Jesus H Christ, you fuckers are made of money.
I have envy. Moderate envy.
Really, though, I just wish my 360 weren’t still in the shop, with no idea when it’ll return to us :-( They’d better damn well put the GPU heatsink on it or I’ll be triple sad.
It’s where the magic happens.
It’s where the magic happens.[/quote]
I considered a setup like that but then realized that I have no money and also no place to put a giant racecar seat.
Come on, I post from a relatively GDP challenged place where electronics are expensive and taxed to hell on top. Cheapstakes.
The PC > XBox thing wasn’t really about the hardware, but the complete experience:
A couple hours ago I was running the French F1 GP, in the same track and same cars as the real guys earlier today, only shortened to 1 hour.
17 guys showed up: all the regulars and a couple fast newcomers.
By mid race I was doing great, my car setup and strategy, developed throughout the past week using the same software that real life drivers use to analyze their telemetry, were working and I just had passed the guy running in 4th position. But suddenly the engine wasn’t pushing as hard and i could see smoke on my mirrors. I had run the engine at slightly higher revs for a couple laps catching the guy, and it was too much, so it blew up in a puff of smoke and flames. I was out of the race, drenched in sweat and with my shoulders and upper arms hurting: F1 cars, even fake, are a workout.
But I was far from sad or pissed, as I had a huge adrenalin high. I should borrow a heart rate monitor to have a laugh.
As good as Forza is, I don’t think the nature of its gameplay can produce that kind of experience yet.
Lurb, which PC racing game were you playing that on? I’m pretty out of touch on the PC racers, but have been tempted to get back in to it.
rFactor, with the FSONE mod. I usually race with people from the SimHQ.com forums, or enter races here.
I also dabble with LFS and GTR2. The LFS demo sent the PS2+GT4 bundle to gather dust in a shelf when I just wanted to see how the PS2 wheel worked with the PC.
I finally caved and bought rFactor today and I’m enjoying it a lot. It was either that or wait years for someone to pick up and do something with the now-available F1 license…
GTR2 is also great, especially for the driving school and wet races, but the focus is a little narrow and wasn’t getting all the mods I was hoping for.
LFS looks good, but the reported lack of force feedback and perpetual alpha state makes me a bit wary. Maybe when S3 comes out.
And if you want to be really hardcore:
Yeah that’s the thing with racing sims versus flightsims. In a flightsim you can get by with just any old desk and office chair but with racing, your ass is glued to the seat for the entire duration with no break until the end and so you better have a good sitting arrangement or else you’ll be very uncomfortable.
I have an old Microsoft force feedback wheel for the PC and while I like the wheel itself the damn pedals are spaced so closely together that after about 30 minutes of driving I just can’t take it anymore.
Check out some of these crazy homebuilt setups
http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=264707
EDIT: for 30 grand you can have one of these http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1iEtjs6S80&mode=related&search=
rFactor is great, well worth the money. I just bought a Live For Speed S2 license yesterday and I kinda regret that now. It’s decent, but it’s not as polished as rFactor.
The other “must have” racing sims on my rig are Richard Burns Rally (duh), GTR2 (ditto), and Flatout 1/2 for the best blend of sim-ish arcade handling and real-time track and car damage, ever. It’s so much fun!
I don’t find rFactor to be particularly polished at all. The AI is horrible… it actually got worse after they patched it. It is quite good for online racing though, even if there are still a few things I don’t like about that.
We have all these GTR fans and no scheduled multiplayer races? Let’s get organized folks.
Don’t give up on LFS. I sure drive it a lot less than rFactor, and things like the fictional cars and tracks and poor sound can be a letdown at first, but some aspects are definitely worth it and inmensely superior to anything else: LFS has the upper hand in things like seamless skin sharing, physics and physics based FF or the awesome lfsworld stats site.
It’s also easier to find open pickup races at any time in LFS, as the rFactor/GTR2 crowd tend to favor private/league servers, and the plethora of rF mods makes hard sometimes to find a host that you can actually join without mismatches.
I’m waiting for the CTRA administered LFS servers to come up later in the summer, their driver licensing scheme and stewarding policies should provide lots of good racing.
rFactor has AI? I’ve never seen them :D.
Yup they are bad, I only use them as reference for laptimes on new tracks and to get a feeling for running in traffic before multiplayer races, but there’s no point in racing them when there’s so many real people willing to take their place :)
LFS AI is even worse, they basically ignore that you are near them and will plow into you on every corner. But again, that’s not what the game is about.
I might…if I were actually any good at it yet. I’m still trying to readjust to the wheel, and need a lot more practice before I graduate up from “moving chicane.” ;)