iRacing after 2+ years

[Perfect Zero]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

I would be interested, but my season ticket habit would keep me out of some races. I am better on ovals but I have more fun on road courses.

[Happy29]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

it's looking like we're getting a decent turnout next i guess we should talk scheduling

[PaperBoyx703]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

If we're doing something on weekdays tuesday nights would be the only nights where I could not make it but if it weekends im available anytime.

[Happy29]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

If we're doing something on weekdays tuesday nights would be the only nights where I could not make it but if it weekends im available anytime.

Yeah I was thinking something like Thursday nights

[TCrouch]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

Thursday would probably be the ONLY weekday I could make unless the schedule changes for football.

[superjames1992]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

That time when you spin yourself and destroy your car on the first lap of a 45-minute race................

[Chaos81]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

That time when you spin yourself and destroy your car on the first lap of a 45-minute race................

Been there. Done that. Got about 500 t-shirts.

Even worse is when you spin yourself and destroy other cars on the first lap.

[Happy29]

I'm going to try and get a server up possibly tomorrow night. I know tonight is too short of a notice. Anyone up for trucks at Darlington or Watkins Glen?


Sent from my iPhone 5 while taking the Browns to the Super Bowl.

[Perfect Zero]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

Might need to put it out another week if you want to get anybody. I'm off Thursday and Friday night this week for sure.

[Happy29]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

Might need to put it out another week if you want to get anybody. I'm off Thursday and Friday night this week for sure.

Yeah everyone just name a good time

[superjames1992]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

Phoenix is a mess. I love driving on the track, but the races have been wreckfests...

[Happy29]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

Really good article about iRacing in Popular Mechanics

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/video-games/a-look-into-future-of-driving-sims-16198094?src=soc_fcbks

The first racing game I ever played was a quirky sportscar shoot-em-up called RoadBlasters. The objective was simple: Get to the end of the course without running on empty. The neon palette suggested a story set in some weird Mad Max future in which street racing daredevils barreled down highways avoiding oil spills and obliterating opponents with machine guns. Sometimes in the distance, there would be these futuristic cities resting on the horizon just out of reach.

This was in the early 1990s, after the classic arcade game was ported for the NES. Racing games had already grown since their humble origins—and have grown impressively since, from arcade cabins complete with four-banger shifters to the realistic simulation franchises of today like Forza, Gran Turismo, and the professional PC simulator, iRacing.

iRacing is the co-creation of Dave Kaemmer and John Henry. Kaemmer is a sim veteran having been the creative force behind Papyrus, a now defunct game company who created the heavily influential Indianapolis 500 in the late 80s and its last title Nascar Racing 2003 Season. The company lost its rights to the NASCAR franchise to EA and soon folded. But Kaemmer bought the source code and created iRacing with John Henry, billionaire and avid sim-racer. Since the company was founded in 2004, it’s served two types of consumers: the hobbyist and the professional. iRacing would take realistic gaming somewhere it hadn’t been before.

But this is all the past. What about the future of racing sims? It turns out they are well on their way. Here’s how they’ll be realized.

A Full 360

With the release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this month, we’ve seen stunning automotive eye candy from Forza Motorsport 5 and Need for Speed Rivals. These games hope to take the experience of racing on the console to the maximum degree of realism. But some racers are moving beyond the holding-a-controller, staring-at-the-TV style of gaming. iRacing, a decade old PC-based racing simulator, is one of the first big racing names to take a step into the virtual reality space by placing players in the cockpit via the Oculus Rift headset.

“Imagine driving in a car and having cars racing around you and not even having to worry about driving because it’s so immersive,” says Steve Myers, vice president of iRacing. “Your mind is just blown by what’s going on around you.”

The Oculus Rift, a 2013 PopMech Breakthrough Award winner, gives users a fully immersive experience, allowing them to turn their heads and explore a virtual environment. In the case of iRacing, players can get in the cockpit to race against competitors around the world and look around the cockpit, seeing the whole interior as they look side to side and competitors in passing lanes.

Asphalt Anatomy



What’s a new practice for Forza 5 is something iRacing has been doing for years: using a laser scanner to capture and replicate a racetrack inch by inch, as the game’s designers did at Lime Rock Park racetrack in Connecticut in 2006. “This has been a game changer in the racing space,” Myers says. “We take an engineering-quality laser scanner… and we take that to a race track. Sometimes it can take us over an entire week to get one race track because it’s millions and millions of points of data.”



iRacing takes that data and recreates tracks so that every bump, curve, slope, tree, and building is an exact match. Myers remembers one track in particular—the Bathurst 1000 in Australia—where drivers were clamoring to be included in the track’s beta testing so that they could practice before the race.

Virtuality mimicking reality, or is it the other way around?

Burning Rubber

Nothing is more important in a racing game than understanding and recreating tire physics. Tires are infinitely complex, act differently in different conditions, and wear down over time, making their simulation a constant challenge.

“The one thing we’ve learned in this business that’s crucial to creating an authentic racing experience is the tire model,” Myers says. “It’s an amazing piece of our code. Dave [Kaemmer] has been working for five years trying to create a new tire model for iRacing.”

Creating the perfect tire model is impossible. Developers can only inch closer and closer to what is really happening when rubber meets road. Kaemmer looks at every aspect to how a tire is constructed, analyzes the oils needed to make that tire, and then creates a simulated tire that acts like its real counterpart. “It’s the black science of what racing simulation is,” Myers says. “His bedtime reading is like the physical properties of polymers handbook.”

The Next Lap

The visual interface of racing games have evolved into an immersive, high-definition experience where cars are more beautifully rendered than reality, but motion simulation is nowhere close. And neither, for that matter, is the simulation of what it’s actually like to drive a race car.

“That’s one thing that people don’t understand is that these drivers are basically marathon runners, sitting inside 150-degree cockpits and enduring 3Gs going in the corners,” Myers says. “I don’t know how we get there, but I can see in the future trying to create what it’s really like to be in a race car.”

For now, iRacing is focused on capturing the complexities of how a track reacts to different conditions. Games have already implemented how rain affects race cars, but Myers calls iRacing’s vision a “live track,” as the asphalt reacts different whether in the sun or shade and how marbles—bits of rubber that come off tires during a race—accumulate in certain areas and affect a car’s performance.

As racing games advance and more complexities emerge, the perfect simulation seems further away. But simulators like iRacing keep barreling toward that future in the distance.

[superjames1992]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

Don't forget fellas..take advantage of the IRacing Black Friday deal and get a year subscription for only $49.

Happy Thanksgiving all!

Yeah, good stuff there, though I already am renewed through 2015 since I took advantage of the 2 year/$99 deal earlier this year.

[RunN1st]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

People still race this?

[superjames1992]

Re: iRacing after 2+ years

People still race this?

You just can't beat it as far as the ease to find multiplayer races. I don't think it's necessarily any more realistic than NR 2003, Game Stock Car 2013, etc. (perhaps even less so), but open servers in other games just don't offer the pick-up-and-play racing that iRacing offers (and with many games it's hard to find anyone online). Of course, other games have leagues, but I kind of just prefer to race when I want and don't want to have to wait until a set time once per week.