u/Roytjb

I'm not entirely sure how the SR gain is calculated, i heard there's some formula behind it where it takes all of your incidents over the last X amount of corners, so not specifically for that race?
Earlier today i had a terrible MX5 race as i jumped in to it without practice, i lost control twice and caught an off track a couple of times. I was also lucky to be driving among 2 racers who were deadset on following their racing line regardless of a car next to them and judging from cockpit view they were playing on keyboard or a very sensetive joystick.

I got rammed with a 4x penalty a couple of times and forced off track once or twice getting more off-track penalties, so for the first time ever i got DQ'd in iRacing and it took my safety rating down by 0.63!! Next race went perfectly well finishing in first with 0 incidents, gaining me only 0.11 SR.

Hence my question; is the calculation in such a way that you can actually earn SR in chunks of 0.5 per race if you have a lot 0 incident races in a row or is there a cap on how far this can go?

They're just numbers of course and unlucky races/co-drivers are just part of the experience so i'm not complaining, i'm just genuinely curious how high the SR gains can go after a good streak.

Edit: i think i'm going for the EVO, thanks a LOT for all the helpfull feedback and info!

From the responses here i've gathered that the EVO's 12Nm is more than enough, both 12Nm evo and 18Nm Pro owners say they mostly run between 6~12Nm at most while racing anyway. Plus someone pointed out that the 12Nm as advertised by Simagic is the Holding/Nominal torque, the peak values actually go up a bit so there's more wiggle room than that.

/Edit

I can't decide which i should get and i'd like some help. Right now i have Simsonn pedals with haptics, a Playseat Challenge DD which can handle up to 15nM with minimal flex and a 4,4nM Belt driven T500RS. The T500RS is the final thing i'd like to upgrade and i've decided i want to get a Direct Drive wheel in the 10~15nM range to have enough wiggle room to not have clipping while also being "done for good" and never have to upgrade it again.

Originally i wanted the Alpha; 15nM range, great reviews, great build quality. Then i saw the EVO series and that's where i lost track of what to go for.

* Evo sport: 8nM is too weak for me and i think i'd regret this, feeling like i should've gotten more

* Evo: 12nM, while i've read that 15nM is generally considered the sweet spot. I'm a bit worried that with 12nM i might run out of range to run it optimally without clipping especially in open wheel cars.

* Evo Pro: 18nM, objectively the best choice, but also very expensive and not exactly what i was hoping for as a budget.

Then there's the Alpha vs Evo dilemma too;

* Alpha is "outdated" and will not continue to be supported as long as Evo

* Alpha is cheaper

* EVO line allegedly has much better force feedback definition

* EVO allegedly also has a lot more technical issues and more likely to have faulty products

Can anyone help me here? Do i go for the trustworthy, but (soon) outdated Alpha? Or the 12nM EVO which might make me regret not getting 15nM+? Or do i go for the 18nM EVO pro which is out of my budget (budget is subjective in sim racing though) and possibly has technical issues?

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Obviously you do NOT defend against a car that has lapped you, you yield and let him overtake. I thought you were also supposed to make sure you don't obstruct them in any way too though, which i've made sure to do numerous times, but in reality this can feel wrong.

Here's an example of what i do now and i'm wondering if it's illegal or not?

• Front of the pack, incident happens, car flies across track and i'm unable to avoid it in time so i crash.
• Possibly have to tow, but in any case have to pit to repair damage
• The whole pack has lapped me by the time i come out
• If i see lead cars approaching me from behind, i'll usually keep driving normally until we reach a straight where they can pass safely
• I'll go off the racing line to the outside to make it obvious, let go of throttle and maybe flash brake lights (can't be arsed to bind "pass left")
• This feels fair and legal, but now i get a car behind me which is slightly slower or at the same pace as me
• I may yield my position again, but if i do this for EVERY car that isn't even neccesarily faster than me, i'll end up stuck behind them or accidentally risking a "battle" when i overtake them with a regular racing line as they mess up a corner. I'd think that i only have to let faster cars pass, but sometimes the car behind me is faster in some sections while i'm faster in others, so they get into dueling range

What is the etiquette here? Do you only have to yield to cars which are faster than you? I'd assume you yield to everyone, but if the whole pack lapped you this means you might as well park on the side and then be forced to drive slower than the slowest driver.

I've had an instance where i yielded my position, let go of throttle as i moved aside and they somehow didn't get the hint or slowed down as well for no reason. I went back on the throttle and returned to my line, only for them to pit maneuver me later on and rage at me for even being in their aura as a lapped car.

It feels wrong to even be driving as a lapped car, i'd love to know what the proper procedure is.

I have a 34" monitor on a mount fairly close to my wheelbase and i'm wondering what everyone else uses to make up for the locked-in forward facing FOV?

My FOV right now is quite good but i can't see cars next to me so i have to press buttons to look left or right.

I've sold my Quest 3 a while ago before getting in to sim racing, currently i'm thinking about setting up head tracking so i can glance over.

The buttons to look left and right work well enough but are tricky to use in a pinch, i find myself giving other drivers way too much room just in case as a result.

Anyway, i'm curious what most other drivers on track with me in iRacing use, so what do you use and can you easily see cars next to you?

-EDIT: MUST READ FOR SINGLE MONITOR USERS- Thanks to a wonderful tip from Secure-Sentence8462, i gave headtracking a second chance and i'm baffled to say that within the FIRST 2 LAPS of practice in a public lobby (first of which was spent tinkering with the settings), i beat my record on that track by 2 seconds.

It's insane how much of a difference it makes when the camera moves along when you look into the apex, i found it a bit disorienting to glance at cars next to me quickly, but the overall movement helped A LOT in removing my "handicap" of not having peripheral vision. During the actual race i actually beat my best lap again in the BMW M2 lobby, originally it was 1:32:3xx, now it is 1:30:302. Without any practice i was now taking apexes automatically, it's really weird how much of a difference this instantly makes.

For anyone interested in trying headtracking, here's a very brief summary of what i did but feel free to ask me for more details:

• Bought a Playstation Eye for about €10 (dirt cheap and runs at 60fps, which allegedly is ideal for headtracking).
• Put it on my wheelbase with double sided tape
• Downloaded Opentrack
• Input: Neuralnet
• Output: freetrack 2.0 enhanced
• Filter: accela
• In mapping, make X, Y & Z movements input 0 (take the top right of the graph and move it to 0 so your head movements never do anything)
• Turn rotation to 0 as well in the same way
• Turn pitch dropdown output to max range (180°) & output graph very low, so it moves minimally
• Turn yaw to max range as well and you might want to tweak this to have a deadzone, but the linear graph works wonders already

No need to map anything ingame, works right off the bat. Can also be done with a phone as the camera which is what Secure-Sentence8462 did, but i never tried that myself. This does mean however that there is nothing stopping you from trying this yourself, no extra hardware required.

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I'm a married man with a fulltime job and i have time for max 2 races a few times a week. Almost half of those races are ruined early on by reckless drivers in the first few turns, especially mid pack. For every good race i do, an unlucky start is around the corner to take down my gained iRating which is frustratinf when i bary have time to play.

I've noticed that ESPECIALLY in the first lap most people have no regard for eachother and will happily spin you out without even letting go of the gas when you don't take one of the first corners at max speed with someone in front of you. It's getting quite ridiculous now where there's about a 50% chance i get spun out or blocked by an arrogant driver.

I make sure to take the first couple of corners carefully as they're usually chaotic and i'm trying to avoid incidents, but it seems like there's nothing i can do when some idiot comes barreling into the inside way too fast and takes everyone out in his trajectory because of understeer. I don't take corners like a grandma on a sunday but i do drive a LITTLE less agressive than i normally would at the start when there's a pack of braking cars.

I seem to be stuck in a vicious loop where i can generally compete with the top 3 drivers in a lobby, but my iRating is consistently going down because of divebombers. Any tips? I've tried qualifying as fast as possible, qualifying a bit lower to be in the rear of the pack and not qualifying at all. The latter seems the safest but surely it shouldn't be a requirement to survive the first corners in R/D class?

• Edit: wow it's impressive how agressively offended people are here throwing downvotes and accusations. The picture many people are painting by themselves is me being too defensive, not allowing cars to pass, not knowing how to drive safe and whatnot. FYI: I'm adressing the FIRST CORNERS in a low split race, particularily mid pack. I am a safe driver overall with a good SR and i compete for top 5 places fairly well in the average race. NONE OF THIS MATTERS in the first few corners and that's why i'm asking tips. So far only tips are to qualify in the front of the pack OR not qualify at all, i was hoping there was a way to guarantee survival in the mid-pack in R/D lobbies.

** Edit 2: thank you for some genuinely good tips;

• Most importantly just qualify rear-pack and start taking positions when the chaos is done in front. (A bit frustrating to do but should get you into 1500 iR fairly quick at which point you can race normally again)
• Avoid MX5 (as fun as it can be) and focus on BMW M2 races, reckless drivers are likely to wipe themselves out before they can take you out
• When confident, qualify for the top 5. Front of the pack is generally quite safe as most reckless drivers will be mid-pack (in front of people who didn't qualify, but behind all the people who put in a decent qualifying lap).

I called someone out for what i thought was a really reckless divebomb move, but upon watching the replay i realised i was at fault for not giving them enough room as i had more room on my other side than i thought.

Anyway, i'd like to apologise to that person for causing an accident and blaming them, any way to do that?

I'm still fairly new but multiple times now i've seen one specific driver in a race vanish out of existence for +/- 5 seconds before re-appearing for 5 seconds, which repeats constantly. I'm assuming it's a form of desync or lag protection where the game removes said driver from the server to prevent crashes or something, but it's odd because when they do appear visible i can see them taking corners normally (not rubberbanding or desynced).

Anyway i had the privilege of having to overtake one of such cars. I got really close to him and was clearly faster so inevitably i had to pass him. At one point he disappeared for a VERY long period (10+ seconds) so i had no idea where he was and i just doubled down on my ideal racing line instead of guessing where he was.

Lo and behold, while i'm going fast i see him phase back into existence INSIDE of my car and his car spins around like a beyblade and gets flung off-track because of the collision bugging out.

I got MULTIPLE 4x contact penalties in that exact moment yet strangely even though i could now see him and he was obviously heavily affected by my car, i received no physical impact whatsoever and was able to just continue. Now i hate to think about this but on his screen things were probably normal and i went INTO his car like a cruise missile so hard that it spazzed out his car.

What would/can you do in a situation like this if you see a driver disappearing and re-appearing? It seems impossible to avoid contact on a car you can't see, especially if they have a somewhat unpredictable racing line.

I just got into sim racing by getting imo good second hand deals;

* Playseat with a Thrustmaster T500RS + pedals + GT wheel mounted on it (also F1 wheel to swap out) ~ €200

* Thrustmaster TH8S shifter ~ €49

* Invision Monitor arm which i can swiftly move from desktop position to extending over the desk, aligning with my playseat ~ €51

So far for €300 i've gotten into sim racing and i'm quite honestly loving it. I've had a T500RS set in the past but never quite enjoyed the hassle of having to mount all of it and rebuild my desk for every session, plus having a chair on wheels wasn't great.

That being said, to me so far the gamechanger is a playseat or platform to mount everything on, it singlehandedly makes me feel like i'm not handicapped by my dated secondhand hardware. It also REALLY nullifies the inconvenience of getting ready to race.

To finally get to the title of my post; the only thing i feel is lacking is control/consistency in my T500rs potentiometer pedals, especially the brake. Today i ordered the Simsonn Plus X 3 pair pedals + baseplate and 2 VAM pro haptics for a painful €400. This is something i never thought i'd to initially, but i'm really hoping i made a good decision in a set of buy once, cry once pedals which will be both gamechanging and future-proof.

Did i make the right decision to spend more than twice my initial budget on pedals?

Would you consider my entire set good/worthy?

Are the Simsonn Plus X as good as i think they are?

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