Anyone here into Sim racing?

[Hades]

Is there any subscription program in rFactor like iRacing? I'm definitely interested in a good sim for when I get a decent gaming computer.

Why does everybody recommend iRacing but not rFactor? I'm guessing the online gameplay is better?

[ermax]

Originally Posted by Hades

Is there any subscription program in rFactor like iRacing? I'm definitely interested in a good sim for when I get a decent gaming computer.

Why does everybody recommend iRacing but not rFactor? I'm guessing the online gameplay is better?

No subs for rF2 but I suspect that will come in the future. iRacing for sure is better for pick up racing where you have 45mins to spare and just want to jump on and do a race and be done. rF2 is more geared towards leagues where you have a who season scheduled and you show up on race night and race with the same group of guys week after week. I’ve spent a good bit of time in iRacing and it’s a great sim and the online racing is good (as long as you ignore all the people arguing over the radio). But I prefer racing in a league where you get to know the guys you race with. People are more accountable because they know they will race with you next week. They also don’t want to be an ass to someone they consider a friend. It’s also interesting to race with the same group all the time because you start to learn everyone’s driving styles and where their faults are. You know who you can go two wide with and who you can’t. rF2 simulates a real race season better than iRacing. In real life you don’t randomly show up at the track with a new random group every race. You have a race season scheduled up front and travel the country or world and see that same guys each race. I have some very close friends I’ve made simracing. From all over the world. I get lessons in Dutch from my Scandinavian friends. Hahaha. We meet up at real racing events like the Daytona 24 or PLM. Some of the guys in the league meet up at LM every year.

Long story short, rF2 gets my vote. Actually, if you are new to simracing I would say start with iRacing and work your way up their ranking system until you feel comfortable jumping into an rF2 league. The league I race with (VEC) is off the charts competitive. Massive talent pool over there. I ran my own league for years and thought I was fast and then joined VEC and was very quickly humbled. Hahaha. But like anything in life, run with people who are better than you and you will find a way to catch up.

[serialk11r]

I just watched some videos of people using direct drive wheels, and I am wondering...what the heck? Real cars don't feel like that at all unless they have broken power steering. What's the point of having one of those wheels?

[ermax]

You can feel what it’s like watching a video? Keep in mind road cars != purpose built race car. Purpose built race cars have way less assist so the forces on the rack aren’t filtered as much as a road car with lots of assist. Not only that but road cars have lots of soft bushings on the rack which also muffles the road. I put solid aluminum bushings on my IS300 which made an incredible difference to the feel.

Those direct drive wheels have way bigger motors capable of forces closer to the strength of a real car. They also don’t have as much backlash. It’s going to be hard to fully emulate a real car but direct drive will come much closer to it than the belt or gear driven wheels will. Not sure which videos you watched but I know a lot of people are obsessed with the FFB being super strong to the point I think it’s clipping. Clipping the same way audio does if the gain is too high. In other words details are lost. This is not as big of a problem on the direct drive wheels though.

[serialk11r]

I have trouble believing that steering on any race car would be so heavy that your arms get tired after one lap, because race car drivers have to drive those things for hours at a time. No one has that kind of endurance. There's no good reason to have steering and suspension geometry that does that to the driver.

F1 cars have power steering, so why is it that a direct drive wheel can bust your ass on that same F1 car in a sim? Doesn't make sense to me. I've turned off the power steering on my cars before as an experiment and I don't have any trouble steering while the car is moving. It's not like my arms are super jacked either. Power steering off with a hydraulic rack is almost full negative power assist, which has to be more than whatever effect you get from caster and downforce.

[ermax]

Again I’m not sure what you saw in the videos? Like they guy is having to take a break after each lap to give his arms a rest?

[serialk11r]

This one:
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1gGo8QheDU"]100% Force Feedback Challenge With A Direct Drive Wheel - YouTube[/ame]

Either his arms are weaker than a small child's, or something is seriously wrong because my arms would not be that sore after a 5 point turn with power steering turned off.

[ermax]

Doesn’t the tittle say it all? 100% FFB challenge? It isn’t a toy wheel where even at %100 you don’t have enough power. In typical use you probably wouldn’t run it that high.

FFB is a very subjective thing. Seems most people think it needs to rip you arms off to be considered realistic. I personally have a toy wheel (G27) so I tend to run low FFB so I stay within the very narrow dynamic range of my wheel. Most people crank it all the way up so small forces such as the front end push gets masked.

Edit: I see the video is from Jimmy B. He races in VEC. We do 4-24 hour races where you often do a 4 hour stint before doing a driver swap. I doubt he has problems with arm fatigue. In the video he is demonstrating the capabilities of the wheel but I doubt he runs it that way at all times.

[serialk11r]

Yea I realize what he's doing, but what I'm trying to say is...

Is there any car in existence that can create a 30Nm torque at the steering wheel from road forces? Maybe some old school race cars? Isn't a wheel like that only good for getting a very strange workout?

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

Is there any car in existence that can create a 30Nm torque at the steering wheel from road forces?

[ermax]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

Yea I realize what he's doing, but what I'm trying to say is...

Is there any car in existence that can create a 30Nm torque at the steering wheel from road forces? Maybe some old school race cars? Isn't a wheel like that only good for getting a very strange workout?

Not sure really. I bet a hit to a wall could do it though. But that isn't the sort of thing I would be interested in simulating. Rip and arm off. Hahaha

[serialk11r]

Old thread haha, I finally got around to trying a VR sim yesterday at Hubneo in NYC. The rig had a 2 dof linear motor motion sim with seat shaker, Fanatec wheel, Oculus Rift 1 running on a computer with 1080GTX.

Frame rate was totally fine, but the resolution was so bad I couldn't tell when the corners were coming until I was about to crash. All instrumentation was useless since it takes too much time to focus my eyes. Assetto Corsa and rFactor 2 definitely feel much more realistic than Project Cars 2. I will say AC and rF2 had a bit of "goggle effect" where I felt like I was viewing from further away than I should've been, while PC2 seemed to nail it in terms of making me feel like I was actually sitting in the car. The Rift S has 20% higher res but I'm not totally convinced it would fix the problem, while the Samsung Odyssey/Vive Pro might barely be adequate at 1440x1600. Pimax 5k/8k would be overkill since I didn't find extreme peripheral vision to be very useful, but the Pimax 4K might actually work (though I read it's not very user friendly, and is discontinued).

The motion sim was a huge letdown too, I couldn't feel any lateral Gs with that 2dof setup, just not enough tilt. I learned to just rely on the seat shaker to tell if there was traction loss.

Man, this sucks. I'm probably gonna blow a ton of money on a real car :P

[StraightOuttaCanadaEh]

I think in basically all sim racers, you’re able to adjust the distance to the steering wheel. So it sounds like that was adjusted perfectly in PC2 but not in the other two. So your experience was ruined because someone didn’t want to do a few keystrokes lol

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by StraightOuttaCanadaEh

I think in basically all sim racers, you’re able to adjust the distance to the steering wheel. So it sounds like that was adjusted perfectly in PC2 but not in the other two. So your experience was ruined because someone didn’t want to do a few keystrokes lol

It was a rental "VR experience" shop, I didn't know how to play with the settings and I was paying for time :shrug:

Either way, I couldn't see the corners at all in the Oculus Rift until they were right there. My eyes aren't perfect but they're not that bad...I can tell when I need to brake in a real car (sort of at least, I am pretty bad at judging speed visually).

I think 2160 vertical pixels would probably do the job. Unfortunately, there's only the HP Reverb (expensive) and Pimax 4K (which I think is actually only 2.5k native res upsampled).