iRacing 2010 edition - who needs GT5?!

[Samiad]

Not sure how many people here have heard of iRacing but it's a PC based online racing sim from the guys who were previously at Papyrus (and did Indycar Racing, Grand Prix Legends and various NASCAR titles).

It's an interesting approach (kind of like a MMO crossed with a racing game) as it's persistent world. You enter races with other people and based on your results your performance and safety rating are tracked centrally, and you can compete for wins and series championships through each 3 month season. The safety rating aspect keeps the races surprisingly clean and honest and the whole thing is just a lot of fun.

I signed up for this back in 2008 and have been addicted since then (285 races and counting!).

Here's a short vid of some race highlights I made a while back - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z69OLaKr8A

They also just launched their F1 car (2009 Williams FW31) which is an absolute blast to drive. It was built by engineers from iRacing and Williams themselves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYKgx2P8MwA

There's a good promotion at the moment for three months for $12, so it's cheap enough to give it a good try out and see it's something that you might get addicted to! (you need a wheel or gamepad/xbox 360 controller).

The current promotion page is https://members.iracing.com/membersi..._code=PR-2FREE and if you do go for it it would be great if you could use my email as the referrer. It's samiad (a-t) samiad.co.uk and in doing so I'll get a months subscription tacked onto my account too.

Happy to answer any questions if anyone has any, would be great to get some people in a NTSC-UK race. It's also a perfect step up from racing Codemasters F1 2010

[Fat_Bob]

Looks interesting. What kind of time do the races take part and generally how long is a race. I need a racer to make use of my new Fanatec wheel. I'll make sure to refer you if I sign up.

[Samiad]

The official races are typically run each hour - but there are different racing series that are offered, so you might have series A (for example) running on the hour, every hour, and series B runs at 30 minutes past the hour, so you can pretty much race when you like.

There is a progression structure (this is the 'persistent world' aspect) so you start as a rookie racing in the rookie series. These races tend to be shorter (around 15-20 mins). As you complete the races safely (speed is NOT a criteria for advancement, only safety) you can earn the next licence (D through C,B,A and finally Pro). Generally the higher the licence the faster the car and the longer the race (and also the higher the grid size).

The other good thing about iRacing is that after a few race results it starts to get an idea for your outright speed and it starts to match you with drivers of a similar ability. It doesn't work for the first few races as there's no way to 'guess' how fast you are so they give you a rating of around 1400 or so (can't remember exactly). That means when you join one of the hourly races you might see 90 people sign up for the race and the service splits off the 90 people into a number of different races, using their rating as a method to decide the splits. So the fast split contains the fastest guys (so they can have a nice speedy battle!) and the slowest split is for the slowest guys so they also have a good race without being lapped 10 times! It works really well.

There's more videos on my YouTube account if you'd like to see more video.

[JP]

There really isn't anything like iRacing on the consoles to be honest, although I don't subscribe myself I do have a few friends who are heavily into it.

I'm really not an online gamer myself which is the main reason I don't bother, another reason being I don't own a PC so although I did look into running it on a Mac (On ISR I think it was?) it just wasn't worth doing it for online racing. That's in no way a criticism of the sim, the racing itself was brilliant but not for me.

I was really impressed with the fact that I didn't experience any dirty racing in what I played and what I've seen of it. There will be contact at times which is how it should be but I didn't see any of the stupid stuff you inevitably get online on console racers and according to my mates that seemed consistent.

By far the most impressive thing for me was the feeling of being on a track with every single bump being effecting what happens. I don't think there's anything out there which has the same sort of level of accuracy.

[huxley]

Nice bit of driving there Samiad - no bumping or cutting by anyone.
Good stuff.