Adventures in Sim Racing

Alex

Just randomly checking my Amazon wishlist and the Trophy is down to £455.

Alex

So this might have happened. Was down to 420-ish quid. It took quite a bit of setup but finally in a usable state. The pedals are currently zip tied onto the board as I ran out of bolts for it. I’d like something really stable so am keen to get that sorted.

I also found out that my Reverb G2 headset no longer works due to Microsoft canning WMR, so I guess I’m going to be a flat screen peasant again…

Alex

First impressions are that it’s very stable, as expected. It’s quite comfortable but a little tricky to get in and out of. I played a bit of ACC and then restarted my iRacing sub. I did a few laps in the F3 for old times sake and it seemed pretty smooth, although my lap times are probably shite now. The pedals are surprisingly stable being zip-tied onto the base, which is good.

Currently I’m just dragging the seat in front of the PC desk old school style, so I would like something a bit more permanent. I’m mulling two options:

Buy a Quest 3 and go down the VR route again
Buy a curved monitor and stand and go for a flat screen approach.

I’m leaning towards 2 right now, as I’d like to get away from VR if I can. I do like VR for racing sims but it’s just such a faff to get working, also it really limits you in terms of what sims/games you can play. The plus-side is that it does take up a lot less space.

I’m looking at the LG UltraWide 34″ with the GT Omega Stand. I’d like to see the monitor in person before buying if I can so I’m going to take a drive over to Currys this morning so see if they have it in store or at least something comparable.

I’m tempted to upgrade the CSL Elite pedals as well lol, as they are now the oldest part of the setup, and while fine they are a bit basic. Christ, it’s amazing how much you can spend very quickly with this hobby. 🙈

Overall I would like a little less stressful time with sim racing this go round, so while I love iRacing I’m keen to do some other sims as well if I can.

Anyway, pleased so far.

Alex

So, this also might have happened. 🤣

I decided to go down the route of the curved ultrawide and plumbed for the LG Ultrawide 34″ which I got in the black Friday sale. I got the stand today and got it setup. It will still require some more tweaking but had a quick go and am pretty happy with it.

Glad to be free of VR for now. As I said above my main goal this time around is to have a much more relaxing experience. I cannot be doing with all the stress!

Jogort

Looks bigger than 34″, nice setup

Brave

Very similar to my setup except my curved ultra is just on a big monitor arm as it needs to be swung out of the way when it’s not in use

I’m now on a 6 week hiatus before my next MA module so I’m finally going to get the direct drive wheel installed next week.

Alex

Last tiny purchase, last one for a while (honest), I got this little keyboard with the touchpad. There was no way to use the keyboard/mouse from the rig so this seemed like a required addition. The touchpad is not as good as you’d expect from say a decent laptop, but it’s good enough for this. Definitely worth the 23 squid.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00XJ3LVPI

Brave

Alex ha. I’ve got the exact same one for the exact same reason 😄

Brave

Finally got the direct drive base installed. Now I get it.

It took me a while to realise just how much more control I had with it. I’m simply not getting as many surprise snap oversteers as I did previously, or at least I’m getting much more feedback that it might happen, well in advance.

I can genuinely feel a lot more of what’s going on with the tires as well.

Bonus benefit: it doesn’t seem to chuck out anything near as much heat as the old wheel did.

Alex

Yeah. it’s a very smooth feeling, especially attached to a stable rig like the trophy.

I have my setup tweaked pretty nice now but mainly waiting for time to play it.

In their wisdom the bosses at work agreed to a 6th of January completion date for this stage of the project, so we’ve been in full crunch mode over Christmas. Tomorrow is my last day before the break though, so I’m looking forward to two weeks of playing vroom vroom cars and Indiana Jones and not giving a shit about trading systems. 🙂

Alex

Did my first iRacing race in a couple of years just there. It was the F4 at Snetterton. It went reasonably well, although it turned out to be a 3.5K strength of field, which meant that even though I did a pretty solid quali lap I was only 14th. I ran pretty well until about lap five where I had a little spin and it was very hard to recover from that, given the strength of the other competitors.

I was pretty happy with my pace overall, I definitely didn’t feel like I was slower with the ultrawide than the VR. The one place where I did definitely miss VR was at the race start in the melee of cars. There was a definite difference in situational awareness that I noticed. This was the first time I’ve missed VR but I think it will probably just require a bit of a mental recalibration.

Brave

Alex I find I’m stuck between liking the ultra and vr equally. Things like being able to see rotary dials on my wheel or even just using a button box are much easier with the monitor but the situational awareness of VR can be a massive benefit, as you say.

The thing that used to put me off was simply the heat that my old rig put out. But the combination of my new PC being at my feet rather than my laptop being right next to me and the t818 wheel base putting out zero heat (or noise for that matter) have made it much more bearable. I might get VR up and running again just so I have the option.

Alex

Brave Oh yeah, VR is awesome, and you definitely get a different experience with it. That said, it comes with a lot of downsides as well. I think the ultrawide is a really nice compromise between VR and flatscreen. It’s like a nice half-way house. It’s especially good as a lot of sims don’t have a great VR experience, or rather VR is so demanding that I could never really get it running well on my PC. It’s really nice to be able to just crank all the settings up to ultra and still get 100fps in these games. Maybe when the 5000 series RTX cards come out I will re-mortgage the house and give VR another go.

Alex

I’m also really liking how with my new setup I can just jump in and start driving. I don’t have to shift things about, move the seat into place, or setup the headset. I have a 3m display port cable that lets me plug the rig into the PC without shifting anything about.

Brave

Alex yeah. Same. It makes it much more likely that I’m going to fire it up for a couple of hours.

Although, that said, my wife does quite often use it as a temporary storage space for random crap in the office. I have to use it just to remind her it’s not some kind of weird misshapen cupboard.

Alex

Been messing around with different pedal positions, now I can actually adjust them. It was interesting how much more confident on the brakes I got once I’d moved them into a really comfortable position.

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