Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Great, Thanks for the information Iwill check it out..  Would someone know what would be the minimal internet speed required to play this? I live in the country and my internet is not the fanciest!

IRacing is  like many other competitive things. You get out of it, what you put in. I have only been racing about 10 races per week, not much practice. Just not much time lately. But, I still manage to get some 305 wins, and even pulled off a 360 win last week. As for the 410's, I almost always qualify near the tail, but usually finish top five. Last season, I finished second in my division in the 410's, simply because I raced every week, and I kept my nose clean. I just do not have the time to practice enough to mess with set-ups yet. Mine are real close to the stock set-ups. 

If you're truly serious about doing this I could help you out.  Two years ago I built a gaming PC for about $1,200.  This was just the tower only no monitor, keyboard, mouse or wheel, but this computer would still run iracing at max settings without a problem.  I lucked out and found a gently used logitech g27 wheel on craigslist for $150.  I would recommend building a PC and not buying one because you can build it just how you want it.  I could have easily built my PC for $800 but I bought a lot of extra things that wouldn't be needed; nice case, lighting kit, wire management accessories, liquid cooling etc.  Building a computer is not that difficult at all, the most difficult part is picking out the parts.

From playing rfactor, there is some things I would have liked to have done are; VR goggles, many people told me to get 3 monitors because you could see so much more, I don't have a ton of room on my desk so I think I would have preffered the VR goggles.  One thing I struggled with in rfactor was not knowing when I was spinning the wheels, there are some pedals that will vibrate once you spin the tires which I think would have drastically dropped lap times pretty quickly.  Unfortunately a set of pedals I found were about $500.

This all seems expensive but if you love to race or would love to race, this is a bargain.  Another nice thing is you don't show up to the race track racing against someone with much better equipment than you, other than wheels pedals and monitors, which you won't wreck in a crash.  There is no late nights fixing wrecked race cars or wondering how you're going to come up with the money to fix a car or chance of getting hurt.  If you wreck, hit escape and try again. or assembling a pit crew.  However because of this you will find some driver who race kind of wreckless.  But what's fun is it's not about finding a magical setup or upgrade, it's all about making laps.  I couldn't believe how much faster I got just by practicing.

I bought my computer that I use only for iracing for $400 on craigslist and itll run everything on max settings. My brother in law is a computer nut so he just looked for used ones. They are out there if you know what to look for. Basic prices on a whole set up would be:

Computer $500-$1500 all depending on what you find. There are tons of options. 

Wheel and pedals $200-$1000+ Thrustmaster t150 is about the cheapest option that is still decent. Logitech G27 and G29 are popular choices in that $300+ range. I use a Thrustmaster T300 with G27 hung pedals and love it. If you want to get crazy you can buy load cell pedals and direct drive wheel for a small fortune.

Monitors/VR $350-$800+ I use triple screens. Asus 24" $109 each on amazon. They work great. youll have another $50 in a stand and some more depending on cables. VR seems to be very popular. The oculus rift was on sale for $350 on black friday. Youll still need 1 screen for that as well.

Iracing $150  Depends on what stuff you want right away. They have specials all the time on memberships. Black friday was 50% off. I think retail is right around $100 but there are always deals. The car packages are $11.95 each. Sprints (comes with 305, 360, and 410), Late Models ( comes with limited, pro, and super), UMP Modifieds, Non wing sprint (comes with 360 and 410), and Midgets. Tracks are $14.95 each typically. A bunch of cars and tracks come with your membership so you wont need to buy every single thing right away. They also have a deal where the more content you buy at a time the more you save. 3-5 items gets a 10% discount and so on. 

Its quite a bit of intial investment but to me its definitely worth it. Its fun getting to race and sometimes beat the pros. They are on all the time. I race alot with guys like Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, Tony Stewart, Brian Brown, Chase Briscoe, etc. 

i have the thrustmaster t150

I have the thrustmater T150 also. It is an OK wheel set-up. I had to modify the pedals, cause unless you have a stand for them, they move easy. I put some heel blocks on the base, so I push more down on the pedals, rather than forward. plus, I velcroed the base down to a rug that is on my hardwood floor. I also run a single, 36" monitor. Decent gaming computer, and the graphics are maxed out, and still getting 90 plus frames per second. Computer is three years old now, with only a newer video card (Nvidia GTX 1060)

My brother uses Logitech G27, and I like it much more than mine. he also uses VR goggles, and is now just getting use to them, and he loves them. 

My biggest downfall is when the track slicks off. I just have not spent enough time working on set-ups, to really improve anything much. Throttle control is huge. It is easy to spin the tires, especially when entering the corner. I usually make-up my ground on corner exit. I about get run over from behind on corner entery, but pull away on corner exit. 

The 305 sprints are a fixed set-up class. The only thing you can do is move the top wing. I win about 20% of the 305 races I enter, but lately, I have been spending more time in the 410's trying to get a better handle on them. 

The midgets are a riot, but I have not run any races with them yet. Waiting for the new season to start, so the rookies can no longer run any 360 and 410 stuff. Pavment legends are a lot of fun as well. I really want to try the pavement sprints, and silver crown cars, but not really wanting to spend the money on the cars, and all the tracks. 

I've been on iRacing for a while, it's alot of fun & the dirt racing is a blast. I just run on a decent gaming PC that I built on my own with a G27. I'd say my favorite class on the dirt side is either the USAC Non-Wing Sprint cars or the Midget cars. Can't wait for the smaller tracks later next year (they got 7 or 8 in development I believe. Next ones should be Limaland, Charlotte, Kokomo & FALS. going off of past press releases & posts by devs in the member forums or social media) 

@dirtracer74 the racing in the Pavement Sprints & Silver Crown (speedway car) is alot of fun. Very competitive at the front of the field & usually pretty clean racing as well. Sadly there is only 2 or 3 races for them a week (usually 8:00PM Eastern on Tuesdays & Thursdays, 9:00PM Eastern in the summer time). Usually been just 1 car shy of having 2 splits on some of the Tuesday night shows last season.

Posted By: StanM on December 07 2017 at 05:47:05 PM This was copied and pasted from a google search for iracing system requirements.  I've got it all covered except for the Windows piece but I'm locked into Linux and won't ever go back for any reason.    Here are the iRacing system requirements (minimum) CPU: Intel Core i3, i5, i7 or better, or AMD Bulldozer or better. OS: Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 64-bit. VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce 2xx series or better / AMD 5xxx series or better / Intel HD Graphics 4200+ or better with 1 GB dedicated video memory. FREE DISK SPACE: 10 GB.

they used to have a port for Mac OSX and Linux but sadly they had to remove it to release the DX11 version because I think neither of the OS or the drivers that makes Windows programs work didn't support it yet.

iR had to upgrade to DX11 to better their graphics engine, which helped them alot in creating everything needed for dirt oval & rallycross racing (i.e. ever-changing surface model etc.)

I think iRacing wants to get back to having support for all 3 OS's at some point, just can't currently given the circumstances.

The new laptop I bought for the wife with Linux pre installed is top of the line and the processor and graphics will handle pretty much anything.  I got hdmi out for streaming races to the TV's.  If iRacing never gets around to Linux support not a big deal.  At 66 my hand eye coordination and reflexes are toats and my membership would be a contribution. 

Stan Meissner

Limaland rained out.

They had the latest Knoxville Iracing set up on a simulator at PRI.....they strapped in Thomas Kennedy for a test spin and watching him rip the cushion was pretty impressive....although most won't have the high end hydraulics and video of what they had, it was still an awesome replication of the real thing..................SC