How realistic is Sim Racing?

[Skybird]

Got myself a second wheel rim after the light and cheap (round) PS4 rim got worn out with the gear pedals' mechanisms. I now use this and the GTR3 rim, depending on the kiund of cars I race/drive. Absolutely fantastic kit, but I must tailor the setups a bit more ideal to optimise the button markers for several titles. Extremely good quick release/connect mechanism, even on the fly while being in the sim. Heavy quality, it feels like real world stuff. I had to wait three months, with one further delay during that period.

[Threadfin]

I wrote four posts addressing you and your setup. No obligation to respond, but no reason for me to be here, it appears. Have fun with your new wheel.

[Skybird]

Threadfin,

I indeed missed your posts with those questions. Sorry that you waited in vain, I try to answer it now in no specific order. It was no intention, I just had not visited this thread for some time. And when I came back to post Chris' video adventure, i again missed your posts from mid April. Sorry.

Fanatec is costly compared to the usual toy-like wheels. They recently raised some prices due to the recent crisis. But there are much more expensive producers out there - their gear however primarily is aimed at full simulatgor stands with installed seats and so forth. I depend on being able to mount the kit and dismount it from the table easily. Well, stuff is worth what peope are willing to pay for. Some years ago I could not imagine to go for Fanatec, I thought it would be crazy to pay these prices. But VR changed my preferences dramatically. And so I wokred my way up on the price ladder, from No Name and Logitech to now Fanatec. Which will be the end of the ladder for me.

Fanatec suffers from the supply lags in shipping, they referred some months ago directly to the lacking shipping containers and the hilarious costs, when they reported their problems they talked of a price rise of factor 16 or 18 per shipping container. Also, the supply chains are disrupted.

For pedals, you asked, I would point you to the important pedal: the brake. You want something with load cells, and good, metal furnishing. A good brake pedal can make you faster. Just a wheel and rim and base will not, its immersion mostly. But the brake, if good, makes you faster. Becasue you will not "mis-brake" so easily.

Belt wheel bases they do not offer anymore, but they came up with two affordable - by their standards - minor direct drive wheelbases recently. "Minor" is relative, they are still so much stronger than the belt drives they once offered - and these already were good. The bigger brothers of these new kits are also still available.

The wheelbase you saw on the picture is an Elite CSL, it is out of production, I got it with a PC-PS4 wheel which is now retired (pedals worn out). It even deals easily with the new wheel though the new wheel is almost twice as heavy than the GTR3. I will use it until it breaks, I am satisfied with it.

The nice thing is both wheels can be changed on the fly, with the sim running. You may need to switch to another keymap, however, but you must not leave the sim to change hardware.

I recommend the GTR3 wheel, and also the new one which I got at a sale. They do these sometimes, and then offer combinations of products. Sometimes they are good, sometimes not so much, the quality i mean, but you can usually save 50-150 coins, and I did. How it is in the difficult economic environment we now have - I dont know their plans.

The second set of pedals on the GTR3 actually are analogue, no gear pedals, and you can code them for launch control, for example. I haven't, and actually do not use them, but I know that those who use them, are die hard fans of them. You can also map throttle and brake to them. But the nmost used purose is for launch control, to avoid stalling, or spinning the tyres. Some sims allow that to be considered. But as I said, i personally do not care. I drive more relaxed these days, less competitive.

Both wheels imo are very good bang for the buck. Good quality, good feel. I am satisfied .

The round wheel is, as you mentioned, for Dirt Rally 2, ETS2, Wreckfest and some cars in Assetto Corsa, Competizione and Raceroom, though I usually play all cars in Competizione with the GTR3 wheel, but some cars in it get dispalyed with a roudn wheel, others with a GT wheel. The round wheel has a massive, solid feel, it feels like the real thing. The GT3 weighs much less, still is very robust and stiff, no distortions when beings under stress, no toyish feel on it, really.

Again, sorry for letting you wait. It was a mishap, no bad intention. Sometimes I just miss something when it happens.

[Threadfin]

Yes, thanks for the reply and my apologies as well for assuming the worst when obviously nothing was intended.


For about a month now I've had a full racing rig. I bought a racing seat called an Open Wheeler Gen 3. I put the Fanatec stuff to the side when it proved hard to get due to supply issues. I bought a T248 instead. Decent wheel with great pedals. Having everything bolted down and so comfortable has really transformed things for me.


Are you a member at SimHQ? I know you used to hang around there right? We are doing some racing there and I'd like to invite you to participate if you like. We started a dedicated ACC private server. Yesterday we ran AMS2. Also bought rFactor 2 and will probably be picking up Race Room in the near future to round out my options. Attracting drivers has some inertia I must say, but I feel, like we're on the brink! Come join us if you want to. The one I drive with most is also from Germany (and an alien).


I'm having so much fun returning to sim racing that even though I only just got this wheel I already have designs on an upgrade. Thanks for your insight Skybird.

[Skybird]

SimHQ, well, now I feel old. Yes, i was aroudn there many, many years ago, but that must be fifteen years or so. Mostly Falcon 4 times when Frugals shut down and an other site also stopped. Combatsim, was that the name of that site? Time is fleeting. It were good times.

Congrats to yur cockpit build. I woudl do that myself, too, a fixe dsite for racing I mean, if I had the spacve, a sepaarte room. But then, using VR exclusively, my design priporities woudl be different, and for button boxes and such I would nto even have use anymore. I need buttons on wheels.

Raceroom offers a once-in-a-lifetime-pick. For - last time I checked - 100 coins you get ALL content they ever released: all cars, skins, tracks. That is so cheap that it stinks: 57 locations, 143 track variations, and cars and skins count in four digit numbers, I assume.

I drive AI practice trackday sessions these days, and sometimes a race against the AI. Races more in Raceroom (better AI), trackdays more in ACC (now that I got my problems that I had with its VR and my new headset fixed). ACC I often drive relaxed, just for cruising. It has some hilariously good track mods. Enjoying its superb cockpits in the high resolution VR I now use, is pure joy. Its very very rare you could see me online. If so, then in AC classic, and practically never in races, but trackdays/endless practices.

P.S. I posted on that fun top-down-looks racing game (LINK). Especially if you have friends or family and kids, I recommend this game, I - to my surprise - currently come back to it frequently. Not often, but frequently. There is somethign around it that makes me hysterically giggle. A round, good, fair priced fun package, really, done with love and a feelign for good style. Recommended for the racing snack in between! Pitting has me not stopping laughing for minutes to come, becasue I suck at it. This game simply gives me a good mood. And I just love the replays. If squirrels would do car racing in matchbox toy cars - this it would look like!


Wreckfest in a virtual cinema on huge movie screen also is a blast. The game cannot be recognised this way, its Wreckfest 2.0 if used this way.

[Threadfin]

Yes, the good old days. I was on Frugal's staff, not under the Threadfin moniker. I'm an old Falconite too.


Well too bad you won't take me up on the invitation, but I get it. Enjoy your racing Skybird.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Threadfin

Yes, the good old days. I was on Frugal's staff, not under the Threadfin moniker. I'm an old Falconite too.


Well too bad you won't take me up on the invitation, but I get it. Enjoy your racing Skybird.

10-15 years earlier - maybe. But I never was a big online gamer, never. It just does not make that clicking sound in my head.

[Threadfin]

Fair enough and to each his own.

I've been running a Vintage Formula 1 World Championship that I created in AMS2. Racing the AI lets me do the stuff I want, and fill the gaps. I concurrently also have a championship going in ACC, driving the 991 GT3 R.

But like I sad those are just gap fillers. Online racing's where it's at for me. The problem is I don't care to run with randos, and finding enough enthusiastic, like-minded people to race with is challenging at best these days.

To whet the appetite, here's the start of round 1 in my title chase. The grid screams off the line at Kyalami Historic 1976. Good stuff.

[mapuc]

Isn't it up to what size of what graphic card and CPU you have that determine how realistic sim racing could be ?

I myself are trying to save money to buy a decent set of Steering wheel with pedals. I've read about the one Skybird has and they look interesting, but again it's all about money.

Then it's my gaming computer it has 6 GB Graphic memory 3.3 GHZ CPU. Can't remember the RAM how much it has.

Markus

[Threadfin]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Isn't it up to what size of what graphic card and CPU you have that determine how realistic sim racing could be ?

Graphical fidelity is great, and some of these new sims are simply fantastic looking. But for me what makes 'realism' is physics and feel. I could drive GPL today with 1998 graphics and love it. Of course that shot above is beyond what we can achieve with GPL and so it becomes the standard. It nails the feel of Grand Prix Legends while looking far better.



To illustrate how good these sims look, here's a shot I took a few days ago in Assetto Corsa Competizione, driving the BMW M6 GT3.

[mapuc]

Thank you I forgot about the feeling sitting in a F1 car or in a rally car and feel the vibration from the engine.

Markus

[Threadfin]

The state of force feedback today is remarkable, it really is. There are two main components -- the sim -- and how it handles FFB -- and the wheel you have, which have varying levels of fidelity when it comes to transmitting the feel of the tarmac to your hands.

But a good modern sim with a quality wheel is amazing. I dare say it would blow away someone who has not experienced what it is like today. Sims like rFactor2, Assetto Corsa Competizione and Automobilista Motorsport Simulator 2 all have fantastic FFB.

Without the wheel you can't feel it of course, but AMS2 has a free demo on Steam if you have any interest in seeing what is all about.

[Skybird]

The trap is that the FFB has to be individually tuned for every wheelbase-sim combo. And when a sim introduces a new data set, or a hardware producers does a new firmware or driver, the hardware needs to be updated and then the data needs to be tuned in again with different values. If fell for that trap myself sometimes, too.

Same in VR, the gfx engine may have gotten an update of the underlying engine, say U4E, and in the VR helmet the image suddenly is way to dark and you have never heard of it, and then you start fuming in anger and despair since you do not get it fixed. Happened in ACC twice to me, I just did not know it that U4E had seen massive changes. The solution was to delete a certain complete folder. Until I learned that, I thought the sim were dead for me.

Also, nVidia driver options for VR sometimes need certain HIGHER values in setting to have a good VR experience and smooth frames and no stutterings - not lower settings, but higher ones! In ACC I had the problem when I switched to my newer helmet that the picture was laggy, stuttering, and I did not get it solved, also it was blurry. I had however reduced some settings in nVidia drivers of which I assumed they would kill frames if I keep them high, because the new helmet has 8 times as many pixels than the old one, and I did not replace the 1080 card. As soon as I moved up these settings - the stuttering vanished and since then ACC looks much better than it ever did befiore in the old helmet. And I thought I had lost aCC!

Finally, the temps in ACC initially almost killed my system, went into the high 90s with low car numbers. Danger zone! But Kunos worked wonders on post release optimizations. With a superiuor VR display and 8x more pixels I now can run 30 cars smooth and crispy without blurrings at temps that are typcial for gaming on this processor type, mid-70s or so.

So many things come together to get a good and working technical experience. Problem is that I cannot keep track of all these many things anymore as I could years back. I forget fixes again, faster, and more regular than in the past. Even forget that a fix exists. ..

[Threadfin]

Hey, way to sell it Skybird


Yeah, there's truth to that, but it's no worse to me than getting set up for a good flight sim like Falcon or DCS or something. If it needs to be re-done with every update then yes that's an issue of course.

[Skybird]

https://www.racedepartment.com/news/...nd-of-may.617/

All raceroom content free to access until end of May. Your opportunity to test all stuff out, namely tracks. (Cars can always be tested on the in-house track).