Gator_86_951

I think the other part of this which is understated here is accessibility. It is infinitely easier to get on my rig on a Saturday and run an endurance race with a bunch of other like minded nebbish nerds than any DE would be. Why on earth would I want to 1) load a car on a trailer (which would have to be stored elsewhere since I live so close in), 2) trailer to say summit point, 3) stay in hotel, 4) then lap with passing rules and with people with modern high HP turbo fan-dangled cars that won’t let you by since they have straight line speed.

Club racing is great too, but that too comes with a whole host of rules and risks of your weekend being screwed. And, many classes are so small now. Fact is, the cost for PCA racing really doesn’t justify the experience for many people in my age group (35-40). It isn’t a money thing; we have the money. It’s a bang for the buck thing.

That said, I would like to wheel 2 wheel with my BIL, with a car back home in FL. I am working on him. Unlikely to be a Porsche though.

Nizer

This is pretty cool. Is it available for both Motec and VBOX or just VBOX?

RobertR1

I think for the foreseeable future, sims are going to be most beneficial for those who can already drive competently at a respectable pace and want to learn lines setup changes on a car (given the sim is well programmed).

Going from track to sim, it's easy to reset your mind to accept that you won't feel all the forces, sounds, effects and all the other oddities of real life driving.

For a pure simracer to go right into a track car, that's a lot of information overload. Imagine always having a consistent brake pedal and then getting into a real car and all of a sudden, the pedal gets long or you start feeling more vibration and abs and other things going through your foot. Because they're such new sensations, it'll take time for someone to come upto speed. However, their car balance, lines on the track and understating what the car is doing should already be well ahead. Then there's the fear factor.

Even the guys who do these eSports and other races have a karting background. They just used eSports as an entry point. I do hope and agree it'll continue to grow. The equipment and sims will continue to advance also.

ProCoach

That has not been the case at all, at the highest level of sim racer, in my experience.

Many years ago, perhaps the best simracer in the world, Greg Huttu, was invited to fly in by a manufacturer from Europe and drive some cars at Road Atlanta. Never seen the track (but had thousands of laps on it), never driven a car on track!

Other than some motion sickness in the real car (imagine that, his inner ear had to recalibrate, usually it’s the other way around), he was up to speed right away. Not record pace, but enough to qualify mid-field in the most recent pro-race in those type of cars.

I think of so many really good pro drivers who, while some had some karting experience, most came directly out of sim racing. The factory (Sony PlayStation, NISMO, Mazda Motorsports) programs have brought some great talent out of sim racing regulars. Jan Mardenborough, Glen McGhee and many, many others.

They don’t even seem to have incidents in the same level as non sim racers with similar in-car experience.

Its a tool, not a toy. It pays dividends and has for a long time for club racers, pro racers and people who have never been in the car before, in my two decades of experience.

My focus IS on coaching experienced club and pro racers on sims, to evaluate and diagnose opportunities to do better while I can SEE and talk to them. It’s fantastic. Wheel speed and amplitude, crisis management, vision, pedal speed, all kinds of things are easily observed next to them on a static or motion sim.

I’m a believer. Not for everyone, but for those willing to apply the same resolute learning discipline as to driving IRL (in real life), it can pay off in spades.

ProCoach

Both MoTeC i2 Pro and VBOX Circuit Tools allow the auto-syncing of captured video from a real car or a simulator session WITHIN the data analysis (squiggly lines) window.

For years, enterprising simmers have used video capture cards to capture on screen simulator video, then importing it into a “Camera View” window they insert in the MoTeC i2 Pro Analysis window, then syncing it with the data and recording the whole thing for analysis and study. You have to use a plug-in, a third party plug-in in your PC that allows iRacing to generate .ld MoTeC log files.

Like in real life, you have to take two generated files (data and video) and marry them in the MoTeC software with the sim generated data and video.

With the VBOX Lap Timer (which is a real logger and sophisticated display), it logs the output channels from the iRacing API as a .vbo file. The VBOX SimPack includes a video rendering capability to insert in the iRacing replay video a time stamp.

This allows you to open Circuit Tools 2 and automatically open both the replay video and the .vbo log files of the data (including tire temps and pressures, ride height, brake temps (IIRC)) automatically SYNCED! MUCH easier than the MoTeC process.

Then, you can compare laps side by side with data and video in CT2. Ready mid-August for retail release. I have half a dozen SimPacks pre-sold. Good stuff!

I’ll add that as more and more 991.1 and 991.2 GT3 Cup teams adopt Video VBOX HD2 in real life, the real life collected video and .vbo data will be directly, in the same window, and with the sim generated data and video, able to be compared. I have sold no less than 15 HD2’s to four current IMSA teams for at-track benefits, now we can extend this benefit off-track!

ProCoach

https://www.autosport.com/esports/fe...acing-rostrums

Gator_86_951

Thanks for posting Peter. Very interesting read! I am finding that the public endurance races on iRacing is about as clean as you can get outside of closed leagues. Sprint racing, even in the top splits, can be a bit of a meat grinder. I have been running endurance races with a group for about the last month.