ProCoach

I would say that if you think the focus is on gaming over replicating the real world and prioritizing it as a driver development tool, you may be looking in the wrong places. I've spent twenty-five years using sims for driver training in real life, and now it's nearly ubiquitous.

Almost all the people I've worked with (and are familiar with) use sims as a training and driver development tool. Modeling the chassis ergonomics, the control input resistance, self-centering and feedback, as well as duplicating brake modulation travel and feel are what most spend their time on.

The Simucube pedal is really cool, although I have been a Heusinkveld user for a long time.

I think you're going to get a LOT out of your upgrade. There is no shortage of good equipment right now. Good luck!

jid2

Hey Peter - Yeah thanks for the feedback. I know that the race teams are out there doing this stuff, but I don't see a place where that community is talking/sharing anyplace online? If so point me in that direction! Just like the original poster mentioned it's not easy to find a place to go to deal more with setting up a simulator. Even the turn key places I've come across are more focused on it being a sim racing setup as opposed to a representation of an actual car somebody might have.

ProCoach

Let me see what I can come up with.

Ziggmeister

If you're a PCA member, I can recommend PCA Sim Racing. There's an active group of drivers, and overall it's a very well run league with fun events, eDE classroom and practice sessions, and lots of helpful people.

https://pcasimracing.com/

daaa nope

Yup - agreed. Tho I will also grant: the space you play in is a much, MUCH, smaller market. If these sim companies had to rely on that size of a market, they wouldn't exist.

I tried my hand at building race sim rigs for a side biz (after already contracting with a flight simulator company for a few years), did manage to sell a few, before an unrelated ugly court case derailed my finances, and I just never picked it back up. But at the time, I had partnered with a local (now defunct and frankly, good riddance) race shop to build rigs that matched their physical setups in their customer's real race cars. I'm a big VR proponent so to me, it was important to get the controls placements right more than looking cool and flashy. I have tons of 3D scans of cockpits or client's real race cars, which I used to precisely measure and set up the sim frames to match the control placements.

What makes it a tough business though, is all the post-sales support. The kind of customer that wants an accurate "trainer" is usually NOT "computer literate". They don't have time (or the desire) to put it all together, deal with updates, etc. And on more than a handful of occasions, I'd get a call from a customer stating that they'd had the grandkids over, the kids loaded up Duke Nukem on it... and suddenly, things didn't work anymore. And so, so, SO, many other cases where it was just a random windows update that broke something. You know how often I still field phone calls today (and I haven't sold a rig since 2020) where iRacing sound quits working? Because some update hit and now all the previously-selected devices now say "(DISCONNECTED)" and I have to walk them through re-choosing their sound devices. For a technie and enthusiast like me, it's a quick fix and something I don't think about. But for the average Joe.... they just know "my simulator is broken again..."

peterp

It may come in a little over the $5k budget , but my son spent about 20 minutes driving the $150k Simcraft 6dof rig at the 12 Hours of Sebring. He has driven 6 or 7 motion rigs over the years and hasn't been impressed with them any of them (they didn't feel like real life and were just distracting). Simcraft is by far the best he's experienced. He's still of the opinion that, if your goal is to be a fast sim racer, you don't need motion. That said, for those who are focused on track, and only use sim to improve their track performance (and aren't hindered by budget!), Simcraft may be worth checking out. TJ Halsema ((770)851-8175) was very helpful if anyone is interested in learning more -- he spent a lot of time answering our questions and was able to rearrange things to open a time slot for my son to drive even though they were fully booked till closing.

They also had a $75k 3dof version available for evaluation. He probably would have found a way to get my son on that rig also, but we felt like we had already used enough of his time and didn't ask.

ProCoach

As a sim proponent for twenty-five years, including selling hundreds and coaching more than that on sims, I would agree with that assessment.

Timmy Hill, a NASCAR driver, won a big NASCAR sim race during the pandemic using a twelve year-old G27 Logitech clamped to his desk and took off his shoes to use the pedals in socks. Gregg Biffle was using a $105K SimCraft. Footnote: https://www.autoweek.com/racing/nasc...0office%20desk.

peterp

I don't have any experience with this rig, but I have to say that at $5885 for a full system including PC, ultrawide, Heusinkveld Sprints, Simucube Sport, Cube wheel, Sparco seat, 80/20 Frame, etc -- this looks pretty difficult to beat. Need to look at what the PC specs are, but they claimed to have spec'ed it well for iRacing.

https://www.murraymotorsport.com/mur...-mur555-1000-b

TomGT3

Anyone know about the APX-1000 or 3000?
https://www.ricmotech.com/simulator-packages

ShakeNBake

I went a bit deeper here than i wanted to. At the moment the most immersive driving experience (compared to iRacing and ACC) I spend time in is the PS2VR with GT7, Maxwell headphones, with a Fanatec base and a Podium porsche wheel (and pedals, race seat, 120mm rig, etc). The racing simulation is not where iRacing is, but it's surprisingly good. Exact same setup works on xbox and PC. VR on PC is OK, helps to have heavy metal like a 4090 to make sure you don't get sick. If you want to tip toe into this, I think it's a great place to start (PSVR2 + GT7 + fanatec and a proper wheel)

Cloud9...68

The OP's original post piqued my interest, because I had a similar goal with my sim set-up. I was hoping to use it as a training tool on which I could practice, with a goal of my time on the sim translating to improved lap times in the real car. After years of doing DE's, I took the plunge a couple of years ago and started competing in wheel-to-wheel racing in an arrive-and-drive series run by an outfit call Primal Racing (who do an outstanding job), driving rented Radical SR1's, at Atlanta Motorsports Park. My situation represented an excellent test case for the ability of sim training to translate to the real world, because I don't own my own SR1, or anything resembling it, so my only opportunity to "practice" between the monthly races was on the sim. My set-up is quite nice - It's all Fantec based, with a DD1 direct drive wheel, their top-of-the-line pedals, triple monitors, etc. I hired an experienced sim coach to create a virtual SR1 matched as closely as possible to the real thing, using R-Factor2, the only sim software that has AMP. I've spent countless hours on the sim, running thousands of laps, and saw, over time, significant and steady improvements in my sim lap times, achieving times on occasion that match the pro's times in the real SR1's.

So how did this translate to the real car? Zero, zip, nada, nil, scratch, zilch. I have a lot of respect for sim racers, as it is a significant skill to master, but I found the skill set for being proficient on the sim to be dramatically different from that needed to be fast in a real car. The sim is all about hand/eye coordination; it reminds of sports like golf, racquetball, or tennis, where being competent in a race car is all about sensing, and quickly responding to, the car's rotation through the corners (excuse the dramatic over-simplification). I understand the argument about the visual cues from the sim being a reasonable substitute for sensing the car's rotation, but I haven't found that to be the case at all. Interestingly, I found it working in the reverse order to some extent; I was able to take insights from the pro drivers' critiques of my data in the SR1 and apply it to my sim driving, and saw measurable improvements in my times and consistency, but haven't seen it work the other way. At all. I can see the sim being very useful for a race team to try out modifications to suspension settings before applying them to the real car, and it's a great way to learn a new track, but as far as any direct connection between getting faster on a sim to getting faster in a real race car, my experience is that this is simply not a thing, so I kind of feel like it was a waste of money, since I have no interest in sim racing. One of the more experienced pro's at AMP told me not to expect the sim to make me a better driver in the real car - I wish I had listened to him, as he was dead on.

For anybody else who has bought a sim with a similar goal in mind, how has your experience been?

daaa nope

I would not look at a sim as a way to really improve driving skills or techniques, as it pertains to the fundamentals of operating the vehicle - outside of some small edge cases.

Something like heel-toe (I learned the feet coordination of it from my sim before I could do it in the real car.). Also, spin recovery.. or at least, the realization that, yes, the steering wheel works even if you find yourself unexpectedly rolling backwards.

I also think it's helpful for learning new tracks... provided you are using a software package that has accurate tracks (and IMO, free track downloads on things like Assetto Corsa are rarely accurate enough.). I personally used it to pre-train for a lot of tracks when I got a little more serious and started doing arrive-and-drive with teams 5-6 years ago. I'd put hours into it in the sim... and when I got to the track, it was like I'd already been there. Sure there are lots of nuances that come from actually being there - but I knew where it went right and left, knew which corners were fast, which were slow, had a rough idea on turn in points, etc. Between myself and my teammates (endurance racing)... we'd each really only need 6-7 laps each to feel comfortable enough to dive into the actual race.

Where I think the sim helps a TREMENDOUS amount - is the art of racecraft, and the mental requirements of retaining focus when you go racing. If you're just a DE guy.. then this is useless to you. You can stop reading here. But if you are racing, and you consciously decide to take the sim seriously - this is IMO a monumental help. You have to trick yourself and pretend like it's the real thing... that you could die if you bin it, etc. THEN it teaches you situational awareness (and in the sim, everyone else's situational awareness is WAY less than in a real car... especially people who use monitors instead of VR.). Get on, and try to run for 30 minutes straight. An hour straight. 2 hours straight. And do it in a grid full of other cars... and while not putting a single tire off in the dirt. That takes mental strength and conditioning - to run the same laps, every lap, back to back, without mistakes, and avoiding others that have terrible awareness of what's going on.

A big difference between doing a DE, and going racing... the DE is about the driving. You are thinking about your driving.. press the gas, squeeze the brake, turn the wheel. It's at the front of your mind. When racing? The driving is background. That's autopilot. I'm thinking about the car ahead, the car behind... what are they doing, where am I faster, where are they faster? Should I defend here? If I make a move here, can I hold it?

And if you want to make it more real... don't run the sim in your nice air-conditioned basement. Put it in your attic and crank the heat... so you're trying to do this while you are sweaty AF and it's 120F air temps, sweat running down your forehead and into your eyes...

But if you think the sim will just help you with car control... you're going to be disappointed.

Ziggmeister

The biggest benefit I get out of it is learning tracks. Yes it's not accurate, I realized that when 2 different mods for the same track drove differently Also a GT4 Clubsport in the sim drives very differently from my base Cayman IRL, even with power / gearing mods. So I'm not even learning braking and turn-in points. But at least you get the turns in your head, like you said, especially for blind corners over hills and situations like that. It saved me time (and therefore money) on track days since I was able to get to working on a line earlier in the day, vs. needing a couple of stints just to get the track in my head.

daaa nope

HEH well... the FIRST time I went from sim to racetrack... probably 2009? I went with my braking markers from the sim.... headed into T5 at Road America... and proceeded to slalom the exit barriers, autocross-style, at a very high rate of speed as I learned my 944 Turbo was NOT going to slow enough to actually make the turn.

So um.. yes... don't use the sim to learn braking points. But in general... it will at least help you learn "Turn 5 is heavy braking... Turn 1, not so much..."

And yes... most "mods" out there are complete crap.

I recognize I can be a bit of an iRacing fanboy but that's generally what I stick to. I did use Assetto with some mods for learning AMP... and it was about the same experience as if they had AMP loaded up in Mario Kart.

Cloud9...68

I agree that the main benefit of a sim is to help learn new tracks (although I'm not sure it's all the much better for that than watching videos). I've also heard it's good for practicing racecraft, but for some reason, I have no interest in sim racing. For reasons I can't quite explain, I find it overwhelmingly intimidating, much more than racing an actual car. As I said above, I saw zero correlation between my lap times on the sim, which improved significantly with practice, and lap times in the real race car, which I only got to drive once a month, and remained stagnant. That's all about to change - I just bought my own SR3, in which I plan to get a lot of sim time. Meantime, I expect my sim rig to continue to gather dust.