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PostPosted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 11:56 am 
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Not spectacular just decent
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Location: Heading back to base for debriefing and cocktails.
KendtEklund wrote:
David Spratte wrote:
The biggest hurdle I'm facing is if it'll run in an emulated Windows XP on my Mac.


Intel-based? Why not dual-boot?


Actually, that's not a bad idea.

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Not spectacular just decent.
I'm not sure what I'm driving.
Maybe an ITR in DS.
Or half-assed STX prepped 330.


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 12:25 pm 
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I err on the side of being stupid
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For those interested, i-Racing "goes live" on August 26.

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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 8:24 pm 
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Sadly, I've had beta access to it since early May and not really bothered to try it out. Which wheel is likely the best for it?

Helps being friends with Don Knowles since he's sponsored by them.


--Donnie


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 9:18 pm 
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Donnie Barnes wrote:
Sadly, I've had beta access to it since early May and not really bothered to try it out. Which wheel is likely the best for it?
--Donnie


For any sim, I'd recommend the G25. The pedal set alone is worth the premium over normal logitech two-pedal setups. The clutch pedal definitely helps on standing starts.

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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 9:45 pm 
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No, THIS is what Donnie needs 8) :

Force Dynamics

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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 10:05 pm 
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Still not finding the time to try this out, but I'll dust off the ActLabs and give it a run sometime soon.

Really good source of all kinds of simracing info:
http://forum.racesimcentral.com/

Freaking 32in 1080p screen, and all I do on it lately is work :roll:

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PostPosted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 2:35 pm 
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iRacing has some nice coming coming down the pipeline... in addition to the Riley Grand-Am Prototype being developed, they just announced this beauty:

http://www.iracing.com/newsEvents/article.php?id=79

MAN I gotta start working up my licenses!!

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 9:17 pm 
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This is surely an interesting piece of s/w. I just finished running VIR South course in the Legends car (the Solstice is boring), and the track is definitely spot on. It's hard to define elevation of course on the screen, but after a while, I sort of lost myself in the course very much like driving it for real.

I still have a very hard time recognizing the tail of the car since all the natural butt input is missing. Similarly, the feel of the front end is missing too of course, but understeer is easier to deal with in a sim. Without being able to feel the tail of the car, it is very difficult to control near the limits for me and to keep the car placed where it should be. I found myself running a gear higher than you normally would and just working on turn-in points, throttle modulation, left foot braking, etc.

It was nice to drive Lime Rock again too. I've not been at Lime Rock since 1982, and the track instantly came back to me. Amazing how you can remember something like that so well after so long. It also reminded me of how I felt about Lime Rock (too short, kind of boring with one scary part – downhill onto the front straight).

I'm getting excellent simulation performance using a recent cast-off from my office (3 year old Athlon64 4400+) with the only mod being a new Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD4850 video card. I'm also using a Logitech Momo force feedback wheel that's a few years old, and that might be part of the problem with "feel" too since this force feedback part feels awful -- fake, too stiff at times, etc.

I'm a loooong way from being able to competently drive this simulator... :( Oh, one more thing, they have the Patriot course running backwards from its "normal" configuration. :?

If anyone has any settings they’ve found more useful (i.e. view zoom settings, etc.), please post them. I find that it’s very difficult to look where I want to at times due to the thick frame of the Legends windshield – would be nice to eliminate the frame, but I don’t think that’s possible.

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 10:11 pm 
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I've not actually tried iRacing yet, but I have thought a lot about racing simulators and played a lot of different arcade style ones, including those with moving cabinets.

While you can't truly simulate constant side G's, moving seat simulators are much better than nothing. And while I like those that move the seat somewhat fully in 2D, there's a third dimension that's pretty much been untapped that I've seen, and that's yaw. In fact, I'd opine that yaw would be more important than either of the other two dimensions for a racing simulator to be accurate.

What do I mean? Well, with side to side motion of your seat, all you're doing is simulating lateral Gs with sideways motion. While the seat is traveling to it's somewhat limited end of motion, it's simulating the G's, but in a long corner the fact that you're leaned over sideways is what's telling you you're pulling Gs, which isn't the same thing. Better than nothing, though. Same thing with longitudinal Gs. Being leaned back means you're accelerating, forward and you're decelerating. Again, better than nothing.

Yaw is much easier to simulate correctly, though. If your seat were mounted on a long bar longitudinally where it could pivot underneath you and an actuator could swing it side to side somewhere a few feet behind you, you'd have your butt sensation of a loose rear end. :shock: Yeah, I did have to put it that way.

I really think just yaw combined with force feedback steering would make racing simulators much more like real life. In fact, if you really want side G simulation I think instead of moving the seat you could just inflate airbags in the side bolsters of a race-like seat. Oh, and for yaw to be really good you'd need your pedals and screen mounted to the assembly, and you'd want the software to change your viewing angle properly with the yaw (which they probably already do to try to simulate the yaw for you now, but as Chuck points out, the subtle visual cue just isn't enough).

There was a rare cockpit cabinet version of Super Monaco GP way back around 1989 that had a moving seat. Unlike most video games, this one used three linear air actuators to move the seat, which means it had a built in air compressor. What I really liked about that was the air compressor ran during the duration of your game and simply used a small blow off valve to make sure it didn't over inflate the built in tank (which wasn't a tank at all, it was actually a donut spare tire mounted inside the cabinet of the game). Why does that matter? Vibration, baby. That subtle vibration made it "feel" more realistic to me, and I think was intended (otherwise they would have let the air compressor cycle, I think).

But take air actuators like that to control yaw and use airbags in the seat for lateral Gs and just forget longitudinal Gs and I think you'd have a killer sit down setup. Oh, and combine them properly with iRacing, obviously. And it would be interesting to see if any of those home-theater "seat shakers" that you hook up to your sound system would do much if you could get the sim company to give you a separate sound output channel that was just engine noise.


--Donnie, who has apparently spent way TOO much time thinking about racing simulators


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2008 9:37 am 
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What it comes down to right now for me is details. I'm driving on a 17" widescreen laptop, and I get PLENTY of visual feedback for both under and over steer. It's all in the accuracy and detail.

I think your idea is solid Donnie... but I think it would only be truly accurate if the "cockpit" was separate from the viewing screen (ala ultra-high end commercial simulators.) I also don't feel that the hardware of such a system could keep up with the software of today's publicly consumable sims.

iRacing, Rfactor, and the GTR series of sims all do a good job I think of simulating "world movement." Rfactor even has an "exagerated yaw" slider, but I've never played with it much. Add to that the capability of multiple monitors, and/or Track IR technology, and there's really not much of a need for mechanical yaw.

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PostPosted: Sat Nov 15, 2008 9:15 am 
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Stacy King wrote:
What it comes down to right now for me is details. I'm driving on a 17" widescreen laptop, and I get PLENTY of visual feedback for both under and over steer. It's all in the accuracy and detail.


Stacy,

I've "got it" now. As soon as I switched to an open wheel car (bought the $15 Mazda Star race car), I can tune into the driving so much better. I had the best time I've ever had driving a simulation game last night on South and Full VIR courses. With the open wheel cockpit, I can really sense the rotation, visually, and I've learned to add to that sense by tuning into the submodalities of their tire noise (which I generally ignored initially since it seemed kind of fake to me).

I have to say taking the uphill esses at ~140mph was pretty exciting. Same with South Bend at huge speed compared to anything I've done over it in real life.

The thing I'm working on now is getting used to the visual inputs when looking down track such as entering turn 3 on Full course. That look ahead through the turn when you're braking and getting ready to turn in obviously doesn't have the richness of depth that exists in real life (although the clarity is fantastic in the sim), but that's just a matter of adapting to the sim.

The first serious simulation program I can remember using was Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0 which I bought with a new IBM PC back in 1982 when we were in grad school. The monochrome stick outlines of airport runways coupled with the pausing update of the screen made it really hard to fly, but I did actually learn a heck of a lot about flying from that program. I never dreamed of something like is available now...and most people take today's stuff pretty much for granted it seems. :)

iRacing has done a great job with the sim. Hopefully they have a solid business case to keep it going.

Chuck

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PostPosted: Sat Nov 15, 2008 9:20 am 
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Yeah, I've already got you on my friend list :)

IMO, it gets even better once you get out there and start racing against other people.

I'm also in a Trackpedia league running SRF's in Rfactor... and it's pretty disappointing. Even though it's an invitational league, we've still got lots of people who haven't done it before, and lots of people who's done Rfactor a LOT and think they know everything.

Even though you'll still get newbs in iRacing, the way the Safety Rating works, and the way they populate the races keeps experience and talent levels pretty equal... which is its most unique (and controversial) feature.

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 Post subject: Re: iRacing simulator?
PostPosted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 11:00 am 
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Stacy King wrote:
Anyone else on here gotten the invite for iRacing yet?

I got mine last week, finally got around to downloading and trying it out. So far I'm pretty impressed with it. I went ahead and paid the extra $20 for VIR... and MAN is it worth it. You will not find a better version of VIR (ALL Configs!) on any sim out there.

Anyone else who wants details... www.iracing.com

Here's a glimpse at it, courtesy of YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIkuIx9hL9Y


Wow, this is really interesting, but it seems to be exclusively for track racing. I'm trying lfs.net right now with the Logitech G25, which comes with a bunch of autocross layouts and a variety of, ahem, entry level FWD cars of the type I'll actually be driving.

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 Post subject: Re: iRacing simulator?
PostPosted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 11:07 am 
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Michael Czeiszperger wrote:

Wow, this is really interesting, but it seems to be exclusively for track racing. I'm trying lfs.net right now with the Logitech G25, which comes with a bunch of autocross layouts and a variety of, ahem, entry level FWD cars of the type I'll actually be driving.


Yeah, no autocross in iRacing, sorry.

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 Post subject: Re: iRacing simulator?
PostPosted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 11:34 am 
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Michael Czeiszperger wrote:
Wow, this is really interesting, but it seems to be exclusively for track racing. I'm trying lfs.net right now with the Logitech G25, which comes with a bunch of autocross layouts and a variety of, ahem, entry level FWD cars of the type I'll actually be driving.


i guess you'll have to start track driving to match your simulator!


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