iRacing

And the UPS (Santa) just turned up. My goodness that Lenze weights a ton! Will post pictures of rig later when wheel mounted. Now just gotta try focus on a few hours of (real) work I have to do before playtime...
 
Ok so I've got the wheel up and running, and I've been practicing on a few circuits with various cars.

I've watched the iRacing vids and read the sporting code, what now? Aside from practice, practice, practice in test mode, I'd appreciate pointers on how best to get into the racing element.

I do know I want to do road racing (not oval). Should I choose a particular car (e.g. Star Mazda), join any random race or enter a rookie league? Bit overwhelming on where to start, info overload, advice welcome.
 
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I bought a load of cars and then realised that I should've taken the advice that everyone gave - stick to one (or at the most a few) series at first.

The MX5 is a good place to start solidifying your irating and learning how iracing operates. It uses stock tracks so no purchases required, although that will get dull fairly quickly.

The obvious progression from there is onto the Skip Barber and the best thing about the Skippy is that the races are very well-attended, so you'll almost always find some action.

I also really enjoy the Spec Racer Ford. I dismissed it when I was starting out in iracing after a quick practice session, but I've returned to it and there is great fun to be had in that car. You can get some more forgiving setups from the forums.

All those cars are fairly slow but that actually makes perfect sense when getting to grips with how the racing happens. It's also good for getting your irating steadily up to where it needs to be for promotions and access to the higher leagues. Besides, slow cars generally make for much closer racing.

Good luck. I've been out of the sim for ages due to moving house and look forward to hearing how you get on.
 
You need to get out of Rookies first via the official races. So that's the MX-5 or Solstice. The objective is just to finish with the minimum number of incidents. Get the safety rating above 4.0 to get an immediate upgrade to a D license. Results don't count for anything while you are a rookie.

Once you've got a D it opens up more choice. Grand Touring, Kia, Cadillac, Spec Ford and the Skippy. Pick one and race just that. Trying loads of them isn't a good idea. ;)
 
Thanks Chris, MagicBoy.

Will go for the MX5. So I choose that, plus track, and hit 'Race' rather than 'Test', and the next qualifying/race time will be indicated? Any tracks with more frequent races than others?

After getting the Lenze set up nicely, I spent a few hours on lime Rock, first with the MX5, then onto the Spec Racer Ford, and finally the f1 thingy (cant rememeber model).

Loved the Spec Racer hurtling (and crashing) around Lime Rock, was amazed at the deifference in grip and overall feel between each of the 3 cars at the wheel.
 
The season runs a 12-week schedule (can be seen and downloaded from iRacing page).

So, for each series, there is 1 track per week and that changes on a Tuesday. For example, it'll be MX5 at Lime Rock for a week, then MX5 at Laguna Seca for a week and so on.

You can therefore only race that car on that track in the official series.

If you click race, you'll be able to see when the races start and register for the upcoming one. You can qualify at any time during the week and that time will give you the relevant grid position in the race you join. You don't have to qualify and in the lower series, you'll see that not many people bother. Equally, you can qualify as many times as you want.

The popular series have hourly races.
 
Chirs that's very helpful. Looking at the PDF, for rookie road MX5 (page 20), the season is already half way through. Would you recommend I join anyway, just to get race experience?
 
Absolutely, makes no difference unless you're hoping to win the championship!

Take part in as much or as little as you want. You can skip weeks, months with no penalty. Or you can enter 24 races in a day!
 
Hi,

after playing all the GT up to GT6, finally needed to move on and find something else and came across iracing which looks awesome, having been swamped with the amount of information there is out there I have decided I will be running three screens and a T500RS, but sorry if this has been asked a lot before, can someone recommend a minimum pc spec I should be looking at?

thanks in advance
 
iRacing isn't that demanding as it's still on DirectX 9. My PC (see sig) runs it at a solid capped 84fps (the default) with maximum detail, and I suspect the graphics card is lightly stressed. It occasionally dips to about 70fps when 60 cars are onscreen at the same time.

I'd recommend an i5, 8GB RAM and at least £150 of graphics card as recommended spec for triples. Should give you a bit of headroom if they ever go DirectX 11.
 
I run triple screens and my GTX 970 struggled so I upgraded to a 980Ti and I still can't max every setting. I doubt it's CPU related either as I have an i5 4960K and 8GB of RAM.

The most annoying thing is I can max out Assetto Corsa on the same PC and maintain a constant 60FPS. I can almost max out pCARS as well. But no matter what I try I have stuttering in iRacing without V Sync on, even if I'm getting a constant 90 FPS

There are definitely some areas on certain tracks that cause the frame rate to dip, no matter what you are running.

You can also have stuttering with high frame rate on triple screen set ups, so I end up using V Sync and triple buffering in the driver to keep it smooth.

You have to bear in mind that you are effectively running at 5760x1080 with 3 1080p monitors, so you'll need something farily high end and with at least 4GB of VRAM if you want to start added decent amounts of AA.
 
I'll preface this post with a statement that I do not have any GPU manufacturer loyalties. I buy on bang per buck and features solely. I've zero interest in fanboy discussions.

Nvidia quirk?

I've not used an Team Green card in a desktop for a few years. I have recently used a single 1920x1200 screen connected to my nVidia equipped MacBook for a few of weeks while OcUK were sorting out an RMA for me, and had to knock down the AA settings at Monza. Wasn't a VRAM issue as the card has 2GB, which is more than iRacing will currently use.

The more recent tracks like Spa and COTA do have areas where the FPS will dip, but I rarely see anything under 70fps at those points even with 60 cars displayed. Some of my team mates in a league race were complaining about halving of frame rates (65fps dropping to 30fps) in places at COTA last week, but i wasn't experiencing any issues.
 
MagicBoy said:
I'll preface this post with a statement that I do not have any GPU manufacturer loyalties. I buy on bang per buck and features solely. I've zero interest in fanboy discussions.

Nvidia quirk?

I've not used an Team Green card in a desktop for a few years. I have recently used a single 1920x1200 screen connected to my nVidia equipped MacBook for a few of weeks while OcUK were sorting out an RMA for me, and had to knock down the AA settings at Monza. Wasn't a VRAM issue as the card has 2GB, which is more than iRacing will currently use.

The more recent tracks like Spa and COTA do have areas where the FPS will dip, but I rarely see anything under 70fps at those points even with 60 cars displayed. Some of my team mates in a league race were complaining about halving of frame rates (65fps dropping to 30fps) in places at COTA last week, but i wasn't experiencing any issues.
Click to expand...

Low frame rates aren't the problem. It's stuttering when I don't have V Sync on. I can have frame rates over 100 FPS and the game stutters. If it was an Nvidia Surround issue then I'd expect to have the same problem with other sims running three screens, but I don't. I've tried loads and loads of settings and nothing works unless I have V Sync and Triple buffering on in the driver.
 
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