SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone: Preview: iRacing

The first thing you notice about iRacing is the total web-oriented purchase and download scheme. You purchase and download the software, install the core sim on your hardware whereupon the web-site guides you through the necessary additional downloads until you have the basic package containing the Legends '34 Coupe and the Pontiac Solstice in rookie and advanced configurations (advanced means you can alter the setups of the cars). You also get a selection of oval and road course circuits to start your iRacing career with.

Instantly you notice that the sim’s GUI is now on the web-site and not on your computer. This means that you will have to be connected to the iRacing web site in order to be able to select car, track and session types.

Still on the web-site, you paint your car from a selection of predefined colors and paint schemes allowing for some variation and individuality, completely customized paint schemes however are not supported at this time. The up-side to this is that it takes no more than 2 minutes to paint your car and even I can figure it out.

Customize Car

Before you start the software, think about enabling the full 900 degree rotation if you own a wheel like the Logitech DFP or G25 as it really will make a huge difference. This sim is able to take full advantage of all 900 degrees of rotation. in fact, I have had my G25 set to this value since driving this sim, and have adjusted steering locks in all other sims accordingly, to make them work with the wheel being set up with this value.

Now, in final preparation for hitting the track you navigate through the various race selection menus.

Practice: In practice, you can practice for typically 30 minutes. Alone or with others, if others join the session.

Qualifying: You qualify for the races. Qualifying for road course usually last 30 minutes, for ovals you get 4 laps.

Race: Well, self-explanatory really.

Time Trial: Drive for a number of incident free laps to improve your rating and your driving skills.

Test: Test any car on any track, even the cars you don’t currently hold a license for. You’ll need to have bought the tracks and cars you wish to drive though.

If you are on a dial up/pay per minute type of internet connection, the iRacing service will work although downloads and updates will be naturally limited by the download speed of your connection.

Should you wish to connect to the service, select car and track, join the server and then disconnect, I found that this was possible. This is a sort of work-around “offline” mode.

Note that there is no AI and as far as we can ascertain, no plans for computer controlled drivers in the future for this software.

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