Starting to realise how good iRacing is...

[Steven Foster]

....because I seem to be "getting the hang of it" (code for going a bit faster - got a 1.05 today at LRP ) AND I had a wee spin in GPL today after a week of iRacing. The force feedback is noticably less detailed. Only 0.06 to an SR of 4......might get that done tonight!

[OSiriS]

It's early days yet. Only those in beta, or the people who rushed to get out of the solstice would be able to drive the Skippy. It will take a few months before we see iRacing becoming what the developers intended it to be. In the meantime, the rest of us have to be patient and develop with the system. Personally, I'm in no rush to get to better cars. While I'm curious, I've found my abilites lacking alot more than I had previously thought, and have been working on filling in gaps. I doubt I'll be bothering with the Skippy before I get my D license in 2 weeks.

I notice you ran your skip barber race at noon. There were races later that evening with 9 and 10 drivers, so early races probably aren't the best at this stage of release.

[Burtoner]

woohoo this is getting better and better, since having this installed saturday morning, and working saturday and sunday, I hardly had anytime to get to grips with this, the 1st track was Laguna Seca, which was impossible to start with, dont even mention the corkscrew section and mount of times i missed it. Then it moved to lime rock Park, which curiously I was racing last night in UKGPL league race.

My laptimes started around the 13's then i was steadily going towards the 1:08s which i thought was pretty decent at the time, and then only just now i posted a 1:06.371 !, which is more than Im happy with at this stage of my racing.

[Paul Richards]

Hi Rob!

Just added you as a friend and realised you were in the Rookie Solstice time trail this morning! Congrats on getting into the 06s  The most important thing at the stage is to try and get consistant laps in without racking up incident points rather than raw pace. The times will come eventually. I also started at Lime Rock and its good place to start with as there aren't many corners to learn but its quite tricky to go fast intially. After Laguna last week I have improved my braking technique in the Solstice which helps again in the first corner. If you would like me to put up a quick guide of how I drive lime rock then just let me know. I read one on Laguna and it helped me a lot!

Cheers
Paul

[Paul968]

It's early days yet. Only those in beta, or the people who rushed to get out of the solstice would be able to drive the Skippy. It will take a few months before we see iRacing becoming what the developers intended it to be. In the meantime, the rest of us have to be patient and develop with the system. ...

I notice you ran your skip barber race at noon. There were races later that evening with 9 and 10 drivers, so early races probably aren't the best at this stage of release.

What he said.

[Steven Foster]

That's it - SR of 4.40 and goodbye to the Solstice

Hello years subscription and Skippy, a seat in the middle, the ablility to see left AND tweakable brake balance.....and, oh my goodness, what a difference. The steering is - ALIVE! I can really tell what the car is doing, and it's an absolute blast. Just had 5 laps practice at Lime Rock, and I'm grinning from ear-to-ear at the moment whilst I type this.

I cannot strongly recommend enough getting into the Skip Barber car ASAP, especially if you are of the GPL persuasion.

[Paul968]

I cannot strongly recommend getting into the Skip Barber car ASAP, especially if you are of the GPL persuasion.

Don't you mean

I cannot strongly recommend getting into the Skip Barber car ASAP, especially if you are of the GPL persuasion.

?

[Steven Foster]

Yeah, or adding "enough" to the sentence......

[Ken Murray]

Glad to see you've made it to the Skip Steven! I can concur wholly with your comments, the FF is incredible. Mind you if you have a go round Laguna you will notice it isn't such an overwhelming experience on a flat track, still good, but it doesn't feel so alive.

Unfortunately for me I've discovered I may have to shelve iRacing until a get a better PC. When I installed the software and ran the graphics test it did say that I may not be able to run the game. Everything is turned down and it's OK on my own but the fps is dropping quite badly in races with lots of drivers. It didn't seem as bad in the Soltice but in a frantic race around Lime Rock in the Skippy the last thing you want is patchy fps. I just did a race and then a solo practice straight after and it was so much more enjoyable when I could see where I was going. It's like having helmet shake as in rFactor but not good when I'm the only one experiencing it!

[Steven Foster]

Sorry to hear that Ken. Not sure what budget you have, but I built a dual-core 2.5GHz Athlon 64-based system, which has 2GB of RAM and a 8600GT video card recently for 300 of your finest pounds sterlings (old fart test - say that last bit in a swedish accent, then tell me what the advert was for  ).

You could build summat for less and still be able to run iRacing well.

[Burtoner]

Just done a time trial. from lap 13 to lap 21 today in a row of Completely on the track, without going off for my 8 laps of time trail

Before that I only had 1 incident around lap 2 at 1st corner of Lime Rock, every other one was on track

My fastest lap was 1:06.210, my best average lap overall over my 8 laps was 01:07.044

I no idea if this helps towards my safety points etc.

[Don]

I no idea if this helps towards my safety points etc.

I think it kind 0f depends how many times you throw it off in the session.
Clean and a quicker average than previous runs will rack the points up for you.
But the Races are where the real gains are to be made.

[Will Tway]

Me too. I actually hadn't logged a time at the GPL rank site for nearly a week...the longest stretch I can recall but like Ken, my PC flat out stinks. Works 'ok' for the short oval races but at LRP my frame rates are dreadfully slow. Shame as I was really starting to get the hang of it. I think iRacing will attract a strong following for years to come...I just hope it's still around by the time I can afford a new PC. 

Enjoy,

W-

[Brendan]

Sorry to hear about your problems Ken.  I was worried before getting iRacing that my system wasn't upto scratch (3.2 P4, 8600GT, 1GB RAM).  Turns out that I can run comfortably at Class 2-3.  From what I've read, iRacing is heavily dependant on the processor, so as a precaution I killed off unwanted apps in the startup menu, cleaned out the registry and disabled unwanted processes in Control Panel/AdminTools/Services in an effort to lighten the load.  Unfortunately, I can't give a "before and after" comparison so I don't know whether or not any of this can benefit you.

[Brendan]

I think it kind 0f depends how many times you throw it off in the session.
Clean and a quicker average than previous runs will rack the points up for you.
But the Races are where the real gains are to be made.

That's an interesting point.  Today, I ran a TT at Lime Rock.  I did 17 incident free laps with a best 8 lap average of 1:04.5 (my best so far).  My SR went up by a paltry 0.03, yet a few days ago I did a TT at Laguna, had a few "offs" and it went up by 0.06.

Do iRacing use voodoo magic to work out the SR, or is there a more logical explanation?