This is the Ford car pack from the new Road trip DLC in American Truck Simulator, for a long time it has by far had the largest, most detailed, and coolest open world ever. But we were limited to semi trucks and crappy car mods. Now we can drive real cars on these maps. There are thousands and thousands of IRL miles to drive, there are 21 states so far and the rest are coming. If you have wanted a good open world driving game this is it. I honestly think the open world aspect will be better than AC EVO will ever be physics aside. Or if you want something to hold you over until evo’s open world this is great.

I am playing in VR using a Meta Quest 3, I am also using a moza r12 and pedals.

Pt. 2/ some more clips in comments Reddit was giving me trouble uploading the full video Edit: the other clips will not upload I apologize I’m trying to get them to but they seem to just not want to upload

My Moza HM150 arrived today to Iceland, 20 minutes later i found myself in a ambulance.

I’m okay looks like i suffered a major panic attack while driving and i think it could be related to the HM150 motion system.

But what really matters is that the motion system is finally home 😅

Not a bad pair of people to have testing the rigs 😂

Super GT and Jimmy Broadbent both jumped on our Thermaltake setups and gave them a proper go.

Safe to say they were slightly better at it than most of us in the office...

>Initial post was on r/iRacing, but since it was generally well received, I decided to add a little bit and post it here.

I'm sure there's a ton of testimonials and in depth reviews about how sim racing translates into real life and vice versa.

But as a beginner-level driver in both sim(1350 iR, 100 race starts, 0 wins, 37 top-5, 3 poles, 3 laps led lol) and the real world(3 time trials, 0 sprint experience), my first-ever sprint race had a bunch of surprises I'd like to share. I hope it's informative and/or entertaining to some.

>additional note: I'm a beginner in terms of skill, but I do have 300+ hours in single player hotlap with Assetto Corsa, and 100+ track day sessions in real life. But I lack competitive pace in terms of lap time and racecraft is nowhere to be found. Because I'm a cheapskate, I have not been coached in a professional manner so far($100 an hour for most offers...). I do watch youtube videos here and there, I did a lot of BMW driving center programs and whatnot, but I wasn't coached for more than 10 cumulative hours with a well-set curriculum by a single person; so I learned to drive here and there with a mix of like 40 different drivers which explains my dogshit driving.

Also, it's a completely LLM-free handwritten post(rare these days) by a non-native english speaker so excuse me for being too verbose in some aspects.

First, context:

I did Elantra N spec-racing with minimal tunes and track oriented street tires(Nexen SUR4G-M, race-specific inferior version to the consumer SUR4G).

Hyundai N Festival N2 challenge sprint race with 19 cars on the grid, 11 laps around a 4km Inje Speedium circuit.

"Just like the simulations"

• VR is basically real life. It felt exactly the same.
  • perceived distance between the cars,
  • the horror and guilty pleasure of watching the 2 cars in front of you bashing against each other,
  • when going two wide into the inside you really do have to turn your head if you want to avoid wrecking each other. Sure, there's peripheral vision but I had to move my head around a lot despite being restricted by the HANS device in order to gain situational awareness.
• Driver behavior is pretty similar
  • iRacing even felt cleaner in some aspects. Since sim racers usually prefer triples to VR, has "radar" on, has virtual mirror with high FOV, and instantaneous AI spotter who doesn't make call-out mistakes, accidents due to poor situational awareness are rarer. 1300 SOF M2 rookies felt cleaner than the race I witnessed & experienced this week.
  • Assetto Corsa public lobbies however... let's not talk about that. It's cleaner than AC & ACC, I'll say that much.

What iRacing did NOT prepare me for:

• The HEAT... so much heat...
  • Heaters had to be at full power if I didn't want to finish last. My phone almost died mid-race due to the heat in the cabin. With FIA-approved underwear, racing suit, gloves, balaclava, helmet, socks, racing shoes, you're basically dressed for winter in the summer while heater is on full blast with windows closed. No amount of sim-racing would've prepared me for this. I've done 3 hour enduro alone in VR during the summer but that wasn't even close.
• Standing start sequence
  • After a formation lap, we have to grid without assistance. Of course, you can't put the car in reverse if you go 1 inch over the grid(DQ).
  • stopping at the exactly right position was a nightmare. It's impossible to look at the grid line because your own car blocks the view. You can't really rely on the radio for this, so you just have to remember the extremely vague reference points like discolored paint on the wall, etc. Penalty for improper grid alignment was common occurrence.
• Tire warm-up is extremely important
  • my start was bad with a lot of wheel spin, and this was mainly due to cold tires. I didn't realize I had to warm them up during the formation lap. iRacing standing start has everyone with the same tire temp so it just didn't cross my mind. Yes, I'm stupid.
• The fear of being ridiculed is real
  • when you finish last in whatever sim league/session, nothing happens. If you finish Top 5 or podium, you feel good about yourself and you can brag to your friends, but that's pretty much it.
  • when you finish as a back marker in a real life competition... how are you gonna look at your family, friends, disappointed engineers, and your rivals?
    • I was focused more on not giving up my pathetic P13 out of 18 positions so that I can at least avoid being P15, that I wasn't aggressive enough to take an opportunity when the car in front made a mistake.
• So many checklists...
  • even though I finally joined a team that helps with the race(for time trials I didn't have a team, and I felt like I was doing car mechanic exercises rather than driving), there are so many things you need to double check, unlike one click setup import in sim racing.
    • Custom 1 drive mode, disable AEB, disable TC, check tire pressure, check wheel nut torque, check launch control feature is turned on(Elantra N woes), check launch control RPM settings, check heater is on, check windows are closed, check my seat belts, etc...
• no HUD (lol)
  • probably because I didn't qualify in the top but I couldn't see the starting lights or whatever they're called very well. I couldn't see the digi flags or boards well either. It felt like playing a game that you've always had HUD turned on all of a sudden with all HUD off. My vision wandered everywhere trying to process information from "real" flags, cars, lights, etc.
• Qualifying with other cars in the field
  • A driver 2 second off pace, for whatever godforsaken reason, decided to divebomb me at the last corner after the first out lap in qualifying when I was already committed to starting my first timed lap. I should've aborted and tried again next lap, but I wasn't experienced enough to make the right call. He ended up blocking me due to the lack of pace, with his early braking in T4. The result was P12 out of 18 when my average best laps during practice was in the P6~8 range.

Limitations of "real life":

• Since sim racing telemetry analysis came from real life solutions in the first place, real life data loggers do exist... but they are honestly inferior to what sim racing has accomplished these days.
  • Race studio 3 is a nightmare to navigate. press space and it goes full screen, press enter and the video stops. reordering the telemetry is hidden in 3 depths of the configuration, and you can't even zoom in with scroll wheel looking at the map.
  • GPS has an average of 1.5~3m error/drift, so comparing entry/exit lines via telemetry is basically impossible - you just have to judge from the onboard footage.
  • Here's a claude-aided analysis of this track using aim solo2 dl telemetry: https://claude.ai/artifact/Sz4rfwHtvEn41jiUTGW3CN
  • compare this to what garage61 analysis provides (https://garage61.net/app/analysis), and you'll notice how cleaner and more "controlled" the racing sim telemetry analysis is. It's easier to have the car weight, track, weather, and all the variables consistent so that you can focus purely on the differences from driving.

I don't want to overstay my welcome so I'll end it here.

I'll linger in the comment section if anyone wants to ridicule my bad driving.

Been trying the ROG XREAL R1 on one of our sim rigs and I’m genuinely curious what the sim racing crowd thinks.

They’re way less bulky than VR and the virtual screen feels massive, but I’m not sure whether I’d choose them over a proper triple setup for long sessions.

Anyone here tried gaming glasses like these before?

Would you actually race with them, or are triples/VR still the way to go?

Hey everyone,
Some of you might remember our earlier posts about the “shifter the world has been waiting for.” Since then, we’ve made quite a lot of progress, so we wanted to share a proper update.

We’ve now built and tested several prototypes, mainly focusing on getting the mechanical feel right. There have been plenty of revisions along the way, but we’re now at the point where the final mechanical design is finished.
The shifter still uses our active lockout system.

The current plan is to officially launch the shifter in late November.

We’ve included a mix of renders and real photos in this post.

The pictures with the styled purple/green studio
backgrounds are renders of the finished design.

The simpler black-background pictures are real photographs of actual manufactured prototype parts.

We’ve also been testing different finishes. So far we have:
Black
Green
Raw/brushed stainless

This is still something we can change before launch, so we’d really like to hear what people prefer.

Which one would you choose for your rig?

And if you’d rather see another color, let us know.

We’ll also be starting to post more development content on our YouTube channel, NIDY Racing. As we get closer to launch, we’ll be uploading videos showing the actual mechanism working, the active lockout system, shifting tests, prototypes, and eventually the complete production shifter.
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@NIDYRACING
If there’s anything specific you’d like us to show in the YouTube videos, let us know as well. Whether that’s close-ups of the mechanism, how the lockout works, shift-force testing, sound, setup, durability testing, or something else, we’re happy to take suggestions.
So if you’ve been following the project and want to see it actually moving rather than just getting occasional update posts, YouTube will probably be the best place to follow the development.
There’s still some testing and production work left before November, but the design itself is essentially finished now.
We’d love to hear what you think of the final design, the colors, and anything you’d change.
And thanks again to everyone who gave feedback on the earlier posts, a lot of it has genuinely been useful during development.
Official launch planned for late November.

Like the title says, I recently made the jump and went all in on a full profile rig. I ultimately decided on the Trak Racer TR40s as I am a little bit limited on space.

I had heard some mixed opinions on the Trak Racer experience, mainly from a year or two ago. However I ordered on a Tuesday, and packages arrived on Friday, with the final package arriving on Monday (4 packages total). Setup took around 3ish hours, with final tweaks for my seating position taking another hour or so. their instructions were clear and I had zero issues, beyond a missing screw here and there (they sent plenty extras)

Just figured I’d share my new setup which is amazing to me! Also provide some up to date first hand experience with Trak Racer. I also just bought another thing (keyboard tray) from them yesterday and it is already shipped out. Curious that so many people say they had issues. I assume a couple years ago they were much less efficient.

My Setup:
Pedals - Moza CRP2
Wheelbase - Moza R5 (soon to be R12)
Wheel - Moza KS Pro
Monitor - Samsung Odyssey G5 34” Curved
Rig - Trak Racer TR40s
Seat - Trak Racer GT Bucket Seat

We’ve been slowly building out these two rigs and they’re finally starting to look the part.

Both are running triple-screen setups and they’ve already caused way too many “one more lap” situations in the office 😂

Still a few bits we want to tweak, so interested to hear what you’d change or add next.

Wanted to share some through-the-lens footage from my Pimax Dream Air while running the IMSA Fixed series at Fuji Speedway in the rain.

I'm running it at 5100 × 4100 rendering resolution, paired with my Qubic QS-V20 motion platform.

Still experimenting with the setup and settings, but I've been enjoying the combination of VR and motion, especially in wet conditions.

Obviously, through-the-lens footage doesn't perfectly represent what you see inside the headset, but hopefully it gives a reasonable idea of the visuals.

Curious if anyone else is running the Dream Air for iRacing and what settings have worked best for you.

So I had bought this pxn 9 off marketplace about mabey two years ago I am sure it had always had this problem but it did not bother me but now I want to fix it, can anybody direct me towards the solution also in the video I don't show it well but all the pedals have the same deadzone amount and it is the same for all of my games is this a physical problem or in the game (TLDR pedals have big deadzone that is the same on every pedal and idk what to do)

Over the past few months the right sparco seat rail started making a lot of noise and developed some play. I emailed sim-lab yesterday to see if it's covered under warranty. While I wait for a response I figured why not make some adjustments and clean my rig. To my surprise, the seat bracket failed 🙃. Hopefully both are warrantied.