I’m currently running an eight hour race at Imola on Assetto Corsa Competizione. I qualified third, but the Lamborghini behind me overtook me into turn one on lap one and then I followed him… for three and half hours.
I noticed I was a bit quicker than the Lamborghini in the early stages of the stint when the cars were heavy and the tyres were new, then he would pull away in the middle as the cars lightened up and the tyres hit their peak performance and then I would close up again at the end of the stint as the cars emptied their tanks and the tyres wore a little. So I spent 200 minutes stuck one-to-three seconds behind.
It was a real punch-the-air moment when I finally got him.
I’m just starting out sim racing. I bought a Thrustmaster T300 and it is so cool. I also have several games to work on: Project Cars 2, ACC, WRC 8 & F1 2018. I’m starting with Project Cars 2 to learn, but I’m not sure if that’s the best plan. Any suggestions on which game to work on first? Is there one I’m missing that would be ideal for a beginner?
I’m a newbie, but of course I’ve already looked into getting a chair and a gear shifter. Isn’t that stimulus check supposed to show up soon?
I think Assetto Corsa (the original, not AC Competizione) is a good place to start, simply because the entire package with all the DLC is frequently on sale (here it is right now for $7!), comes with a lot of official content and then has a ton of really well-made mods too.
The cars available go from F1 and twitchy hypercars all the way down to tiny vintage plastic FIATs and (once you get used to the UI) it’ll keep you busy for hundreds of hours.
The AI isn’t the best, but it will provide challenge if you’re starting out and it is more consistent than in Project Cars 2 where the AI varies radically based on what car/track combination you’ve picked.
I just fell in love. I was playing Project Cars 2 to learn how to even race. I hope to one day go online and play. Perhaps iRacing since it sounds like it is the easiest to get into a multiplayer race. So, I decided to try out ACC to see how it is. Holy crap. Night and day from PC2. Now THIS feels like racing. Wow! The graphics are great, but damn that sound and FFB. The sound is the stand out. It’s almost palpable. Looking forward to sucking less.
Thanks for you suggestions. I’ll see about getting AC. Do you race online at all? It’s not something I plan to do for a while, but it seems like that’s the end game of this. Is there a league I should look at joining? I’m super nervous at the thought of racing others, but I figure I probably just need to jump in the deep end and swim.
I really like ACC and probably don’t play it enough. I think that a lot of the weaknesses of sim-racing AI are covered over by the nature of endurance racing, where consistently good pace is more important than blinding overtaking manoeuvres which have always been a problem for AI (since about Grand Prix 4).
Yes. I’ve done the iRacing thing, but nowadays I just race online in a league of friends. @Octavious230 from here is also a member. We’re attached to the GamersWithJobs forums and the fact that we call ourselves the “Racing Dorks” should show we don’t take things too seriously.
This is season 7 for us and we put 15-20 drivers on track at each event. This year we’re racing low-powered open wheelers in the Formula 4 class.
This is us going into turn one on lap one of our latest race. It gets quite busy!
We use a game called RaceRoom Racing Experience which actually has a decent free to play section to it, with a few tracks and cars costing $0.
The game has a weird history and back in the day it had a la carte pricing, one car at a time, so when you first look at it the prices can seem high. These days it has packs available with cars and tracks and regular sales too and so there are tricks to get a lot of content for a moderate outlay.
Our league has a spread of a few seconds a lap between our fastest and slowest drivers, so pretty much anyone could join in and find people about their speed to race against. We also use competition ballast to make faster drivers slower and the second race of each event night is a reverse grid, with the race one winner starting last - so we do try to make things interesting for everyone.
We get pretty competitive, but the voice chat at each even is usually lots of laughing. We look for people who want to race clean, but we also know stuff happens™.
We race at 9 Eastern US time and we use a scheduling tool to pick the day on which most drivers are available. It usually works out to be about one race every four weeks, which gives lots of time for practice.
I would have a hard time recommending iracing when you are just starting out. I would think it would be overwhelming and frustrating. And expensive. I guess if you just stuck with the mx cup you would be okay, but I’d think it would be kind of diving into the deep end.
If you have a ps4 I HIGHLY recommend gt sport first. The online is super easy to get into and you’re not paying subscription fees. I really should play it more myself. I just recently put the ps4 back in it’s proper spot so that I don’t forget about it.
Thanks for the suggestions. I hadn’t planned on getting into iRacing, or any multiplayer racing, for a while as I’m still learning how to drive a car fast without killing myself. @Mr_Bismarck, thank you for the information on your league racing. I’ve never even tried to drive an open wheel car (well I did play F1 2018 for about 10 minutes). Something for me to look into.
I downloaded RaceRoom a few days ago, just because it was a racing game; haven’t done anything with it yet. Give me a little time and I hope to contact you guys and try some driving with you. My contribution will probably be to make you look good.
Ya well I’m a bad influence so you should stay away from me. I kicked off a massive spending binge in the racing league. ;) The f4 car is super easy to drive compared to f1 so it’s not a bad thing to mess around with.
You have three drivers for a four hour race. Max driver stint length is an hour with a five minute grace period, (so really 1:05 is the max single stint time) and each driver can be in the car for a max of 90 minutes total. So now I’ve got 59 minutes left to run, the driver in the car has a max 14 minutes left and then I have two other drivers who both have ~28 minutes max left in the car.
I hate the crazy restrictive driver stint rules. Its not ACC, but ACC implementing the crazy SRO rules. Good luck sorting that out.
My quick update: My iracing Daytona24 ended early. A less experienced driver got taken off track at the horseshoe, but as he was re-entering the track really took a lick. I took over after repairs, but now the setup was off. I managed for a stint but then on low fuel the rear snapped loose at the busstop, and I got whalloped. After repairs the next driver told the car was still undrivable, so we parked it after ~6hrs
I also am in a team endurance series, and we raced yesterday at Le Mans. Lap 1 I got a great run at the start and passed a car who proceeded to turn into me at T1. Car spun, then got hit by a car who could not see me for all the tire smoke. However after a tow and repairs the car was still very quick and we had a blast running back up the field. to 9th.
I agree with others that iRacing would be a hard starting point. The rookie races are notorious. Start offline, then race online in a league. While the public online races in AC are pretty bad, the public races in ACC are generally pretty good because they have a safety rating system.
The advantage of iRacing is scale. For the 2021 Daytona 24 there were 3,100 cars entered and nearly 10,000 drivers. The Le Mans 24 will be as big, while the other big enduros (Spa, Petit, Panorama, etc) will be maybe 50-70% of that size. So its relatively easy to find a team if you want to do these events (which is what I do). My other racing is league based in AC or ACC or some public server racing in ACC.
So I booted up Assetto Corsa Competizione and started the career mode. The first event is some sort of Lamborghini Youth Camp (!) placement test where you have to run a Lamborghini Huracan around a track to set a lap time.
I’ve turned off all assists, but I noticed you can set traction control and anti-lock brakes as you drive by pressing the d-pad left and right. In this particular Lamborghini Youth Camp* both traction control and anti-lock brakes are enabled. Generally, I want no part of assists, because in my experience, they dumb down driving models and rob cars of their personality.
But part of the Lamborghini Youth Camp placement test is maintaining control of the car. And without traction assist or anti-lock brakes, it’s nearly impossible for me not to lose traction at some point and trigger the “you lost control!” indicator. I’m not wiping out or anything, but I’m definitely losing traction and spinning my wheels. Obviously, this placement test is about learning to drive and not spinning the wheels of your fancy Batmobile wanna-be. It’s about not tearing up my tires any more than necessary. Fair enough.
So my question is, do actual real-world non-Youth Camp drivers in races actually use assists like traction control, ABS, and ESC? While playing Assetto Corsa, am I supposed to be managing those systems as I drive instead of just turning them off? I notice a lot of the better times in Project Cars 3’s rivals mode are using assists, so maybe they’re not the training wheels I’ve been assuming they are.
-Tom
* Italy is weird. When I was a kid in Arkansas and went to camp, we just rode horses and minibikes.
Short answer: Yes. ACC is a faithful recreation of GT3 and GT4 racing, and GT3 and GT4 cars are allowed and generally equipped to use traction control (TC) and anti-lock brakes (ABS) in practice and in races in the real world.
Longer answer:
GT3 and GT4 are car classes designed around the “gentleman” driver. In racing terms, a “gentleman driver” is usually a very rich individual whose hobby is racing cars. They pay $$$ to buy the cars from the manufacturers and pay the teams (engineers, mechanics, etc). Sponsorship helps, but given this is not NASCAR teams on national TV these pay-to-play drivers cover a substantial amount of the costs.
With that said however, with advanced computer control even pro drivers use traction control and ABS to improve laptime. The difference is while the amateur driver might be using a rather high setting for TC/ABS to save his bacon the pro may be running a very low setting as a performance aid. As a performance aid, the TC/ABS settings become as important to the car’s handling as the spring or aero settings.
ACC does a good job simulating all of this. As a driver, you can and should adjust the TC/ABS settings to your specific liking. Or just run the included setups. They are good, and certainly good enough to get you through the academy and career races.
Also stability control (ESC), like we have on most street cars these days, is not allowed in racing to my knowledge. Turn that off in your difficulty settings. ESC is often the aid that makes the car feel funny.
Dave Perel said that if anything the ABS in ACC is generally under-utilised by drivers and that in real life he’s told to absolutely hammer it and give it as much abuse as it will take.
Thanks so much for the detailed reply, @eliandi! I guess I’ll have to rethink my staunch “no assists!” policy.
This seems so weird to me! How is that not cheating? And how is ESC any different? Why would ABS and traction control be allowed, but ESC isn’t? At least tell me there are traditionalists who vehemently oppose any sort of computer-controlled assists in competitive racing. I want to buy those guys a beer.
They’re switching to the new “Gen 3” car next year and there’s a fervent argument happening right now about whether it should have paddle shifters or the traditional sequential stick shift, with lots of the drivers moaning about paddles, while the teams are quietly in favour because it lowers the chance of over-revving the engine and costing them money in repairs.
Currently the Aussie V8s still use locked rear differentials. So they’ll kill you, but at least you’ll feel pure.
F1 doesn’t allow abs or traction control. I personally can’t drive it without some traction control on. The just have so much power. Braking I’m fine with that off. But ya for acc you should be using abs and tc.
Some gold in the regular weekly Raceroom update today.
Added real world pricing for Nordschleife Tourist layout - each lap will cost 2500 vRP on weekdays or 3000 vRP on weekends. 100 vRP will also be charged per incident point incurred
Race results are no longer based on who finishes first. Instead all participants vote on who should win and then everyone gets a medal. Ranked Multiplayer changed in accordance, everyone gets the same score.
And one I actually need:
Pit Limiter: Every time you enter the pitlane, you get a drive through. This was made to make it fair to those who don’t seem to be able to enter or exit a pitlane correctly.
