Just joined iracing

There is no way

 

3 monitors or VR is the right solution.

Having said that there are lot of folks racing with one monitor (as I did till about a year back). You have to use "Look left" and "Look right" toggles and engine sound to figure out the passing cars.

I have noticed in the current build that the spotter is a bit tardy in announcing a car is next to you or clear. So extra caution is required.

 

Thanks for the feedback. Not what I wanted to hear, but good to know I'm not missing anything. The look left/right buttons are a little farther away on the Fanatec than the G27, still within reach though.

As predicted above, a new "direct drive" wheelbase is coming -> https://www.gtplanet.net/fanatec-direct-drive-powered-wheel-to-arrive-this-year/

"Hanging Pedals" version of V3 pedals also -> https://www.gtplanet.net/fanatec-releases-updated-clubsport-v3-pedals-with-inverted-brake-clutch/

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The button placements are sucky in the Fanatec BMW wheel. The 918 is slightly better but not that great.

My recommendation would be to trade in for the Formula wheel or get the universal hub with a smaller wheel that gets the buttons closer to your thumb.

Another option could be finding a cheap wireless controller something like this https://www.amazon.com/SUNNYPEAK-Bluetooth-Controller-Compatible-Cardboard/dp/B00UV70YVC I(I dont know if the one in the link is right one but it is right size). You can zip tie to your BMW wheel and use the buttons for look left and right.

I have a G25 wheel with 2 buttons (LOL) of which 1 doesnt work. So I zip tied a PS3 controller to it. Works great for me.

 

Thanks Sam. I'm going to give that mini controller a try and will report back how it works.

 

Using left right buttons is lame. Get triples or a vr headset.....there really is not other way to do this properly...

 

I would get triples in a heartbeat if I had room for them, but I really don't in the room the cockpit is in and I don't want to move it to another room either.

With VR, is it possible to mirror the image to the screen while the driver is using VR? Having not used VR, I'm not sure if it would make sense to mirror the driver view or just project the normal driving view to the monitor.

 

VR is the superior experience IMHO. Oculus shows the headset output on screen as well.

 

Thats really Cool!! Even I have also joined iRacing.

 

I did end up getting the Oculus. It seems to be awesome when it works, but he is having a lot of problems with it. The most common problem is that is that the camera movement sometimes freezes (the picture looks fine, but the view just stops following his head movement). I suspect it has to do with sensor placement. Where has everyone found to be the ideal position for the sensors relative to the racing seat? Right now he has them about 5 feet in front of the driving seat spaced about 3 feet apart and about 3 feet off the ground. It goes through the setup fine, but doesn't work reliably when he drives with it.

 

I've mounted mine up high on the ceiling on either side of the tracker area. I spent 15-20 minutes on sensor placement and it works extremely well now in roomscale and in seated stuff (my couch is on the edge of the tracked area, so I sit there if it's not a roomscale game). No tracking issues.

I'm going to do the 24 hours of daytona in iracing this weekend running a 488gte on a team of 5 others. I'll post a link here to the stream if anyone wants to watch. It's going to be a night race (for 24 hours!) as they don't have day/night transitions yet, though it's supposed to be coming soon. I think we're running 2 hours stints, so everyone will get 2 stints and the fastest (or least tired) couple of guys will get 3 stints. I've done a couple of 1.5 hour sessions in preparation and my biggest concern was the headset getting fogged up but it hasn't been an issue at all so far.

 

didn't see this before, but yes it mirrors the left eye output to the screen (minus the lense warp) so easy for someone to spectate or to stream it.

 

Good info, he has tried many different locations for the sensors, but has not tried hanging them from the ceiling. Hopefully that will be the answer. What brackets did you use to mount them to the ceiling?

Would love to see the live stream. Do you know which split you are in?

 

Here are the mounts I used, but anything with a camera mount will work.

OdiySurveil (TM) Metal CCD Security Housing Mount Bracket for CCTV Camera https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R96X9DS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_iffO3nOMLZzVY

We were in a lower split, didn't get the link to the live stream in time to post (I was spotting and then had to drive). We finished 17th out of 30 in gte and 21st out of 55 overall. We had too many wrecks requiring repairs. I had 2 accidents in the 5 and a half hours I drove, one while passing a gte car that was following a gt3 car into the bus stop, I braked on the limit and the gt3 car braked early so I ended up going side by side into the bus stop with the gt3 from 2 cars back, which I'm sure he didn't expect, and had a big accident, 100% my fault. The other was two gt3 cars battling in front of me and the lead car got loose exiting the bus stop causing him to spear back across the track, and I got collected. Both required repairs, 7 laps worth for the first and 3 laps for the 2nd. After the 2nd accident the car was down on speed, which sucks at Daytona, around 1s per lap worth.

I've never done one of those in iracing and it was an absolute blast. Multi class racing is very tough, even when the gt3 cars were only 1.5 seconds slower than the gte cars the speed difference still made things difficult to judge. The first accident was pure stupid impatience on my part coupled with misjudgment of gt3 speed, 2nd was bad driving by another driver.

 

Thanks -- I just ordered a set. My plan was to see where the sensors would go and then figure out what kind of mount to get -- but since he hasn't been able to find a working position, I never ordered them. I'm hoping your solution of ceiling mounting will be the answer.

Sounds like a lot of fun. It gives you a real feel for what the teams go through and a real appreciation for what it takes to succeed in endurance races. Multi-class racing is definitely challenging, but I think the multi-class experience on iRacing has helped my son a lot with wreck avoidance in karting (he seems to be able to slip through pileups and spins better than others). Just finishing a 24-hour race is an accomplishment. My son has done a bunch of 24 hours races -- originally on Gran Turismo 6 which was really difficult to administer the race overall because GT6 didn't handle networked teams among many other issues -- then iRacing, which is a million times better from every perspective. He still hasn't found his groove on iRacing to be really fast on all tracks (iRating is mid 2000's) but he is very fast (relative to his rating) on Daytona. He ran a GT3 Mercedes this year and they were in 2nd (in class) for most of the race until the 20th hour when they were hit from behind and had to pit for 11 minutes for repairs. They ended up in 7th. With aero damage, I think the car was topping out at about 165 on the long straight versus something like 173 when the car was healthy.

A similar thing happened two years ago where they were leading their class at Daytona from about the 3rd hour through the 20th, and then they totaled the car (their own driver error in that case), so they DNF'ed. They were pretty happy to finish 7th this year even though they were positioned to do better until the last few hours. Just finishing is an accomplishment (something that's difficult to really understand until you've been through it).

I'm taking him to the real 24 Hours of Daytona this weekend. It's pretty cool to watch the real race a week after having just raced it (virtually) yourself. I did the same last year with Sebring last year, where he raced the iRacing event and then we went to the real Sebring race the week after. Also did this with Daytona the year before last.

 

Yup, it was a total blast. The key was finding a good group of teammates, that made it all the more enjoyable. Then you can share the load in setup work, take turns spotting, work on driving in traffic prior to the race, strategy etc. I had almost as much fun in preparing for the race as running it. Our top guys were around 2000 irating and I'm around 1500 (I haven't driven much until very recently), so we're not super fast, though we were one of the faster cars in the race. That actually makes staying clean a little harder as a few times other cars would lose it trying not to get passed or fight really hard with 20 hours of racing to go, which is really dumb in an endurance race. I felt really bad for the lead gt3 car, they led the first around 16 hours and were 8 laps up on the nearest car when their engine blew, race over.

I didn't follow the Oculus directions for placement - they recommend placing one sensor in each corner. I put them on either side of the center of the area - reason being that with the corner mounting, the corners they are not in have the weakest coverage. With the setup I have, all corners have the same coverage and coverage is weakest at the very front and very rear of the play area, which I seem to never find myself in. I move a lot more left to right than front to back, so having them on either side gives me excellent coverage. Even so, in the few times I find myself at the front or back of the play area I don't have any noticeable issues. I spent a lot of time angling the cameras to get maximum coverage in the setup screen, so have him take the time to do that, and then with the cameras hard mounted there should be no reason to ever touch them and so no change in tracking.

 

24 hours of nurburgring tomorrow, live stream will be at the link below if anyone wants to watch. We're driving a 911 gt3 cup (I lobbied for the 488gt3 but a Porsche at the ring makes sense). Race starts at 9am, I'm driving at 2pm, 11pm and 2am (subject to change based on wrecks and driver fatigue).

http://intellectualpropertyip.blogspot.com/p/simracing.html

We're coming off a win at the sebring 12h in the 488gte, so we hope to do well but the ring is a completely different animal.

 

I think that’s the coolest thing on earth. Good luck!

Someday soon I hope to put a rig together. Every time I get the money it goes to the kids or new tools.

 

Get your kids into racing and then by them a racing rig. Kill two birds with one stone . That strategy worked for me, except I don't have any time to race on my son's rig .

Congrats, hope your team did well. Nurburgring is a difficult race. My son's team did it in GT3 Mercedes. He was really nervous about the race and had enough consistency issues during practice that he was considering pulling himself from the rotation. He ended up having 5 clean 1-hour stints, and his team did well, so he was happy, but very tired, this morning.

 

Nice - you should drive with him! We did alright, 7th out of 17 in our class. We were running 2nd at ~8 hour mark and then a wall jumped out at one of our guys and it went downhill from there. I drove 3 clean 1.5 hour stints with exception of 2 gt3's trying to mount me from behind in my middle stint, but luckily the damage was minor so didn't slow us down much. It was a lot of fun, nailing a lap at that track is a great feeling!

Next race is 24 hours of Spa, but I might not be able to drive in that one as my cousins will be visiting from Belgium. They live about 20 minutes from Spa, kind of ironic I'll be missing the race because my family will be visiting from there!

I already have my kids playing, I'm piecing a 2nd setup together so I can race with them/race each other. They're only 5 and 7, but my son (5) can already drive clean (slow) laps.

 

I would drive with him if it was possible to "dabble" and drive well, but unfortunately I just have zero time. I don't think I've been in the simulator seat even once this year. Last year I probably drove iRacing for a total of 2 hours (for the whole year). Apparently it takes more "seat time" than that to become an expert . I could probably fake it much better in a real vehicle where I can feel the dynamics, but I don't think I could make it one lap around Nurburgring in iRacing without taking out the entire field and most of mainland Germany. His split was all GT3's -- 52 cars in one class, which was a luxury for him from a traffic perspective.

He's still using a single monitor (106" projection) after his difficulties getting Oculus to work. I've passed along your Oculus sensor tips, but he hasn't had a chance to focus on getting it working. The reason he had consistency issues on Nurburgring was because of the "curbs of death". He finds the curbs on Nurburgring much more lethal in iRacing than they were when he raced in Gran Turismo 6. He had a difficult time judging where the curbs were -- not sure how much of that is due to single monitor (or his field of view setting) and how much of it is just the way it is. He thinks Spa will be even more difficult then Nurburgring (though I forget why at the moment).

 

Anyone interested in setting up an Fchat I racing league? I'm racing in the PCA peachstate league and its a lot of fun.

 

I'd love too but I'm about 30 days away from FINALLY getting a rig setup. Keep saying I'm going to and the kids expenses get in the way.

I'd appreciate hearing how it goes in the mean time. What are you using for a wheel and pedals if I may ask?

 

I have a track racer rig with fanetech wheel pedals and shifter have a direct drive on order


Sent from my iPad using FerrariChat

 

Which direct drive wheel did you get?