Is there a suggested place I can go to get "all components" at once, plus setup? Looking for a complete set up with moderate budget $10-15K

 

I remember some threads where people discussed this, companies that will build / setup entire systems for you. I think 10-15K should get a pretty nice setup. Maybe try searching some older threads?

I had my funniest race last night. There's a new set of cars and tracks in GT Sport every Monday, and I guess not as many people had raced it yet, because I ended up starting at #1 position in one race based on my qualifying time. Never happened before, so me and my kids were pretty excited / nervous. Then I had someone who was actively trying to bump me from the side and push me into the wall, James Bond style. Never had that happen before either, but that distracted me to where I lost track of the brake markers at the end of a very long straight. So that basically ended the race - I went to last place (15th), and ended the race at 11th.

This week's race is in a fictional Tokyo track with GT4-equivalent cars. The track has walls on both sides of the road, and the race has heavy penalties for even the slightest wall contact. So far my strategy is to drive a little conservatively and let the others bounce off the walls and get penalized. I've also finally realized I can draft other cars Had once race where I started 5th and finished 3rd, that's my best finish so far with the faster cars.

 

Here is the Mega iRacing thread on Rennlist --> https://rennlist.com/forums/racing-a...hread-251.html

7,526 posts!!!

It looks like the above thread wasn't moved to the "E/SIM Racing" forum when it was created, probably because it was a sticky under "Racing & Drivers Education".

Maybe a mod can move it to this forum. It makes sense to have one running thread for ongoing general sim racing discussions and there is a lot of good info in that thread.

 

I wonder what the safety rules are like on iRacing vs. GT Sport on the PS4. Has anyone played both, and can comment? Losing because I'm trying to race clean while others aren't playing by the same rules, is starting to get old. Not to say I'm not making unforced errors. Still, my solo lap speeds are now putting me in the top 4 in the starting grid, but it's tough to stay there when the whole pack bunches up in the first tight turn, and there are people who don't hesitate in nudging others out of the way. Or slamming you sideways to keep you from drafting them. Etc. etc. And I'm already at the highest safety rating in this game, playing against others with the same rating. It seems like you only get penalized if you directly hit someone hard, or something.

 

Welcome to sim racing.

I've noticed in iracing special events (endurance races) that higher splits with higher strength of field have better driving. Less forced moves. Guessing that combined with folks recognizing your not going to win a 6+ hour race on lap 1, T1.

PCA sim racing usually enforces orange violation on formation and lap 1 especially with national races. Maybe think about joining or running with POC, there's a good group of drivers there too.

 

Haven't used GT Sport, so can't comment on that, but in iRacing, when you file a protest, it does get reviewed by a human and they will take some action if warranted. Usually only warnings to the offending driver, but if somebody has repeated offenses, I'm sure they take stricter action. Sometimes they'll rule it as a "racing incident", meaning that neither driver was at fault -- that feedback can be educational as well.

If your goal is to become a better real-life driver, I suspect that making the jump to iRacing would be a worthwhile investment. That was definitely the case with iRacing versus Gran Turismo 6, but I don't really know how it stacks up against GT Sport. Hopefully somebody else with GT Sport experience can add more color on that.

 

I finished in first place!! Mostly by getting my solo time up to where I started in first place, and then I didn't make any bad mistakes which put me into a wall. I was second for around half a lap, twice. But the person in front of me already had a penalty badge, so I just stayed behind them and didn't try to pass, and went round them when they were forced to slow down in the penalty area. I had the 5th fastest lap, and my fastest lap was 1.5s slower than my solo laps (on a 1:59 track), so I was driving fairly conservatively. This just reinforces my feeling that it's really difficult to win if you start further in the back.

I did put a stiffer spring into the G29 brake pedal, and then swapped the other springs around as well (brake to clutch, clutch to gas). $13 from eBay - probably a 10c part, if you know the length / circumference / stiffness needed. I figured $13 was an OK amount to spend on a mod I've seen load cell kits for $100+, which seems silly since the G29 costs $250 for the wheel and pedals.

With all that said - I'm getting more convinced that in a few months I'll be looking pretty seriously at a PC + monitor / VR setup and switch to iRacing. And then get a better cockpit / wheel / pedal as well. Although I don't think the graphics card availability situation is going to get better anytime soon. Maybe look for something from the last generation of Nvidia / AMD cards?

That is definitely my primary goal. The competitive aspect is fun, but not my main interest. I did some reading last night, and internet chatter suggests GT Sport's physics model is quite a bit inferior to iRacing. Lots of people complaining about the suspension, brakes, damage, etc.

 

Hi Dennis what cockpit is that? I just ordered a Fanatec DD1 wheelbase and yours looks to be a DD1 or DD2. I'm looking for a real strong cockpit to handle that torque

Jeff

 

If you're a DIY type, you may want to design/build your own rig using 8020 hardware. There are plenty of online examples (custom and commercial) for inspiration. The advantage is you can customize it to your liking, make it vey adjustable, and modify it if you need to expand. And it will cost less than an equivalent commercial unit. Its super rigid and everything is adjustable for distance, height, and tilt - seat, wheel, pedals, shifter. There are also online tools to build your design in 3D, and generate a bill-of-materials. Here's what I built. Will supply details if anyone's interested.

 

From my experience, if you want a *somewhat* realistic/enjoyable sim - the cheap hardware will not work. It's just a fact of life. You can PLAY with $200 plastic wheel/pedals set fixed on a flexible stand, but it will never allow you to actually feel the car and trick your mind for real driving experience. There is really not much you can skip on. Pedals, screen, and PC have to be good. Steering wheel can be somewhat cheaper I guess, but no less than Fanatec belt wheels. Shifter and seat can be cheaper still, but that doesn't help much in grand scheme of things.

After having been in somewhat serious Sim rig with full motion, me and my 10 year old son fall in love and embarked on a long project to build something that is somewhat more than just a toy. We also finished a small room in our basement for this project, and called it a Race Room. What you see below is 8 months in the making, and is far from complete, but at this point we are

8020 is an obvious choice for the base. We use 40mm series, 40x120 and 40x80 for the base, and 40x40 for smaller pieces.
With custom designed pieces in between. Tell you right now unless you have access to cheap 8020 pieces - it's not necessary cheaper then buying a ready made 8020 based rig from one of the Sim companies for $600+. We decided on fully custom build because we are stupid and optimistic and always think we can do better than companies that do that for living

Honestly, the size difference between me and my son is 100lbs vs 200+, with two feet height difference, so wide adjustability range was absolute priority in our design. The monitor, pedal stand and seat can be adjusted in seconds. Although it turned out the screen adjustment is not really necessary after initial setup.

The seat is a suspiciously cheap reclining Recaro from Amazon, plus sliders.

The pedal stand is custom made from 1/2 aluminum plate with multiple hole pattern designed for Heusinkveld pedals. Can be adjusted front-back in seconds. The whole plate slides. There is black plywood pad on top, because we race barefoot and aluminum is cold!
Heusinkveld pedals are wonderful and absolutely essential for the experience.

The screen is Samsung Odyssey G9 49" curved. After agonizing between 3 monitor setup and this - I've read some review that were positive, and so went for simplicity. It is attached to the rail on a ceiling, and can be slided back and forth, and also adjusted higher and lover.

The gearshift is Fanatec QS. It's pretty good and looks like the best you can find at the moment. It's very solid, but doesn't really feels like my Porsche stick. To engage reverse is kind of pain. But it's really not that important.

The steering wheel is from temporary ThrustMaster set we bought because we could not wait. The pedals broke after a month of very light use, and were absolute crap anyway. The steering wheel is somewhat ok for temporary, but it can not be securely fixed to the sufrace, so it slides and flexes and twists a bit, but we just learned to live with it. We are waiting on Fanatec's new direct drive system that they are starting selling now. The steering wheel mount is also TBD, right now it's just wooden shelf there

The PC we build ourselves and it doesn't have the graphics card yet. The prices just wen crazy this year, and I am hoping it will calm down soon. So right now we running only central half of the screen on low res, low FPS, using built-in graphics from the motherboard. It's not that bad looking, but I would really want to see my mirrors!!!!

We using Asseto Corsa, and so far seriously studied Monza, with dabbing in couple more trucks. We also focus on a 1980s 911 porsche race car. As faster/more serious cars is just a disaster at the moment. All assists OFF of course. We race with bunch all flavors of AI 911s, Lotuses and such. With some practice my Monza times went down from very bad, to 2:15 best. But very inconsistent still. I can consistently finish 5 laps Monza in the front half of 26 similar cars.

This setup so far really allows for a periods of complete immersion, where I can feel what the car is doing, and kind of drive at the limit now and then. Braking is very difficult without any g-feedback and knowing what wheels are doing.

I'm designing all this with a possibility to add full motion in the distant future.... But in the immediate future I want to explore some options for a cheaper/cheating motion feedback. Like buttkickers and live seatbelts systems. Didn't study this much yet though.

Also, as you can see we made the room in a completely dark color scheme and with very subdued lighting. The pictures made with flash, but in reality, it's pretty much all black behind and side of the screen. So the eye of a user do not have any distractions outside of the screen. I'm certain that helps a lot for immersion (vs. bright room, with visible objects behind screen)

 

You're well on your way!

For GPU's - yes, prices are now insane. My son wanted to build a PC with me for gaming with his buddies... and in the end, DIY just wasn't worth it (first time that's ever happened.) Wound up buying a pre-built Dell Alienware when it went on sale at MicroCenter for $1500 - and it came with a 3070. So it was almost like I bought a 3070 and got a PC for free Something to consider.

Motion is.... just IMO? Overrated. Every motion platform I've tried (and I've tried most of them), there is a time delay. It might only be a few microseconds, but when it comes to racing, you can feel it. You can get USED to it (most folks eventually do) but it's got a delay. I think Buttkickers are the right path - just enough to get you some "feel". That's likely my next move on my rig.

 

I think my next upgrade will be to get a PC + monitor so a) I can switch from GT Sport on the PS4 to ACC / iRacing, and b) get the FOV correct (right now my display is a projector screen that's very far away, and GT Sport doesn't have any FOV settings). I have the cheapest Playseat folding cockpit, and Logitech wheel / pedals. I can definitely feel the limits of both. But I too have my eye on the new Fanatec stuff, and I'm leaning towards waiting for that to start shipping next year vs. trying to upgrade right now. Similarly with the cockpit, rigmetal.com looks interesting, and they're out of stock. Hopefully Dell / Newegg / some other pre-built PC options will have some decent sales over the holidays, same for monitors. I didn't realize that I could get started without a GPU, that definitely opens up some more options. Although, I don't really need a 3070, and I found some pre-builts with the previous generation RTX 20xx / GTX 16xx cards that seemed like decent options.

One question for the people playing on PCs - how fiddly is it from bootup to "I'm racing"? On the PS4 that's pretty nice, because I can control everything from the wheel. I see everyone with a keyboard / mouse to the side, and I wonder if that's for chat, or how much that's needed just to get racing?

 

Good motherboard will have GPU built in. It's not anything stellar, but works for a temporary solution. My replays is really quite cinematic, i love watching myself It's just a few clicks to get racing, especially if you keep sim (and track) loaded and just put PC to sleep. Then it's really just few seconds on good hardware. But you do need mouse and keyboard to get through, yes. Keyboard with backlight, control pad or track ball built in is even better for saving space. My current kb is just cheap kb that was in the closet, not the final setup

I'm thinking something like this

 

I'd recommend to go the route of an older PC. I got a REALLY good deal last year on a pre-built with a 2080 and it runs triple 1080's at 144fps all day long on iRacing and other games. In this market with 30xx cards hard to get, I would suggest buying a leftover or a refurb. Even a high end 10xx card will work. For iRacing, the CPU is actually very important. Jus make sure the PC has a good processor like an i7 or i9 with the fastest clock speed you can find.

As for launching games, other than needing a keyboard and mouse, it is not much harder than PS. It really depends on the game. Some have better UI's than others...

 

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I don't think a built-in GPU will be enough for iRacing -- iRacing is very graphics thirsty (CPU also). RTX 20xx works well.