Quick Look: iRacing.com

Neat

I want my prize!

I was like 10 minutes late to this. I was downloading the updates and they finished just after you guys finished recording :(

No Vinny?

Brodyquest for 10 hours.

I sure like these three duders in a QL that we have going on.

Please quick look more websites in the future.

I built most of the New Hampshire Speedway for this game...I'm having serious flashbacks watching this quicklook.

This is the iCarly of racing games

Never even heard of this game prior to these guys putting it on the schedule.

Long time iRacer here! Love that it's getting some GiantBomb love :)

I lost 18 months to this damn game. On the plus side if it wasn't for iRacing i would not have found Giant Bomb...

Collision-free racing? No way... That can't possibly be a thing.

My issue with iRacing is the cost. You need a good setup (wheel, shifter, TrackIR, etc.) which itself is pricey. The subscription doesn't bother me, but the price of tracks and cars, which you need to compete, is pretty high. I understand that they charge as much as they do because they model the cars and tracks so meticulously, but it's still a hard pill to swallow.

the payment schemes for this are fucking insane.

Learning how to heel-toe, as @drewbert described, is difficult but immensely rewarding.

Edit: this reads like a fortune cookie.

Jeff already knows all about collision-free racing! He's an expert on the subject!

Oh boy :D Hope this isn't a crashfest

Who would play this shit? Monthly fee, then buy cars, then buy tracks, then buy fucking server time?

Drew! :D

I just want to ram others. I want destruction.

The hell. When I downloaded the High quality version of this, I got an MS-DOS application.

@flacracker: People who like competitive simracing? It's not that expensive in the end. They run promos for 50 usd/year for the subscription quite often, you never need to buy server time (it's just for non-official races, all the official leagues you don't have to pay for) and you can race for years in the free cars and maybe 3 paid tracks (I know I have, tho I don't race that actively). Compared to the amount of time you have to put in to actually do even half-decently, it's not very much. Yeah, compared to other non-subscription games it is, but this is a super niche product and they've obviously calculated that they wouldn't get enough more subscribers to cover the costs if, say, all tracks and cars were free.

@flacracker: People who want the absolute best in terms of simulation. This is for a super-niche audience who are heavily invested and gain an immense amount of joy out of this. iRacing really is in it's own league when it comes to this level of precision and life-like simulation experience.

Oh man.... watching this really makes me want to re activate my iRacing sub.....

@flacracker: You pay a monthly sub for just a gaming website! Seriously, who'd pay for that shit?!

It's not Divekick, so they don't have any fancy domains, but iRacing is also on Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=129485071

@skullcrushermountain: Didnt hizang get banned for saying that website?

@jertje: I signed up for a year sub a while ago. Played it for about 2 months, and really enjoyed it. What ruined it for me was that it was impossible to get into races with my friends. Too bad, because the concept is great.

I want an iGolfing equivalent.

Drew seems to be using the oval config in the Legends (at least at ~10min), the car is practically undrivable on a road track with that. Pretty awesome, with that in mind, that he's going slow and steady and not spinning around like crazy (which is easy if you push at all on the oval baseline). Exactly like you're supposed to learn to get faster!

It is for things like this that I love GiantBomb.

I'm looking forward to them doing pCars whenever that actually comes out, the whole way that game is being funded and developed is so crazy.

Heel toe is pretty basic stuff, certainly not iRacing exclusive.

Awesome! Thanks for the QL @drewbert I added you in iRacing. I also have some screenshots over on the iRacing page of some whiskey media paint jobs I did. I have a Obuto cockpit with the triple screens but I don't have a picture handy.

Drew just had the mirrors off. I race with them on but they're a big performance hit.

Also helpful for Drew is to have F3 up during races.

edit: It's also week 13 now which is the off week. They just do random events mostly. Seasons are 12 weeks rotating tracks each week in each series.

@draugen: Yeah, it's what made a bunch of people I know reconsider the sim as well. The thing is, that iRacing tries (and in many ways succeeds) to be an online alternative of real race competitions on all levels. With the hosted events you can get your own thing going for a charge, but in practice this is only really used to host tournaments or practice for track/car combinations that are on the schedule for the following week and don't yet have 'official' servers.

What makes it so ridiculously expensive compared to other sims/games is that all tracks and cars are laser scanned and modeled to perfection. There is no room (besides the sheer difficulty of 'getting it right' with current day technology and knowledge of, say, tyre compounds) for guess-work or modeling anything based on 'feel'. Also, many guys I know have invested thousands (we're talking $1000-$5000 here) on their setup. For many people, including myself, iRacing is not a game but a relatively cheap alternative to racing for real and having to spend $5000 per weekend to get a car to a track and potentially wrap it around a wall somewhere.

It's also worth nothing that there is nothing you can do on a PC that is more exciting than racing a very, very difficult to control car around a perfect virtual track in perfect harmony with other like-minded and insanely skilled people. The fear of ending your race (no resets, damage is always on, people racing with you are seeerious about this stuff), the pressure from having a faster driver 0,2 second behind you into a 100mph brake zone, going into a turn side-by-side while both cars are sliding slightly... to myself and many others, that can't be beaten by anything but the real thing.

Haha.

i went to the British Grandprix at Silverstone a few years back and can testify to just how insanely loud the cars our.

Pff, they already quicklooked the internet quite thoroughly in the Euro Truck Sim 2 quicklook.

Excited to see this. I just started a month or so ago and love it. Just stick with it and watching the driving school videos can really help. I sent you a friend request friend

Wow, I think Drew and I are in complete synergy. I just started iRacing a few weeks ago and have been loving it. Before that I was flying warthogs and choppers in DCS World.

I love this guy!!

Well @drewbert you have gone and done it. i just re-activated my years old iRacing account. I blame you for this!

@brad: DaaaayTOOOOOOOONAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

@brutushayesosu: What, Pang'ya not good enough for you? Huh? Pfffffft.

Shit on a stick! that's an expensive game.

Is it really weird for people in the US to use a clutch to switch gears? are all cars in the US with automatic transmission? Every car i owned was non-automatic. It's really the way to drive a car if you ask me.

Gear Ratio? come on guys thats baby stuff.

After 13th week (which is basically just between seasons fun) it'll return to normal schedule, and there's 3 road series you can run with the content you get for the subscription IIRC. The Spec Racer one has some tracks (tracks change week by week) not included tho.