I would make that! I don't do anything in the way of modding or making things out of wood, but that looks a lot of fun and provides super immersion and it was really cheap.
With a little bit more effort and attention to detail one could make this cockpit a really great one. The only thing that kept me from building a cockpit myself is lack of space in the home-office. So I'm still attaching my wheel to the desk instead.
It's ok. The pricing is total insanity, something like $15 a month, $11.49 per car and $15 per track. Here's the catch, as if that wasn't one already. You can't race any car you buy until you are licensed to race in a race or series in which that car is included. upsides, it looks nice, it really is a sim, although not as fun as the likes of RACE or rFactor. There is much more competitive racing which is readily available, much better than say posting here, organising a race, for 5 people to turn up and 4 go off at the first corner.
That's the problem I have with games u have to buy again and again each month. Imagine if all games went that way... you have the cost of your internet connection and other bills each month, then you have to buy this game again and again and even $15 is not sufficient since you're encouraged to buy cars and tracks. iRacing is one sim you will never find me on.
Some interesting points made I remember a programme where this young man was really into flight sims had all the kit, the lot. In the programme they let him have a free flying lesson, at the end he was so blown away and excited he said 'as soon as I get home i'm selling all my stuff to try and afford more lessons'. Sims are ok but anything you can do in real life I think is far more rewarding.
I don't think anyone would argue with that. I think the main point is money. Lets dial it back from F1, as the chance of actually doing that in real life is super slim anyway, and the costs are unfathomable, So lets say, the Caterham academy, which costs £17,500 last time I looked. For that you get a Caterham car, racing license, some racing tuition and a years racing in the Caterham academy cup. Now, add to that fuel for each race, consumables like brake pads, maybe tyres, all the kits required (helmet, overalls etc)and it could possibly get up to nearly £20k for a year. Whereas a gaming PC, a G25/27 and even a proper top of the line racing cockpit isn't going to come to £20k. You should be able to get it all for around £2k, sure you could spend more, but I think you'd be hard pushed to have to spend £20k. Even lesser cars, and just doing trackdays, at £250 a pop per trackday, and then fuel and consumables, and then the cost of the actual car, your still probably going to be over the cost of a sim experience.
I think the whole argument about why bother because reality is better is rather silly. Simulations are here for a reason and we know what the reason is. Saying reality is better is like saying it's better to drive to london rather than walk there or use public transport. We know reality has better graphics (and force feedback) but the computer simulation is still valid. If a simulation was so crap and unworthy... why are they used by professionals? Why are pilots using them? Why are they used by soldiers etc? Racing drivers? There are racing drivers who still spend time on driving sims... what does that tell you? If I have a real car... I should not spend time or money setting up a home driving sim? 3d glasses, body vibration, £370 wheel, pedals, shifter? Seems like a small fraction of what it costs to drive a car and especially the Caterham example given above. So someone who had never flown a plane was given the experience of flight and sold his home sim to persue flying lessons... As if that suddenly makes simulated flying redundant and pointless... I would suggest if anything that person was a little immature. Sure it's great to pay for real lessons if you can afford it but that doesn't mean you have to drop simulated flight never to return to it. Both have their place and both will continue to be used by professionals and by people at home.
What I love about racing sims is that you can come pretty close to reality at times, not all. But I love the competition, the struggle to get that perfect setup, the days of testing those setups on a track for hours, noting lap times as they increase or decrease. And if you throw the car into the wall, you're fine and your wallet is safe. Personally, I think Huttu is nothing special, he obviously takes a very minimalistic approach to competitive racing, I like to have a balance, I want to be fast, but I still want the challenge a sim brings.
Interesting vid. So is there an A10 version? Kid who fly only A10 sim for some years is given the controls of real A10? So now I'm interested to know the Huttu's controller setup at home? Which wheel and pedals? They also made clear in this vid that Huttu has only really spent time on older/slower sim cars so it was like a double whammy having to learn a real car that's faster. Huttu said the real car is more stable I guess with it being a modern car. So perhaps I get the point of iRacing now. It may be expensive for a game but it's a bit more than a game and still much cheaper than the real thing.
It is well known that a large chunk of the real top end sim racers disable all force feedback, make their wheel totally weightless in turning and sometimes even use buttons for shifting. I don't like this but unfortunately it's impossible to police. It's not all doom and gloom though, you can still beat them with your setups. At the moment I'm racing the Riley Daytona Prototype in practice sessions for 120min of thunder @ watkins glen. It's already plain to see i'll be in the second group or split which means I have a good chance of being at the front. iRacing has a sort of matchmaking system which works really well!
Disabling FF feels awful to me even with body vibration working. I'd rather go for as close to realistic control setup as possible rather than kind of cheating to get top speed on a sim. So what sims are you using mostly?
If you setup your wheel without FF and without any weight for turning, then you'll loose alot of feedback in a simulator actually. You know, the things you usually feel in your bottom, like when you're going to loose traction etc. Atleast that's my experience with racing-sims. I'm hoping that SimBin will do a new updated version of their Race 07 engine, with better graphics ofc and preferably for the PS3 instead of the PC. What can be achieved - graphicswise - with either the PS3 or XBox360 is shown by GT5 (in parts) and Forza4. Pair that with the rather good physics-engine of the GT-R or RaceOn-series and we've got a winner.
SimBin are working on GTR3, there's a website for it, with a teaser which is basically just a sound clip. +1 on the FFB, I couldn't drive a car in a game if there was no FFB. I don't even like the way my mum's car steering feels (Fiat 500) as it's got power steering, and my car doesn't. I like to feel the resistance to turning the wheel, and then when it goes light, I know it's no longer turning and I need to back off a bit (this is in RL), the effect of FFB for me has never really been similar to RL for me. Part of that may be because I've never 'drifted' a car in real life, I've never been able to get my Dads car to get the backend out on track, there's so much grip on it, so I don't know what that feels like. But in games, with a wheel, I never seem to be able to control power slides very good. I can react to a bit of slip, and get the back end back in line, but continuing the drift, I've never really been able to get the hang of. I suspect part of that is down to how complex the physics behind tyres are, and when drifting, I'm sure it gets even more complicated, and possibly even impossible to simulate. Part of it must also be down to the fact that you don't have the feeling of the weight of the car sliding around, which must contribute to the ability to control a slide.
I actually think Race 07 looks very good for it's age. I was pleasantly surprised. I bought it a few months ago on steam and set everything to max. Was pleasantly surprised. The fact that I playe it with 3d glasses makes it better, games look flat and cartoony without. Even installed Richard Burns Rally after many years absence and that too looks quite good with 3d glasses.
Race does look great still. I'm playing Injection atm, if anyone wants a race gimmie a shout Mostly it's been rFactor, Race series and iracing. Wait. Project CARS too! Still to try LFS.
