You don't need to wait 1 month. The prices for everything dropped. The Skip Barber is $12 not $15 now and tracks at $12 an $15 instead of $15 and $25. Big drop.

Here is a post I made with the current track schedule for season 2. You can now get all the tracks you'll need for the Skip Barber D Class, C, B etc and more for under $100. A lot less than $500 now.

============

You get a volume discount when you buy 3 or 6 things at a time now.

Tracks that come with the basic subscription, are Summit, Laguna Seca and Lime Rock on the road side, South Boston, Lanier and Charlotte/Lowes on the oval side.

Since a lot of the tracks are shared by different series you could buy 13 tracks and have all 12 tracks needed for the complete 12 week D, C and B series of Skip Barber, V8 Supercar and the Vette. Once you get a basic set of tracks, you're in pretty good shape, because they are shared a lot.

Also, the division championships only require you to compete in 8 of 12 weeks, so those 12 would probably cover you for 8 weeks in just about every road series all the way from Rookie to A Class.

And if you really want to save money, you could buy fewer tracks and just race those tracks with whatever series was running them that week. Lot's of options. You don't need all the tracks to race and have fun. Lot's to do and to get good requires a lot of practice, so most people (me included) can't focus on more than 1 series at a time anyway. There are always people faster, so I end up practicing and racing one series just trying to get better and better in that series. If you race 2 series at once, you won't do as well in either..., so often I focus on one car and one series at a time and with races 7 days a wekk I'm plenty busy.

 

[Jack B]

No i have never played this game so i dont know how good it really is so this is what i see from the outside stand point what are all the poeple that play this game thinking with what i have just read (Ramon's post) i think every one is just mad all that money for nuffing i just cant get my head around it i mean is it really that much better then rfactor? i really really cant see how they are getting away with it just goes to show in this day an age there are still componys willing to rob poeple blind sorry if this post upsets anyone but thats how i see it just my 2 pence

Wayne, yeah everyone needs to decide if iRacing is a value for them or not. The total package for me is the best sim available, but that's for each individual to decide.

As for the costs, they are way less than there were two years ago. A lot of people don't realize that, because they don't follow every update etc, so they still remember how things "were" not how they are now. iRacing keeps growing, so it seems to be working.

As for the "robbing people blind part"... iRacing is very niche. It's not trying to be a 4 million seller like Gran Tursimo or even selling like rFactor or Simbin titles. It's specifically catering to people who want organized racing with laser scanned cars and tracks. We're a small group. Growing, but still small.

If you run the numbers iRacing probably still loses money every month and even when they start making money each month it will take a few years to get back their original investment, so I don't think they are robbing anyone blind. They have to charge what they charge until their subscriber base grows.

It's growing and they've already had periodic price decreases, so gradually over time they'll likely have more incremental price decreases. The feature set grows every 3 months, so you get more "value" each 3 month update even if prices didn't drop. Most box games give you one or two very minor bug fix updates. iRacing gives real feature enhancements. Hope this helps update your information.

 

[Jack B]

But you don't get promoted every week right?

Bram, yes there are people getting promoted from Rookie to D or higher in a weekend. As long as you avoid incidents you can progress quickly.