mig7410

I think it really helps a lot with getting you up to speed much faster using a sim. The only course I drive in real life and on my sim is Mid Ohio. I drove hundreds of laps around that course before I ever went there and I was up to speed within 4 or 5 laps. Sure you do miss a lot of the g forces and the biggest thing is no fear. So you will go off course much more just because you can hit re-set.
You also will be temped to run a better car then you really have like a Porsche Cup car. If you are trying to get ready for a course it's best to stay with a car that is similar to what you really have. I can do Mid Ohio 10 seconds faster in a cup car then a street car. I don't even drive Indy or F1 cars because the grip is just crazy good.
Iracing does have a interesting way of progressing you. You start out as a rookie, then D, C, B and A. The way you advance in a race is based on your SA Safety Rating. Every time you go off course hit a wall or another car you get a incident. Most races will only allow you 12 or so and then you get tossed out. So say you get 1st with 6 incidents, and the guy who get 2nd with zero incidents he will advance his SR more then yours. This really encourages clean smooth racing.
Also NACAR is a lot of fun. It is so realistic I could almost predict the finish of the Daytona 500 Sunday, With one lap to go at Daytona its always better to be in 2nd or 3rd on the last lap. You will get such a good aero push going you can almost always run down the leader.
Racing a sim is also very exhausting, at least for my 57yo body. The sim is in my basement which is very cool. In a matter of minutes I'm sweating. If your on a bumpy course like Kentucky
Speedway you will get tired of fighting the wheel over the bumps. The Accuforce and most of the other wheels will let you turn down the force feedback if you want.

FLA997

Hahaha...yep! I still shake my head when someone (an Alien) brakes at the 2 marker going into T7 at Sebring and actually hits the apex (911 Cup). You will definitely see some things that are just NOT possible in a real car....but not often.

For me this was a huge factor. I had to be in the same seat as the real car. I had to have the same wheel, the pedals had to feel like the Cup and be absolutely correctly positioned. You guys will probably think I'm nuts but I'm adding belts to my rig as well...

Sebring: They just need to "update" T1 pit wall and T17 exit (the grass)... I routinely get chastised for not using the present iRacing config where the T1 pit wall is shifted to the right and not using that track real estate. I simply ignore it as if the wall continued with no shift to keep it as real as possible (for me). I've heard some other tracks need updating as well.

mglobe

switchface

The analogy to audio equipment was a good one. I went from having fun on a Xbox and plastic wheel to a full blown motion rig with high end gear. Slippery slope indeed, but worth every penny. While I'm a fan of 'buy once cry once', the sim community is alive with buy/sell threads, so you can always parlay your old gear for the next upgrade. My Accuforce wheel and HPP pedals transformed my interaction with the sim, and my previous gear helped cover their cost.

If you are serious about race prep, iRacing league races is a good choice (even though I personally don't care for it), as all tracks are laser scanned and each driver is in a class due to their safety rating. It does have a subscription fee and you pay for each car/track a la carte.

I think I said it earlier, but I still stand by the fact that a properly setup motion rig turns your experience from a mere game to an alive experience. By this I mean I felt my actions had consequences - I was nervous and sweating the first time I tried a motion rig. I started a session the other day and the motion was temporarily/accidentally paused and my equilibrium was immediately 'off' as I began braking for T1 and I was not pitched forward. To continue the audio analogy, a poorly tuned motion rig will be as disappointing as a pair of Martin Logan's backed against a wall, pointing away from the listener.

Barry from Sim Racing Garage on Youtube does a good job of breaking down gear to the little engineer inside all of us. Gives you an appreciation for the build quality and the nuance certain types of gear provide. I always like seeing gear in action to determine if the value they offer is worth the asking price. A lot of the gear discussed in this thread (HE, HPP, 80/20, Accuforce, OSW, seat mover, DBOX, etc) has been throughly broken down in Barry's videos if you search his channel.

mglobe

I'm relatively new to using iRacing other than to learn new tracks, so take my comments for being worth what you paid for them. I've talked with two MX-5 Cup drivers who are pretty successful, and both have pointed me towards iRacing to help improve my driving in general, not just on specific tracks. One of them is a multi-time SM national champion who I have used as a coach. The other is a friend who went from running with me in mid-pack SM to being a contender in MX-5 Cup. He improved dramatically over the course of one year. When I asked him how he improved so much, he credited sim time. His comment was that by removing g-forces from the equation, you are forced to learn to drive with your eye and ears, and feedback to your feet and hands. He was particularly focused on the eyes part (probably due to being an optometrist). Basically if you can be quick without the g-force input, you can be even better with it when you go to the real world. Makes some sense to me, but then like I said in my first comment, I'm still learning.

ProCoach

matt33

brake dust

I like driving the Cup car in iRacing. I find it too difficult to jump back and forth from the Cup car to even a GT3 car and be competitive. So spend most of my time with the Cup car. As someone posted above, if you live in the north, iRacing is a fun acticty in the winter months!

Based on the comments - am going to install SimVibe. Will run chassis with BK LFE minis - so do you have any recommendation for a 4 channel amp?

Thanks!

JustinL

We run on Wednesday nights at 6:15 mountain time for 2 hours. Because we're a rennlist group, we always run Porsche variants. Before the official cup car came out, we ran the GT3 version of the RUF. Now it's 991 cup. Generally we do North American tracks that rennlist members are likely to actually drive and race at. I have to admit that I've missed a lot of races this year and I need to get back into it. Check the sticky thread to see what's going on in any given week. All you need to do is PM your iracing name to me or OmniJim and we can add you to the list of drivers, then you just show up whenever you can.

Difool

When does the fire suppression system go in? Safety first!

To the point made above by a couple people, I'm really appreciating how the sim forces the brain to use ocular inputs. I don't know whether the book "Perfect Control" form the "Science of Speed Series" is well received by the crowd here (is it?), but that's where I first was exposed to the idea that vision was the better tool for determining yaw and speed than kinesthetics. I'd assumed that the butt-dyno was doing all that work, but the assertion was that ocular input (especially when trained) is far more precise and really the best tool for understanding where car is really heading and whether in under- or over-steer.

So twist my arm, I had to get a rig The funny thing is that when i think back on a session, like the iracing race last night with COM SCC at LRP, I *remember* the gforces and compression from the turn-in on the downhill. So clearly something is getting wired up in my brain. It will be interesting to see what it's like to get back out on the same tracks.

To echo what Peter said (not that it's needed). The few times that I have spun out from oversteer on real tracks: I now understand that there was *no way* I would have saved those. From the sim I learned I was (a) looking where the car was going, not where I wanted it to go, and (b) my corrections were too slow and about half of what they needed to be. It was cool to repeatedly get into the same situations in iRacing, with the same outcomes, and it has been way cooler to start to develop the ability to change those outcomes!

In 5 years of HPDE I've gotten to learn how to scoot around the track with increasing speed and efficiency, but feel that the development of skills to handle what is on the other side of control have been lacking and are certainly not encouraged. So safety has been increasingly bothering me, and my training in the sport has felt out of balance. To add to this I had a close call last year when I optimistically read an ambiguous point-by. This was in a black/advance DE run group, but DE just doesn't let anyone really practice situational awareness in a meaningful way. It was about as close a call as one can imagine and it was on me and gave me something else to worry about. I got the simulator (with VR) to work on both ocular and situational skills, but I wasn't sure what to expect. If you can't tell, I'm shocked by how effective it is as a training tool. Then there's the virtual skid pad, but I'm already rambling.

ProCoach

THIS is COOL! So glad to hear this. The plasticity of the mind is incredible and you are REALLY using your sim time WELL! Congrats!

Nizer

switchface

The majority of motion rigs fall into two categories: 'seat movers' and DBOX. I tried both before buying my rig - CXC's $50k 'seat mover' setup at a Porsche event and I also tried a Human Racing chassis on a 4 actuator DBox setup.

'Seat movers' create immersion by manipulate your inner ear/balance to create a sense of motion via the principles of kinesthesia and proprioception. The concept is that since no (realistic) simulator can provide the full G-Forces the way an actual vehicle can, you must trick the brain into perceiving these effects thus forcing the body to emphasize muscle pressures. The key is not to move the wheel and pedals, and only the occupant (thus the term 'seat mover'). For example, under braking, the same forces are essentially applied to the muscles in my wrists and forearms as would be applied in an actual vehicle, and as a byproduct I tighten and brace my core. Seat movers argue that simulators that attempt to move the entire cockpit/wheel/pedals (i.e. DBOX) cannot create these pressures to manipulate the sense of balance. To me, I think Rear Traction Loss is amazing. When I employ too much throttle, whether off camber, tires too greasy, or I haven't unwound my steering inputs enough, I feel it in my *** before I notice it on screen and I can correct it. I know others are commenting above on not wanting to have this feeling on purpose so you can focus on just visual inputs, but I can't speak to that. I'm not race training, but I'm sure having a ton of immersive fun while building my skills along the way!

Here is a video of someone with a SimXperience seat mover:

The counter argument for DBOX is that in a real car you don't move independent of the seat/pedals. I think this is missing the point as noted above. DBOX has a neat feeling of being hung by an actual suspension with actuators at all 4 corners. I like how quiet and compact the actuators/rig can be, especially considering they can also take care of the vibrations of SimVibe from within the actuators. I think you get a better sense of elevation with DBOX, and it can feel like a very tight 'ride' in a fun way. I reference earlier that Barry from Sim Racing Garage had the same rig as I, but he just replaced it with a DBOX setup just to switch things up. He has not had this setup long, so he's still formulating his opinions, but he keeps getting asked about missing rear traction loss. So far, he says that RTL was his favorite input, but somehow the DBOX is able to still convey the sense of the rear braking loose. He's not entirely sure how, but this is his initial impression so far.

Here is Barry on a DBOX setup:

Cost wise, you can buy (the most popular seat mover) the SimXperience rig in stages; here is what I have (costing around $5500ish). DBOX gets expensive, for 4 actuators you can pay 2-4 times that much for just the actuators.

I think its best if you can try them out for yourself. Most setups at expos and such are turned way up for wow factor, which takes away from the immersion and turns it into more of a carnival ride. I have my effects turned way down as you don't need much to trick the brain. For me personally, I preferred the 'seat mover' as it causes me to brace and tighten in small ways. In the future, I think a neat 80/20 rig with DBOX would make a cool VR setup. Another cool company with different setups to look at is SimCraft. They travel to many races throughout the season as they have sponsored many drivers (Jordan Taylor among others). SimCraft seems very popular with race teams and their setups can get in the $30k range - I'd love to try one of these as they employ many different DOF, seemingly combining the effects of DBOX and a seat mover.

Here is a video of one of the SimCraft setups:

ProCoach

Great, very informative post! Thank you, switchface!

If and when I decide to adopt motion for my personal simulators, I will go with D-Box.

hsmith

I want a D-Box setup so badly.