I spent on tracks mostly. The cars get updated, I've bought two Ferrari and they want me to buy it a third time. I'd hate to be stuck in a 2020 Ferrari....
The thing is with the pricing guys like me and and thousands of others on this race in real life our use to and if you spend money to be competitive it’s expensive like real expensive so a lot of us think hell this is cheap oh wow 15 for a track 15 for a car when you go to the dirt track to race on Friday or Saturday night you spend minimum 250 so 15 bucks is cheap!!
I've been on iRacing since 2008, I would never argue that it's cheap but the price is honestly a non issue for me, every few years I pay a couple hundred bucks on black friday for a 2yr membership and then buy the occasional car or track. It's true that I've built up a fair bit of content over time and that is why I only need the occasional content purchase. However the amount I've spent on hardware over the years would dwarf the software cost. I'm not trying to convince anyone but honestly the cost is not something I think about. If you're in it long term it really doesn't cost that much but if you're just testing the waters then be very selective on what you buy, ask on the forum and you'll get lots of advice on how to make the most of your money. Anyway your video was pretty fair imo.
@@dinkidink5912 I agree that if you're on the service for many years and you don't have an addictive personality (needlessly buying every car in a class, or tracks you're never going to drive), then yes, the price won't be unreasonable given the amount of racing you can get in over such a long period. I guess that can be hard to see when you're just starting out, and I think it's a shame that the costs are so heavily front loaded. Thanks for watching and commenting, it's appreciated!
@@DiariesOfABadDriver I've been on it long enough to have most content I'd want to race, but it did cost a decent amount at the beginning. Now I just pick up the new stuff I'll use, and it's £40 or so every 3 months. I can see it really isn't accessible for new drivers, though. I hope that iRacing put something in place like being able to buy a car and a season worth of tracks at a significant discount, or be able to rent the tracks for a season. It won't help drivers like me in terms of cost, but it might increase participation in weeks with tracks that are less popular, so we'll benefit in that way.
100% this. If you want hardcore competition then it's not even a question of price. It's just a question of where you can reliably find it and the answer is iracing. Who cares what it costs?
iRacing's pricing model is a major barrier for new subscribers. I'm a long-time subscriber and to me it represents value for money. Fourteen years ago I bought Watkins Glen and Road America for $20 AUD a pop. Still racing them regularly to this day. I raced IRL at Bathurst twice and it cost me at least $10k. I haven't spent close to that on iRacing but since I can't afford real life racing anymore, iRacing is a very fitting substitute. That's me. I appreciate others will view the value proposition very differently.
Ah, a story as old as time; someone who thought AI racing was pretty good tries out iRacing, and now all the other circuit racing sims are permanently ruined. On a more serious note; iRacing is probably everything I wanted from a racing game when I was a kid. It'll be interesting to see what happens in this space when a competitor eventually catches up and can math iRacing in scope and service value (I thought Rennsport was gonna do that, but they dropped the ball soooo hard. ACC and Le Mans Ultimate are good at very specific things but their scope is tiny. AMS2 could've been a hit but who knows whether LFM in AMS2 will be a hit or not - it's many years too late I think)
@@SLENDAMANN haha yeah that pretty much sums it up. I think that, somewhat unfortunately, for this kind of service I'm not really sure if there is even room in the market for another one? It's like iRacing is big enough that it's developed it's own gravitational pull. Kunos I think have also more or less confirmed that they're not even really going to try to compete with iRacing when it comes to ACE.
@@dnalord77I keep hoping, I hear new features coming etc, install it and the same 33 people are racing across all servers that have been forever. That's the problem with RRE, no depth to the competition, which is fine if you're the fastest cat out there, but I'm not, and need slow people to race against. Iracing has loads of people slower than me.😂
I think the concern over iracing being a rip off would be alleviated immensely if: 1. They allow trials of unowned cars/tracks in test drive mode at any point in time. 2. If you lapse your subscription after a 12-month non-consecutive subscription, you can always use owned cars/tracks in AI races or test drive mode. The issue at the end of the day is that maintaining servers is expensive and they do have a stewarding review process (whatever you might think of its quality), so a subscription model is the only one that is commercially viable.
How expensive do you think maintaining servers is? How many subscription models do we see today with other multiplayer games? How do the other sims stay afloat? If you honestly believe that they aren't floating in a pool of money, then you're just a happy customer I guess. There's no way this financial model isn't extremely lucrative. But hey ... as long as they keep finding customers. I'm just not one of them.
@@EnnoMaffen I work for a company that runs a number of AWS instances 24/7, (and iracing runs at least 4 AWS boxes IIRC), and I can tell you it is not cheap. No other game uses AWS as far as I'm aware.
@@Injektil_o I’m not sure if you meant “No other sim uses AWS,” but I can tell you that quite a few of the larger games use AWS. I remember working at Amazon a while back when AWS went down and I just wanted to go home and play some games on my xbox and quite a few were not working all the way because of the AWS issue. However your point is still true, multiple AWS boxes ain’t cheap and I think a sub model is fair, just that they could probably instill new-user confidence with a few tweaks in their model
about the watermark, it's in the TOS that if you are streaming or using iracing content, the watermark is to be displayed to keep from copyright, it's in the TOS to keep us from copyright strikes and gives us rights to use our races in streams productions and broadcasts of races
@@trihard42069 Happens to other real world series on a occasional basis (and yes, their official accounts), especially at tracks that host F1 or NASCAR. IndyCar even had a full race broadcast from Texas taken down by the WWE back 5 or 6 years ago
@@DAGATHire lmao! It's a SERVICE no different than paying Spotify to listen to music and make playlists full of music that you do NOT own. It's a service that has customer support, and a protest system that polices rammers, griefers, and cheaters which in turn produces the most competitive, and most fair multiplayer lobbies compared to any other racing game/sim. A service that provides major software updates and improvements every 3 months. A service that hosts racing disciplines outside of road and formula with oval, dirt oval, and rally racing. AC is a good sim, made way more amazing by a great modding community, but racing against other humans with it is absolute trash, and that's including needing to use LFM for matchmaking. Racing against AI is even worse. AC doesn't even have a proper rolling start for GT cars. AC is great for hot lapping modded tracks and cars, that's pretty much it. If you want to race actual people in populated lobbies, people who don't treat racing games like a destruction derby, then iRacing is the current king.
As a broke college student, formerly broke high-school student. The price has always been the barrier of I-racing for me. Especially given that its a double dipping model (sub and purchase) so the cost is never ending AC and ACC lfm still gives me decent racing and arguably better physics, and because it costs so much less, and ive been able to save enough money for some half decent equipment with the money i didnt spend on i-racing.
@@Erowens98 that's a very fair way to look at, you've got finite hobby money so less spent in one area is more you can spend elsewhere. It makes me wonder to myself if I'd rather race AC lfm with a direct drive setup, or play iRacing with a G29... I'll have to think about it 😅
Im Australian so this is in AUD. But I've spent 1800 on a 4080, 700 on a 7800x3d, 1000 on wheels, 1500 on my Alpha wheelbase, 400 on a rig, around 200 on transducers, pedals, amps etc. Still the rest of the PC, still shifters and button box. It just feels too much to invest all this to "own" it all. Then to only be stuck renting my software. I have AMS2, ACC, AC with mods, BeamNG, GTA5 modded to run on wheel, wreckfest, Forza and still more... I feel like if I can't enjoy all of this. Then its time to take a break from my rig, not search for the next way to keep it interesting. Eventually I "might" change my mind and sub to iracing. Id like to test out driving on it before I commit to anything though... A short offline trial or demo would be nice
i started on ACC controller through ps5 plus premium. i always wondered why i sucked so much and that brought me to the csl elite bundle. i would have never enjoyed sim racing if i didn’t randomly download ACC through ps plus premium and im so grateful for it.
Been on iRacing for a few years and it feels more like a hobby than just a game I hop into. Except maybe LFM the chances of finding a race with people of the same skill level is so hard in other sims. You get close fights every race with people on your level. Endurance racing with a mate or with a team is so fun and exciting. Yeah it's expensive, but everything is laser scanned by themselfes and so much work goes into it. The servers are rock solid, never had an issue with them even on 24h races. My rig wouldnt have been worth it if it wasnt for iRacing
As a member of the 40 club (if you know you know) it can be expensive. However, engaging your brain a little can make it not ridiculously expensive (though even the biggest fan would agree it’s not cheap). Buy subs in their Black Friday deals and the sub is only £6 a month, or less if you sub two years. Be selective in what you buy and get participation money each season. It’s quite easy to get $40 a year towards your Black Friday sub. I’d say never buy new cars or tracks until you see how many splits etc there are longer term. There is also a list of tracks used most to save a lot of money. Let’s face it, if you’ve spent thousands on rigs, wheels and pedals, this is a drop in the ocean. Other good sims are available so it’s not mandatory, but the online is simply great. Join a team, do the huge 12 hour and 24 races and it’s the best.
@@jenscee7679 The issue is its not just the subscription, but tracks and cars all cost a very good chunk of money each. The sim is just too expensive unless this is your only hobby. Been doing endurance races on ACC instead.
@@Rocky712_ As someone who's only hobbies are iRacing and karting, the subscription is in my entertainment budget. As in I see no difference between paying for iRacing, Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, etc. These are all for entertainment, but no one bats an eye at paying for 3, 4, or 5 tv/streaming services that they can only watch one of at a time. iRacing works for me, ACC works better for you, and that's ok.
@@DAGATHire He wasn't taking a shot at anyone's intelligence, just giving advice that anyone getting into iRacing should lean on their intelligence and plan ahead. If you think people are deluded for paying that then brillo bananas, it's still gonna happen. This isn't a monolithic corporation nickel and diming its customer base to pay for things they used to be able to buy outright. This is simply the virtual equivalent of maintenance/entrance fees which are present in real world racing: No, iRacing doesn't have a physical track/garage/amenities to maintain, but they have servers to keep running, a game engine and UI to improve, users to support, and people to pay for officiating, all of which happen round the clock for the majority of the year. But how about you engage your brain, take a deep breath and recognize you've got an anger issue, or die mad because otherwise you're clearly butthurt about money you don't have to spend.
@@DAGATHire What's a bad thing about making wise money decisions? If you don't have an iRacing account yet, you can get a 1 year subscription for free/very cheap via your national FIA member club. You also don't need to buy many tracks and cars to have fun. You don't even need to buy any cars or tracks to reach B class in the sports cars series.
It needs to be something traditional where you pay once and you're allowed access to the game permenently. When i was viewing games that go well with my steering wheel, i found i racing in the list and i was interested until i figured out it was sub only and my first time seeing such a concept.
The IRacing pay model keeps the racing at high standard and constant updates and new content. I’ll gladly keep paying. There is always a race available at anytime of the day. All types of racing from oval, street, dirt, formula, etc. And most importantly, no other game comes close to racing simulation.
About 21:05 , the people who unironically defend the payment model by saying it keeps the dickheads away, are themselves the proof that it doesn't keept all the dickheads away, only the poor ones. But really enjoyed listening to your opinions and reflections, great video!
No user likes the pricing model of the iRacing, sad fact is that there just isn't any other sim that can seriously compete with iRacing when it comes to actual racing and being able to actually hop in a racing against people who are of similar skill level. That said, there are a lot of issues they have including the tyre model that just snaps out of under you, net code being bearable to horrible lately, and the "care" they put in keeping people who ruin races in line is just superb.. which gets us back to the original point of their monetization as people would be much more willing to part with their money if they fixed the most glaring issues :P
This is the exact reason i lapsed on my subscription and never renewed. I joined and within my first 5 races i had 3 penalties caused by other racers, they dontt make reporting incidents easy at all, you essentially need to take time to analyze your own footage and even then you arent guaranteed a verdict. Its probably one of the saddest sims ive used in a while
@@opticXML The reason why reporting incidents isn't easy, is because you are supposed to only report intentional wrecking. People make mistakes and it might feel unfair, but crashing is part of racing. The best way to avoid incidents is to pay attention to the drivers around you, give space and be careful Just like in real life and just like in REAL racing. People take their safety rating very serious, wich is why there is alot less wrecking in iracing. Especially higher up.
In regards to the tire modeling. it used to be bad enough that IRL drivers complained to iRacing that the sim was actually harder to drive than real life. From what I've read and been told, this is due to a theoretical tire model being used for the game. No exact tire was used as a model to work off of, this is why a lot of old Papyrus sims (Grand Prix Legends, Nascar Racing 2003) had better modeling on the higher end of grip, due to sticking with an actual tire as reference. Supposedly this was a point of contention between two devs one wanting to use a theoretical tire model, and one wanting to reference actual tire manufacturers. The actual 'referenced' model was what was used, but as Papyrus got bought up by Vivaldi and then promptly got obliterated into the ether with Vivaldi's closing. The dev that wanted to use the theoretical tire model came back for iRacing, but not the dev who preferred the referenced model.
Tire physics in sim games are always on the slidy side for some reason, which shouldn't be the case. Never played iR, but Live For Speed has the most realistic behaviour "by feel", as in if you understand physics, you can predict the tire very well, even if grip values are lesser. All other sims I played, I had to "learn" the tires as a separate game mechanic, instead of just learning the car, track, weather or whatever.
I used to think iracing was dumb but when I started working on my driving technique and got a better grip on real life racing by competing in autocross events and spirted driving. I used to never truly push my car until I got used to pushing cars on the limit and a little over the limit. If I never took iracing seriously I truly believe I wouldn’t be as good of a driver
Wow, thanks so much for your generosity! I honestly never thought I'd get any donations when I set that thing up 😂 Glad you find it informative, thanks for watching!
As a german it makes me furious to not being able to drive my paid content offline without a subscribtion! Currently I'm on the one year for 10$ + F4 car deal but im hesitating to invest real money into tracks & cars because I won't be able to use them without an active subscribtion, which can't be paused because of money. This and the utterly outdated Tracks (Hello Nordschleife), Graphics, Hud and the FFB are a real bummer in the Iracing universe, at least for me. Ah and the reporting system in LFM is waaaay better then Iracings: "yeah, we will tell him to stop crashing into people", they reply in an email, but they won't do shit about it, because of money they might lose.. people are as reckless as in every other sim. In LFM you can get banned for days, weeks, months if you repeat the offense. I like the ingame voice chat very much though. Super funny to hear some foreign insults being thrown around. Great video!
I agree about offline content. I think that should change. If you've purchased content, you should be able to drive on cars & tracks that you own alone or maybe with AI.
But at that point you've already spent hundreds of dollars and you don't own any of the content you paid for. ACC is currently $15 CAD and you own it for life.
@@marcforget33 when I can hop on ACC at 2am and have a competitive multiclass race with people all over the world…I’ll switch. Till then, I’m on iracing. The cost per hour of enjoyment is tiny.
@@marcforget33 And you also only get to race GT3... It's really not that complicated. Imagine spending $5,000 on a racing rig and complaining about $200 a year on cars, tracks, and subscriptions. Pretending like ACC offers the same thing as iracing is a joke.
iRacing is a sim I am always wanting to come back to, but I just never am wanting to play against others. I just like practice, so what I ended up doing was downloading most of the tracks from iRacing that have been ported to Assetto Corsa. I also play Automobilista 2. What I would like is for all of those cars and tracks I purchased, to be available offline without a sub, and I am just locked out of the community features and multiplayer.
Yep, agreed. In fact, when I've often tested tracks for free in AC before purchasing them in iRacing 😂 Ams2 is good fun for hotlapping and seeing how you stack up on the leaderboards.
I'm an avid iRacer and have been for the best part of a decade. I will never claim it has the best physics, best graphics etc etc. But in terms of the community and the way iRacing continue to make the sim as accessible as possible for those with various disabilities including myself puts it at the top for me. I feel like there's a genuine care and consistent dialogue between iRacing and the community to make tweaks and add options.
their expensive model is the only reason dirt oval racing is available at all on pc. Our community is way smaller, so this model is basically the only way dirt racing would get a game at all. But the road side def gets crazy expensive, especially when acc and le mans ultimate have pretty compelling physics as well.
Iracing does make a World Of Outlaws game. Oh wait, it's only available on consoles. Isn't that interesting? I'm sure the upcoming NASCAR game by Iracing will be on console only as well. The greed is real.
@@marcforget33 i see why you feel that way, but to me it doesnt come even close to scratching the itch iracing does. I do hope nascar 25 isnt console only
I'd have no problems with iRacing if the quality of the product matched the price. The game looks dated, sounds dated and it has been shown many times now how some aspects of its car physics are flawed and unrealistic. Frankly, it is shameful that the game has fallen behind in terms of realism and overall quality, especially considering it is both the most popular and most expensive racing sim. They need to get their shit together.
4:46 Cars launching into the moon is ridiculous, but so is the face in the mirror. Great video. I don't have the time or the money for iracing, so i'll stick to dirt rally and watching your videos.
I’m an avid sim racer on PC and console. I refuse to play iRacing as I CANNOT STAND subscription based games. You end up spending thousands of pounds on something that should cost about £50. Subscriptions services only benefit the publishers, it’s a huge rip off for the end user.
Hate subscriptions, you’re not alone, unfortunately we live in a sub world. Great vid by the way, you covered loads of subjects and well presented. IR really is the best sim and they know it.
I think you nailed it. Especially at the end. As far as developers go, iracing is a shining beacon of transparency and open communication between fans and developers. Plus, it gets a minimum of 4 major updates per year, has by far the best wet weather racing in sims, and is being actively developed to address the exact flaws most of the community has. Except the pricing of course, but the quality and quantity of new content and excellent developer interaction feels like you actually get a premium service for the price. I mean, building a new engine from scratch in house is something most developers do not have the budget or deadline for, yet that is already in the works.
Been simracing for 20 years, and… this is the correct answer. Funnily enough today I found the time to do my first two races after months of absence. Worth every penny for sure.
LMU offers the same type of ranked racing, without the cost, with much more lively and realistic physics, without the unsavable slides. The only downside being that it only covers gt, lmp2, and hypercars. I say this not to crap on iracing, but to tell people that if gt racing is what you want, stop sleeping on Le Mans Ultimate.
@@spraynardkruger6426 do they have official scheduled races? Not sure why no other sim or racing game has copied that format. It's ridiculous sitting around in a lobby waiting for it to get filled up
@@HighValueTargetRacing yes they do. Just like iRacing they have a couple of series with different license requirements and car/track combos that run races every X hours. They have a built-in report system, driver rating, safety rating. Literally everything (in terms of online system) that iRacing offers for the cost of the game and no sub.
@@tboneisgaming thank you! I think being from Australia is a significant part of what makes iRacing better than those alternatives. Raceroom's online is functionally dead during my available hours, and as I touched on in the netcode section, my connection experience in iRacing was far better than lfm. For an Australian, I think the most viable alternative to iRacing is a locally based league.
I definitely agree you should be able to atleast test drive a car before you buy it like you would in real life. I've been on iRacing for 5 years and there's a few cars I've bought because I thought they would be fun and I ended up not liking it and don't even use them anymore especially when they're all $12 and that adds up quick. They should assign a single track to that car (one that is included in your subscription for free) and allow the user to run untimed laps with it to feel it out and see if they'd like it.
@ertpecsertpecs Oh yeah I know I'm just talking in general they should just make it a constant rather than for a couple hours for a few days of the year or having to wait an entire year. Also the downtime is during very inconvenient hours for a regular person like me who works 8 hours for 5 days a week so I really don't get the opportunity for that.
I’m an oval racer and I feel the worst thing about Iracing is I’m better than my safety rating and that affects MY safety rating because they wreck me.
The pricing model tricks people into thinking its the most realistic sim on the market, when that couldnt he further from the truth. In reality its a dated sim with subpar physics, the worst community in simracing, pathetic customer support, and bugs that were present in 2001 that still havent been fixed (thats not an exaggeration btw, this runs on the same engine as N4 and dozens of N4 and NR2003's bugs are still present in iracing in 2024) iracing is like reddit - your first sip of it will make you like it, but as time goes on you quickly see it for what it really is and you'll leave wishing you never even wasted your time with it
This is one of the most fair and honest review I came across to yet. Thank you, I'm glad you also mentioned about the pricing which doesn't seem to take developing economies into calculation.
Thanks for the kind words! Yes I felt it was an important element of the pricing that was worth mentioning. Thanks for watching and commenting, glad you got something out of it!
I do agree that all offline features should be free be free and only need subscription top do online races, this way new users could try out the sim before putting money down, maybe they should make the test drive feature work with out a paid subscription.
On the topic of blinkers....I couldn't agree more. That has become my number one complaint with iRacing. More than bad driving or deliberate wreckers, the blinkers ruin my experience every time I see them. I understand not everyone has perfect ping, but iRacing needs to tighten it's grip on how bad a connection the servers will tolerate before parking someone. In short track racing you might be better off dropping out of a race than taking phantom 4x's trying to pass a car that is disappearing then dropping from the sky in a crash animation on your hood. There just isn't enough corners to count in those races to offset the incident points and your SR tanks far more easily than it recovers. A couple weeks ago I took a 12X - two phantom 4X and one real 4X when he did in fact wreck me- in a 40 lap short track event. Crushed my SR.
Its expensive to get started but once you get a few cars an only purchase the tracks for that week an ect. I only race dirt oval sprints an big blocks sometimes latemodels.
The worst part of the blinking is when the car ahead of you disappears, and then you get a 4x penalty for 'contact' when all you did was keep driving without issue. Or even worse you then spin out for no reason because the physics are somehow the only thing still functioning for them
For me, with the launch of AC Evo in early access coming in just a bit over a month, for me it's not worth to try iRacing now. AC Evo might be huge! And, depending on the game implementation, could rival all the positive aspects os iRacing. I will wait and see. Maybe after that i will rethink it, the pricing structure of iRacing was always something that made me fell like it's waaay too much for just a game.
I'm really looking forward to AC Evo but I think it's very unlikely that it's going to even try to compete with what iRacing does, let alone eclipse it. For instance, I watched an interview that gamer muscle did with the developer where they stated there was no current plans for a built in ranked multiplayer system. I think it's going to be good but it's not going to do everything.
@wharg7468 can you expand on that? What is not a game, iRacing? If you mean that to iRacing I guess so, but it would be the same case for AC, ACC, rFactor, LMU, etc. And maybe I would throw Flight Sim 2020/2024 and Xplane on that bucket aswell, all simulators delivered on a game package. I guess going to a DD wheel would turn any of these "games" into a "simulator". I also would say that the main differences for iRacing are the way better racing event structure, the amount of content overall and the driver skill ranking system. The main drawback being the monetisation. As it is focussed on motorsport, an expensive hobby IRL or in sim, the devs feel free to charge a lot of money for any small content. That's my impression at least, since I did not played iRacing yet and can't tell if the content is really that good to justify the prices.
@@FelPi_LuizFelipe Every single big sim that has come out since iRacing has been called "the next iRacing killer" but iRacing has only grown in popularity over the years...I'm sure AC Evo will be a great game and very popular in its own right, but the appeal for games like AC and AC Evo isn't the same as iRacing, one notable example especially being if you're into stuff like oval racing. iRacing is the only sim that has decent oval racing, it's the only one that has NASCAR or even a good amount of American tracks and series like IndyCar or dirt oval racing. Meanwhile ACC has just a handful of American road courses with more focus on European and Asian F1 style tracks and only GT3 or GT3 adjacent racing to choose from. AC and ACE seem to be aiming to be like Gran Turismo for the PC, especially with the emphasis on the Eifel region cruising thing they are doing. And without ranked racing out of the box it's obvious to me that they are focusing on the more casual players rather than the hardcore sweaty tryhards (both are perfectly fine to me). Yes, iRacing is expensive. But for that you get the best matchmaking system in the sim racing space across a wide variety of series along with laser scanned cars and tracks built using real data alongside continual updates. It's far from perfect but iRacing was the first to build a game like this on this scale and they put all of the pieces of the puzzle together first and it was only in the last few years that the other sims started to catch up IMO.
I didn't renew my subscription this year, after 6 years, I stopped playing online for reasons and only really use the AI racing, and it kinda sucks that the us$1378 i have spent on content i just cant continue to use for the AI. They say when you buy content it's yours, but it's not,.
Yep, totally agree with you! It's ridiculous and should absolutely be changed so that players like yourself who want to take a break from online competition can still use the content they've paid VERY good money for.
@@DiariesOfABadDriver Would be nice if i could sell off the content i bought too, or trade it back in, I am kinda over it all, and now want to sell my rig (Which I probably won't get much for since I got a Fanatec CSL and no one wants belt drive anymore!) Without a rig, the game is totally useless!
I got mad an sold my moza r5 set up an took a few month break an now decided to go back an got my thrustmaster out of the closet an took me alil to get used to it but now I know why I got mad an left irwcing. Get tired of getting wrecked an alot don't care about I rating or safety rating.
He's soooooo back 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 I'm sure i'll like this video (28 minus, heck yeah), and will definitely have a better understanding of iRacing (which will still make me not even want to try it because it's so expensive). Some interesting points: 1. Nice knowing you're australian, i have plans on going to Australia. Seems really fun. 2. I did not know about these ffb issues. They gotta step it up. 3. The blinking sounds like hell, i can imagine how people would be mad when this happens. 4. iRacing is really damn expensive where i live. For example, if we ignore the discounts, the 2 year plan will be arround 1200 BRL (85% of month worth of minimum wage here btw). You add that to the obscene price of the gear (we pay ≈ 283 USD, or 1.2 months worth of minimum wage for a G29. And if we adventure ourselves to anything other things get *way* worse. We pay ≈ 766 USD FOR A THRUSTMASTER T300 RS GT EDITION, literally over 3 months of minimum wage. Plus the cost of the pc and everything else, we get why this is is such an expensive hobby, like everything here), and get something that is *way* out of the question for a lot of people. Also, yes, i know that the average income is higher, but most people who play these kinds of games are people in their 20's, and i don't think many 20 year olds get paid well. 5. Similar thing is happening with ETS2. Their engine is old (but easy to run), and they already have to start updating it to have more features.
@@felipeferreira00 thank you, friendo :) You're by far my best hype man, haha. Hope you enjoy, and find it informative: that's exactly what I set out to do!
Well until AC or any other title can finally give us great racing and a real MMR/License system to ban or remove bad or grief drivers. Iracing is our only option. You can’t get a full day of real racing outside of Iracing. With in a days span of racing on other titles you’ll get a dude who just wants to ruin races or crash into people
thr thing is, AC or any other sim will never have a MMR/License or multiplayer league system like iRacing, for one single reason: it's not worth it financially. quite simply. maintaining the system would cost far too much. we simracers have to accept that we're in a bubble. without a constant flow of money, the service can't be maintained. you can see that at LMU right now, the company is financially at the bottom. the developers have to make sure that the games are financially viable.
I keep replaying the last part hoping that it'll get less funny the more I watch it, but I genuinely cannot stop laughing whenever I see the ridiculousness of the whole situation and GamerMuscle belly laughing at said situation. Great video! Instantly subscribed.
@@danielundercow If I was going to try and answer GM's question 'what is this?!', I'd say it's comedy gold. Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for watching and subscribing!
Honestly if iRacing came with all the tracks and cars free with the subscription I would be so much more likely to buy it. But for now I will stick to other sim racing games.
You may actually pay more is the end 3ys at 12$ (minimum / optimistic) being already 432$ Btw you would find it quickly hard to drive all category you have due to your pace training requierment to enjoy competitivness And if you stop that theorical global access you would then need to acquire licence so i prefer pick as it also create better diversity and more focused driver
iRacing should add some incentives/rewards for participation in a dead/low populated series (like giving some free subscription credit if you reach a certain goal) ... It'll help revive the series, iRacing will sell more cars/tracks and probably make more money than they lose. Win-win for everyone.
I think you’ve perfectly summed up why iRacing is worth it despite the cons. The subscription makes sense when you see how active the devs are and just how much the game improves year after year. Just to throw out a random gripe that I have - I hate how many of the new circuits tend to get caught in a death spiral of low participation + not being added to the schedule due to low participation. I feel like having track bundles would boost participation on some of the lesser known tracks.
That's a good point about the business model, because tracks are so expensive less people are willing to pay up for tracks that they aren't as familiar with or that they perceive as being unpopular. If the service was an all encompassing subscription fee that included everything, it would be better from a participation standpoint.
well in my country minimal wage is about 750 dollars a month with crazy ass inflation so if it wasn't for FIA and iRacing partnership I would propably never try it
I Hate to be that guy, but my standard of living and wallet thank me every single month that I have not subscribed/ entered into iRacing. I still want to join in, and have been very tempted, but I will wait untill it's more financially feasible for me personally. epic content as always mate 10/10
That's totally fair. The price kept me away for ages too and I think its a completely legitimate reason to play elsewhere. I'll never criticise anyone for criticising iRenting's prices :) Thanks for the kind words and for being such a loyal viewer! It's appreciated!
9:52 iRacing was built off the source code from NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, but they have been slowly moving away from said code, which has noticeably increased optimization, and most of all load times.
I just skipped through the parts that were interesting to me and for the Force Feedback I have to say, it's by far my favorite out of all the games. I feel like in AC it feels super "rubbery" like the wheel constantly going in one direction but super smooth, pretty much driving the car by itself while in ACC it's so numb, I can't get any information out of it. LMU is super hard and needs a lot of damping and filtering to properly work. I don't remember exactly why I dislike AMS's force feedback, but... I do remember that I didn't like it. The only force feedback I really enjoy is the one in Race Room. I don't know about the low update Rates since I'm using Race Hubs "Torque Behavior Prediction" on 1 as that's pretty much what everyone does I'm on the Asetek Invicta btw. usually playing with an in game FFB strength of 4-5 depending on the car and full 27nm in the software.
I am currently in the same boat as you, I bought iRacing almost exactly one year ago and just had to renew it. I got into iRacing to try out the endurance racing and my god is it good. your video sums up my experience very well this past year has been the best in my sim racing journey, and I am hoping for a better year next year as I am now apart of a dedicated endurance team. if you haven't tried the endurance racing I would highly recommend it some of the best fun you can have on the service. recently these past couple of weeks I have gotten pretty big into ovals which I never thought would happen but here we are. anyways I need to stop my rambling great vid and I hope to see more content in the future.
@@roastedrat7113 thanks for the kind words! I've dipped my toes into endurance with the Michelin pilot challenge (just did one this morning, actually) and I really enjoy that. I have yet to do any team stuff, though, which I'll be sure to try at least once :) Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@DiariesOfABadDriver I would really recommend the longer endurances. this summer i tried the Spa 24 (did not go well) i am going to try to do daytona 24 and nurb 24, I was very stupid and tried the indy 6h solo. my advice is to never do anything like a 6h solo.
Oh yeah I never would, the 2 hours of the MPC is about my limit, I'm well and truly ready for a break by the time that race is over. 6 hours sounds like torture 😂
I am from South Africa and I am heavily involved in IRL motorsport in a range of roles from corner marshal and race control all the way to competing myself. All in all I end up spending around half of my weekends a year at race tracks around ZA. I got into sim racing before I got into IRL events due to covid and school. I started in rally and F1 2019 and moved to ACC and eventually when the multiplayer experience got bad enough I went to iRacing. I love the multiplayer experience (even being far from any servers). Everything looks like the way real cars move on track (apart from the obvious bugs). The only downside is that to fund a month of iRacing (subscription and tracks for a single series) costs around $73(R1400) if you don't own the tracks. That is big money for the relatively low income of an African to the point where I had to weigh up the choice between racing in a rookie series IRL vs iRacing. Obviously the IRL series would cost me more and there would be more risks but all the skills that I have honed in the virtual world over the last 4 years would be going to waste. That saving per month allows me to cover the fuel costs for an entire track weekend. So I quit iRacing for a year to persue IRL racing. I ended up winning driver of the series because of my full send attitude I got from the virtual world. Now I am not saying that iRacing is a perfect simulator. There is something mid corner that does not feel right and IRL to unlock a tire is possible whereas I feel in iRacing it is more challenging. I am now for the first time in a year getting back into the virtual seat after a year of IRL motorsport and it feels like home without the brutality on the body and having to fix/check my car after every session.
So I decided to put all my iRacing orders into a google sheet for the last 9 years, eventually I will get more detail into it purely out of interest but I thought I would post the grand total here for now. A few things to keep in mind with the total is I almost always get the max discount for a bundle until I started to receive max discount for the 40 piece club. I have gotten back 40$ a year due to participation credits, I would say 50% of my time on iracing (9 years) as there is no way at the moment that I can tell the exact number so I am over estimating I think. Lastly I have always gotten my subscription at the black friday sale except for 1 year I paid the full price. I mostly race road and would say I own about 80% of all road cars, 90% of road tracks, 50%+ of dirt oval content roughly, and 95%ish of rally cross content. Okay so with all that rough estimates and junk so you get an idea of how much I own in iRacing the "grand total" is........... $1542.06 over almost a decade and it averages to 171.34 a year. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and obviously iRacing is not for everyone. It can be done for cheaper than what I paid if you are mostly focused on say GT3 or just oval and don't buy much outside of a specific discipline. IMO I have no issues with the prices in iRacing, my wheel base and one rim alone is about the same as the 9 year total I have paid. I know with iRacing my money is going into development as they have always reinvested a lot into the game and to see the change since 2015 I continue to believe that with every year things will keep getting better. I'm also a critic when it comes to the tires and other weird things about the game, we all want perfection but I also keep in mind what there doing is not the easy route and with all great things they take time. I have enjoyed iRacing very much over the years even with its issues and quirks and I don't think anyone will match what they do without the associated costs.
As someone who's fell into the DCS rabbithole previously. What I wish I racing would have is something like DCS's Flaming Cliffs. A 40usd module that gives you say 5 different cars to race in a common class. Throw in maybe the ability to always race those 4 cars without buying additional maps. DCS doesnt have map trials but they let you try any plane for 2 weeks each.
@@Mystic_Chizu With DCS, i own the module i buy, no paying subscription required like the Iracing scam. DCS is the best flying sim out here, not like iracing which is mid at best.
0:24 I think it's all a matter of perspective: If you get a 2 year subscription with one of the 25% off deals that run periodically, the base cost is about $6/mo. Pick up a GT3 car of your choice, and budget for 1 new track per month, and you're basically in *"Normal MMORPG Subscription"* territory. Contrast with, say, Microsoft Flight Simulator, where the Labor of Love "free stuff" ethos of FSX dried up with the launch of MSFS 2020, and now every new plane is effectively $30-70. iRacing starts to look pretty good compared to some other sim options...
I always wonder, if iRacing is soooo bad on tires, physics, graphics etc. then why don't we see pro drivers using anything else? "Max Verstappen, 4 time F1 champ, I'm sorry, but didn't you know this is a crap sim? You could be playing ACC!" Nascar drivers " Hey William Byron, I know you're actually a Nascar driver now with 13 wins, and learned almost exclusively on iRacing, but didn't you hear it's a rip off?"
Great vid!!. I been on here since about 2012-2013. I started out with papyrus sims in the 90s. You missed the days when you guys didn’t have any servers down there, and you guys would be all over lol, or the ice racing days with V3 tires. Or doing burnouts in the pits to warm your tires up. Only thing i wish they would update is the penalty structure for corse cuts. So inconsistent when it comes to registering the countdown. Just give me the 5 second penalty at the end of the race.
Well to be fair about the pyshics, if you have more than 100k races with over 250k players, there will be janky physics from time to time. It's literally impossible to have a game without any weird physics happening.
I’ve never used iRacing, because of the pricing. For me as someone who just races for fun Automoblista 2 feels great, pretty cheap* and no subscription :) Great multiplayer, good single player though the AI are slow af on ovals
Look, I get that iracing costs money. But it also has more ongoing attention to detail than any other title, from multiplayer splits to tracks, set-up balance and now AI. Is it perfect? No, far from it. But the subscription model incentivises them not to stand still. There's a reason that the serious events are all hosted in iracing. From having the most detailed tracks, set-up fairness and flag and penalty rules, to the simple arms race against cheaters. For many of the people complaining, they simply want a video game rather than a simulation that enforces competitive balance.
just ''bought'' the thing, after about a year playing AC with mods, mostly going for tougues and drift, and now im venturing into competitive actual racing, the only thing i dont like so far, is car starts to loose grip on the rear and it WILL spin theres nothing you can do, and when you lose grip you become a passanger, while in AC it feels better, on iRacing once its sliding it feels like youre driving on ice.
Member since 2011... ive taken YEAR long breaks from Iracing (and/or Simracing) but always get back to Iracing... its the only sim i can hop on, pick a race i wanna do.. 30 min practice and then 30 min later i'm racing, against people and its always a RACE with battles, high's and lows. And yeah, over those 13 years i've spent thousands, but still enjoy it and dont mind buying a track/car or something every season. Currently, it looks dated though, that would be my biggest issue.... the graphics compared to something like ACC are just a complete joke at worse FPS... but the sim holds it own and i think thats why we have those wierd Physics issues when we crash etc sometimes... cause its ACTUALLY physics based and the engine just doesn't know how to handle those situations, where other sims tend to have a base of physics and stacks of algorithms ontop of that to make it make sence.
I did try it for a month, a year and a half ago. Found it ok in terms of driving feel and immersion. Just couldn't justify the massive cost for something that is only ok. I don't mind paying alot for a service, but it has to be good. There has been alot of physics update since, maybe i'll have to give it a try again at some point. Currently i'm very addicted to LMU online racing with hypercars. LMU is definitely very good, only bad thing about it is the rain physics, and unpopulated servers at some hours.
I'm a college student and the currency of subscription base just to play iRacing is painful for me, there is more than just the subscription on iRacing, you also have to buy each of the cars and tracks there. And luckily for me there is Assetto Corsa Competizione, which has the best GTWC that has GT2, GT3 and GT4 cars and best physics to date for these cars. Probably once I finished my college and have a job, I might go try iRacing.
They should remove the subscription fee. Virtually no difference between iracing noobs and LFM noobs. It would expand the sport for both sim racing and for real racing.
But why would they? How would their company benefit from doing that and what would be their motivation? There seem to be plenty of expansion for sim racing and racing going on. I am truly asking the question, not being snarky.
Removing the subscription would vastly increase the amount of careless trolls. Having just one idiot in a race is bad enough, with a “free” service you’d have gangs of uncontrollable, unaccountable trolls.
Tbh this game should just have a subscription and that's it. A sub plus purchases is insane to me tbh. If The sub included everything alot of people would jump on board, myself included
I've heard many oval racers say this, I haven't tried oval myself but I'll take your word for it :) most of the competition in the Sim space is very squarely concentrated on road, it seems.
Yeah I don't really care how good a game is I would never pay a monthly subscription to have to play a game on top of that having to still buy in game content even though I'm paying a monthly subscription the greed of this is absolutely absurd On top of that forcing internet connection I do understand that the main focus is multiplayer but you can still play against ai I'll just play everything else but if iRacing ever stopped forcing monthly fees and forcing internet connections I would 100% get it but I know for a fact is never going to happen Btw this is a nice video very thorough and well paced not saying anything negative about your perspective i was purely talking about the game
@@lebroncarter4902 Completely understand where you're coming from, I really can't blame you for feeling that way. Glad you enjoyed the video, thanks for the kind words and for watching!
I feel like the pricing model would be much more well received if it was just a subscription or just paid content. Even if said solution would still ultimately cost the same in total. It would make it less convoluted and feel less scammy.
i honestly love iracing, definitely best close to realistic racing game exist on the market for me. However, I completely agree on two subjects that you've mentioned - single player option should not be on subscription based. £30 and get it forever for example just like AC, and keep the content available to purchase within the game such as tracks cars etc. - subscription is ok - however paying £12 for a car and £12 for a track meaning total of £24 for each individual class is ridicilous. you'll pay £400 only to unlock each class cars/tracks for a season... this is way too much
About the visuals and performance: iRacing is keenly aware of what you pointed out and have been at work to rectify it for the last couple years. They checked into new engines to be the core of the platform but elected to do it themselves instead, as they outlined last month in the Dev Blog. The iRacing engine is ANCIENT. 2007 OR EARLIER. so yes, they are squeezing everything they can out of it, but at the end of the day, it's slow, it's inefficient, and it just looks its age. Sure iRacing still LOOKS pretty good, but as they demonstrated compared to even themselves as a work in progress, they can, and will, do better. As a VR driver, it's absolutely second to none, but sometimes you can tell it's just not right, and boy is it HEAVY on the system. But I won't go back to displays. Right now the issues I have with VR are to be directly attributed to Microsoft (I run a WMR headset, which will be sunsetted this year). As a driver since 2014, I play this and Beam. I tried Asetto Corsa but the physics felt wrong. As most other games do to me now.
Not looking to start a war, but I wish iRacing would offer a bonet camera or dash camera in addition to the cockpit camera. As someone with a triple monitor setup the layout is similar to that of a car, adding an additional windshield on top of that makes my practical view of the track way smaller than a driver IRL. Whatever, I'll just have to opt for VR to be able to actually see the track ever.
13:51 as someone who does iracing and mostly oval racing, whenever there is a week they use night lighting its really poor and looks like someone forgot to pay the electric bills
Disappointing to hear that it extends to oval as well. Given that the Sim supports day night cycle and that night races get featured in the official series, it really needs to be WAY better than it is.
I’m a 13 year vet going into my 14th. I’ve been on this service since I was 13. I’ve been on the highs and lows of Iracing. Last year I was a 7000 oval Irating so being in a big SOF lobby with the people who take this as their day jobs, it’s not all that great. I would say it’s expensive. It use to be way better back in the day but the downfall of Iracing to me is how accessible it is now. Yes that sounds weird but the staff are ignorant more than ever now. They work on adding content instead of fixing and perfecting what needs to be fixed. In my opinion they have gone backwards when it comes to customer service and important things like tire model and aero model. When most real life drivers come on and say it’s bad then you should do something about it but they don’t. Casually speaking casual races are fun. If you really want to do this I’d suggest taking a loan out( just kidding) but find a league or enjoy hosted races but people in officials are rude and sweats. That’s my opinion for being here so long.
Great video mate. Being a fairly new parent I dont have the consistent time available to commit to a certain series, so for now I will need to stick with just watching or using other games!
When i first bought iracing i stuck to nascar. 2 years later and im still sticking to nascar and own almost every nascar track and car and race in many hosted leagues and officials
While you may not be able to hide the iracing water mark fully, you can shrink it down really small by doing ctrl+pgdn, vice versa to make it bigger. helps a lot with photos and replays
Thanks for the great video! As a new sim racer I want to get into iRacing eventually but the subscription model makes me want to avoid it until I know what I want to get into.
@@sailyourface You're very welcome! And yes it's probably worth experimenting with other things first before you give iRacing a try. Cut your teeth with ai racing in other games and such. What sims are you starting out with?
@@DiariesOfABadDriver I've been enjoying Automobilista 2 just got all of the DLC with the steam sale. I think I'm someone that falls into the 'single player first' category you talked about and from what I've read AMS2 has the best AI outside of iRacing. I've also tried ACC but the poor selection and VR performance has turned me off.
@@sailyourface Nice, yeah AMS2 is fun and while it isn't my absolutely favourite to drive, the new update made it noticeably better. It looks and runs great, too, more than I can say for iRacing. I would def say I prefer it over ACC. I believe AMS2 also has Low Fuel Motorsport integration launching very very soon, so if you want to ease yourself into some multiplayer, you will be able to do it :)
Great review. I also started iracing a year ago after exclusively doing acc for two years. I hated iracing at first try. Thought the money model was crazy etc….. But today, I wouldn’t trade iracing for anything. Even after spending probably $500 over the last year. As you said, no other sim provides anywhere near the comprehensive value of iracing. Not even close.
I justify iRacing with two lines of reasoning… 1. if considered a hobby it’s pretty cheap 2. there’s always a race available It’s not perfect and relative to other sims it is expensive, but I like how it’s structured and there’s always something to do.
12years on Iracing (this month) Iracing for me is more than just a sim/game , its a hobby ,a place where most my friends meet to unwind or go full race mode iRacing+discord= good times :) The price for iRacing is all about "You" and how much you wanna spend on a hobby Much love from the Cold North (Denmark) :)
@@DiariesOfABadDriver I have never had a sim racing friend in real life, but I made a ton of friends online. Especially in leagues, where you race the same group every week.
Motorsport Australia now requires you to have the Esports licence to access the free 12 months of iRacing - the licence is 30 dollars if you don't have a competitive licence or free if you do (like me)
I've always had such a split opinion of iRacing. My fundamental problem with it is that the cars just aren't that enjoyable to drive - I'm sorry but they just aren't! The cars in iRacing have always felt a little distant with very little feed back and quite nervous. They do not tolerate being hustled or pushed very well. If you like me are a pretty agressive driver who likes an oversteery car, you have to change your style to suit the cars, otherwise you will have troubles with massive tyre degradation and spinning often, besides being too slow. To me the tyres have always been "wrong". I've found myself returning to it several times over the years giving it yet another chance exactly because of the reasons you list. They have a really appealing and unique eco-system with the seasons and the popular yearly Special Events. I also really like how they have managed to make the community passionate about smaller national classes like the Mazda and junior formula cars. In every other sim, everybody just seems to want to jump straight to the fastest cars there is. I've pumped hundreds of dollars into it over the years and I've raced big events like LM24 and N24. In the end, I've ended up not renewing since 2020. While true that the development is quite transparent I also find it to be increadibly slow. Pretty much since day-one people have been complaining about some glaring issues like the blinking and the tyres - these are apparently still present to this day as you point out. The same answer has been perpetuated over and over; 'Oh well, the new tyre model version "X" will fix all of that!'. At this point they have been going at it for 16 years, and frankly if they haven't fixed it by now I doubt they are capable or willing of doing so.
I think you raise a good point that how willing or able a person is to be able to overlook or forgive the flaws of iRacing's handling likely has a lot to do with their driving style. I would consider myself to be slightly conservative in how I drive and I try to stay just under the limit as much as possible. But if you like to toe over the limit and play that fine balancing game a lot more than I do, it's probably not going to be as enjoyable.
For handling regards approach im.still blasted that iracing ig option called "intensity" is natively set to 50% instead of 100% because ramping ffb force are a world better It doesn't clip anything more its giving you 100% of thé car handling and is actually initialy stronger that your previous setting so you lower overall ffb at slider but feel now 50% more ffb so you're full of information with a well balanced force with same peak feel as before. No more suddent calls as you might reffering to Found out with suelio video..
You very briefly mention leagues. I would venture to say that the majority of people who view this video know very little about leagues.I have been on iracing for 10 years and in the last 4 to 5 years I have maybe raced 30 Official faces. Yet I may race between 6 to 10 Leagues races a WEEK. Most of my competitors in the Leagues also race very few Official races. League racing is far more enjoyable, highly competitive with toxic behavior being forbidden. Many people, including you, do not mention ALL of the ways that people enjoy iracing, choosing to leave out the tremendous enjoyment that leagues provide. By participating in leagues I am able to avoid many of the negatives that people love to complain about. Blinking will never be eliminated with any internet based program, but in leagues, drivers are ordered to park their car but most drivers do so voluntarily when they find out that they are blinking. I agree with some of the other points that you mention. I raced short track stock cars in real life and the competition that I find in iracing is as close as it gets to the real thing. That's what keeps me coming back. I do not find iracing to be an expensive hobby, rather many of my other financial purchases that I make for enjoyment and entertainment are vastly more costly. A night out at the movies or a nice dinner costs way more than what I spend to run 10 races over a weeks period of time. And that's factoring in the cost of the equipment that I have invested in over the years for iracing as well as membership. For example, one can, and should factor in the cost of their vehicle (purchase, maintenance, and insurance) that they use to enjoy other "hobbies" when making a separate value comparison on the cost of iracing. All in all, your video was very good, but it did leave out parts of iracing that people may not be aware of and therefore, have not experienced.
Yeah, I mean if leagues work best for you, that's awesome! But as I said in the opener, this is simply a recounting of my experiences with the service this past year, and leagues haven't been a part of that. And I think the video was long enough already 🤣 fwiw, I've tried out leagues in Assetto Corsa, and I think in many ways its like mods. For every good one there's at least a dozen bad ones. But ultimately, I just strongly prefer the convenient flexibility that the official series offers over leagues. I also think that when you're in the upper splits the racing quality is pretty good for the most part, but I can certainly believe that a well-regulated league with a good internal culture and good members would be the cream of the crop. And yeah, I'm sure iRacing is dirt cheap compared to real stock car racing. It's all a matter of perspective and how well off you are. Thanks for watching!
i really hope iracing listens to this video. just got my iracing subscription and ill tell you the pressure of not using it in that month gap is real. it feels like im wasting money when i play my other games
I tested iRacing for a month, but the series I liked, was never in the schedule, so it stayed at one single month of testing. was quite uninteresting for me.
@@las10plagas that's too bad, but very understandable. If what you really want to race is a dead series, it's not going to be a very appealing service.
@@DiariesOfABadDriver well, on top of production cars, rally cross felt really awesome, but I hate subscriptions as much as you do and paying monthly just to drive that one series ain't worth it IMO. what really bugged me with almost every car was the breaking bias... I can't race with a fixed setup... I spun around like a madman, each time I was breaking >.< otherwise I would have jumped on the MX5 series or any other one :P
I went from OG AC to iRAcing and loved the competition, but hated the pricing so much and the feelinf of kerbs, spent 2 years on iRAcing but now i am on ACC and I love it but I do miss Ovals
"I RACING IS THE MOST ADVANCED RACING SIMULATOR IN THE WORLD ... ITS ALSO THE MOST REALISTIC"
Utter lies, AMS2 1.6 is absolute sim racing perfection, just like the last versions that were also perfect.
@@DiariesOfABadDriver ACC HAS NO BUGS!
I think he’s talking about the prices 😂😂😂
@@glitchingbee lool
Who are you quoting?
I lile iracing at 1-4am mountain time in north america with the aussies for the hillarious shit talking
@@Haulinbassracing holy net-code
I race oval at midnight in Wyoming, half Americans, half Australians and a few randoms in the mix, it’s a great crowd.
All roads lead to iRacing until the road runs out and your wallet is in a deep hole.
Yeah but if you throw enough money into the hole, the hole disappears! 😂
I spent on tracks mostly. The cars get updated, I've bought two Ferrari and they want me to buy it a third time. I'd hate to be stuck in a 2020 Ferrari....
@@seebarry4068this is the common sense approach.
The thing is with the pricing guys like me and and thousands of others on this race in real life our use to and if you spend money to be competitive it’s expensive like real expensive so a lot of us think hell this is cheap oh wow 15 for a track 15 for a car when you go to the dirt track to race on Friday or Saturday night you spend minimum 250 so 15 bucks is cheap!!
Amen brother
I've been on iRacing since 2008, I would never argue that it's cheap but the price is honestly a non issue for me, every few years I pay a couple hundred bucks on black friday for a 2yr membership and then buy the occasional car or track. It's true that I've built up a fair bit of content over time and that is why I only need the occasional content purchase. However the amount I've spent on hardware over the years would dwarf the software cost.
I'm not trying to convince anyone but honestly the cost is not something I think about. If you're in it long term it really doesn't cost that much but if you're just testing the waters then be very selective on what you buy, ask on the forum and you'll get lots of advice on how to make the most of your money.
Anyway your video was pretty fair imo.
@@dinkidink5912 I agree that if you're on the service for many years and you don't have an addictive personality (needlessly buying every car in a class, or tracks you're never going to drive), then yes, the price won't be unreasonable given the amount of racing you can get in over such a long period.
I guess that can be hard to see when you're just starting out, and I think it's a shame that the costs are so heavily front loaded.
Thanks for watching and commenting, it's appreciated!
@@DiariesOfABadDriver I've been on it long enough to have most content I'd want to race, but it did cost a decent amount at the beginning. Now I just pick up the new stuff I'll use, and it's £40 or so every 3 months. I can see it really isn't accessible for new drivers, though. I hope that iRacing put something in place like being able to buy a car and a season worth of tracks at a significant discount, or be able to rent the tracks for a season. It won't help drivers like me in terms of cost, but it might increase participation in weeks with tracks that are less popular, so we'll benefit in that way.
100% this. If you want hardcore competition then it's not even a question of price. It's just a question of where you can reliably find it and the answer is iracing. Who cares what it costs?
iRacing's pricing model is a major barrier for new subscribers. I'm a long-time subscriber and to me it represents value for money. Fourteen years ago I bought Watkins Glen and Road America for $20 AUD a pop. Still racing them regularly to this day. I raced IRL at Bathurst twice and it cost me at least $10k. I haven't spent close to that on iRacing but since I can't afford real life racing anymore, iRacing is a very fitting substitute. That's me. I appreciate others will view the value proposition very differently.
Yeah, if you're getting into simracing, the cost of the actual sim is likely going to be one of the cheapest parts of the hobby
Ah, a story as old as time; someone who thought AI racing was pretty good tries out iRacing, and now all the other circuit racing sims are permanently ruined.
On a more serious note; iRacing is probably everything I wanted from a racing game when I was a kid. It'll be interesting to see what happens in this space when a competitor eventually catches up and can math iRacing in scope and service value (I thought Rennsport was gonna do that, but they dropped the ball soooo hard. ACC and Le Mans Ultimate are good at very specific things but their scope is tiny. AMS2 could've been a hit but who knows whether LFM in AMS2 will be a hit or not - it's many years too late I think)
@@SLENDAMANN haha yeah that pretty much sums it up.
I think that, somewhat unfortunately, for this kind of service I'm not really sure if there is even room in the market for another one? It's like iRacing is big enough that it's developed it's own gravitational pull. Kunos I think have also more or less confirmed that they're not even really going to try to compete with iRacing when it comes to ACE.
I think Raceroom is the one to watch out for. They're integrating to LFM next year.
@@dnalord77I keep hoping, I hear new features coming etc, install it and the same 33 people are racing across all servers that have been forever. That's the problem with RRE, no depth to the competition, which is fine if you're the fastest cat out there, but I'm not, and need slow people to race against.
Iracing has loads of people slower than me.😂
@@SLENDAMANN everything will flop iRacing stays on top
@@dnalord77 I really love how raceroom drives, but it's unpopularity (particularly in Aus hours) puts me off buying it.
I think the concern over iracing being a rip off would be alleviated immensely if: 1. They allow trials of unowned cars/tracks in test drive mode at any point in time. 2. If you lapse your subscription after a 12-month non-consecutive subscription, you can always use owned cars/tracks in AI races or test drive mode.
The issue at the end of the day is that maintaining servers is expensive and they do have a stewarding review process (whatever you might think of its quality), so a subscription model is the only one that is commercially viable.
@@Injektil_o Agreed, I really think they could stand to be more generous in those ways.
Totally agree with your two points!
How expensive do you think maintaining servers is? How many subscription models do we see today with other multiplayer games? How do the other sims stay afloat? If you honestly believe that they aren't floating in a pool of money, then you're just a happy customer I guess. There's no way this financial model isn't extremely lucrative. But hey ... as long as they keep finding customers. I'm just not one of them.
@@EnnoMaffen I work for a company that runs a number of AWS instances 24/7, (and iracing runs at least 4 AWS boxes IIRC), and I can tell you it is not cheap.
No other game uses AWS as far as I'm aware.
@@Injektil_o I’m not sure if you meant “No other sim uses AWS,” but I can tell you that quite a few of the larger games use AWS. I remember working at Amazon a while back when AWS went down and I just wanted to go home and play some games on my xbox and quite a few were not working all the way because of the AWS issue.
However your point is still true, multiple AWS boxes ain’t cheap and I think a sub model is fair, just that they could probably instill new-user confidence with a few tweaks in their model
about the watermark, it's in the TOS that if you are streaming or using iracing content, the watermark is to be displayed to keep from copyright, it's in the TOS to keep us from copyright strikes and gives us rights to use our races in streams productions and broadcasts of races
Good to know! I haven't had any copyright issues with any other games, but it's good insight as to why it's there. Thanks for sharing!
that is the most ass backwards thing ive ever read
@@trihard42069 You will own nothing and be happy!!!
@@trihard42069 Happens to other real world series on a occasional basis (and yes, their official accounts), especially at tracks that host F1 or NASCAR. IndyCar even had a full race broadcast from Texas taken down by the WWE back 5 or 6 years ago
@@DAGATHire lmao! It's a SERVICE no different than paying Spotify to listen to music and make playlists full of music that you do NOT own. It's a service that has customer support, and a protest system that polices rammers, griefers, and cheaters which in turn produces the most competitive, and most fair multiplayer lobbies compared to any other racing game/sim. A service that provides major software updates and improvements every 3 months. A service that hosts racing disciplines outside of road and formula with oval, dirt oval, and rally racing. AC is a good sim, made way more amazing by a great modding community, but racing against other humans with it is absolute trash, and that's including needing to use LFM for matchmaking. Racing against AI is even worse. AC doesn't even have a proper rolling start for GT cars. AC is great for hot lapping modded tracks and cars, that's pretty much it. If you want to race actual people in populated lobbies, people who don't treat racing games like a destruction derby, then iRacing is the current king.
As a broke college student, formerly broke high-school student. The price has always been the barrier of I-racing for me. Especially given that its a double dipping model (sub and purchase) so the cost is never ending
AC and ACC lfm still gives me decent racing and arguably better physics, and because it costs so much less, and ive been able to save enough money for some half decent equipment with the money i didnt spend on i-racing.
@@Erowens98 that's a very fair way to look at, you've got finite hobby money so less spent in one area is more you can spend elsewhere.
It makes me wonder to myself if I'd rather race AC lfm with a direct drive setup, or play iRacing with a G29...
I'll have to think about it 😅
Im Australian so this is in AUD.
But I've spent 1800 on a 4080, 700 on a 7800x3d, 1000 on wheels, 1500 on my Alpha wheelbase, 400 on a rig, around 200 on transducers, pedals, amps etc.
Still the rest of the PC, still shifters and button box.
It just feels too much to invest all this to "own" it all. Then to only be stuck renting my software.
I have AMS2, ACC, AC with mods, BeamNG, GTA5 modded to run on wheel, wreckfest, Forza and still more... I feel like if I can't enjoy all of this. Then its time to take a break from my rig, not search for the next way to keep it interesting.
Eventually I "might" change my mind and sub to iracing.
Id like to test out driving on it before I commit to anything though... A short offline trial or demo would be nice
i started on ACC controller through ps5 plus premium. i always wondered why i sucked so much and that brought me to the csl elite bundle. i would have never enjoyed sim racing if i didn’t randomly download ACC through ps plus premium and im so grateful for it.
Been on iRacing for a few years and it feels more like a hobby than just a game I hop into.
Except maybe LFM the chances of finding a race with people of the same skill level is so hard in other sims. You get close fights every race with people on your level.
Endurance racing with a mate or with a team is so fun and exciting.
Yeah it's expensive, but everything is laser scanned by themselfes and so much work goes into it.
The servers are rock solid, never had an issue with them even on 24h races.
My rig wouldnt have been worth it if it wasnt for iRacing
I stopped renewing in 2020 and im glad i did. My only regret is not cancelling it earlier. I do not miss iracing one bit
@@MrJohansen to each their own, what are you racing these days?
As a member of the 40 club (if you know you know) it can be expensive. However, engaging your brain a little can make it not ridiculously expensive (though even the biggest fan would agree it’s not cheap). Buy subs in their Black Friday deals and the sub is only £6 a month, or less if you sub two years. Be selective in what you buy and get participation money each season. It’s quite easy to get $40 a year towards your Black Friday sub. I’d say never buy new cars or tracks until you see how many splits etc there are longer term. There is also a list of tracks used most to save a lot of money. Let’s face it, if you’ve spent thousands on rigs, wheels and pedals, this is a drop in the ocean. Other good sims are available so it’s not mandatory, but the online is simply great. Join a team, do the huge 12 hour and 24 races and it’s the best.
All fackz. #40 club😉
@@jenscee7679 The issue is its not just the subscription, but tracks and cars all cost a very good chunk of money each. The sim is just too expensive unless this is your only hobby. Been doing endurance races on ACC instead.
@@Rocky712_ As someone who's only hobbies are iRacing and karting, the subscription is in my entertainment budget. As in I see no difference between paying for iRacing, Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, etc. These are all for entertainment, but no one bats an eye at paying for 3, 4, or 5 tv/streaming services that they can only watch one of at a time.
iRacing works for me, ACC works better for you, and that's ok.
@@DAGATHire He wasn't taking a shot at anyone's intelligence, just giving advice that anyone getting into iRacing should lean on their intelligence and plan ahead. If you think people are deluded for paying that then brillo bananas, it's still gonna happen.
This isn't a monolithic corporation nickel and diming its customer base to pay for things they used to be able to buy outright.
This is simply the virtual equivalent of maintenance/entrance fees which are present in real world racing:
No, iRacing doesn't have a physical track/garage/amenities to maintain, but they have servers to keep running, a game engine and UI to improve, users to support, and people to pay for officiating, all of which happen round the clock for the majority of the year.
But how about you engage your brain, take a deep breath and recognize you've got an anger issue, or die mad because otherwise you're clearly butthurt about money you don't have to spend.
@@DAGATHire What's a bad thing about making wise money decisions? If you don't have an iRacing account yet, you can get a 1 year subscription for free/very cheap via your national FIA member club. You also don't need to buy many tracks and cars to have fun. You don't even need to buy any cars or tracks to reach B class in the sports cars series.
It is a rip-off. You should be allowed to run the content YOU PAID for offline without a monthly sub.
It needs to be something traditional where you pay once and you're allowed access to the game permenently. When i was viewing games that go well with my steering wheel, i found i racing in the list and i was interested until i figured out it was sub only and my first time seeing such a concept.
@@thepeskyone sure, but you have endless options that meet your needs. You don’t need iRacing.
The IRacing pay model keeps the racing at high standard and constant updates and new content. I’ll gladly keep paying. There is always a race available at anytime of the day. All types of racing from oval, street, dirt, formula, etc. And most importantly, no other game comes close to racing simulation.
About 21:05 , the people who unironically defend the payment model by saying it keeps the dickheads away, are themselves the proof that it doesn't keept all the dickheads away, only the poor ones. But really enjoyed listening to your opinions and reflections, great video!
it does ... once you get in a higer SOF .. then you realize its way better then LFM or other Sims on the market ..
whats your paypal ill send you 5 bucks
No user likes the pricing model of the iRacing, sad fact is that there just isn't any other sim that can seriously compete with iRacing when it comes to actual racing and being able to actually hop in a racing against people who are of similar skill level. That said, there are a lot of issues they have including the tyre model that just snaps out of under you, net code being bearable to horrible lately, and the "care" they put in keeping people who ruin races in line is just superb.. which gets us back to the original point of their monetization as people would be much more willing to part with their money if they fixed the most glaring issues :P
It wouldn't surprise me if iRacing sees a subscriber spike once the new game engine launches. Better visuals alone will bring in new people.
@@DiariesOfABadDriver absolutely, but I would say the biggest spike is when they get the latest tyre model (v10) and FFB updates
That will be huge as well, I'm very much looking forward to it.
This is the exact reason i lapsed on my subscription and never renewed. I joined and within my first 5 races i had 3 penalties caused by other racers, they dontt make reporting incidents easy at all, you essentially need to take time to analyze your own footage and even then you arent guaranteed a verdict. Its probably one of the saddest sims ive used in a while
@@opticXML The reason why reporting incidents isn't easy, is because you are supposed to only report intentional wrecking. People make mistakes and it might feel unfair, but crashing is part of racing.
The best way to avoid incidents is to pay attention to the drivers around you, give space and be careful Just like in real life and just like in REAL racing.
People take their safety rating very serious, wich is why there is alot less wrecking in iracing. Especially higher up.
In regards to the tire modeling. it used to be bad enough that IRL drivers complained to iRacing that the sim was actually harder to drive than real life.
From what I've read and been told, this is due to a theoretical tire model being used for the game. No exact tire was used as a model to work off of, this is why a lot of old Papyrus sims (Grand Prix Legends, Nascar Racing 2003) had better modeling on the higher end of grip, due to sticking with an actual tire as reference.
Supposedly this was a point of contention between two devs one wanting to use a theoretical tire model, and one wanting to reference actual tire manufacturers. The actual 'referenced' model was what was used, but as Papyrus got bought up by Vivaldi and then promptly got obliterated into the ether with Vivaldi's closing. The dev that wanted to use the theoretical tire model came back for iRacing, but not the dev who preferred the referenced model.
Tire physics in sim games are always on the slidy side for some reason, which shouldn't be the case. Never played iR, but Live For Speed has the most realistic behaviour "by feel", as in if you understand physics, you can predict the tire very well, even if grip values are lesser. All other sims I played, I had to "learn" the tires as a separate game mechanic, instead of just learning the car, track, weather or whatever.
I used to think iracing was dumb but when I started working on my driving technique and got a better grip on real life racing by competing in autocross events and spirted driving. I used to never truly push my car until I got used to pushing cars on the limit and a little over the limit. If I never took iracing seriously I truly believe I wouldn’t be as good of a driver
00:15 professionell WHAT?! 😂
Professional Racing at its best 😎😎😎
Really nice work, good commentary, love the Mr. Bean in the mirror and very informative video. Hope this covers a decent pizza
Wow, thanks so much for your generosity! I honestly never thought I'd get any donations when I set that thing up 😂
Glad you find it informative, thanks for watching!
As a german it makes me furious to not being able to drive my paid content offline without a subscribtion! Currently I'm on the one year for 10$ + F4 car deal but im hesitating to invest real money into tracks & cars because I won't be able to use them without an active subscribtion, which can't be paused because of money. This and the utterly outdated Tracks (Hello Nordschleife), Graphics, Hud and the FFB are a real bummer in the Iracing universe, at least for me. Ah and the reporting system in LFM is waaaay better then Iracings: "yeah, we will tell him to stop crashing into people", they reply in an email, but they won't do shit about it, because of money they might lose.. people are as reckless as in every other sim. In LFM you can get banned for days, weeks, months if you repeat the offense. I like the ingame voice chat very much though. Super funny to hear some foreign insults being thrown around. Great video!
I agree about offline content. I think that should change. If you've purchased content, you should be able to drive on cars & tracks that you own alone or maybe with AI.
iRacing becomes worth it when you reach a point where every new season you don't buy anything because you have a lot of content
But at that point you've already spent hundreds of dollars and you don't own any of the content you paid for. ACC is currently $15 CAD and you own it for life.
@@marcforget33 when I can hop on ACC at 2am and have a competitive multiclass race with people all over the world…I’ll switch. Till then, I’m on iracing. The cost per hour of enjoyment is tiny.
@@marcforget33 And you also only get to race GT3... It's really not that complicated. Imagine spending $5,000 on a racing rig and complaining about $200 a year on cars, tracks, and subscriptions. Pretending like ACC offers the same thing as iracing is a joke.
@@tl1921 ACC is just one example you iRacing simp
@@tl1921ACC with LFM literally offers the same thing as iRacing.
iRacing is a sim I am always wanting to come back to, but I just never am wanting to play against others. I just like practice, so what I ended up doing was downloading most of the tracks from iRacing that have been ported to Assetto Corsa. I also play Automobilista 2. What I would like is for all of those cars and tracks I purchased, to be available offline without a sub, and I am just locked out of the community features and multiplayer.
Yep, agreed. In fact, when I've often tested tracks for free in AC before purchasing them in iRacing 😂
Ams2 is good fun for hotlapping and seeing how you stack up on the leaderboards.
I'm an avid iRacer and have been for the best part of a decade. I will never claim it has the best physics, best graphics etc etc. But in terms of the community and the way iRacing continue to make the sim as accessible as possible for those with various disabilities including myself puts it at the top for me. I feel like there's a genuine care and consistent dialogue between iRacing and the community to make tweaks and add options.
their expensive model is the only reason dirt oval racing is available at all on pc. Our community is way smaller, so this model is basically the only way dirt racing would get a game at all. But the road side def gets crazy expensive, especially when acc and le mans ultimate have pretty compelling physics as well.
Iracing does make a World Of Outlaws game. Oh wait, it's only available on consoles. Isn't that interesting? I'm sure the upcoming NASCAR game by Iracing will be on console only as well. The greed is real.
@@marcforget33 i see why you feel that way, but to me it doesnt come even close to scratching the itch iracing does. I do hope nascar 25 isnt console only
@@marcforget33 hey they put WOO on pc too btw :)
@@Landon21racing I heard. This is a positive development. Let’s hope they extend this mentality to the new NASCAR game.
I'd have no problems with iRacing if the quality of the product matched the price. The game looks dated, sounds dated and it has been shown many times now how some aspects of its car physics are flawed and unrealistic. Frankly, it is shameful that the game has fallen behind in terms of realism and overall quality, especially considering it is both the most popular and most expensive racing sim. They need to get their shit together.
4:46 Cars launching into the moon is ridiculous, but so is the face in the mirror.
Great video. I don't have the time or the money for iracing, so i'll stick to dirt rally and watching your videos.
@@damanraaj3496 Haha, I use my Mr bean helmet to intimidate my opponents into letting me pass 😁
Thanks for the kind words!
I’m an avid sim racer on PC and console. I refuse to play iRacing as I CANNOT STAND subscription based games. You end up spending thousands of pounds on something that should cost about £50. Subscriptions services only benefit the publishers, it’s a huge rip off for the end user.
Hate subscriptions, you’re not alone, unfortunately we live in a sub world. Great vid by the way, you covered loads of subjects and well presented. IR really is the best sim and they know it.
@@GMCRaptor Thanks for the kind words, fellow subscription hater :)
I think you nailed it. Especially at the end. As far as developers go, iracing is a shining beacon of transparency and open communication between fans and developers.
Plus, it gets a minimum of 4 major updates per year, has by far the best wet weather racing in sims, and is being actively developed to address the exact flaws most of the community has.
Except the pricing of course, but the quality and quantity of new content and excellent developer interaction feels like you actually get a premium service for the price. I mean, building a new engine from scratch in house is something most developers do not have the budget or deadline for, yet that is already in the works.
New UI coming to iRacing in 2025 looks good so far
It's certainly welcome! The sooner that they can make all of the overlays irrelevant, the better.
Personally for me I can afford iRacing and theres no other racing game that comes close to it. Everything else is a waste of time.
Been simracing for 20 years, and… this is the correct answer. Funnily enough today I found the time to do my first two races after months of absence. Worth every penny for sure.
Not a waste of time if you enjoy it, also iRacing doesn't have everything.
LMU offers the same type of ranked racing, without the cost, with much more lively and realistic physics, without the unsavable slides. The only downside being that it only covers gt, lmp2, and hypercars. I say this not to crap on iracing, but to tell people that if gt racing is what you want, stop sleeping on Le Mans Ultimate.
@@spraynardkruger6426 do they have official scheduled races? Not sure why no other sim or racing game has copied that format. It's ridiculous sitting around in a lobby waiting for it to get filled up
@@HighValueTargetRacing yes they do. Just like iRacing they have a couple of series with different license requirements and car/track combos that run races every X hours. They have a built-in report system, driver rating, safety rating. Literally everything (in terms of online system) that iRacing offers for the cost of the game and no sub.
Iracing simply has the best multiplayer and ranking system
Really balanced review. I'd like to see similar reviews for other online services such as Race Room and Low Fuel Motorsport.
@@tboneisgaming thank you!
I think being from Australia is a significant part of what makes iRacing better than those alternatives. Raceroom's online is functionally dead during my available hours, and as I touched on in the netcode section, my connection experience in iRacing was far better than lfm.
For an Australian, I think the most viable alternative to iRacing is a locally based league.
I definitely agree you should be able to atleast test drive a car before you buy it like you would in real life. I've been on iRacing for 5 years and there's a few cars I've bought because I thought they would be fun and I ended up not liking it and don't even use them anymore especially when they're all $12 and that adds up quick.
They should assign a single track to that car (one that is included in your subscription for free) and allow the user to run untimed laps with it to feel it out and see if they'd like it.
you can test drive a car before you buy it during downtime. you just cant test drive new content, you have to wait till its a season old.
@ertpecsertpecs Oh yeah I know I'm just talking in general they should just make it a constant rather than for a couple hours for a few days of the year or having to wait an entire year. Also the downtime is during very inconvenient hours for a regular person like me who works 8 hours for 5 days a week so I really don't get the opportunity for that.
I’m an oval racer and I feel the worst thing about Iracing is I’m better than my safety rating and that affects MY safety rating because they wreck me.
The best advice about SR is, don't think about it. As long as you qualify for the series you want to race, ignore your SR.
The pricing model tricks people into thinking its the most realistic sim on the market, when that couldnt he further from the truth. In reality its a dated sim with subpar physics, the worst community in simracing, pathetic customer support, and bugs that were present in 2001 that still havent been fixed (thats not an exaggeration btw, this runs on the same engine as N4 and dozens of N4 and NR2003's bugs are still present in iracing in 2024)
iracing is like reddit - your first sip of it will make you like it, but as time goes on you quickly see it for what it really is and you'll leave wishing you never even wasted your time with it
This is one of the most fair and honest review I came across to yet. Thank you, I'm glad you also mentioned about the pricing which doesn't seem to take developing economies into calculation.
Thanks for the kind words! Yes I felt it was an important element of the pricing that was worth mentioning.
Thanks for watching and commenting, glad you got something out of it!
I do agree that all offline features should be free be free and only need subscription top do online races, this way new users could try out the sim before putting money down, maybe they should make the test drive feature work with out a paid subscription.
On the topic of blinkers....I couldn't agree more. That has become my number one complaint with iRacing. More than bad driving or deliberate wreckers, the blinkers ruin my experience every time I see them. I understand not everyone has perfect ping, but iRacing needs to tighten it's grip on how bad a connection the servers will tolerate before parking someone. In short track racing you might be better off dropping out of a race than taking phantom 4x's trying to pass a car that is disappearing then dropping from the sky in a crash animation on your hood. There just isn't enough corners to count in those races to offset the incident points and your SR tanks far more easily than it recovers. A couple weeks ago I took a 12X - two phantom 4X and one real 4X when he did in fact wreck me- in a 40 lap short track event. Crushed my SR.
This video is a really balanced view on iRacing. I'm an iRacer and every criticism of iRacing I can fully get behind. Really good video!
Thanks so much, glad you enjoyed it!
i'd love love LOVE to jump into iracing but the pricing model just isnt sustainable for me
Its expensive to get started but once you get a few cars an only purchase the tracks for that week an ect. I only race dirt oval sprints an big blocks sometimes latemodels.
Great video. By the way. Just subscribed after watching DJ Yee-J with you. Fun video.
Me too
Thanks man! Haha yeah, I was so, so happy with how that all came together. Very unexpected but I'm glad it happened, was a lot of fun.
The worst part of the blinking is when the car ahead of you disappears, and then you get a 4x penalty for 'contact' when all you did was keep driving without issue. Or even worse you then spin out for no reason because the physics are somehow the only thing still functioning for them
For me, with the launch of AC Evo in early access coming in just a bit over a month, for me it's not worth to try iRacing now. AC Evo might be huge! And, depending on the game implementation, could rival all the positive aspects os iRacing.
I will wait and see. Maybe after that i will rethink it, the pricing structure of iRacing was always something that made me fell like it's waaay too much for just a game.
I'm really looking forward to AC Evo but I think it's very unlikely that it's going to even try to compete with what iRacing does, let alone eclipse it. For instance, I watched an interview that gamer muscle did with the developer where they stated there was no current plans for a built in ranked multiplayer system.
I think it's going to be good but it's not going to do everything.
@@FelPi_LuizFelipe thing is, its not a game, i used to think same as you when i was ACC w my g29 then dd loadcell makes it crystal clear
@wharg7468 can you expand on that? What is not a game, iRacing? If you mean that to iRacing I guess so, but it would be the same case for AC, ACC, rFactor, LMU, etc. And maybe I would throw Flight Sim 2020/2024 and Xplane on that bucket aswell, all simulators delivered on a game package.
I guess going to a DD wheel would turn any of these "games" into a "simulator".
I also would say that the main differences for iRacing are the way better racing event structure, the amount of content overall and the driver skill ranking system. The main drawback being the monetisation. As it is focussed on motorsport, an expensive hobby IRL or in sim, the devs feel free to charge a lot of money for any small content. That's my impression at least, since I did not played iRacing yet and can't tell if the content is really that good to justify the prices.
@@FelPi_LuizFelipe Every single big sim that has come out since iRacing has been called "the next iRacing killer" but iRacing has only grown in popularity over the years...I'm sure AC Evo will be a great game and very popular in its own right, but the appeal for games like AC and AC Evo isn't the same as iRacing, one notable example especially being if you're into stuff like oval racing. iRacing is the only sim that has decent oval racing, it's the only one that has NASCAR or even a good amount of American tracks and series like IndyCar or dirt oval racing. Meanwhile ACC has just a handful of American road courses with more focus on European and Asian F1 style tracks and only GT3 or GT3 adjacent racing to choose from.
AC and ACE seem to be aiming to be like Gran Turismo for the PC, especially with the emphasis on the Eifel region cruising thing they are doing. And without ranked racing out of the box it's obvious to me that they are focusing on the more casual players rather than the hardcore sweaty tryhards (both are perfectly fine to me).
Yes, iRacing is expensive. But for that you get the best matchmaking system in the sim racing space across a wide variety of series along with laser scanned cars and tracks built using real data alongside continual updates. It's far from perfect but iRacing was the first to build a game like this on this scale and they put all of the pieces of the puzzle together first and it was only in the last few years that the other sims started to catch up IMO.
I didn't renew my subscription this year, after 6 years, I stopped playing online for reasons and only really use the AI racing, and it kinda sucks that the us$1378 i have spent on content i just cant continue to use for the AI.
They say when you buy content it's yours, but it's not,.
Yep, totally agree with you! It's ridiculous and should absolutely be changed so that players like yourself who want to take a break from online competition can still use the content they've paid VERY good money for.
@@DiariesOfABadDriver Would be nice if i could sell off the content i bought too, or trade it back in, I am kinda over it all, and now want to sell my rig (Which I probably won't get much for since I got a Fanatec CSL and no one wants belt drive anymore!)
Without a rig, the game is totally useless!
I got mad an sold my moza r5 set up an took a few month break an now decided to go back an got my thrustmaster out of the closet an took me alil to get used to it but now I know why I got mad an left irwcing. Get tired of getting wrecked an alot don't care about I rating or safety rating.
He's soooooo back 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
I'm sure i'll like this video (28 minus, heck yeah), and will definitely have a better understanding of iRacing (which will still make me not even want to try it because it's so expensive).
Some interesting points:
1. Nice knowing you're australian, i have plans on going to Australia. Seems really fun.
2. I did not know about these ffb issues. They gotta step it up.
3. The blinking sounds like hell, i can imagine how people would be mad when this happens.
4. iRacing is really damn expensive where i live. For example, if we ignore the discounts, the 2 year plan will be arround 1200 BRL (85% of month worth of minimum wage here btw). You add that to the obscene price of the gear (we pay ≈ 283 USD, or 1.2 months worth of minimum wage for a G29. And if we adventure ourselves to anything other things get *way* worse. We pay ≈ 766 USD FOR A THRUSTMASTER T300 RS GT EDITION, literally over 3 months of minimum wage. Plus the cost of the pc and everything else, we get why this is is such an expensive hobby, like everything here), and get something that is *way* out of the question for a lot of people. Also, yes, i know that the average income is higher, but most people who play these kinds of games are people in their 20's, and i don't think many 20 year olds get paid well.
5. Similar thing is happening with ETS2. Their engine is old (but easy to run), and they already have to start updating it to have more features.
@@felipeferreira00 thank you, friendo :) You're by far my best hype man, haha.
Hope you enjoy, and find it informative: that's exactly what I set out to do!
@@DiariesOfABadDriver Nice knowing i hype you up, because your content really deserves it.
5:54 I too have ten thumbs :)
One of us... Two of us... Ten of us...
Well until AC or any other title can finally give us great racing and a real MMR/License system to ban or remove bad or grief drivers. Iracing is our only option. You can’t get a full day of real racing outside of Iracing. With in a days span of racing on other titles you’ll get a dude who just wants to ruin races or crash into people
thr thing is, AC or any other sim will never have a MMR/License or multiplayer league system like iRacing, for one single reason:
it's not worth it financially. quite simply. maintaining the system would cost far too much. we simracers have to accept that we're in a bubble. without a constant flow of money, the service can't be maintained. you can see that at LMU right now, the company is financially at the bottom. the developers have to make sure that the games are financially viable.
I keep replaying the last part hoping that it'll get less funny the more I watch it, but I genuinely cannot stop laughing whenever I see the ridiculousness of the whole situation and GamerMuscle belly laughing at said situation.
Great video! Instantly subscribed.
@@danielundercow If I was going to try and answer GM's question 'what is this?!', I'd say it's comedy gold.
Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for watching and subscribing!
Honestly if iRacing came with all the tracks and cars free with the subscription I would be so much more likely to buy it. But for now I will stick to other sim racing games.
You may actually pay more is the end 3ys at 12$ (minimum / optimistic) being already 432$
Btw you would find it quickly hard to drive all category you have due to your pace training requierment to enjoy competitivness
And if you stop that theorical global access you would then need to acquire licence so i prefer pick as it also create better diversity and more focused driver
@@wharg7468 i got two years for 90 dollars, who the f*ck are you buying from? $432???
iRacing should add some incentives/rewards for participation in a dead/low populated series (like giving some free subscription credit if you reach a certain goal) ... It'll help revive the series, iRacing will sell more cars/tracks and probably make more money than they lose. Win-win for everyone.
I think you’ve perfectly summed up why iRacing is worth it despite the cons. The subscription makes sense when you see how active the devs are and just how much the game improves year after year. Just to throw out a random gripe that I have - I hate how many of the new circuits tend to get caught in a death spiral of low participation + not being added to the schedule due to low participation. I feel like having track bundles would boost participation on some of the lesser known tracks.
That's a good point about the business model, because tracks are so expensive less people are willing to pay up for tracks that they aren't as familiar with or that they perceive as being unpopular.
If the service was an all encompassing subscription fee that included everything, it would be better from a participation standpoint.
well in my country minimal wage is about 750 dollars a month with crazy ass inflation so if it wasn't for FIA and iRacing partnership I would propably never try it
I Hate to be that guy, but my standard of living and wallet thank me every single month that I have not subscribed/ entered into iRacing.
I still want to join in, and have been very tempted, but I will wait untill it's more financially feasible for me personally.
epic content as always mate 10/10
That's totally fair. The price kept me away for ages too and I think its a completely legitimate reason to play elsewhere. I'll never criticise anyone for criticising iRenting's prices :)
Thanks for the kind words and for being such a loyal viewer! It's appreciated!
You can get a 1 year iracing subscripton for free via your national fia member club
What a bizarrely considered and balanced review. Are you sure you belong on TH-cam?
@@Twongo TH-camRS HATE THIS ONE SIMPLE TRICK; writing your own damn scripts instead of using chatgpt
9:52 iRacing was built off the source code from NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, but they have been slowly moving away from said code, which has noticeably increased optimization, and most of all load times.
I just skipped through the parts that were interesting to me and for the Force Feedback I have to say, it's by far my favorite out of all the games.
I feel like in AC it feels super "rubbery" like the wheel constantly going in one direction but super smooth, pretty much driving the car by itself while in ACC it's so numb, I can't get any information out of it.
LMU is super hard and needs a lot of damping and filtering to properly work.
I don't remember exactly why I dislike AMS's force feedback, but... I do remember that I didn't like it.
The only force feedback I really enjoy is the one in Race Room.
I don't know about the low update Rates since I'm using Race Hubs "Torque Behavior Prediction" on 1 as that's pretty much what everyone does
I'm on the Asetek Invicta btw. usually playing with an in game FFB strength of 4-5 depending on the car and full 27nm in the software.
I am currently in the same boat as you, I bought iRacing almost exactly one year ago and just had to renew it. I got into iRacing to try out the endurance racing and my god is it good. your video sums up my experience very well this past year has been the best in my sim racing journey, and I am hoping for a better year next year as I am now apart of a dedicated endurance team. if you haven't tried the endurance racing I would highly recommend it some of the best fun you can have on the service. recently these past couple of weeks I have gotten pretty big into ovals which I
never thought would happen but here we are. anyways I need to stop my rambling great vid and I hope to see more content in the future.
@@roastedrat7113 thanks for the kind words!
I've dipped my toes into endurance with the Michelin pilot challenge (just did one this morning, actually) and I really enjoy that. I have yet to do any team stuff, though, which I'll be sure to try at least once :)
Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@DiariesOfABadDriver I would really recommend the longer endurances. this summer i tried the Spa 24 (did not go well) i am going to try to do daytona 24 and nurb 24, I was very stupid and tried the indy 6h solo. my advice is to never do anything like a 6h solo.
Oh yeah I never would, the 2 hours of the MPC is about my limit, I'm well and truly ready for a break by the time that race is over. 6 hours sounds like torture 😂
I am from South Africa and I am heavily involved in IRL motorsport in a range of roles from corner marshal and race control all the way to competing myself. All in all I end up spending around half of my weekends a year at race tracks around ZA.
I got into sim racing before I got into IRL events due to covid and school. I started in rally and F1 2019 and moved to ACC and eventually when the multiplayer experience got bad enough I went to iRacing. I love the multiplayer experience (even being far from any servers). Everything looks like the way real cars move on track (apart from the obvious bugs).
The only downside is that to fund a month of iRacing (subscription and tracks for a single series) costs around $73(R1400) if you don't own the tracks. That is big money for the relatively low income of an African to the point where I had to weigh up the choice between racing in a rookie series IRL vs iRacing. Obviously the IRL series would cost me more and there would be more risks but all the skills that I have honed in the virtual world over the last 4 years would be going to waste. That saving per month allows me to cover the fuel costs for an entire track weekend. So I quit iRacing for a year to persue IRL racing.
I ended up winning driver of the series because of my full send attitude I got from the virtual world.
Now I am not saying that iRacing is a perfect simulator. There is something mid corner that does not feel right and IRL to unlock a tire is possible whereas I feel in iRacing it is more challenging.
I am now for the first time in a year getting back into the virtual seat after a year of IRL motorsport and it feels like home without the brutality on the body and having to fix/check my car after every session.
Nice to meet a fellow South African in the sim racing community and yeah, R1400 per month is beyond asinine.
So I decided to put all my iRacing orders into a google sheet for the last 9 years, eventually I will get more detail into it purely out of interest but I thought I would post the grand total here for now.
A few things to keep in mind with the total is I almost always get the max discount for a bundle until I started to receive max discount for the 40 piece club. I have gotten back 40$ a year due to participation credits, I would say 50% of my time on iracing (9 years) as there is no way at the moment that I can tell the exact number so I am over estimating I think. Lastly I have always gotten my subscription at the black friday sale except for 1 year I paid the full price. I mostly race road and would say I own about 80% of all road cars, 90% of road tracks, 50%+ of dirt oval content roughly, and 95%ish of rally cross content.
Okay so with all that rough estimates and junk so you get an idea of how much I own in iRacing the "grand total" is........... $1542.06 over almost a decade and it averages to 171.34 a year.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and obviously iRacing is not for everyone. It can be done for cheaper than what I paid if you are mostly focused on say GT3 or just oval and don't buy much outside of a specific discipline. IMO I have no issues with the prices in iRacing, my wheel base and one rim alone is about the same as the 9 year total I have paid. I know with iRacing my money is going into development as they have always reinvested a lot into the game and to see the change since 2015 I continue to believe that with every year things will keep getting better. I'm also a critic when it comes to the tires and other weird things about the game, we all want perfection but I also keep in mind what there doing is not the easy route and with all great things they take time. I have enjoyed iRacing very much over the years even with its issues and quirks and I don't think anyone will match what they do without the associated costs.
@@socal828 this is great info, thanks for sharing!
As someone who's fell into the DCS rabbithole previously. What I wish I racing would have is something like DCS's Flaming Cliffs. A 40usd module that gives you say 5 different cars to race in a common class. Throw in maybe the ability to always race those 4 cars without buying additional maps. DCS doesnt have map trials but they let you try any plane for 2 weeks each.
@@Mystic_Chizu With DCS, i own the module i buy, no paying subscription required like the Iracing scam. DCS is the best flying sim out here, not like iracing which is mid at best.
0:24 I think it's all a matter of perspective:
If you get a 2 year subscription with one of the 25% off deals that run periodically, the base cost is about $6/mo.
Pick up a GT3 car of your choice, and budget for 1 new track per month, and you're basically in *"Normal MMORPG Subscription"* territory.
Contrast with, say, Microsoft Flight Simulator, where the Labor of Love "free stuff" ethos of FSX dried up with the launch of MSFS 2020, and now every new plane is effectively $30-70.
iRacing starts to look pretty good compared to some other sim options...
I always wonder, if iRacing is soooo bad on tires, physics, graphics etc. then why don't we see pro drivers using anything else? "Max Verstappen, 4 time F1 champ, I'm sorry, but didn't you know this is a crap sim? You could be playing ACC!" Nascar drivers " Hey William Byron, I know you're actually a Nascar driver now with 13 wins, and learned almost exclusively on iRacing, but didn't you hear it's a rip off?"
I race on iRacing, but i also race on RaceRoom which I feel like is just as good
@@Beck-b9g I prefer how raceroom feels to drive, it's one of my favourites. The multiplayer is totally dead, at least in my time zone, though.
Great vid!!. I been on here since about 2012-2013. I started out with papyrus sims in the 90s. You missed the days when you guys didn’t have any servers down there, and you guys would be all over lol, or the ice racing days with V3 tires. Or doing burnouts in the pits to warm your tires up. Only thing i wish they would update is the penalty structure for corse cuts. So inconsistent when it comes to registering the countdown. Just give me the 5 second penalty at the end of the race.
Thank you! I agree about the cut penalties, it's very weird the way it is.
Well to be fair about the pyshics, if you have more than 100k races with over 250k players, there will be janky physics from time to time. It's literally impossible to have a game without any weird physics happening.
I’ve never used iRacing, because of the pricing. For me as someone who just races for fun Automoblista 2 feels great, pretty cheap* and no subscription :)
Great multiplayer, good single player though the AI are slow af on ovals
Look, I get that iracing costs money.
But it also has more ongoing attention to detail than any other title, from multiplayer splits to tracks, set-up balance and now AI.
Is it perfect? No, far from it. But the subscription model incentivises them not to stand still.
There's a reason that the serious events are all hosted in iracing. From having the most detailed tracks, set-up fairness and flag and penalty rules, to the simple arms race against cheaters.
For many of the people complaining, they simply want a video game rather than a simulation that enforces competitive balance.
just ''bought'' the thing, after about a year playing AC with mods, mostly going for tougues and drift, and now im venturing into competitive actual racing, the only thing i dont like so far, is car starts to loose grip on the rear and it WILL spin theres nothing you can do, and when you lose grip you become a passanger, while in AC it feels better, on iRacing once its sliding it feels like youre driving on ice.
You definitely have to drive a bit more conservatively and carefully than in AC, I agree.
Member since 2011... ive taken YEAR long breaks from Iracing (and/or Simracing) but always get back to Iracing... its the only sim i can hop on, pick a race i wanna do.. 30 min practice and then 30 min later i'm racing, against people and its always a RACE with battles, high's and lows. And yeah, over those 13 years i've spent thousands, but still enjoy it and dont mind buying a track/car or something every season.
Currently, it looks dated though, that would be my biggest issue.... the graphics compared to something like ACC are just a complete joke at worse FPS... but the sim holds it own and i think thats why we have those wierd Physics issues when we crash etc sometimes... cause its ACTUALLY physics based and the engine just doesn't know how to handle those situations, where other sims tend to have a base of physics and stacks of algorithms ontop of that to make it make sence.
I did try it for a month, a year and a half ago. Found it ok in terms of driving feel and immersion. Just couldn't justify the massive cost for something that is only ok. I don't mind paying alot for a service, but it has to be good. There has been alot of physics update since, maybe i'll have to give it a try again at some point. Currently i'm very addicted to LMU online racing with hypercars. LMU is definitely very good, only bad thing about it is the rain physics, and unpopulated servers at some hours.
I'm a college student and the currency of subscription base just to play iRacing is painful for me, there is more than just the subscription on iRacing, you also have to buy each of the cars and tracks there. And luckily for me there is Assetto Corsa Competizione, which has the best GTWC that has GT2, GT3 and GT4 cars and best physics to date for these cars. Probably once I finished my college and have a job, I might go try iRacing.
They should remove the subscription fee. Virtually no difference between iracing noobs and LFM noobs. It would expand the sport for both sim racing and for real racing.
But why would they? How would their company benefit from doing that and what would be their motivation? There seem to be plenty of expansion for sim racing and racing going on. I am truly asking the question, not being snarky.
@@johnmac9250 i think 3,99 euro per month would be more reasonable
Removing the subscription would vastly increase the amount of careless trolls. Having just one idiot in a race is bad enough, with a “free” service you’d have gangs of uncontrollable, unaccountable trolls.
Tbh this game should just have a subscription and that's it. A sub plus purchases is insane to me tbh. If The sub included everything alot of people would jump on board, myself included
The main reason I stick with iRacing above all else is because no other sim racing game offers oval racing at nearly the same quality.
I've heard many oval racers say this, I haven't tried oval myself but I'll take your word for it :) most of the competition in the Sim space is very squarely concentrated on road, it seems.
Dude your helmet on the replay is so fucking funny hahaha the psycho eyes on the mirror
@@SoulEnlightt 👀🤣
Yeah I don't really care how good a game is I would never pay a monthly subscription to have to play a game on top of that having to still buy in game content even though I'm paying a monthly subscription the greed of this is absolutely absurd
On top of that forcing internet connection I do understand that the main focus is multiplayer but you can still play against ai I'll just play everything else but if iRacing ever stopped forcing monthly fees and forcing internet connections I would 100% get it but I know for a fact is never going to happen
Btw this is a nice video very thorough and well paced not saying anything negative about your perspective i was purely talking about the game
@@lebroncarter4902 Completely understand where you're coming from, I really can't blame you for feeling that way.
Glad you enjoyed the video, thanks for the kind words and for watching!
I feel like the pricing model would be much more well received if it was just a subscription or just paid content. Even if said solution would still ultimately cost the same in total. It would make it less convoluted and feel less scammy.
i honestly love iracing, definitely best close to realistic racing game exist on the market for me. However, I completely agree on two subjects that you've mentioned
- single player option should not be on subscription based. £30 and get it forever for example just like AC, and keep the content available to purchase within the game such as tracks cars etc.
- subscription is ok - however paying £12 for a car and £12 for a track meaning total of £24 for each individual class is ridicilous. you'll pay £400 only to unlock each class cars/tracks for a season... this is way too much
About the visuals and performance: iRacing is keenly aware of what you pointed out and have been at work to rectify it for the last couple years. They checked into new engines to be the core of the platform but elected to do it themselves instead, as they outlined last month in the Dev Blog. The iRacing engine is ANCIENT. 2007 OR EARLIER. so yes, they are squeezing everything they can out of it, but at the end of the day, it's slow, it's inefficient, and it just looks its age. Sure iRacing still LOOKS pretty good, but as they demonstrated compared to even themselves as a work in progress, they can, and will, do better.
As a VR driver, it's absolutely second to none, but sometimes you can tell it's just not right, and boy is it HEAVY on the system. But I won't go back to displays. Right now the issues I have with VR are to be directly attributed to Microsoft (I run a WMR headset, which will be sunsetted this year). As a driver since 2014, I play this and Beam. I tried Asetto Corsa but the physics felt wrong. As most other games do to me now.
Not looking to start a war, but I wish iRacing would offer a bonet camera or dash camera in addition to the cockpit camera. As someone with a triple monitor setup the layout is similar to that of a car, adding an additional windshield on top of that makes my practical view of the track way smaller than a driver IRL. Whatever, I'll just have to opt for VR to be able to actually see the track ever.
@@iPuls3 OUTRAGEOUS, HOW DARE YOU!
13:51 as someone who does iracing and mostly oval racing, whenever there is a week they use night lighting its really poor and looks like someone forgot to pay the electric bills
Disappointing to hear that it extends to oval as well. Given that the Sim supports day night cycle and that night races get featured in the official series, it really needs to be WAY better than it is.
I’m a 13 year vet going into my 14th. I’ve been on this service since I was 13. I’ve been on the highs and lows of Iracing. Last year I was a 7000 oval Irating so being in a big SOF lobby with the people who take this as their day jobs, it’s not all that great. I would say it’s expensive. It use to be way better back in the day but the downfall of Iracing to me is how accessible it is now. Yes that sounds weird but the staff are ignorant more than ever now. They work on adding content instead of fixing and perfecting what needs to be fixed. In my opinion they have gone backwards when it comes to customer service and important things like tire model and aero model. When most real life drivers come on and say it’s bad then you should do something about it but they don’t. Casually speaking casual races are fun. If you really want to do this I’d suggest taking a loan out( just kidding) but find a league or enjoy hosted races but people in officials are rude and sweats. That’s my opinion for being here so long.
Great video mate. Being a fairly new parent I dont have the consistent time available to commit to a certain series, so for now I will need to stick with just watching or using other games!
@@MrShortstint thanks mate! I can certainly imagine how being a new parent would obliterate hobby time.
When i first bought iracing i stuck to nascar. 2 years later and im still sticking to nascar and own almost every nascar track and car and race in many hosted leagues and officials
While you may not be able to hide the iracing water mark fully, you can shrink it down really small by doing ctrl+pgdn, vice versa to make it bigger. helps a lot with photos and replays
Thanks for the great video! As a new sim racer I want to get into iRacing eventually but the subscription model makes me want to avoid it until I know what I want to get into.
@@sailyourface You're very welcome! And yes it's probably worth experimenting with other things first before you give iRacing a try. Cut your teeth with ai racing in other games and such.
What sims are you starting out with?
@@DiariesOfABadDriver I've been enjoying Automobilista 2 just got all of the DLC with the steam sale. I think I'm someone that falls into the 'single player first' category you talked about and from what I've read AMS2 has the best AI outside of iRacing. I've also tried ACC but the poor selection and VR performance has turned me off.
@@sailyourface Nice, yeah AMS2 is fun and while it isn't my absolutely favourite to drive, the new update made it noticeably better. It looks and runs great, too, more than I can say for iRacing. I would def say I prefer it over ACC.
I believe AMS2 also has Low Fuel Motorsport integration launching very very soon, so if you want to ease yourself into some multiplayer, you will be able to do it :)
Great review. I also started iracing a year ago after exclusively doing acc for two years.
I hated iracing at first try. Thought the money model was crazy etc…..
But today, I wouldn’t trade iracing for anything. Even after spending probably $500 over the last year. As you said, no other sim provides anywhere near the comprehensive value of iracing. Not even close.
Blinkers are so scary :D Nice vid apart form the slightly clickbaity title ofc =)
I justify iRacing with two lines of reasoning…
1. if considered a hobby it’s pretty cheap
2. there’s always a race available
It’s not perfect and relative to other sims it is expensive, but I like how it’s structured and there’s always something to do.
12years on Iracing (this month)
Iracing for me is more than just a sim/game , its a hobby ,a place where most my friends meet to unwind or go full race mode
iRacing+discord= good times :)
The price for iRacing is all about "You" and how much you wanna spend on a hobby
Much love from the Cold North (Denmark) :)
I wish I had a single friend who was a simracer 😢
Thanks for watching!
@@DiariesOfABadDriver I have never had a sim racing friend in real life, but I made a ton of friends online. Especially in leagues, where you race the same group every week.
Motorsport Australia now requires you to have the Esports licence to access the free 12 months of iRacing - the licence is 30 dollars if you don't have a competitive licence or free if you do (like me)
Thanks for that piece of info! There's always some fine print to miss somewhere, but I guess even at $30 there's not much cheaper offers
@ it used to be how you described it - that’s how I got my sub.
I've always had such a split opinion of iRacing. My fundamental problem with it is that the cars just aren't that enjoyable to drive - I'm sorry but they just aren't! The cars in iRacing have always felt a little distant with very little feed back and quite nervous. They do not tolerate being hustled or pushed very well. If you like me are a pretty agressive driver who likes an oversteery car, you have to change your style to suit the cars, otherwise you will have troubles with massive tyre degradation and spinning often, besides being too slow. To me the tyres have always been "wrong".
I've found myself returning to it several times over the years giving it yet another chance exactly because of the reasons you list. They have a really appealing and unique eco-system with the seasons and the popular yearly Special Events. I also really like how they have managed to make the community passionate about smaller national classes like the Mazda and junior formula cars. In every other sim, everybody just seems to want to jump straight to the fastest cars there is.
I've pumped hundreds of dollars into it over the years and I've raced big events like LM24 and N24. In the end, I've ended up not renewing since 2020. While true that the development is quite transparent I also find it to be increadibly slow. Pretty much since day-one people have been complaining about some glaring issues like the blinking and the tyres - these are apparently still present to this day as you point out. The same answer has been perpetuated over and over; 'Oh well, the new tyre model version "X" will fix all of that!'. At this point they have been going at it for 16 years, and frankly if they haven't fixed it by now I doubt they are capable or willing of doing so.
I think you raise a good point that how willing or able a person is to be able to overlook or forgive the flaws of iRacing's handling likely has a lot to do with their driving style. I would consider myself to be slightly conservative in how I drive and I try to stay just under the limit as much as possible. But if you like to toe over the limit and play that fine balancing game a lot more than I do, it's probably not going to be as enjoyable.
For handling regards approach im.still blasted that iracing ig option called "intensity" is natively set to 50% instead of 100% because ramping ffb force are a world better
It doesn't clip anything more its giving you 100% of thé car handling and is actually initialy stronger that your previous setting so you lower overall ffb at slider but feel now 50% more ffb so you're full of information with a well balanced force with same peak feel as before. No more suddent calls as you might reffering to
Found out with suelio video..
4:49 that helmet design!
You very briefly mention leagues. I would venture to say that the majority of people who view this video know very little about leagues.I have been on iracing for 10 years and in the last 4 to 5 years I have maybe raced 30 Official faces. Yet I may race between 6 to 10 Leagues races a WEEK. Most of my competitors in the Leagues also race very few Official races. League racing is far more enjoyable, highly competitive with toxic behavior being forbidden. Many people, including you, do not mention ALL of the ways that people enjoy iracing, choosing to leave out the tremendous enjoyment that leagues provide. By participating in leagues I am able to avoid many of the negatives that people love to complain about.
Blinking will never be eliminated with any internet based program, but in leagues, drivers are ordered to park their car but most drivers do so voluntarily when they find out that they are blinking.
I agree with some of the other points that you mention. I raced short track stock cars in real life and the competition that I find in iracing is as close as it gets to the real thing. That's what keeps me coming back.
I do not find iracing to be an expensive hobby, rather many of my other financial purchases that I make for enjoyment and entertainment are vastly more costly. A night out at the movies or a nice dinner costs way more than what I spend to run 10 races over a weeks period of time. And that's factoring in the cost of the equipment that I have invested in over the years for iracing as well as membership. For example, one can, and should factor in the cost of their vehicle (purchase, maintenance, and insurance) that they use to enjoy other "hobbies" when making a separate value comparison on the cost of iracing.
All in all, your video was very good, but it did leave out parts of iracing that people may not be aware of and therefore, have not experienced.
Yeah, I mean if leagues work best for you, that's awesome! But as I said in the opener, this is simply a recounting of my experiences with the service this past year, and leagues haven't been a part of that. And I think the video was long enough already 🤣
fwiw, I've tried out leagues in Assetto Corsa, and I think in many ways its like mods. For every good one there's at least a dozen bad ones. But ultimately, I just strongly prefer the convenient flexibility that the official series offers over leagues. I also think that when you're in the upper splits the racing quality is pretty good for the most part, but I can certainly believe that a well-regulated league with a good internal culture and good members would be the cream of the crop.
And yeah, I'm sure iRacing is dirt cheap compared to real stock car racing. It's all a matter of perspective and how well off you are.
Thanks for watching!
I stopped doing official races after a few years and just raced leagues for 5 years. I loved racing people I knew instead of random strangers.
i really hope iracing listens to this video. just got my iracing subscription and ill tell you the pressure of not using it in that month gap is real. it feels like im wasting money when i play my other games
I tested iRacing for a month, but the series I liked, was never in the schedule, so it stayed at one single month of testing.
was quite uninteresting for me.
@@las10plagas that's too bad, but very understandable. If what you really want to race is a dead series, it's not going to be a very appealing service.
@@DiariesOfABadDriver well, on top of production cars, rally cross felt really awesome, but I hate subscriptions as much as you do and paying monthly just to drive that one series ain't worth it IMO.
what really bugged me with almost every car was the breaking bias... I can't race with a fixed setup... I spun around like a madman, each time I was breaking >.<
otherwise I would have jumped on the MX5 series or any other one :P
@@las10plagasoh yeah rallycross slaps hard, it's a shame that it's relatively poorly populated, so I wouldn't pay just for that either.
I went from OG AC to iRAcing and loved the competition, but hated the pricing so much and the feelinf of kerbs, spent 2 years on iRAcing but now i am on ACC and I love it but I do miss Ovals
Bro the helmet scared the shit out of me when I saw it for the first time
I hope the devs see this because you have really valid points here that they should listen to
@@Tre_Scatti glad you think so! Thanks for watching and commenting :)