This is why you are one of my favourite simracers. You are always willing to help and advice others and find the time to do so. Dave, you are an absolute legend, we love you ❤
Nice intro. The one thing I'll add is that at least for beginners, tow to pits is really important to use. If you are on a narrow track like Mount Panarama, please don't try to do a u-turn. Taking a tow is safer than doing a 7-point turn with other racers. Hitting that button as soon as you are stopped saves a lot of incident points.
I've taught some noobs many of the same stuff. One thing I learned about the Virtual Mirror is that racers with single monitors is that many of them prefer a high setting. With a single monitor you may not be able to see your side mirrors, depending on your FOV (field of view) setting and a high Virtual Mirror setting allows you to see other racers as they begin to come along side
Great video Dave!! As for the Virtual Mirror, I've done a lot of work trying to get it as realistic as possible. I've found that 45 degrees gives me the best view of how close the car actually is. It's so heard to focus when it looks like the guy behind me looks like he's going to dive bomb me at every corner. I set my FOV by pulling forward in the pits and then backing up till I think I'm up against my pit crew guy. Then I would look at the replay and see how close I actually was and then readjust the FOV till I was actually right up against him when I got out of the car. I hope this helps anyone trying to get that as close to real as possible. Cheers Mate!!
The brake force factor is like the 'brake gamma' you find in other sims. I only know this because I upgraded my G29 to a "load cell" brake pedal, and really struggled with modulation at the top end before I realized I needed to change this (they all default to high values for G29 - ACC default is 2.8, I'm playing with 1.0, massive difference). Great vid Dave!
@Adrian Most welcome, I forget where I first heard it but I tend to comment about it as it made such a difference! If you struggle to adjust, I'd recommend a bit of dead zone like Dave suggests and sticking with it. I basically had to re-learn how to trail brake...
Just getting into iracing. Learned more in this 19 minute video than I have in hours of youtube surfing and watching other videos. Thanks Dave for a quick and easy to understand video! Looking forward to watching and learning more.
First: Thanks for all you do for simracing community. I don't know when Steve, SuperGT, last streamed, but in his streams you can see that he likes to move the right foot while on the throttle. I'm doing the same thing, so 5% deadzone at the top is a must for me.
Your first iRacing tips video was a huge help for me getting setup on the service when I started. Likewise your race videos have definitely helped me progress. Much appreciated!
Dave, Thank you so much. Been sim racing for about a year but this is my first real season in iracing and I love it but even after about 30 races, I was missing 5 of these tips. Amazing.
Never thought to just hold the brake to create a dead zone for the minimum pressure. I've done the dead zone for the maximum pressure. Thank you for the tips, the brake setup in iRacing definitely help me find something I was missing.
If you're just starting out. I recommend the Logitech G923. I started on this wheel and peddle set. They are in the middle of the price range for quality Sim Racing equipment. Been on it for almost a year. And its been performing great.
I am trying my best in tracing since 6 weeks now.. and Dave this Video was so helpful! Never thought about deadzones or force factors of braking. thank you very much Dave! Great video.
Rallycross 101, the dark brown patches of dirt give you more traction than the light brown. There are no pits. Can’t take joker lap on first lap. You have to stay below the line that marks the joker lap, called the commit line.
A note about steering wheel calibration in the sim. You say to ignore your physical wheel position and just look at the output on screen and turn it until this output display says 900 degrees. I think you may have misunderstood the purpose of this particular step in the calibration routine. This “turn your wheel 90 degrees to the left” step exists because there is a good chance some error exists in the steering wheel’s system. Turning the physical wheel by a certain amount of rotation might not correspond to that much movement being reported in its output. And this particular calibration step’s purpose is to actually measure how much error exists. Once it knows how much error exists it can compensate for it so that your physical wheel’s current amount of rotation will match up with the amount of rotation in the sim. Without this error compensation it is quite likely that the amount of rotation of your physical wheel will not match up with the amount of rotation in the sim. You can exaggerate the problem just so you can see it in action for yourself by going through the calibration routine and purposely doing it wrong. At this step turn the wheel so the display only reads 600 degrees instead of 900. Once you complete the routine with this intentional error turn your wheel back and forth throughout its entire rotation and watch what the sim wheel does. See how its rotation does not match your physical wheel rotation at all now? See how the error is very exaggerated? It is possible that some of this error still exists when you simply make that calibration step’s screen output say 900 degrees. Try the calibration routine again, only this time do as it says and look at your physical wheel and do your best to turn it exactly 90 degrees. Don’t worry about what the screen output says. Just make sure your wheel is as close to 90 degrees as you can get it. Once you complete the routine this way watch the sim wheel again as you move your physical wheel through the whole movement range. This time they should match up very closely throughout the entire range. My Fanatec CSWv2 contains a noticeable amount of error. When my wheel is as close to 90 degrees as I can get it the screen display actually says 848 degrees, not 900. If I turn it until it says 900 and hit done then the physical wheel and sim wheel no longer match up in their movement. One shows more rotation than the other. But if I ignore the screen output and just turn the wheel by 90 degrees and hit done then they match up very well. This calibration step is to measure that error and compensate for it. It is important to do correctly.
I am disabled, and use paddles on the back of my wheel as pedal replacements. If I wanted to set my wheel up so that a lower turn (say I turn my wheel 45° when it says 90°), would that give me double the rotation in the sim compared to the real world? That could help me keep my hands on the virtual "pedals" in tight turns, though it would also come with a downside of having less fine control possibly leading to an overcontrol situation. Sounds like you know what you're talking about, so I figured I'd ask your opinion. Thx.
@@kevykevTPA You can manipulate how the sim wheel behaves by abusing the "turn left 90 degrees" step and the associated settings of Wheel range and Map range. The purpose of this calibration step is to provide a way to give a wheel that has a limited range of rotation more rotation in the sim. An older wheel might've only had 360 degrees of rotation available, 180 degrees each way from centre. The "turn left 90 degrees" step kind of serves two purposes. It tells the sim how much of your wheel's total rotation is required to turn 90 degrees, and it tells it when it needs to abandon linear input and start scaling it. When you follow the directions properly this helps the sim match more closely how your wheel actually is turned versus the positional output it gives. If a "900-degree wheel" is actually only 842 (I said 848 earlier but I was mistaken) then this step will compensate so that it remains as linear as possible both below the 90-degree location and above it. If I turned my wheel in this step until the display on screen said 900 degrees instead of actually turning my wheel an actual 90 degrees then it would cause the sim wheel to rotate at a different amount than my wheel. The error wouldn't be very large, but it would introduce some error as a result of not actually turning it 90 degrees. When I actually turn it 90 degrees the display says 842 degrees, and when I watch the steering wheel in the settings page as I turn my wheel the amount of rotation in both wheels match each other. But if in that calibration step I just turned it until the display said 900 then the actual wheel has only been turned about 82 degrees (using the measure app on my iPhone to get this) and the wheel in the sim reached the 900-degree end point, 360 + 90 = 450 degrees, when my actual wheel is at about 360 + 62. So after the inital 90 degrees of rotation the sim wheel starts turning faster than my wheel does. Normally, this is undesirable. If I properly turn my wheel 90 degrees during that step then I get a sim wheel that mirrors my actual wheel rotation as closely as possible, and it just happens to display 842 degrees during that step. Which brings us to how we can manipulate the situation in order for you to get more sim wheel rotation with less actual wheel rotation. You can simply turn the wheel less than the requested 90 degrees during that calibration step. That alone will change the sim wheel's behaviour somewhat. The sim wheel rotation should still remain linear below whichever location you've used, so if you want to try it out with only 45 degrees of rotation in that step to see how it behaves you should see that it remains linear everywhere below that point. Above that point the wheel will start turning more quickly in the sim. The degrees of rotation display during that step doesn't start moving until my wheel reaches the 33 degrees point. Below that it says 2160 degrees no matter where I turn it, and it doesn't start showing below 2160 degrees until I get past that, so that should give you a rough point of reference. It doesn't appear to be a limiter, in that you can use a point below there for your "90 degrees" location and the sim will still use it. It simply doesn't start changing that display until you get past that point. It will happily use 20 degrees or whatever you want to try. If your wheel is a 900-degree wheel, or is set to be a 900-degree wheel, and your use a smaller amount of rotation for that "90 degrees left" step the sim will let it behave as though it is a 1080-degree wheel and give you an accelerated amount of rotation past whichever point you used in that step. You could play around using a different amount of rotation at that step to see if anything seems to work better for you. It's going to require some time to get used to the change, too, don't forget. As I say, with my wheel it is around 33 degrees when the 2160-degree display just finally moves to 2159. At 45 degrees is says 1614, at 60 degrees it says 1221, and at 75 degrees it says 984. Well, for my wheel. Your will likely differ slightly, but I guess that's not terribly important. It still gives you some frame of reference. I would say you play around with it a bit in the settings page and see what it does. And try it out driving. It doesn't give you an infinite amount of adjustability, but it does allow for a decent amount of wiggle room. It should help you some. Let me know how it goes.
I have to say, this helps me tremendously. I jumped into iracing because of your racing videos, but these informational and educational videos are truly helpful. Love your channel, Dave. This helps me get the “real feel” and control I need to achieve my goal on the platform. Maybe now I can get good enough to race against you! Keep these videos coming, my friend. Sincerely a fan from Mississippi 😉
Finally making the jump to iracing. Been several years on ACC and been loving LMU, but talk now of LMU being up for sale has me installing iracing. I don't expect to be disappointed.
thx , well explained . When i started years ago , there was nothing like that to find on YT .... so this is a very good help for a Rookie in SimRacing not to get frustrated before the first Race has even started .
09:44 - for any existing players wondering if FFB has a little different since the last update - note the new feature for FFB control called "smoothing". It's cool that iRacing added the feature but not cool that they set it to 15% by default for all cars without telling anyone! Also worth noting that many of the settings Dave talked about here can be global (all cars) or set to be unique for a specific type.
@@OtaQ iRacing has a famously terrible FFB update rate (only 60Hz compared to the likes of ACC at 300+Hz). This means FFB can feel "grainy" on some wheel setups. iRacing have clearly decided to "fix" this by hiding it behind a smoothing setting. I set it at zero in iRacing and use my wheelbase setting (Fanatec) to control such things.
Great video Dave, found several of these by searching TH-cam as I started iRacing a week or two back, but having them all here is such a great resource.
What great timing! I signed up to iRacing only last week and had to work out a lot of what you talk about for myself, which took ages, although I realise that I now need to calibrate my controls. The one other tip I would give a newcomer would be that the AI racing is for road races only. I spent a couple of hours trying to work out why I couldn't set up a race against AI on rallycross and dirt tracks until I discovered that iRacing doesn't do it! Thanks very much for making such an informative video.
Very nice well spoken and informative tutorial Dave! Even that i'm not new, i watched it fully. Maybe do one about overlaps such as racelabs and crewchief. I remember i was struggling to figure out what that was and how to use it in the very beginning.
I have been racing for 7 months now but even I picked up a few things here. Firstly the dead zones for the pedals. I will certainly recalibrate to get those setup. Also I do tend to lock up a bit on certain cars at certain tracks even when I don't feel I am pressing my brake pedal too hard, so I guess I need to increase that too. Will get load cell pedals one day when I can afford it but for now, I am stuck with the G29 wheel and pedals. Very helpful information for new drivers. I think another thing for new drivers is to not rush your way to 1 licence and try to win every race. 2 things will happen, 1 - you will end up involved in lots of incidents and therefore your safety rating will suffer and you won't advance licence classes anyway and 2 - you will piss off a lot of other drivers. Take you time to learn the sim and how each car handles each track with your driving style. Do lots of test drives and time trials (a good way to earn a small amount of SR without other cars being there though less than racing) so you can get used to each car on each circuit. Keep eye on relative and when you are being lapped (usually within 1.5 - 2 seconds depending on how quickly they are catching you) then move over on a straight and slow down slightly to give them an easier chance. The other drivers will thank you and it will earn you lots of respect. Also those other drivers when they see you in a race with them in the future, they will be able to predict what you will do.
there is a simple but well working mod for your G29 Pedals, there are plenty of video explaining how to remove the rubber block that is inside your breakspring - then grab yourself a flipflop (yes you heard right) and cut out a nice square piece 3.5cm and put it in the break spring - this mod is a huge improvement also try to switch the clutch with the throttle spring
Dave, I greatly appreciate your videos they are very informative for someone new to Sim Racing / i Racing. Thank you! I started racing in the physical world and have been racing Formula Fords (loved you videos on those too) for 12 years. One comment about tire sound, I can not hear tire sound in on-board videos either, but in the car I can and it is helpful. It is subtle but it is definitely there. Thanks again!
Yes, I can in my car if I specifically listen for it. Ross Bentley (Speed Secrets, driving coach) mentions this in some of his teaching/training. He recommends doing "auditory sessions" on track where all you do if focus on listening to the car. Under the limit I can't hear much noise, but near the limit there are little "chirps" as tires (tyres) briefly slide/lock and they make a scrubbing sound across the surface of the road near the limit. Of course if you completely loose the car they get much louder!
Just wanted to say thanks! this video has helped a lot, especially the bit about brake pedals and preventing lock up. I have cheap entry level ones and never figured out why i would seem to tap them and I would lock up. great help!
a load cell brake of any kind is the best investment you can really make. i was on pots for years and picked up the clubsport v3s. it still blows my mind 2 years later how much better a load cell is.
Holy SH...... I wish this was out a long time ago. Thank you so much for putting this video out. I have been looking for a video like this for a while.
This is brilliant information. I’m around 1 week in to iRacing, so pleased you posted this today Dave! It would be great to see a series of these videos with more tips and tricks! Third party plugins for example would be great to get recommendations on! Thanks again.
Crew Chief and Trading Paints are the two third party apps that almost everyone runs, I reccommend both. RaceLabApps is also a common one for generating fancy overlays, however I strictly use it as a relative box, only because it allows me to see the irating and safety rating of other drivers around me so I know who I'm dealing with. I've learned that less is more in terms of overlays if you aren't streaming, less stuff crowding my vision and stealing my attention when I'm in a race. Dave did a video a while back called " iracing UI and how to move it to suit you" that if you haven't seen, you should.
@@thecreatorsmusic If you're new to simracing in general, Aris.Drives did a couple of very long videos called "How to Race" and a sequel "How to Fight" that I strongly reccomend. If you're coming from another simulator like acc then you probably already know this stuff
Well done Dave. Brings back memories of all the hard lessons I learned the first few weeks on iRacing just 2 years ago. Still consider myself a rookie as there's still so much more to learn. Hope you'll continue with a few more like this with some more helpful tidbits... like how to set a secondary clutch for standing starts if you don't have a fancy wheel with a secondary clutch??? Can't figure that one out... cheers!
Glad ya did this one for the new guys , wish I had this when I started I racing. Good tool for them, ad there was a couple things I didn't know, thanks for all the hard work.
As you said, this is basic, but a good tool for seeing how you are (or aren't) able to compete is the Watch function. It can be very helpful without wrecking a bunch of racers.
Yesterday i left a comment on one of your video that i wasn't hitting top speed. Turn out that i wasn't revving the engine until it's last breath and my PEDAL WASN'T CALIBRATED !!!! wow dave wow you saved me so much of time and effort. Thank you so so so so so much brother
Nice one Dave, thanks! The Brake Force factor though, I believe you didn't nail the explanation. What it does is simply do an S-curve with the pedal input and not regulate the brake force as you said. So if it is zero, pedal response is linear, if it is at 5.00 it is a sharp S-Curve where you need a lot of pedal input to reach 50% and the other 50% happen in the later depression of the pedal. Great tutorial nonetheless ;) Hope to race you soon!
I got a 3-month iRacing subscription for the Fanatec Magnetic Shifter, so I'll be "new to iRacing" for 3 months, then I'll uninstall it. :) Thanks for the tips, Dave!
Thanks for info, signed up over the weekend and got caught out with the repairs. Thought I had fast repair enable. pitted, sat there for 3 minutes getting the required repairs only for the engine to blow up after 2 laps. Had a play with IRFFB but seem to get no FFB when starting some sessions so given up on it.
Great video. I have a triple screen setup, but some of the UI is stretched across all screens. Is there a way of changing this so the results page is just on the middle screen? The race list seems to be ok.
Great video Dave, its good even for non-beginners. Fantastic as always! Would be great to learn more about the Tires black box, do you use it? Thank you!
I would reconsider the tire sound choice. In a real race car, you might not be able to hear the tires over the engine and other noises, but you *feel* them. In the sim, you lose a lot of that feeling due to no movement, etc, so adding the tire sounds helps you at least have some cue for what the tires are doing. It just comes through in a different way!
You Legend Dave, Only thing wrong with this video is that you didn't make it a year ago. I have been doing iRacing for about 9 months now and knew nothing about that brake force thing. I use V3 pedals and always struggle with locking up and being consistent on the brakes but now I've put brake force to 0 braking is so much nicer with just a little bit of testing. I was also using 1080 wheel rotation and 900 does feel better too so I'm going to give these changes a month or so practice and hopefully I can be much more consistent. Thanks Great video
Dave, any good videos on racecraft to help me when I'm trying to drive my line, hit my brake zones when I'm directly behind someone? This is one of the hardest skills for me get better at.
@Dave Cam just when you thought you knew all the basics.. thank you for some good tips. ffb nm settings changed for Thrustmaster TS-PC Racer wheel to 6 from 0. Feels similar, maybe a bit smoother. Jim said “It goes faster the other way up!”, but what does Jim know? Cheers
One thing that is incorrect in the video. You should set your "Wheel strength" to whatever the amount your wheelbase is using with your setting (ffb strength), rather than what can it potentially use. Reason for this is, then iRacing "knows" how much torque it can use in your wheelbase. If you use 50%, of a 20NM base, and you add 20NM on your Wheel Strength setting, you will get an incorrect ffb interpretation given to you by iRacing. Stretched out, if it makes sense. Dave Tucker (from iRacing) explained it on several places why and how.
Just joined via steam and that was quite a hasle, it took 5 hrs to instal and allot of frustating hours more to find out howto login. But eventually got it to work fine, only wished I knew your info before joining my 1st rookie race. Thank you for the much needed essentials. Now I need to not do a bodge job like I did in my 1st race. Steam and IRacing should make the whole login and setting up wheel/pedals much easier, because that was quite difficult. But it was worth the haslle after all the long frustrating hours it took to get things working. I'll check for good advice on how to improve my ratings, any advice would be welcome.
Beginner tip. Focus on clean Racing and get safety rating up and unlock more racecatecorys before you go for irating. It Can be very tricky to Do both in the lover ranks
Wow, not just for beginners Dave. The steering setting has just made a world of difference for me. I’ve always used the standard setting of 1080. It always felt cumbersome 😂 now I know why 😂😂😂 Cheers Dave learnt from you again and another great video
@@irongoatrocky2343 I'm using the Moza R9 with the CS wheel. Really nice with the lower rotation when using paddles, and i don't think it's too little/jerky either on high speeds.
I'm really surprised that there haven't been some kind of joint partnership deals that have occurred allowing you to fully update and modify certain pedals and wheels from within iRacing. That's definitely the kind of mod I would enjoy
Thanks for the acceleration pedal deadzone tip. I checked mine and it has only been going up to 99.6 - all those hours and laps on ACC without full throttle 🤦♂
@@kingcarrot6355 If only iRacing encrypted that file.... Lets all cheat :) (I know I will always going to forget those repair and tyre settings for every race )
Hi thx for the great video which already helped me very much. But I don't really know what wheelbase settings I should use because I don't really find any on the net for my wheelbase.I am using a Fanatec DD pro GT.
Dave, I have two questions about that. On the one hand, what does the difference in the angle setting do, as I have described, and on the other hand, what happens in the steering behavior between 900 and 1080 degrees?
Great video. Can recommend changing the pitstop config so you don't have to check the boxes every time. Wondering why my pedals sometimes forget their dead spots?
Hi Dave. I'm new to iracing, starting this week sometime. Do you suggest I get the free "overlay" program for graphics? I've seen some guys mention that along with the "crew chief" program.
This is why you are one of my favourite simracers. You are always willing to help and advice others and find the time to do so.
Dave, you are an absolute legend, we love you ❤
Nice intro. The one thing I'll add is that at least for beginners, tow to pits is really important to use. If you are on a narrow track like Mount Panarama, please don't try to do a u-turn. Taking a tow is safer than doing a 7-point turn with other racers. Hitting that button as soon as you are stopped saves a lot of incident points.
I've taught some noobs many of the same stuff. One thing I learned about the Virtual Mirror is that racers with single monitors is that many of them prefer a high setting. With a single monitor you may not be able to see your side mirrors, depending on your FOV (field of view) setting and a high Virtual Mirror setting allows you to see other racers as they begin to come along side
Great video Dave!! As for the Virtual Mirror, I've done a lot of work trying to get it as realistic as possible. I've found that 45 degrees gives me the best view of how close the car actually is. It's so heard to focus when it looks like the guy behind me looks like he's going to dive bomb me at every corner. I set my FOV by pulling forward in the pits and then backing up till I think I'm up against my pit crew guy. Then I would look at the replay and see how close I actually was and then readjust the FOV till I was actually right up against him when I got out of the car. I hope this helps anyone trying to get that as close to real as possible. Cheers Mate!!
Thanks, very helpful and detailed. Cheers.
The brake force factor is like the 'brake gamma' you find in other sims. I only know this because I upgraded my G29 to a "load cell" brake pedal, and really struggled with modulation at the top end before I realized I needed to change this (they all default to high values for G29 - ACC default is 2.8, I'm playing with 1.0, massive difference).
Great vid Dave!
THATS WHY I CANT DRIVE WITH THE T-LCM!!! Thank you so much man
@Adrian Most welcome, I forget where I first heard it but I tend to comment about it as it made such a difference!
If you struggle to adjust, I'd recommend a bit of dead zone like Dave suggests and sticking with it. I basically had to re-learn how to trail brake...
I’m currently in the market for my first sim rig, these videos are invaluable to me working this all out , thank you so much Dave
In the same boat. Did you make a decision?
Just getting into iracing. Learned more in this 19 minute video than I have in hours of youtube surfing and watching other videos. Thanks Dave for a quick and easy to understand video! Looking forward to watching and learning more.
First: Thanks for all you do for simracing community.
I don't know when Steve, SuperGT, last streamed, but in his streams you can see that he likes to move the right foot while on the throttle. I'm doing the same thing, so 5% deadzone at the top is a must for me.
Your first iRacing tips video was a huge help for me getting setup on the service when I started. Likewise your race videos have definitely helped me progress. Much appreciated!
Great stuff Dave! Even those of us who have been around iRacing for a long time now still need reminders of the basics.
Here, here! I learned something watching this video and in fact saved it for later. If I ever have to set up a new computer I'll re-watch it.
Dave, Thank you so much. Been sim racing for about a year but this is my first real season in iracing and I love it but even after about 30 races, I was missing 5 of these tips. Amazing.
Never thought to just hold the brake to create a dead zone for the minimum pressure. I've done the dead zone for the maximum pressure. Thank you for the tips, the brake setup in iRacing definitely help me find something I was missing.
If you're just starting out. I recommend the Logitech G923. I started on this wheel and peddle set. They are in the middle of the price range for quality Sim Racing equipment. Been on it for almost a year. And its been performing great.
I am trying my best in tracing since 6 weeks now.. and Dave this Video was so helpful! Never thought about deadzones or force factors of braking. thank you very much Dave! Great video.
Rallycross 101, the dark brown patches of dirt give you more traction than the light brown. There are no pits. Can’t take joker lap on first lap. You have to stay below the line that marks the joker lap, called the commit line.
ive been on iRacing 12years 👍
Had to show a rookie the basic's (yesterday)
holy heck iracing is a complete nightmare for newcomers .
A note about steering wheel calibration in the sim. You say to ignore your physical wheel position and just look at the output on screen and turn it until this output display says 900 degrees. I think you may have misunderstood the purpose of this particular step in the calibration routine. This “turn your wheel 90 degrees to the left” step exists because there is a good chance some error exists in the steering wheel’s system. Turning the physical wheel by a certain amount of rotation might not correspond to that much movement being reported in its output. And this particular calibration step’s purpose is to actually measure how much error exists. Once it knows how much error exists it can compensate for it so that your physical wheel’s current amount of rotation will match up with the amount of rotation in the sim. Without this error compensation it is quite likely that the amount of rotation of your physical wheel will not match up with the amount of rotation in the sim.
You can exaggerate the problem just so you can see it in action for yourself by going through the calibration routine and purposely doing it wrong. At this step turn the wheel so the display only reads 600 degrees instead of 900. Once you complete the routine with this intentional error turn your wheel back and forth throughout its entire rotation and watch what the sim wheel does. See how its rotation does not match your physical wheel rotation at all now? See how the error is very exaggerated? It is possible that some of this error still exists when you simply make that calibration step’s screen output say 900 degrees.
Try the calibration routine again, only this time do as it says and look at your physical wheel and do your best to turn it exactly 90 degrees. Don’t worry about what the screen output says. Just make sure your wheel is as close to 90 degrees as you can get it. Once you complete the routine this way watch the sim wheel again as you move your physical wheel through the whole movement range. This time they should match up very closely throughout the entire range. My Fanatec CSWv2 contains a noticeable amount of error. When my wheel is as close to 90 degrees as I can get it the screen display actually says 848 degrees, not 900. If I turn it until it says 900 and hit done then the physical wheel and sim wheel no longer match up in their movement. One shows more rotation than the other. But if I ignore the screen output and just turn the wheel by 90 degrees and hit done then they match up very well. This calibration step is to measure that error and compensate for it. It is important to do correctly.
I am disabled, and use paddles on the back of my wheel as pedal replacements. If I wanted to set my wheel up so that a lower turn (say I turn my wheel 45° when it says 90°), would that give me double the rotation in the sim compared to the real world? That could help me keep my hands on the virtual "pedals" in tight turns, though it would also come with a downside of having less fine control possibly leading to an overcontrol situation. Sounds like you know what you're talking about, so I figured I'd ask your opinion. Thx.
@@kevykevTPA You can manipulate how the sim wheel behaves by abusing the "turn left 90 degrees" step and the associated settings of Wheel range and Map range. The purpose of this calibration step is to provide a way to give a wheel that has a limited range of rotation more rotation in the sim. An older wheel might've only had 360 degrees of rotation available, 180 degrees each way from centre. The "turn left 90 degrees" step kind of serves two purposes. It tells the sim how much of your wheel's total rotation is required to turn 90 degrees, and it tells it when it needs to abandon linear input and start scaling it. When you follow the directions properly this helps the sim match more closely how your wheel actually is turned versus the positional output it gives. If a "900-degree wheel" is actually only 842 (I said 848 earlier but I was mistaken) then this step will compensate so that it remains as linear as possible both below the 90-degree location and above it.
If I turned my wheel in this step until the display on screen said 900 degrees instead of actually turning my wheel an actual 90 degrees then it would cause the sim wheel to rotate at a different amount than my wheel. The error wouldn't be very large, but it would introduce some error as a result of not actually turning it 90 degrees. When I actually turn it 90 degrees the display says 842 degrees, and when I watch the steering wheel in the settings page as I turn my wheel the amount of rotation in both wheels match each other. But if in that calibration step I just turned it until the display said 900 then the actual wheel has only been turned about 82 degrees (using the measure app on my iPhone to get this) and the wheel in the sim reached the 900-degree end point, 360 + 90 = 450 degrees, when my actual wheel is at about 360 + 62. So after the inital 90 degrees of rotation the sim wheel starts turning faster than my wheel does. Normally, this is undesirable. If I properly turn my wheel 90 degrees during that step then I get a sim wheel that mirrors my actual wheel rotation as closely as possible, and it just happens to display 842 degrees during that step.
Which brings us to how we can manipulate the situation in order for you to get more sim wheel rotation with less actual wheel rotation. You can simply turn the wheel less than the requested 90 degrees during that calibration step. That alone will change the sim wheel's behaviour somewhat. The sim wheel rotation should still remain linear below whichever location you've used, so if you want to try it out with only 45 degrees of rotation in that step to see how it behaves you should see that it remains linear everywhere below that point. Above that point the wheel will start turning more quickly in the sim. The degrees of rotation display during that step doesn't start moving until my wheel reaches the 33 degrees point. Below that it says 2160 degrees no matter where I turn it, and it doesn't start showing below 2160 degrees until I get past that, so that should give you a rough point of reference. It doesn't appear to be a limiter, in that you can use a point below there for your "90 degrees" location and the sim will still use it. It simply doesn't start changing that display until you get past that point. It will happily use 20 degrees or whatever you want to try.
If your wheel is a 900-degree wheel, or is set to be a 900-degree wheel, and your use a smaller amount of rotation for that "90 degrees left" step the sim will let it behave as though it is a 1080-degree wheel and give you an accelerated amount of rotation past whichever point you used in that step. You could play around using a different amount of rotation at that step to see if anything seems to work better for you. It's going to require some time to get used to the change, too, don't forget. As I say, with my wheel it is around 33 degrees when the 2160-degree display just finally moves to 2159. At 45 degrees is says 1614, at 60 degrees it says 1221, and at 75 degrees it says 984. Well, for my wheel. Your will likely differ slightly, but I guess that's not terribly important. It still gives you some frame of reference. I would say you play around with it a bit in the settings page and see what it does. And try it out driving. It doesn't give you an infinite amount of adjustability, but it does allow for a decent amount of wiggle room. It should help you some. Let me know how it goes.
I've been iracing for 5 years and still needed this little tutorial. thanks Dave
I have to say, this helps me tremendously.
I jumped into iracing because of your racing videos, but these informational and educational videos are truly helpful.
Love your channel, Dave.
This helps me get the “real feel” and control I need to achieve my goal on the platform. Maybe now I can get good enough to race against you!
Keep these videos coming, my friend. Sincerely a fan from Mississippi 😉
Easy done with me talking 😁
Finally making the jump to iracing. Been several years on ACC and been loving LMU, but talk now of LMU being up for sale has me installing iracing. I don't expect to be disappointed.
thx , well explained . When i started years ago , there was nothing like that to find on YT .... so this is a very good help for a Rookie in SimRacing not to get frustrated before the first Race has even started .
09:44 - for any existing players wondering if FFB has a little different since the last update - note the new feature for FFB control called "smoothing". It's cool that iRacing added the feature but not cool that they set it to 15% by default for all cars without telling anyone!
Also worth noting that many of the settings Dave talked about here can be global (all cars) or set to be unique for a specific type.
What do you mean? What is smoothing and how does it influence FFB???
@@OtaQ iRacing has a famously terrible FFB update rate (only 60Hz compared to the likes of ACC at 300+Hz). This means FFB can feel "grainy" on some wheel setups. iRacing have clearly decided to "fix" this by hiding it behind a smoothing setting. I set it at zero in iRacing and use my wheelbase setting (Fanatec) to control such things.
@@Daz5Daz I see!!! Such a great advise. Thank you.
Great video Dave, found several of these by searching TH-cam as I started iRacing a week or two back, but having them all here is such a great resource.
What great timing! I signed up to iRacing only last week and had to work out a lot of what you talk about for myself, which took ages, although I realise that I now need to calibrate my controls. The one other tip I would give a newcomer would be that the AI racing is for road races only. I spent a couple of hours trying to work out why I couldn't set up a race against AI on rallycross and dirt tracks until I discovered that iRacing doesn't do it! Thanks very much for making such an informative video.
Very nice well spoken and informative tutorial Dave! Even that i'm not new, i watched it fully. Maybe do one about overlaps such as racelabs and crewchief. I remember i was struggling to figure out what that was and how to use it in the very beginning.
I have been racing for 7 months now but even I picked up a few things here. Firstly the dead zones for the pedals. I will certainly recalibrate to get those setup. Also I do tend to lock up a bit on certain cars at certain tracks even when I don't feel I am pressing my brake pedal too hard, so I guess I need to increase that too. Will get load cell pedals one day when I can afford it but for now, I am stuck with the G29 wheel and pedals.
Very helpful information for new drivers. I think another thing for new drivers is to not rush your way to 1 licence and try to win every race. 2 things will happen, 1 - you will end up involved in lots of incidents and therefore your safety rating will suffer and you won't advance licence classes anyway and 2 - you will piss off a lot of other drivers. Take you time to learn the sim and how each car handles each track with your driving style. Do lots of test drives and time trials (a good way to earn a small amount of SR without other cars being there though less than racing) so you can get used to each car on each circuit.
Keep eye on relative and when you are being lapped (usually within 1.5 - 2 seconds depending on how quickly they are catching you) then move over on a straight and slow down slightly to give them an easier chance. The other drivers will thank you and it will earn you lots of respect. Also those other drivers when they see you in a race with them in the future, they will be able to predict what you will do.
there is a simple but well working mod for your G29 Pedals, there are plenty of video explaining how to remove the rubber block that is inside your breakspring - then grab yourself a flipflop (yes you heard right) and cut out a nice square piece 3.5cm and put it in the break spring - this mod is a huge improvement also try to switch the clutch with the throttle spring
Dave, I greatly appreciate your videos they are very informative for someone new to Sim Racing / i Racing. Thank you!
I started racing in the physical world and have been racing Formula Fords (loved you videos on those too) for 12 years.
One comment about tire sound, I can not hear tire sound in on-board videos either, but in the car I can and it is helpful. It is subtle but it is definitely there.
Thanks again!
So you can hear the tyres irl?
Yes, I can in my car if I specifically listen for it.
Ross Bentley (Speed Secrets, driving coach) mentions this in some of his teaching/training. He recommends doing "auditory sessions" on track where all you do if focus on listening to the car.
Under the limit I can't hear much noise, but near the limit there are little "chirps" as tires (tyres) briefly slide/lock and they make a scrubbing sound across the surface of the road near the limit. Of course if you completely loose the car they get much louder!
Just wanted to say thanks! this video has helped a lot, especially the bit about brake pedals and preventing lock up. I have cheap entry level ones and never figured out why i would seem to tap them and I would lock up. great help!
a load cell brake of any kind is the best investment you can really make. i was on pots for years and picked up the clubsport v3s. it still blows my mind 2 years later how much better a load cell is.
Holy SH...... I wish this was out a long time ago. Thank you so much for putting this video out. I have been looking for a video like this for a while.
Even though I have been racing for half a year, this video gave me some great insights! Thanks a bunch, Dave!
Thanks for making this. Such a great video for new drivers starting out in iRacing. Much appreciated.
This is brilliant information. I’m around 1 week in to iRacing, so pleased you posted this today Dave! It would be great to see a series of these videos with more tips and tricks! Third party plugins for example would be great to get recommendations on! Thanks again.
Crew Chief and Trading Paints are the two third party apps that almost everyone runs, I reccommend both. RaceLabApps is also a common one for generating fancy overlays, however I strictly use it as a relative box, only because it allows me to see the irating and safety rating of other drivers around me so I know who I'm dealing with. I've learned that less is more in terms of overlays if you aren't streaming, less stuff crowding my vision and stealing my attention when I'm in a race. Dave did a video a while back called " iracing UI and how to move it to suit you" that if you haven't seen, you should.
Thank you Ben that’s a real help. Hugely appreciated!
@@thecreatorsmusic If you're new to simracing in general, Aris.Drives did a couple of very long videos called "How to Race" and a sequel "How to Fight" that I strongly reccomend. If you're coming from another simulator like acc then you probably already know this stuff
@@BenChillinOfficial Coming from GT Sport & GT7 with a few hours on ACC at a local sim racing place.
Well done Dave. Brings back memories of all the hard lessons I learned the first few weeks on iRacing just 2 years ago. Still consider myself a rookie as there's still so much more to learn. Hope you'll continue with a few more like this with some more helpful tidbits... like how to set a secondary clutch for standing starts if you don't have a fancy wheel with a secondary clutch??? Can't figure that one out... cheers!
Hi Mark if you have a handbrake fitted you can map that. 👍
Dan suzuki has a good video on this!
Holy. I been on iracing for 6 years and I learned a couple things. Thanks
Glad ya did this one for the new guys , wish I had this when I started I racing. Good tool for them, ad there was a couple things I didn't know, thanks for all the hard work.
Excellent video, just 4 days in iracing, lots of help, thanks!
Super helpful, I just recently got my first cockpit and it included a one year subscription for iRacing, so this helps a lot!
You are a Saint, thank you from an new racer from Iowa!
perfect timing, i just started iracing 3 weeks ago. Thank you :)
Dave your information is like finding gold- thanks very much.
Many thanks for this. I've had iRacing for a while but still picked up some good info, particularly the mirror FOV, didn't realise that 👍🏻
Just gone from console to pc. It’s another world. Great advice Dave 👍
As you said, this is basic, but a good tool for seeing how you are (or aren't) able to compete is the Watch function. It can be very helpful without wrecking a bunch of racers.
Epic video as I am new to iRacing this video is fantastic stuff to know, thanks again Dave and have a great day!
5 years in iRacing and I learned a few things. Outstanding video.
Yesterday i left a comment on one of your video that i wasn't hitting top speed. Turn out that i wasn't revving the engine until it's last breath and my PEDAL WASN'T CALIBRATED !!!! wow dave wow you saved me so much of time and effort. Thank you so so so so so much brother
Awesome. Glad you got it fixed 😁
Some great stuff here Dave. About to rejoin iracing after a long hiatus. Thanks.
Nice one Dave, thanks!
The Brake Force factor though, I believe you didn't nail the explanation. What it does is simply do an S-curve with the pedal input and not regulate the brake force as you said. So if it is zero, pedal response is linear, if it is at 5.00 it is a sharp S-Curve where you need a lot of pedal input to reach 50% and the other 50% happen in the later depression of the pedal.
Great tutorial nonetheless ;) Hope to race you soon!
This is basic info. It was just a brief demo to show what it did 👍
To be fair, i never looked at the brake force, not even sure what mine is set to atm. Definitly need to take a look into that first thing.
Thanks
Thank you!! 😍
Super thanks Dave
What about a video for “best overlays/addons must have” for iRacing in 2024??
Cheers
What an amazing video. I just started with Iracing and this helped me a lot!!! Thank you Dave
I am not new to iracing but still love your videos!
Thank you. This has been a great help to me as a new player.
Great video dave 😀 would love a rfactor2 one at some point.
Great work, especially this wheel improvement. Thank you!
I got a 3-month iRacing subscription for the Fanatec Magnetic Shifter, so I'll be "new to iRacing" for 3 months, then I'll uninstall it. :) Thanks for the tips, Dave!
Thanks for info, signed up over the weekend and got caught out with the repairs. Thought I had fast repair enable. pitted, sat there for 3 minutes getting the required repairs only for the engine to blow up after 2 laps. Had a play with IRFFB but seem to get no FFB when starting some sessions so given up on it.
Very helpful video. I appreciate the advice for an old noob like me.
Perfect I just got iracing last week
i set clutch deadzone like about 20% bottom and 30% top, a real clutch pedal is not linear through it's travel range.
Good video. Would you able to do a video on streaming settings for twitch or TH-cam? Interested in seeing what your settings are
Brilliant. Wish I'd seen this sooner!
this video us perfectly posted i just bought iracing
Great video Dave!! Learned a few things.
Thank you so much for this information. Awesome content and very clear.
Pleased to help 😁
Great video. I have a triple screen setup, but some of the UI is stretched across all screens. Is there a way of changing this so the results page is just on the middle screen? The race list seems to be ok.
Excellent video Dave. Thanks!
Great video Dave! Hope this helps me out a bit on track :)
Great video Dave, its good even for non-beginners. Fantastic as always! Would be great to learn more about the Tires black box, do you use it? Thank you!
I would reconsider the tire sound choice. In a real race car, you might not be able to hear the tires over the engine and other noises, but you *feel* them. In the sim, you lose a lot of that feeling due to no movement, etc, so adding the tire sounds helps you at least have some cue for what the tires are doing. It just comes through in a different way!
No, I'm not a fan. It's entirely up to anyone else if they want to use it 😁
I set my Virtual mirror to the same as my FOV. That way the front and rear views match up.
You Legend Dave, Only thing wrong with this video is that you didn't make it a year ago. I have been doing iRacing for about 9 months now and knew nothing about that brake force thing. I use V3 pedals and always struggle with locking up and being consistent on the brakes but now I've put brake force to 0 braking is so much nicer with just a little bit of testing. I was also using 1080 wheel rotation and 900 does feel better too so I'm going to give these changes a month or so practice and hopefully I can be much more consistent. Thanks Great video
Excellent. Happy to help 😁
Tkx for the tips Dave!
Hi nDave - loving the new content recently like a lot of us if we knew that when we started would have been easier....
Dave, any good videos on racecraft to help me when I'm trying to drive my line, hit my brake zones when I'm directly behind someone? This is one of the hardest skills for me get better at.
I didn''t know about the brake force thing.. Thanks Dave! Hopefully it helps me stop locking up using my potato pedals :D
@Dave Cam just when you thought you knew all the basics.. thank you for some good tips. ffb nm settings changed for Thrustmaster TS-PC Racer wheel to 6 from 0. Feels similar, maybe a bit smoother. Jim said “It goes faster the other way up!”, but what does Jim know? Cheers
One thing that is incorrect in the video.
You should set your "Wheel strength" to whatever the amount your wheelbase is using with your setting (ffb strength), rather than what can it potentially use. Reason for this is, then iRacing "knows" how much torque it can use in your wheelbase.
If you use 50%, of a 20NM base, and you add 20NM on your Wheel Strength setting, you will get an incorrect ffb interpretation given to you by iRacing. Stretched out, if it makes sense.
Dave Tucker (from iRacing) explained it on several places why and how.
Thanks much for the tips!
Just joined via steam and that was quite a hasle, it took 5 hrs to instal and allot of frustating hours more to find out howto login. But eventually got it to work fine, only wished I knew your info before joining my 1st rookie race. Thank you for the much needed essentials. Now I need to not do a bodge job like I did in my 1st race. Steam and IRacing should make the whole login and setting up wheel/pedals much easier, because that was quite difficult. But it was worth the haslle after all the long frustrating hours it took to get things working. I'll check for good advice on how to improve my ratings, any advice would be welcome.
Beginner tip. Focus on clean Racing and get safety rating up and unlock more racecatecorys before you go for irating. It Can be very tricky to Do both in the lover ranks
Wow, not just for beginners Dave. The steering setting has just made a world of difference for me. I’ve always used the standard setting of 1080. It always felt cumbersome 😂 now I know why 😂😂😂
Cheers Dave learnt from you again and another great video
I even run it at 540. Give it a shot, u might like it :)
@@imppen......what type of wheel base are you using?
I ask because I am using the VRS DFP
@@irongoatrocky2343 I use Moza R9 with the Moza CS wheel. Really nice with the lower rotation when using paddles to shift.
@@irongoatrocky2343 I'm using the Moza R9 with the CS wheel. Really nice with the lower rotation when using paddles, and i don't think it's too little/jerky either on high speeds.
Even when Not new to iRacing, still a good watch.
Brilliant Dave Thank you.
im new to Iracing and enjoying it so far 🙂
I'm really surprised that there haven't been some kind of joint partnership deals that have occurred allowing you to fully update and modify certain pedals and wheels from within iRacing. That's definitely the kind of mod I would enjoy
Thanks for the acceleration pedal deadzone tip. I checked mine and it has only been going up to 99.6 - all those hours and laps on ACC without full throttle 🤦♂
Thank you for making this video
Perhaps a short "ini file for dummies" in a future video as a followup?
That's cheating, and you know it 😉
@@kingcarrot6355 If only iRacing encrypted that file.... Lets all cheat :) (I know I will always going to forget those repair and tyre settings for every race )
@@frankderks1150 They could also you know, put some of the revenue back into game development and make things feel and look less 1981 😅
Hi thx for the great video which already helped me very much. But I don't really know what wheelbase settings I should use because I don't really find any on the net for my wheelbase.I am using a Fanatec DD pro GT.
Dave, I have two questions about that. On the one hand, what does the difference in the angle setting do, as I have described, and on the other hand, what happens in the steering behavior between 900 and 1080 degrees?
Great video. Can recommend changing the pitstop config so you don't have to check the boxes every time. Wondering why my pedals sometimes forget their dead spots?
How do you do the pit stop think, seems like it would get annoying in vr for every race
Great video. Thank you 🙏🏻
Really like this Tks dave
Hi Dave. I'm new to iracing, starting this week sometime. Do you suggest I get the free "overlay" program for graphics? I've seen some guys mention that along with the "crew chief" program.
Anyone else laugh when Dave said “what is a black box” I was like : “Christ Dave , you are a bit long in the tooth to not know what that is!!” 😂😄😂
Thanks pal for the vid
Listen to the tires mate it’s free information out there for the taking otherwise keep driving!
Excellent video. 👍