Thanks for the review. As the eternal rookie simmer I find much of what iRacing offering attractive, but am wary of the total package.

The idea of modded races, where rude behavior is penalized, sounds appealing so long as the blame can be attributed fairly. I've seen too many online FPS's where teamkill punishments can get out of hand. And handling a car in traffic without bumping is difficult to do, as well as unrealistic, so I'd hope there is some forgiveness built-in.

The ranking scheme sounds good - i'd much rather duel with others of the same rank than be wasted by an alien and be leading a newbie.

I find the pricing scheme unfortunate though. Not the subscription price, which while high, is justifiable. More the accessability.
Like many others I'd much rather see a model where you can get a free or cheap non-subscription rookie license, one car and one or two tracks. Upgrading would require you to use the subscription model. While a $20 introductory rate for a month does not sound excessive, I'm wary as one month I can play often, while another I may not be able too.

Also, the inability to compete on private servers with friends, or even rendezvous on public servers, is a big disappointment.

That said I figure I will spend $20 to give it a try, knowing that I will probably never go for a subscription package. It's still cheaper than a couple races at the karting track.

I disagree. If this past weekend's F1 race was evaluated according to iRacing, Raikonnen would have as many incident points as Hamilton. Nakajima would also have points after odd circumstances sent his car out of control into a wall at only 50 mph.

You are asking for computer AI's judgement to be replaced by humans. Obviously that would result in the most correct decisions, but the manpower to do that simply doesn't exist. That's why computer games have AI in the first place.

You can count me out, too.

No AI--big minus.
No control over what tracks are being raced? Ditto.
The pricing scheme is not supportable.
EITHER pay per month OR pay per car/track, but not both.
For $20-$40 you can get any of the ISI-engined, heavily moddable sims and add tracks and cars and race against AI and whatever.
Maybe the tracks aren't as accurate. Maybe the cars aren't. However, charging SEVERAL times the price for what most people may at best see as only a 50% improvement over what they now have?

I don't deny there are people that will go for this and think it good, I do deny there will be any sort of mass appeal at all.

Aces High and Warbirds have the model they should've followed. This seems like double charging. You want to drive that car on that track? That's $50 (minimum?) extra. Plus you have to pay per month to drive. No AI to practice against, so if you don't pay for MP you have what, a solo test drive on a couple of tracks with a couple of cars??

While the economy was coming out of a recession when they started developing this, things are different now. Only people who will not race (or play) anything else on their PC could justify this cost. Great for online leagues, certainly, but not Everyman Racer.

I predict 12 months max before they have to switch tactics unless they're going to be very forgiving on profitability or their operating costs stay low (which I doubt).



The Jedi Master

Good article, but does anyone know of any thoughts posted by someone who wasn't a beta tester ?
Been reading lots of "reviews", etc., but I'd prefer if they all weren't from someone associated with the project.

I was only referring to understanding his post. I still don't think the system is fair at all!

And your second response is exactly my conclusion! You won't see it happening.


Cheers!

Allow me a chance to chime in and say I thought it was a good review...very informative. There were a couple of observations I had...

I am guessing that 2009 will be the end of EA's stranglehold on exclusive rights for NASCAR PC titles. I would also imagine that iRacing, with it's foot already safely in the door, can probably finagle getting those rights wrested from EA. For that I say good riddance to EA. They have done nothing but further fracture an already fragmented community.

Is pitting an experience like what we see in rFactor, or N2K3 as far as animations go? I am guessing that it may be omitted to conserve CPU capability. It's not the end of the world, but is an immersive quality N2K3 has that rFactor doesn't.

Short track racing is known for bumping and banging. Especially in Sprint Cup. I hope the threshold for incident/license points is high. What about drafting? That is a legit excercise in Sprint Cup, or any other like series.

Even rFactor will allow you to import paint, and share with others you race against. The applet looks cool, but nothing replaces your own paint. I am guessing that one reason is because they don't want some less than desirable schemes making it on their server when they are trying to look professional.

I agree with the general concensus here. The hardcore guys are going to want it regardless of the pricetag, and the minor incidentals. The rest are going to balk at the pricing alone.

I have always held a cautious eye towards iRacng/First. But I will confess what they have completed so far is indeed a very polished product according to the review. I think I am going to wait until they get the NASCAR license first before I consider buying the demo.

I am all for business and profit. But I think this product has a little too much emphasis on the profit instead of the other way around.

They won't have any problems with wannabes hangin' around to the tune of $155 per year.

As far as the MMORPG model...it could go two ways. One hand, you have World Of Warcraft, on the other, Star Wars Galaxies. One a success, the other a disaster.

Question: The $60 credit for renewal - can that only be used for buying more cars and tracks, or can that be used to put towards your access fee?

jmaacintosh; A few of your questions I can answer knowledgably.

Pitting isn't implemented yet and your $60 credit can be used towards renewing your access fee.

I haven't felt any drafting effects so I'm almost certain that this isn't implemented at the moment.

In order for that to happen, you will have to wait until retail copies are available. Right now all of the iRacing previews (and that's what they are, not reviews) are coming from trusted beta testers who are now free to reveal their thoughts since the NDA has lifted. No one else has copies of the game.



Jens,
No pitting? No drafting? I thought we were talking about the "world's most accurate motorsports simulation" here? Sorry to be a demanding whiner, but for hundreds of dollars I have some high expectations.

This is beginning to remind me somewhat of netKar Pro, which I did buy. Primarily an online racer, but not with your buddies, no AI, emphasis on physics, etc. I don't know, whatever happened to netKar Pro? Maybe it's still going strong and I just don't know it.

But I agree with Joe. No pitting? So much for longer races.

I hate to be negative so early in the game, but I compare what you get with rFactor and it's not even close. For much less cash.

Absolutely agree.

I don't - it's not a matter of getting more or less but getting something different.

rFactor is fun, no doubt about it. But as someone with hundreds of hours of real seat time in real cars, there are some shortcomings that I hope will be addressed in iRacing. I'm not going to deny that rFactor looks like a *far* wider product at this point, but my suspicion is that iRacing is going to take a very narrow slice of the racing world but take it to a depth that rFactor can't touch in terms of vehicle and track modeling and driving physics.

This suits me perfectly because I have little to no interest in NASCAR, F1 or the CART/IRL stuff, preferring to use my sim time enjoying the kind of driving that I do anyway - streetcar-based racing and time trials/HPDE stuff with a smattering of specialty track cars (radical, Caterham) thrown in.

YMMV of course, and for someone looking to sim the major racing leagues, I can understand the hesitation.

Well said, TheGeezer.

Very well said.

We can't compare apples and pears here; iRacing is arrive-and drive, absolutely no risc of file-mismatch or figuring out where to put all those downloaded files. There's in-sim chat, but for the time being, no pitting and no drafting.

It is the Feel which makes iRacing special to me. A feel for track and car and speed which is intuitive, consistent and enables me to know which driving errors I commit and let me analyse them so that on the next lap I can apply newly learned lessons and gradually improve my driving.

I must admit that in some other sims, sometimes I lose the car and don't really know why it happend. In iRacing I am able to attribute it to a specific driver error.

I guess it is in the eye of the beholder, if iRacing is something for you, dertemined by what you look for in a sim. iRacing is a very high fidelity driving simulation with emphasis on accurate physics, cars and tracks. A study sim if you will.

In its present state, iRacing works very well and I haven't encountered one single bug. There are tons of features still needing to be added and it is far from finished.

In the beta-testing I have only experienced quick addressing and fixing of bugs and frequent updates.

If you want to wait 6 months or a year you will be able to follow what features are added and when.


�We are about to launch an amazing product. We could wait a year or so to add more features, but we'd rather begin building this sport as is. Why should we wait for everything or for anything. This is just the beginning.�
- John Henry

Ok, thanks. Previews/reviews, tomato, tomatoe :). Anyway, no offense to Jens at all, but over the years, I've found beta testers for any game, to usually become so "wrapped up" in the game, that it can become difficult for them to be objective regarding the game, hence my question.




Also, unless I'm mistaken, isn't the track to be raced at chosen by the server, et al ? If so, how can real racers use the program to train at a track ? I.e., "Time to fire up iRacing to practice on track x !............What, only track y is available ?

Jens,

I guess I will wait on it to see if features that from a NASCAR perspective I consider important are implemented.

Pitting, and drafting being two of them...lol.

Us NASCAR fans got burned by EA with NSR. I am not enthusiastic about partaking in a title that is not finished. Like my experience with SWG, we unwittingly became paying beta testers ourselves. The sim so far has some impressive features, but it has a way to go before it is ready for mass consumption.

Looks like the first round of invites will not be sent out until late next week. In the meantime, back to LFS and the CTRA for me.

Well, good luck to them. Hopefully, some day they will be successful enough that their premium service price achieves a premium service value.

Jens,

Most of us don't have a problem with their choice of cars and tracks. Personally, I would love to drive a high fidelity study racesim, irrespective of the car make/model or race venues.

The big stumbling block here with most folks who responded to this thread is the commercial model the developers intend to implement.

Now I'll be the last person to lecture anyone on how to make money given the sanctity of the Eleventh Commandment ('Thou shall make a profit') but even then, there are limits as to what most folks will accept when it comes to buying a product and having some leeway in using it the way they expect.

I agree, the market for PC NASCAR titles has significantly waned to console gaming. rFactor is a nice platform, but that just doesn't have the feel like NASCAR was made for it. In light of what iRacing's focus is. I am not sure they really needed to buy up Papy's code, and block others from using it. I think what fans of N2K3 want isn't inherently covered in iRacing's offering. At least not yet. Considering the different niche these two titles serve, it leaves me scratching my head.

Take away offline AI, and you take away the need for the licensing right from all those cars and drivers. Just need licensing rights from tracks. Why couldn't they have come up with something COTish right out of the box? Late model is quite a ways off. They couldn't have gotten license to use a COT model? NASCAR is almost IROC. Same body shapes, just different engines, and decals.

I would be willing to give up offline racing if it meant I could go on a track to practice at any given time.

So at this time - No pitting, no draft effects, no importable paint, no multi-class or multi-player level racing, and no 24/7 availability of tracks. Are these to be implemented in the future?

And that's a sad reality that I really hate. Oh well, maybe a really good Nascar mod will be made for RFactor.