Iracing Camera Packs

[Brinda]

TheSCCA membership 3 month free trial got me again, and so I opened a new iRacing account. Since I'm going to Lime Rock this Saturday, I figured I'd spend an hour or so yesterday learning the track in a Spec Miata. In general, my life doesn't support iRacing since I don't have a dedicated time to play games per week, and usually it's for a half hour at 11:30PM or so once every week or two, so I've avoided it. I tried iRacing probably close to a decade ago (when NCs were the Spec MX-5s), and I never quite got the hang of the physics/tire engine then, either.

Anyone have any tips for improving turn in & tire grip feeling with iRacing? Obviously it's me, since it's so popular, but compared to something like Dirt 2.0, rFactor, Project Cars, etc., it feels totally numb.

I believe I got the tires up to temp, how can you tell other than time? I did a full 15 minutes race by the end of the night. I did the calibration that popped up the first time I launched it.. Is there a better/different calibration I should do?

I only adjusted tire pressures and added the rear sway bar as the default config didn't use it, and turned up the force feedback slider some to try to get some feeling into the wheel. That helped a little, but not much.

The main thing is making sure the sim knows how strong your wheel is (A G25 is somewhere between 2-3 Nm), and that you don't have everything cranked up so high that it just maxes out every force and you don't get any sensation from it.

One thing could be that iRacing is not a game, it is a simulator. Games falsely make their cars easy to drive. A simulator gives you very close to real world physics. iRacing is not an install and jump into a race kind of thing. It took me a week or so with many hours of seat time before I was ready (questionably at that) to safely jump into a rookie race and not be "that guy".

At first, your perception of speed will be off. You don't have seat of the pants vibrations and g-forces that tell you that you are going fast. That leads you to grossly over driving the car into turns. Which in an MX-5 will lead to pushing. The MX-5 in iRacing is a full blown race car, so is harder to drive than a street car. The slicks are very slippery until you get some heat in them. The brakes also are a little weak when cold.

You definitely need to get the FOV set correctly. Honestly, just like autocross or racing, don't start tweaking the car until you can stay on the track and run consistent laps. Your G25 is fine. There are guys all the way in the pro ranks (yes, there are pros) that use G25s.

Yeah, I've had this wheel since it was new (2005/6?) and played sims since forever, and I understand the need to get seat time with whatever physics engine you're playing with (It took me a month before I could complete a rally in full-damage mode for example). But it feels totally dead-stick compared to other sims.

On the car physics thing, I do have a spec Miata with a couple of hundred hours logged on track in it, so I'm fairly familiar with how a real Miata responds to input. The only time mine has ever responded close to this way was when I had a set of undersized RRs on it and it just plowed for days as soon as the tires warmed up. If it responded like this car does, I'd be looking at what's wrong with the alignment/suspension or switching platforms if it couldn't be fixed. It's not fun or eager to turn at all.

The only time mine has ever responded close to this way was when I had a set of undersized RRs on it and it just plowed for days as soon as the tires warmed up. If it responded like this car does, I'd be looking at what's wrong with the alignment/suspension or switching platforms if it couldn't be fixed. It's not fun or eager to turn at all.

I went back and looked at the baseline / rookie setup for the MX5. If you are not running the fixed setup rookie series you should consider adding rake by lowering the front / raising the rear, and adding additional negative camber (around -4) to the front.

iRacing can output about 250MB/hour of telemetry if you turn it on, everything from ride heights, tire temperatures, to brake pedal position is logged. I use MoTeC i2 pro based on a workbook that an iRacing user created:

I had this same argument with my friends who do iracing often and once I moved my screen to about 14 inches from my face, everything was better. It really changes the "intuitiveness" of controlling the car.

I tried the same thing too. I just increased my field of view so I could see the apex and other things outside of my narrow range. It seemed better.... It was not. I did a race where I hit a car under the pacelaps because the FOB was all wrong. On my screen I was still 10 to 20 feet away. In reality, I was in his trunk!

I think a lot of people get really hung up on an accurate FOV, which is always going to result in a reduced FOV. I'd rather be able to see a somewhat normal range of stuff, even if its slightly distorted, vs. seeing stuff rendered accurately with insane tunnel vision.

For example, a 22" 16:9 monitor 14" from your face will result in a FOV of approx 73degrees, or about 40% of what you can see in real life. I have a 35" Ultrawide screen about 27" from my face, which results in a pathetic 61degree FOV. I play with it set at maximum though (most games top around 120, but those that go higher I set to 140ish.

To get a realistic FOV with a single monitor, your eyeballs would literally have to touch the screen. Also note that even though in game, you are looking at an object far away, the screen is the actual focal point for your eye so moving it close may cause difficulty if you are older.

This is why I race with a 43 inch TV at 1080P. The TV is on the desk my eyes are probably 36 inches form teh screen or so. ( I can measure it tonight as the assetto corsa group is racing tonight. I give up detail for proper FOV. My "other" racing setup for the PS4 (ya first world problem here) I am using a 55" plasma TV and with that I can use my play seat with the TV on the wall again at 1080P. I would love to go higher resolution but a bigger screen let you get better and more realistic FOV making the game that much better.

I'll just jump in with a comment on the MX-5, a couple of builds ago it was a really fun car to drive, the front end was pretty planted and it was very easy to get the car to rotate. Perfect for experienced users but not so much for a rookie car. Since then they have tamed the car down with the baseline setup and I think that is part of your problem here.

In sim you are typically going much faster than you think you are it also doesn't give you a good sense of where your weight is until you really learn the visual cues, sounds, and the information your wheel is trying to convey. This means you usually go in too hot and bounce off the brakes during turn in making the front light. Back up your braking points, come off the brake earlier to settle the car, coast to the apex and concentrate on hitting that apex and nailing the exit hitting the gas as early as possible and modulating it to avoid offtracks. As you do this you will naturally bring your braking in closer and closer but you gotta feel what the car can do when your not messing up the dynamic with your inputs. This is one of the limitations of sim, in real life you know where the weight is because you feel it in your butt, in sim it still conveys this information just not as intuitively.

FOV is important. iRacing took the time to program in the FOV calculator for a reason. If its coming up with a very small FOV try to move the monitor closer to your wheel.

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