Racing game with the best progression? I loved Gran Turismo 2 back in the old days for precisely this reason. You had to chug your way through upgrading hondas and the like for a while, and I thought the game did an excellent job of ramping up with the player skill/car selection. I’ve tried a handful of recent and not so recent titles, but haven’t cared for the progression in any of them. It’s usually too fast, i.e. you end up in some super expensive car too quickly.
Anything out that’s as good or similar to the older GT stuff as far as progression goes?
RPS mentioned the motorcycle game Ride. It’s developed by the SBK/MotoGP guys. The interesting thing is they have some city and country tracks rather than just closed circuits. I love that kind of stuff.
I had fun tooling around MotoGP 13 for a week. It was a casual but engaging experience. I might buy this when it goes on sale for cheap.
The online version for Grid2 has that sort of modifying cars within a given racing tier, and progression is slow. Not really a car rpg though. . The single player game, however has progression by obtaining more cars and not developing the cars.
I am new to racing games. I got a subscription to iRacing, and I’ve been doing the ‘ghost car’ feature where you can drive with other players but they can’t see you, and your car goes right through them.
I have a question about down-shifting. I’m racing on Jefferson Circuit, in a maxda mx-5. In one of the left-hand turns I usually come into the turn at 4th gear, and brake and all that while turning left. I’m slowing down so I down-shift into third gear. (I’m using a logitech g27, auto clutch but with gear shifter). It seems that as soon as I down-shift into third gear during the turn my car just instantly loses traction or whatever and starts spinning out to the left.
What am I doing wrong? I can’t figure out if I’m down shifting too late, too early, or if I need to hit accelerator when I shift.
Any tips would be appreciated, as I’m a total noob when it comes to cars and racing :)
My guess is downshifting too early combined with the nature of auto clutch. This would cause compression lock on the rear wheels and consequent loss of traction. I don’t think the auto clutch does a throttle blip for you, so blip the throttle (which will be tough to do with auto clutch) or downshift later. The throttle blip is critical to balance, it matches engine speed with transmission speed so you don’t get a jolt or compression lock when the clutch re-engages, which unbalances the car or causes loss of traction.
Also, not familiar with the corner, but general rule of thumb is brake, ensure you are in the right gear, then turn. Shifting/braking while turning makes it difficult to keep the car in balance and keep traction predictable. You also get best braking performance when braking in a straight line as all weight transfer is spread evenly on both front tyres. If you break while turning you increase the risk of overloading the weight on the outside tyre, causing lock, while simultaneously reducing braking impact of the inside tyre.
So, given you have a G27, turn off auto-clutch and use all the pedals!! :)
Take it nice and easy for a while and learn to brake and down change smoothly, then enter the corners in the right gear. Begin to practice heel and toeing to blip the throttle on down change. No need to double clutch - clutch in, change gear and blip throttle, clutch out. Doing this at slow speed will help you develop the technique and you will get a feel for how much you need to blip the throttle based on vehicle speed and gear. As you get used to it you will begin to pick up the pace and notice the car stays much better balanced as you get the timings right. Remember - smooth is fast. Maybe also turn off the ghost car for a while as you develop the basics
Lastly and probably most important, do NOT be tempted to practice heel and toeing IRL on the street.
Is that the final turn onto start finish, where you cross pit entry toward the finish line?
You need to check and make sure that you also have “auto blip” on, not just auto-clutch, because I agree with sharaleo, it does sound like you’re changing down a gear before the car is ready, so when you complete the gearshift, (and the auto-clutch disengages), you have a sudden jump in revs which is breaking all traction at the back of the car.
Some people will tell you to just learn to rev match now, so you don’t have to relearn later, but I think it’s fine to put auto blip on and just focus on learning other things and getting comfy first.
The league I run with, CMSracing.com, is doing an iRacing Driver Development program using MX-5 and the free content in iRacing. First session is Tuesday evening US, with follow on sessions every other week. Sounds like a good opportunity for you.
Regarding spins, it could be the shift but it could be the braking while turning. Yes, you can brake and turn but as you go faster and faster it becomes harder. Better to start with what sharaleo mentioned and brake in straight line and really work on hitting your marks (turn-in, apex, track out) so you get back on the gas faster. This translates to being faster down straight, and is worth more than being faster on corner entry especially as new driver.
Thanks for the tips. It made a huge difference just braking straight and not down-shifting while turning. My best lap so far is something like 59.8 seconds, which is faster than before, also my ability to stay on the track is much better now :)
I ended up buying Game Stock Car Extreme after all—the amount of content and the mod scene are hard to get around, and the driving does feel pretty great. Here’s Istanbul’s GP circuit in Formula V12. Istanbul has some great turns, and the back straight is very much an open-wheel high-downforce sort of place, with the kink right in the middle.
The active mod scene for GSCEx is pretty nifty, I have to say. It has so many things to do that I find myself unable to pick any one thing to really dive into just yet. I’ve acquired a few extra tracks (Monaco, Istanbul, Imola, Roads America and Atlanta), and have been trying them out with various cars (the older F1 options, a Renault Clio, some GT3 cars, the Brazilian stock car…), just getting a feel for the driving. I realized, going around turn 8 at Istanbul and feeling the car skip to the outside over some bumps, that 1) this was a good $30 buy, and 2) I needed to soften the suspension a little bit.
Which leads me to two questions: first, where can I go if I’m looking for some online action? I’m not likely to have the time to commit to anything serious, but at the same time, I don’t really trust open play either. Second, how come there’s never been an F1 race at Road America? It’s such a fun track.
If you want online action for GSCE, then the best place is racedepartment.com. You’ll need to join the site so you get your “license” to race on their servers, but they have regular GSCE events, in various cars on various tracks.
You should also make sure you get the Blancpain mod for GSCE. It’s excellent.
Thanks for the recommendation. Turns out there’s a Formula 3 race on Saturday I can make, so I’ll be bringing up the rear there and maybe streaming it, too.
Turns out I did indeed bring up the rear, in bothraces. That said, it was a good time, Vanport is a tough track, and I’m a little more hopeful for a good result out of the Formula Vees at Sugo this coming Saturday.
If you’re in possession of an iRacing sub, then the Gamers With Jobs iRacing League starts this Tuesday. We’ll be running the free Mazda MX5 Cup for most, if not all of the season, starting off with a race at Lime Rock Park - the layout that includes the chicane.
We have a range of ability, which means you can usually find someone to race, and we share setups to try to get everyone as close to their potential speed as possible.
Each session runs with a 7pm - 9pm EST warmup, then 9pm-9:30pm Qualifying and then a 9:30 start to the race. People can and do drop in at any point in that timing.
The first season will be focusing on free cars and free tracks, but we have a couple competitions lined up during the year with iRacing credits as prizes, to allow people to buy tracks and maybe the Skip Barber open wheeler, so that we can widen our choices for season two.
That’s fine - Game Stock Car recently landed on Steam, which means a bunch more friends have picked it up. I’ve been throwing the ridiculous Formula Vee’s around Guapore for a week.
