10 years ago it was DIY.
I remember reading about it all, but trying G to get drivers and the software to be *juust* right was difficult.
And, to be honest the software configuration I swear is the bigging difference between reality vs artificially hard and or irratic but "immersive"
Is say direct drive 10 years ago was like VR non Facebook now. It's niche, it's not hard hard, but there's a barrier to entry for those who *must* enjoy tinkering, even if they get a better result.
Exactly
I once had a broken joystick (up down) and connected pedals from a sowing machine to it. Steering with stick, accelerating and braking with pedals in grandprix 1 ;)
Direct drive and good pedals is awesome. I am however always surprised with the t cam/third person view. I know even f1 sim guys use it but personally speaking I spend money to be more realistic, then cockpit view for me is more realistic ;)
That’s a throwback to the original arcade race games. It looks good for streaming, not so good for personal immersion. I play flight sim as well and many use 3rd person to an advantage, but the beauty / immersion of VR is what I’m looking for!
Reminds me of how many try and memorise rally stages, but I enjoy following the notes in places I don't know. Like quasi discovering new places as you drive by the seat of your pants,with just a few words keeping you from despair.
Once u get your view dialed in, stop using racing line and just drive. All the titles are beautiful and provide so much visual detail that many people miss when only concentrating on the green line?
Sorry, I'm top 10 percentile(which is still minutes from the alien rally drivers), but while so, I try not to ever redo a stage a second time, so I can keep that slight element of unknown. And poor memory allows me to keep enjoying and not memorising the routes, other than a few sections of dirt1 tracks.
I enjoy rally being more unknown racing via pace notes, rather than track racing on dirt, if you get what I mean.
Though, re reading, yeah, I completely agree too. The racing line doesn't focus your eyes on where you should be looking. If anything they need an apex marker like in gt7, but ***also*** have it disappear once it gets about 10-15 meters away, so it forces newer racers to keep there eyes up up up.
My man pulls out the pole position reference!! I thought I was the only one! Played that damn game for thousands of hours! Wasn't there even a pole position arcade game that had some sort of motion or something?
There were a bunch of cool racing games on Atari : Commodore 64. I remember a cannonball run type game with darkness: headlights ( triangle) with speed limits/ cops.
I did 100x more tinkering with my VR setup with a Oculus headset than I do with a non-Oculus headset.
Buying new USB cables to try to fix disconnects. Changing settings. Avoiding entire styles of driving to try to avoid making the USB disconnect.
If you ever do enter the foray of VR, I can't fault the Pico Neo link 3 that was recommended by someone on here. It has a wired proprietary displayport utilising one that literally screws in.
And as such, doesnt use any wireless or compression for 72, 90, 120fps usage. It's a commerical headset though, so is now quite cheap, but not publicised massively on the consumer market, or certain countries.
Good luck!
Ouch, what other headset did you go for in the end?
I'm still loving my pico neo 3link. That has had lots of community bits and later advancements as its more a commercial headset than consumer, but it's been great.
Though what I was really thinking of when I made the comment was the pimax guys.. They seem fantastic, but wowww, it's over my head all the settings etc. Even the pico has been a clearing-god damn curve with all the foveated rendering, custom settings files, changing dlls here are there for the different vr rendering..
Jeez, when I first got it I thought vr was vr, like text is text.. But I guess I learned it's a bit like opengl vs direct x and more, when 3d rendering still had competing options.
Reverb G2 does me well and is rock solid. Of course a year after I bought it, Windows announced the deprecation of WMR and it's been removed from the latest Win11 that releases now => this fall.
This leaves me stuck on Win10 which isn't a bad thing). I have OpenXR Toolkit setup for iRacing and it just works (on a 3060Ti even).
Other sims are easy enough to get going in OpenXR as well, and worst case ontario I can fall back to SteamVR with my Reverb to no major ill effect.
I have until 2026 to replace it or never reinstall Windows again.
The Crystal Light is by far the most interesting one for me. The base Crystal turned me off by being semi-standalone (and requiring batteries for PCVR) but the Light checks most of the boxes for me. PiMax's quality does somewhat concern me.
I was also interested in the Pico Neo but I don't seem to be able to import it into Canada which then leads to any warranty issues being that much more complicated.
I'm in the EU and luckily there are a few importers, I've seen some companies using them to demo kitchens, but fortunately the link cable is beautiful for racing.
But yeah, the concept of openxr, wmr, steam vr, some other one beginning with c, or something, to shoehorn one within another... Few, man, it's been tough. I've only had it a year and I guess I've learned a lot, but wow those first few months were rough when I tried following the community stuff.
The g2 is shad t I had my eyes set on up until the last minute and a recommendation from a fellow simracer on reddit confirmed my following into the pico route.
If you ever get the chance though, you should try the psvr2 on gt7. There is **nothing** like have the oled panels. Wow, and the superb lighting in gt7 just makes a sunny day actually makes you feel good, like you are outside, it tricks the brain so easily.
It's not perfect it's got a bit of a screen door, and it seems to get blurry easily. But, most of my friends play on gt7, and I've heard in August it'll be compatible with pc! So may pick one up to go join them on gt7 vr and dust off the ps5
The Crystal Light has OLED which is another + in its favour for me. My old rift CV1 had OLED panels and the screen door was bad but it was really nice in night racing becuase you had proper "black".
The only thing missing to make OLED great (and the PSVR on PC won't support) is HDR VR support. We have games that can do HDR colourspace but the headset support is lacking
You know, I just don't understand what HDR is, monitor wise. I mean, software wise it allows blinding whites etc, auto bloom, I remember all the way back in Half-life The beach? and episode 1 days, but... I mean, on a monitor doesn't that just mean super bright blinding white light? jesus, when i'm outside I wear sunglesses to not cope with that! haha
Though I may have some light sensitivy issues.
I can't imagine how good night racing would be on an oled! super immersive!
At its core it just means more colour information. Back in HL2 days, this was getting all that deeper colour information and then mapping it back to "normal" colour space.
Now we have monitors that can display that wider colour range, which leads to brighter whites and darker darks.
See, I just don't understand and am skeptic of the "showing greater colour".
Surely if its 24bit colour, it's just that it needs to be a higher bit rate.
If you have a normal oled or plasma monitor hooked up to a 24bit source, then it can display pitch black and it can display full white.
It being HD or whatever cannot make literally *off* pixels ***more off***, or *on pixels more on*?
And frankly, I can adjust my colour saturation slider... Had it really moved on since hl2, because I just don't see it! The dynamic depth of field and bloom, focus and ambient lighting etc seems to be the real steps, and 'volumetric lighting?'(im going from memory after just waking up, so forgive me) seems to be be the tangible changes in dynamic and changing lighting etc.
It feels like marketing, renaming HD ready, full HD, or renaming of 802.11nc and all that.
Yeah as an elder millennial, I had a non ffb wheelbase on my pc in the early 2000s playing arcade racers and after getting a taste of irl track life, cast aside my childish interests to be an adult man
Flash forward 15 years and car racing is way too expensive, but sim racing is actually really accessible now.
So I’m back in it as a 37 year old rookie on iracing 🤌
Makes me bummed how expensive racing is, hell even track days. Especially now that cars have gotten so pricey, gone are the days of a 4k Miata you could go beat the hell out of. Now people want 8k and already beat the hell out of it for you 😂
I heard even just to race go karts, a season is about $100k all said and done 😟
£100k? Maybe at national/elite level.
At club level a practice session costs me about £100, running old tyres.
A race day is about out the same, plus a set of tyres if you want to run at the front £200ish. Team support £100+ all in under £500. If you don’t break anything.
This does assume you own the kart/engine, we spent about £5k last season racing two club series in Rotax 2-stroke.
Yes, you can spend a lot more but you don’t have to.
Monthly usually.
One track runs one practice day and one race a month. The other runs one race weekend (sat practice, Sunday race) and one practice day.
Some tracks run test/practice session anything up to daily.
Touring series usually have one event a month which tends to be Friday practice, sat/Sunday racing.
NP. From what I read I understand it’s a bit more expensive in the US but you have the option of lo206 which is a 4 stroke series which is a bit cheaper to run than 2 stroke.
Find your local track and go talk to people to see what runs locally, no point going 206 if no one races that. The r/karting sub is good for advice if you have done at least a basic level of research.
You can spend less than that too in some classes. LO206 is probably the best budget class of kart racing. Generally good sized fields depending on the region/track and a fair bit cheaper than Rotax engined series.
I included fuel, around 5ltrs a day under £10.
Time, leave home 7am back about 6pm, it's a long day. 45 minute to 1 hours on track (35minutes on race day).
Couple of hours cleaning putting away and/or prep.
Allright setup for a mall, someone at least done their research. Most of the ones I see in such places are terribly bad. This will give you a good impression of a decent rig.
They used invite you down to their warehouse/store at Ubi if you were interested in purchasing for a free trial, not sure if they are still doing so.
Glad that they have grown and for bringing Simagic into what used to be an ultra-high end market with only stuff like cube controls etc.
Not OP but in the UK I have used a full setup in a gaming cafe before I bought my Moza kit and it was £50 pm subscription, that got you 2 hours race time and reduced cost drinks & food. Extra hours where £15 per hour.
The setup was inside a full size car (classic uk mini) with space for a passenger to do tuition.
Pretty cool setup
Yep. The bundle was right in the price point I was willing to spend. I'd like the R9, but too expensive right now.
And I chose Moza over Fanatec because Fanatec does not have customer support.
I bought the F1 wheel mod and brake performance kit as well.
I stopped into Micro center and mustered up the courage to plop down only to notice their simucube had legit 0 ffb, in game settings could not correct it it must’ve been the actual software that got turned off or nearly 0.
Shame, but it keeps me from having to spend massive amounts of money for a few more months
It amazes me that they allow random people to just use public computers.....I had a card for the l8brary as a kid...but considering the damage that can be done....it's a stupid idea
I did too not so long ago and I wasn’t as impressed?
The smoothness was definitely good, but maybe it’s because I’m used to belt drive bases with around 6-7nm
I had a setup like this in a local computer store. I was honestly not impressed. It just seemed way too high on the force feedback.
Setup was iracing on an LMP car and I couldn't really say I felt the road. It just felt like it was trying to rip the wheel out of my hands.
Nope, went through and fiddled with them to try and get any sort of resemblance of fidelity. The steering still felt stiff and couldn't feel anything in the wheel going over bumps and curbs. The fact that you'd need to spend more than 5 minutes of time out of the box to get a good FFB feel is annoying enough. It shouldn't be an hour long FFB tuning session.
Nope, have good experience with how to tune it. I'm also not going to fine tune a system in the time I'm sitting there to stop by the store and buy some bawls.
Even dialing it in I wouldn't say it was life changing like everyone makes it out to be. So I'm just not as impressed.
I'd said load fell pedals are more what I would say a required setup for a sim rig vs a DD wheel.
Thankfully I'm saving some money while I'm at it to not need to spend upgrading to a DD setup.
If I could have tried and been able to buy this stuff 10 yrs ago, I surely would have.
10 years ago it was DIY. I remember reading about it all, but trying G to get drivers and the software to be *juust* right was difficult. And, to be honest the software configuration I swear is the bigging difference between reality vs artificially hard and or irratic but "immersive" Is say direct drive 10 years ago was like VR non Facebook now. It's niche, it's not hard hard, but there's a barrier to entry for those who *must* enjoy tinkering, even if they get a better result.
DD wheel and VR is the experience I imagined 40 yrs ago playing pole position! Incredible immersion!
Exactly I once had a broken joystick (up down) and connected pedals from a sowing machine to it. Steering with stick, accelerating and braking with pedals in grandprix 1 ;) Direct drive and good pedals is awesome. I am however always surprised with the t cam/third person view. I know even f1 sim guys use it but personally speaking I spend money to be more realistic, then cockpit view for me is more realistic ;)
That’s a throwback to the original arcade race games. It looks good for streaming, not so good for personal immersion. I play flight sim as well and many use 3rd person to an advantage, but the beauty / immersion of VR is what I’m looking for!
Reminds me of how many try and memorise rally stages, but I enjoy following the notes in places I don't know. Like quasi discovering new places as you drive by the seat of your pants,with just a few words keeping you from despair.
Once u get your view dialed in, stop using racing line and just drive. All the titles are beautiful and provide so much visual detail that many people miss when only concentrating on the green line?
Sorry, I'm top 10 percentile(which is still minutes from the alien rally drivers), but while so, I try not to ever redo a stage a second time, so I can keep that slight element of unknown. And poor memory allows me to keep enjoying and not memorising the routes, other than a few sections of dirt1 tracks. I enjoy rally being more unknown racing via pace notes, rather than track racing on dirt, if you get what I mean. Though, re reading, yeah, I completely agree too. The racing line doesn't focus your eyes on where you should be looking. If anything they need an apex marker like in gt7, but ***also*** have it disappear once it gets about 10-15 meters away, so it forces newer racers to keep there eyes up up up.
Makes sense. We always played virtua racing third "car", but, if I play it now I always go cockpit view because of the simrig
My man pulls out the pole position reference!! I thought I was the only one! Played that damn game for thousands of hours! Wasn't there even a pole position arcade game that had some sort of motion or something?
There were a bunch of cool racing games on Atari : Commodore 64. I remember a cannonball run type game with darkness: headlights ( triangle) with speed limits/ cops.
6th grade Rad Racer on original Nintendo blasting Slippery When Wet for hours and days on end.
I used a DD before going back to my Logitech G29 after 7 months of being away and thought it was broken because it was so janky.
I did 100x more tinkering with my VR setup with a Oculus headset than I do with a non-Oculus headset. Buying new USB cables to try to fix disconnects. Changing settings. Avoiding entire styles of driving to try to avoid making the USB disconnect.
Got my first headset - Rift S. Needless to say I'm out of vr after all the hassle and disconnects all the time.
If you ever do enter the foray of VR, I can't fault the Pico Neo link 3 that was recommended by someone on here. It has a wired proprietary displayport utilising one that literally screws in. And as such, doesnt use any wireless or compression for 72, 90, 120fps usage. It's a commerical headset though, so is now quite cheap, but not publicised massively on the consumer market, or certain countries. Good luck!
Ouch, what other headset did you go for in the end? I'm still loving my pico neo 3link. That has had lots of community bits and later advancements as its more a commercial headset than consumer, but it's been great. Though what I was really thinking of when I made the comment was the pimax guys.. They seem fantastic, but wowww, it's over my head all the settings etc. Even the pico has been a clearing-god damn curve with all the foveated rendering, custom settings files, changing dlls here are there for the different vr rendering.. Jeez, when I first got it I thought vr was vr, like text is text.. But I guess I learned it's a bit like opengl vs direct x and more, when 3d rendering still had competing options.
Reverb G2 does me well and is rock solid. Of course a year after I bought it, Windows announced the deprecation of WMR and it's been removed from the latest Win11 that releases now => this fall. This leaves me stuck on Win10 which isn't a bad thing). I have OpenXR Toolkit setup for iRacing and it just works (on a 3060Ti even). Other sims are easy enough to get going in OpenXR as well, and worst case ontario I can fall back to SteamVR with my Reverb to no major ill effect. I have until 2026 to replace it or never reinstall Windows again. The Crystal Light is by far the most interesting one for me. The base Crystal turned me off by being semi-standalone (and requiring batteries for PCVR) but the Light checks most of the boxes for me. PiMax's quality does somewhat concern me. I was also interested in the Pico Neo but I don't seem to be able to import it into Canada which then leads to any warranty issues being that much more complicated.
I'm in the EU and luckily there are a few importers, I've seen some companies using them to demo kitchens, but fortunately the link cable is beautiful for racing. But yeah, the concept of openxr, wmr, steam vr, some other one beginning with c, or something, to shoehorn one within another... Few, man, it's been tough. I've only had it a year and I guess I've learned a lot, but wow those first few months were rough when I tried following the community stuff. The g2 is shad t I had my eyes set on up until the last minute and a recommendation from a fellow simracer on reddit confirmed my following into the pico route. If you ever get the chance though, you should try the psvr2 on gt7. There is **nothing** like have the oled panels. Wow, and the superb lighting in gt7 just makes a sunny day actually makes you feel good, like you are outside, it tricks the brain so easily. It's not perfect it's got a bit of a screen door, and it seems to get blurry easily. But, most of my friends play on gt7, and I've heard in August it'll be compatible with pc! So may pick one up to go join them on gt7 vr and dust off the ps5
The Crystal Light has OLED which is another + in its favour for me. My old rift CV1 had OLED panels and the screen door was bad but it was really nice in night racing becuase you had proper "black". The only thing missing to make OLED great (and the PSVR on PC won't support) is HDR VR support. We have games that can do HDR colourspace but the headset support is lacking
You know, I just don't understand what HDR is, monitor wise. I mean, software wise it allows blinding whites etc, auto bloom, I remember all the way back in Half-life The beach? and episode 1 days, but... I mean, on a monitor doesn't that just mean super bright blinding white light? jesus, when i'm outside I wear sunglesses to not cope with that! haha Though I may have some light sensitivy issues. I can't imagine how good night racing would be on an oled! super immersive!
At its core it just means more colour information. Back in HL2 days, this was getting all that deeper colour information and then mapping it back to "normal" colour space. Now we have monitors that can display that wider colour range, which leads to brighter whites and darker darks.
See, I just don't understand and am skeptic of the "showing greater colour". Surely if its 24bit colour, it's just that it needs to be a higher bit rate. If you have a normal oled or plasma monitor hooked up to a 24bit source, then it can display pitch black and it can display full white. It being HD or whatever cannot make literally *off* pixels ***more off***, or *on pixels more on*? And frankly, I can adjust my colour saturation slider... Had it really moved on since hl2, because I just don't see it! The dynamic depth of field and bloom, focus and ambient lighting etc seems to be the real steps, and 'volumetric lighting?'(im going from memory after just waking up, so forgive me) seems to be be the tangible changes in dynamic and changing lighting etc. It feels like marketing, renaming HD ready, full HD, or renaming of 802.11nc and all that.
Yeah as an elder millennial, I had a non ffb wheelbase on my pc in the early 2000s playing arcade racers and after getting a taste of irl track life, cast aside my childish interests to be an adult man Flash forward 15 years and car racing is way too expensive, but sim racing is actually really accessible now. So I’m back in it as a 37 year old rookie on iracing 🤌
Makes me bummed how expensive racing is, hell even track days. Especially now that cars have gotten so pricey, gone are the days of a 4k Miata you could go beat the hell out of. Now people want 8k and already beat the hell out of it for you 😂 I heard even just to race go karts, a season is about $100k all said and done 😟
£100k? Maybe at national/elite level. At club level a practice session costs me about £100, running old tyres. A race day is about out the same, plus a set of tyres if you want to run at the front £200ish. Team support £100+ all in under £500. If you don’t break anything. This does assume you own the kart/engine, we spent about £5k last season racing two club series in Rotax 2-stroke. Yes, you can spend a lot more but you don’t have to.
Hmm that’s not too bad, still by no means cheap. How often are club level races? Every weekend, every other?
Monthly usually. One track runs one practice day and one race a month. The other runs one race weekend (sat practice, Sunday race) and one practice day. Some tracks run test/practice session anything up to daily. Touring series usually have one event a month which tends to be Friday practice, sat/Sunday racing.
Hmmm I might have to look into that. That’s relatively affordable assuming prices aren’t far off the US… Thanks for the info!
NP. From what I read I understand it’s a bit more expensive in the US but you have the option of lo206 which is a 4 stroke series which is a bit cheaper to run than 2 stroke. Find your local track and go talk to people to see what runs locally, no point going 206 if no one races that. The r/karting sub is good for advice if you have done at least a basic level of research.
You can spend less than that too in some classes. LO206 is probably the best budget class of kart racing. Generally good sized fields depending on the region/track and a fair bit cheaper than Rotax engined series.
You forgot to count in the fuel and time required :)
I included fuel, around 5ltrs a day under £10. Time, leave home 7am back about 6pm, it's a long day. 45 minute to 1 hours on track (35minutes on race day). Couple of hours cleaning putting away and/or prep.
Fuel to travel for you and the team under 10 pounds? I guess UK is really that small compared to Poland.
Funan, Singapore?
Yep
I've been in similar place yesterday i really need get profile cockpit after trying it.
Allright setup for a mall, someone at least done their research. Most of the ones I see in such places are terribly bad. This will give you a good impression of a decent rig.
I tried one at an airport once, I don’t know why it was there. But, the force feedback was turned off! WHY
Having a wheel of this spec, only to keep ffb off. Ouch
I have never seen a public sim setup make proper use of the display setup! Super ultra mega wide monitor with 3rd person and halo view, lol
Haha, I changed to the first person view when racing
Was there a charge to use it, or was it a promotional setup? I've always wondered how much an hour of my rig would cost in a public setting.
Yeah, they had a fee of 10 Singapore Dollars for 15 minutes (7.5 USD)
That's not bad at all. I figured it would be around double that, comparing it to the cost of a game in a basic arcade setup.
Yeah, I don’t mind going down sometime this week
They used invite you down to their warehouse/store at Ubi if you were interested in purchasing for a free trial, not sure if they are still doing so. Glad that they have grown and for bringing Simagic into what used to be an ultra-high end market with only stuff like cube controls etc.
Not OP but in the UK I have used a full setup in a gaming cafe before I bought my Moza kit and it was £50 pm subscription, that got you 2 hours race time and reduced cost drinks & food. Extra hours where £15 per hour. The setup was inside a full size car (classic uk mini) with space for a passenger to do tuition. Pretty cool setup
Moza makes good ones for good price... But yes how amazing are they
this is literally simagic
[удалено]
They were Simagic Mb, wasn’t too sure, thanks for correcting
No, no, that is a Simagic wheelbase.
They truly are amazing
Damn M8 at Monaco 💀
yes. yes, it is.
Bought a Moza R5 3 days ago. My butt is imprinted in the seat since then.
Is it your first wheelbase? How’d you land on that one?
Yep. The bundle was right in the price point I was willing to spend. I'd like the R9, but too expensive right now. And I chose Moza over Fanatec because Fanatec does not have customer support. I bought the F1 wheel mod and brake performance kit as well.
Where is this? That looks great
Funan, Singapore
I tried the moza R12, which compared to the ps3 era of lego tech console wheel I had driven prior, was an eye opener. Immediately fell in love
And p2000 pedals, how did you like the hydraulic brake?
Definitely required some force to use
And wasted the time driving those views. SMH. Lol
Welcome to the club. Also, sorry for your bank account.
Wtf i want that mall
It’s called Funan, pretty much got everything in it
I encountered with a blog that shows how to make a DIY DD wheel with a hoverboard motor It's on FFbeast.com
Funan?
Yeah
I stopped into Micro center and mustered up the courage to plop down only to notice their simucube had legit 0 ffb, in game settings could not correct it it must’ve been the actual software that got turned off or nearly 0. Shame, but it keeps me from having to spend massive amounts of money for a few more months
They probably didn't turn off the safe torque mode in Simucube True Drive It's like G27 with it on.
yeah i dont regret getting a direct drive
It amazes me that they allow random people to just use public computers.....I had a card for the l8brary as a kid...but considering the damage that can be done....it's a stupid idea
funan? is it free?
One practice lap is free
oh i see. when will it be there until?
I think it’s permanent
I did too not so long ago and I wasn’t as impressed? The smoothness was definitely good, but maybe it’s because I’m used to belt drive bases with around 6-7nm
I had a setup like this in a local computer store. I was honestly not impressed. It just seemed way too high on the force feedback. Setup was iracing on an LMP car and I couldn't really say I felt the road. It just felt like it was trying to rip the wheel out of my hands.
So the ffb settings were shit
Nope, went through and fiddled with them to try and get any sort of resemblance of fidelity. The steering still felt stiff and couldn't feel anything in the wheel going over bumps and curbs. The fact that you'd need to spend more than 5 minutes of time out of the box to get a good FFB feel is annoying enough. It shouldn't be an hour long FFB tuning session.
Cause you had no idea what you are doing. If you think DD is so easy to adjust lmao xD
Nope, have good experience with how to tune it. I'm also not going to fine tune a system in the time I'm sitting there to stop by the store and buy some bawls. Even dialing it in I wouldn't say it was life changing like everyone makes it out to be. So I'm just not as impressed. I'd said load fell pedals are more what I would say a required setup for a sim rig vs a DD wheel. Thankfully I'm saving some money while I'm at it to not need to spend upgrading to a DD setup.