Thinking of returning to iRacing

Philip Antonia · Mar 8, 2010

Hi to all the iRacers here at RD:smile:.

I was one of the lucky buggers to get to drive iRacing b4 the Full public release and it got me into online racing. Unfortunately I couldn't afford to continue after my first month and I've not used it since. I had the original 2 cars plus I'd bought the Skippy to practice in if I'd got my rating high enough at the end of my first month. I think I bought V.I.R raceway and another Oval I think. I know I'll still have these if I rejoin, but I'm wondeing if any of you guys here have any suggestions as to which cars/tracks I may benifit from most early on. I'm not entirely sure how iRacing runs week by week. When I did the first month it was a roadcourse one hour then an oval the next. It would be the same two tracks for a week and then different ones the following week. How has this changed now and how many circuits etc will I need to take part without missing out?

Basically they have sent me an offer to rejoin which runs out on the 20th of March. As it's my Birthday on the 23rd I was thinking of taking it up and asking for iRacing gift vouchers from my family to get me started.

Any thoughts/suggestions or advice will be of great help in my decision process. It's not a case of wether I'll like iRacing as I know I did. I'm just weighing up the value for money/time available to play etc so that I can feel happy with my decision.

Cheers,

Phil.

Gary Lennon · Mar 20, 2010

Nice one papa Phil m8,i will get you on me buddy list as well now along with Marky Mark AW (not that i can find any use for iR buddy list?)...more motivation now for me to get on with setting up a little RD iR gathering,i cant promise anything exotic guys....might be a Skippy or Spec Fordy night....unless i crack later on and get the Jetta and a couple of add on track treats (Brands priority #1).

Hopefully see you all on a track soon!.

Philip Antonia · Mar 20, 2010

Cheers Gary. I didn't get on last night as I was having a cuddle with my little girl and I fell asleep :wink:.

Yeh a group night will be cool oneday. I'm quite tempted by the Jetta at some point too:thumbup:.

Mark A Warmington · Mar 20, 2010

Spec Racer, Spec Racer, Spec Racer - what an absolute blast that car is :biggrin:. Or even the Advanced Legends (if it works for Scottish Motor Racing, why not RD :wink:?

PS - anyone else planning on running the Sebring 120 today?

Philip Antonia · Mar 21, 2010

Oh well I finally got to start iRacing up on my rig this morning having once again fell asleep well ahead of my intended bedtime!!!

Not a good start either I'm afraid. Quickly did some house work for the wife whilst she and the kids were out so that it was done when she got back. Had trouble getting my rig on to our home network. After restarting PC twice I decided to stop Steam from starting on start up and voila the Network connection worked.

Then ran the installer I downloaded from iRacing yesterday hoping to get racing soon after. Only to find I had to download an hours worth of updates first. Pretty annoying as I assumed I'd have the latest build from the installer.

An hour later I thought I'd try the Spec racer as it looked fun. Did the calibration of my wheel which was as simple and intuative as I remembered. Hit the track (a version of Summit point) and straight away felt dissappointed. The cars steering lock seemed far to small. My wheel is calibrated to 540deg so would have hoped to have a fair amount of precision. The car was just swinging one way to the other. After searching the setup options hoping to see the steering lock adjustable I couldn't find anything, so gave up with that one. Decided to go to the Solstace as I remember enjoying that car. The track available to run was Lime Rock which was the first track I drove on in iRacing. This time the steering felt better, but it still didn't feel as good as I remember. When I first drove iRacing I remember thinking how right everything felt. Not easy to control or forgiving, but just right. Then the family walked through the front door just as I was going to start my first race and any chance of concentrating went out of the window. So I had over 2 hours of time to myself, but alas thanks to having to download updates and find my way around the slightly confusing site I only managed about 30-40mins. Hopefully if I'm not exhausted again tonight I can get some time with it and hopefully the experience will be better for me. Sadly I definately didn't get that feeling of sheer pleasure from it this time around

.

Oddly enough while I waited for the updates to download I installed the F1Classics mod for rFactor and drove that. If anything that felt far better than my return to iRacing:frown:.

Gary Lennon · Mar 21, 2010

Is all a bit different for me too,but from a totally different angle,my first dip in to iRacing was with my old wheel and pedals,by no means a top of the range affair either,a £25 Saitek R220 no ffb 180deg jobby that i did indeed grow to love and had tons of success with,but in iRacing it always felt so twitchy and hypersensitive,i got by on the brilliance of the pedals in my opinion,i still miss those pedals even with a G25 now...
My return was also very iffy and shaky and took over a week to just get a bit settled again,and i found i was still getting caught up in other peoples madness just like last time around as well,my first Spec Ford race yesterday was more or less over at T1 with a whack that bent the car up,then a further 2 hits and i decided to get outta there!!.....
Just literally had my second Spec Fordy race moments ago and had a right proper ding dong 3 way battle with a couple of "Class A" guys which has helped restore my faith again,it was my own under pressure mistake that dropped me from a 2nd place finish,had fun recovering from 4th to 3rd though

).
I think it needs a bit more time and work for us returnees Phil,not easy for you at the moment im sure,so i will get cracking and get us a RD lock-in event setup and we can have a proper bash around with no penalty threats hanging over us

.

Mark A Warmington · Mar 21, 2010

That happens to me as well but I have a simple fix (works for me that is). I just rotate the wheel to the left and right, press each peddle to the floor a few times and then iRacing is fine. For me it seems as though the sim needs me to remind it of the steering rate of my wheel ever so often.

Philip Antonia · Mar 21, 2010

Yeh I think you're right Gary:smile:. I think I expected to get in and be comfortable straight away. I have been racing Simbins Race series ever since and I didn't expect to have to adapt so much.

I'll give the Spec Racer a go again l8r and I'll make sure to try your suggestion Mark:thumbup:.

If I have to I'll put my DFP to 900deg, but that will mean remembering to change it back for everything else

.

Gary Lennon · Mar 21, 2010

I forgot to mention for iRacing nowadays with G25,i open my Logitech profiler for iR and i adjust the rotation for each car before i go in a server,for the Spec Fordy and the Skippy i find 487 deg. is almost bang on perfect and the Solstace looks to be moving the full 900 deg.,i use about 880 or something for that?...what i try and do is match up how the wheel on the screen moves to my wheel on the desk moving,its a doddle to get them in perfect sync,this has really improved everything for me,being stuck on permanent 180deg. in the old days was just wrong

.

Mark A Warmington · Mar 21, 2010

I just have my G25 set to 500 degrees and leave it at that for every sim :wink:. I turn off the in game steering wheel so it doesn't put me off and then just adjust the steering lock (in game) till it feels right.

Philip Antonia · Mar 22, 2010

Ok I've managed to do 3 races this evening after the disaster this morning. All 3 in the Solstace at Limerock. Managed 4th in the first one having fluffed the lead:frown:. Won the 2nd race with almost perfect run and finished a frustrating 2nd in the 3rd. Frustrating because I was leading, but had a problem with a backmarker (though I managed to avoid contact or going off track) and lost the lead and then on lap 17 my throttle pedal did it's sticking trick and binned it into the barrier as I couldn't stop the car accelerating. Limped last 3 laps unable to see over the bonnet properly and pulling to the right big time. Luckily we had pulled well ahead and I managed to hold on to P2. Pity as it would have been a clean run which would of helped my crappy rating.

I'm feeling happier with it now though having given myself some time. Now I want to keep improving my Road Course rating.

Steve Emmons · Mar 25, 2010

Well, after waiting 4 days to get my promo code working I got signed up and the software downloaded. The cars feel better than I recall... Maybe I'll see you guys out there.:smile:

Philip Antonia · Mar 25, 2010

Good stuff Steve. I'm enjoying my time in iRacing now. Getting nice and consistant and gaining my ratings nicely.

I think the best thing for me is I can join anytime of the day and get a race. I miss a lot of races here at RD as I go to work at night here and often leave b4 races are finished:frown:.

Mr Chip · Mar 26, 2010

Philip Antonia said:
Good stuff Steve. I'm enjoying my time in iRacing now. Getting nice and consistant and gaining my ratings nicely.

I think the best thing for me is I can join anytime of the day and get a race. I miss a lot of races here at RD as I go to work at night here and often leave b4 races are finished:frown:.

This was something that I was wondering about as I also do a lot of late shifts, and there used to be racing all around the clock - so is that still the case?

Anyone know of any promo codes still active, I thought it was valid til the end of the month and missed the 3 months for $18

Edgar Herrero · Mar 26, 2010

Hey mates, I've started with iRacing few hours ago, and I love it

. I just got the basic-mods but its awesome. I need to know something important about this sim?

Greetings !

Steve Emmons · Mar 26, 2010

Adrian Gibson said:
This was something that I was wondering about as I also do a lot of late shifts, and there used to be racing all around the clock - so is that still the case?

Anyone know of any promo codes still active, I thought it was valid til the end of the month and missed the 3 months for $18

You might try this, but it's only a 30-day trial.
http://www.iracing.com/5-dollar-promo/

Think it would also be worth sending them an email to see if they would still honor the 3-month deal. You never know...

Mr Chip · Mar 26, 2010

The 30 day trial is only for new customers :frown:

But thanks for the e-mail suggestion - I will do that and see how I get on, would be good to get back my old stuff - especially the Radical and see how different it is with my Fanatec wheel, as it was awesome with the G25.

On a side note, does anyone know any good setups for the Fanatec Porsche Turbo S wheel? Only seems to be plenty of G25 info around unless there is some on the iRacing members forum....

Philip Antonia · Mar 27, 2010

hi adrian. To answer you question about around the clock racing, i've only been running solstace races so far as my rating was lower and i'm more interested in road racing. There is a race every hour on the hour. Qual sessions i think every five mins and tt every two mins. If i join at say half past i'll spend 25mins doing a tt or qualifying then sign in for the race. If you have more cars or want oval racing to then i should imagine there would be little waiting around

Mark A Warmington · Mar 27, 2010

Yep - once you add more cars to your garage you will find that there are even more events available for you to enter into. As Philip has stated, the thing I like about iRacing is that you can always find a race when you turn on your computer (and there will always be a grid of cars). If you care more about the racing than the points, you can go back to Legends and will pretty much always find a Legends race, without having to go to a forum to arrange for the event (the same for the Spec Racer ford or Solstice).

Ivo Simons · Jun 4, 2010

How do you have FF settings?
I took the 20 FF strenght for the info thread and 100 in the profiler. But it still feels abit weird.
I am used to the 100% strenght in other games. But with iRacing thats insane.