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Early Christmas present to myself. Thanks to Jim for the source (just took 2 weeks in UPS hell).
Once I have it up and running I will be selling by GT3 wheel (only a year old) this slope is almost as slippery as the club racing one :-)
You bastards need to stop posting pics of that 918 wheel... LOL.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
Early Christmas present to myself. Thanks to Jim for the source (just took 2 weeks in UPS hell).
Once I have it up and running I will be selling by GT3 wheel (only a year old) this slope is almost as slippery as the club racing one :-)
this slope is almost as slippery as the club racing one :-)
Tell me about it.
Relatee query: How much should I budget to build a dedicated PC with a three-monitor set up?
(NB: I already have a Logitech G25 and a Bob Earl racing seat, so for now at least, just looking to upgrade the PC/Monitor, a better seat will have to come later)
Allen, If you go back in this thread to sometime last here where was some discussion around the machines, I built mine and spend more that I probably should of, I bought 3 24in monitors from Office Depot I think for ~$150 each. The important part if the video card.
That said if I would do it now I might just skip the triple monitor and go to the Rift, I'm just waiting for that to go GA.
Relatee query: How much should I budget to build a dedicated PC with a three-monitor set up?
(NB: I already have a Logitech G25 and a Bob Earl racing seat, so for now at least, just looking to upgrade the PC/Monitor, a better seat will have to come later)
Relatee query: How much should I budget to build a dedicated PC with a three-monitor set up?
(NB: I already have a Logitech G25 and a Bob Earl racing seat, so for now at least, just looking to upgrade the PC/Monitor, a better seat will have to come later)
Willing to build it yourself, or looking to have it built?
DIY, $1k can get you a really nice, solid PC. Then add monitors. I think a few folks here recently built new machines, they can give their specs on costs.
Places IMO to spend money are in the graphics card (nVidia GTX770 or GTX970, or AMD R9 280) first, then a decent processor (I have an older Intel Core i5-3570k and even though I built it over a year ago it's still more than enough). And if you're running stock, unmodified G27 pedals - pony up for the "Perfect Pedal" mod. Makes a HUGE difference.
As for going triple monitors... two schools of thought. 1: get decent low-latency monitors. I have a set of BenQ GW2450's (24") that were awesome when I was running triples. BenQ is pretty well known for low-latency LCD's. Got them at Microcenter for $169/ea on a Black Friday deal in 2013.
2: Skip the triples and go Oculus Rift. Now - I've been touting the Oculus Rift for a while now, and I recognize I'm also a bit of an "Early adopter" when it comes to this stuff, so my opinion might be slanted more than it needs to be. Chris (baddogz) and Justin here both recently bought them, and I know Chris has been using his a few weeks. Justin just tried his out, officially in a RL league race, this past week. Hopefully they'll both share their 2 cents.
But MY opinions - once you get used to the lower resolution of the Rift's screen.... no comparison to triples. Your wife might make fun of you for wearing goggles, but it's true 3D, 100% head tracking. Pulling into traffic, you literally look over your shoulder, out the window past the B-pillar, to make sure no one is coming. You look through the turns to the apex and the next turns. You see your "hands" holding the wheel in front of you. You use your depth perception to gauge distances... cars in front actually get closer to you, they just don't get "bigger" on the screen.
And the current Rift is $350. And IMO - it's worth double that, no contest in my book. So buying the next version when it comes out in late 2015 (still expected to be 300-350) will still be a bargain. And two Rifts are in the same $$$ ballpark as 3 monitors anyways.
If you want to make the trek out to Huntley, I'd be more than happy to let you try out my setup for a few hours before you dive into anything.
I'm really trying to love the Oculus rift and it has huge potential. I'm not sure if it's my rig or just a sensitivity to blur, but I really struggle with the screen blurring when I turn my head. I love it for spectating, and other games, but driving with it I find difficult. Jim seems to do really well. I'd really suggest trying out Jim's if you can to see if it's something you want to invest in. Though like Jim says, it's really a great value regardless. In the last race, I found that even chewing gum while wearing the rift moved it around on my face enough that it felt weird. Also the force feed back from the wheel can jolt my shoulders enough to shake my head and I lose focus. I'm faster with triples, the game looks prettier because I can run higher detail, but it's never going to match the rift for immersion. When the consumer rift comes out and iracing is finally out of directx 9, then we'll truly see how good VR racing can be.
I just upgraded my video card to a GTX 970 and it's totally bottlenecked by my CPU, which is ancient. This weekend I'm going to pop over to the local nerd store and get a new motherboard and an i5-4690K. That should clear up any hardware limitations my system has and keep me going for another few years before the next upgrade.
Just to add. When you are looking for a video card, be very selective about what outputs it has and make sure that they are compatible with whatever monitors you are going to be using. This is especially important if you are going with 120hz displays.
I'm really trying to love the Oculus rift and it has huge potential. I'm not sure if it's my rig or just a sensitivity to blur, but I really struggle with the screen blurring when I turn my head. I love it for spectating, and other games, but driving with it I find difficult. Jim seems to do really well. I'd really suggest trying out Jim's if you can to see if it's something you want to invest in. Though like Jim says, it's really a great value regardless. In the last race, I found that even chewing gum while wearing the rift moved it around on my face enough that it felt weird. Also the force feed back from the wheel can jolt my shoulders enough to shake my head and I lose focus. I'm faster with triples, the game looks prettier because I can run higher detail, but it's never going to match the rift for immersion. When the consumer rift comes out and iracing is finally out of directx 9, then we'll truly see how good VR racing can be.
I just upgraded my video card to a GTX 970 and it's totally bottlenecked by my CPU, which is ancient. This weekend I'm going to pop over to the local nerd store and get a new motherboard and an i5-4690K. That should clear up any hardware limitations my system has and keep me going for another few years before the next upgrade.
The DK2 is a little bit pickier/trickier to set up. DK1 worked great right out of the box.
Justin if you're getting motion blur, then something isn't set up right IMO. It too me a while to get mine working right - I know when a random setting gets reset because suddenly the view gets blurry when I move my head... and it is REALLY nauseating.
First few questions I have:
- Extended or Direct mode?
- If in Direct - try using Extended. Better framerates. I'll talk about Direct later.
- If (or once you are) in Extended: Are you 100% certain that your Rift is being refreshed at 75Hz? You might need to make sure that ALL monitors on your system are running at 75Hz to ensure the Rift is, too. That might mean running the other monitors at odd resolutions. Running at 75Hz is *key* to enabling low persistence. Possible easy way to tell - when you get the Rift warning screen, is the white text really bright and white? Or more of a dull white or grey? If it's bright white, you're running at 60Hz. Needs to be a dull color, that's 75 with Low Persistence.
- Once you've for sure got the Rift running at 75Hz, then you have to make sure that your framerate stays at or above 75Hz. I have my 970 locked at 95 fps when I run in extended mode... and I hardly ever drop below that. In some odd cases (Spa with lots of cars around) it'll fall down into the upper 60s and I can feel it. Do what you can to keep things over 75 at all times.
- In Extended mode - keep V-sync off. It introduces a teeny tiny bit of lag.
For fun, and to see the true potential (if you aren't already doing it) - try running it in Direct mode. In a private test, on an easy-to-render track (like Lime Rock or Summit, one of the original iRacing tracks), give it a shot. It should be smooth like butta. There is a known issue with screen tearing in the right eye. Not much you can do about it. Otherwise, it's amazingly smooth and IMO perfect.
Downside to Direct mode is that I think it needs more dev work - add a few other cars, or run on a newer track, and you pretty quickly lose framerate.... which becomes difficult to drive with.
Give the few things a shot and let me know if that works. Ping me on FB if you get stuck.
Trying to learn Indy for next week and play with the new wheel, this wheel will give you a workout.
Not a big fan of indy, shorter than I would of thought and for some reason I don't think this would be a good thing:-)
Nice. I like how your shadow is sticking out past the 2nd wall. I looked to see what the records are at Indy. There aren't any. Nobody seems to like it.
I took the G27 apart today and sure enough, the rotational encoder wheel is broken almost in half. I tried to glue it but my first attempt rendered it inoperable. I got it working again but it's no better then it was and looks ready to fail entirely. New part ordered from Thailand but if I don't show up tomorrow night...
You bastards need to stop posting pics of that 918 wheel... LOL.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
I am content with my BMW CSL wheel.
Hey, ya know what's totally awesome? The 918 wheel. Isn't it, Phil? Totally bad ***. OMG it is soooooo awesome....
But really, this CSW V2 wheel, once I got it set up right, is totally bad ***. Definitely worth the investment.
I'm going to miss the race this week (travelling to wet and rainy LA for work), and might also miss practice tonight (depends on how the wifey is with me disappearing to the basement for two hours when I'm going to be gone all next week).
But she's out Christmas shopping now. And I'm home alone. Which means I'm on iRacing. I can host up a session at Indy if anybody is interested?
Session hosted under generic hosted sessions. I left it open for non-members since not sure how many of you guys are on, and I don't want to be in there all by myself. Besides, no one will be able to tell I'm not wearing pants so what's the big deal anyways?
12-12-2014, 04:48 PM
