Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Pit Stop: Is iRacing still King? (Patreon Special Re-Release)

Transcript

Pit Stop: Is iRacing still King? (Patreon Special Re-Release) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  We always have a blast chatting with our guests about all sorts of
• 0:03
  different topics, but sometimes we go off the rails and dig deeper into
• 0:07
  their automotive and motorsports pasts.
• 0:09
  As a bonus, let's go behind the scenes with this pit stop mini sode
• 0:13
  for some extra content that didn't quite fit in the main episode.
• 0:17
  Sit back, Enjoy, and remember to like, subscribe, and
• 0:20
  support Brake Fix on Patreon.
• 0:31
  That's going to be the title of this episode.
• 0:33
  What's the plan?
• 0:34
  What's the plan?
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  With Brock.
• 0:41
  My big thing with iRacing, if I can get on my soapbox for just a
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  moment, is iRacing still the best?
• 0:47
  And what about some of the competing products out there?
• 0:49
  Like I said, of course, a Composizione and some of the other
• 0:52
  sims that exist on the market.
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  The experience.
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  Is probably one of the best.
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  And I say that with a little bit of hesitation because
• 1:01
  I think it could be better.
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  The graphics are not great.
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  The menu system is extremely complicated.
• 1:07
  The tuning mechanism is just to the point of complete exasperation.
• 1:11
  Like if you just want to arrive and drive, iRacing is not for you.
• 1:15
  With so much sim experience under my belt, there's been a lot of programs that came
• 1:20
  before iRacing that were really cool.
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  And we didn't really have the horsepower to capitalize.
• 1:25
  On how good they could have been and they were abandoned just because of lack
• 1:29
  of interest in evolution and everything else, but you take something like a
• 1:33
  cc a set of course, a competition and not a set of course, which is like
• 1:37
  Forza and you compare it to iRacing just from a sports car perspective.
• 1:42
  And I tell people all the time that are nonbelievers, go try it for yourself.
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  The ACC experience is better.
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  It is, but you're relegated to sports cars.
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  You have to be into endurance racing.
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  You have to be into that.
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  Whereas I racing gives you.
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  More of a palette to choose from, I guess you would say let's kind of level
• 2:03
  set for people because for those of us that are really into iRacing, you
• 2:07
  can apologize for it all day long.
• 2:09
  You know, you can justify it, you can rationalize it, but in reality,
• 2:13
  let's talk about some of the things that it misses from real life.
• 2:16
  Of course, nothing's going to be perfect.
• 2:18
  Oh yeah.
• 2:19
  You can only take so much.
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  I mean, we saw it last year with Formula 1 with the Mercedes W13.
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  They didn't know it was going to porpoise because they couldn't simulate that stuff
• 2:28
  in sims, so it caught them by surprise.
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  So, sims, it's not the fix all, end all, etc.
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  You can't do everything on a sim, and there's obviously
• 2:36
  room for improvement for both.
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  Uh, Seto Corsa could...
• 2:40
  add some stock cars or some dirt stuff and iRacing could take a better focus
• 2:45
  into some of the more visual and also simplification of their tuning and
• 2:49
  their setup building process as well.
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  They're both good sims and it's all dependent on what you enjoy as a driver
• 2:57
  and what you enjoy as a fan as well.
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  Now that I'm getting into some more sports car stuff I might go back to ACC
• 3:04
  because when I I tried it the first time.
• 3:06
  I wasn't a sports car driver.
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  I didn't understand it, didn't understand how to drive it, so I just kind of
• 3:12
  messed around, flipped a couple cars, and then was like, alright, I'm done.
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  Being able to have that experience both ways, and being kind of level
• 3:20
  headed about it, and saying, you can do whatever you want with it.
• 3:24
  It's just a realm of freedom, you know?
• 3:26
  So I think both sims definitely have a lot to work on.
• 3:29
  But with more powerful computers and more powerful simulation abilities,
• 3:34
  we don't know where we could be in the next two or three years.
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  Assetto Corsa and iRacing could be the best sims flat out,
• 3:42
  hands down, no questions asked.
• 3:45
  There's always going to be something better in the form of something else.
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  So, for me, iRacing is the best sim just because it has what I want.
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  It has the creatability that I want and it overcomplicates things
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  so I understand it a little more.
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  Because for me, simplification is my worst.
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  Enemy.
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  I can't oversimplify something because I'll forget how to do it.
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  If I make it complicated, I have to make that checklist, and I don't know, maybe
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  that's me trying to find a silver lining with the overcomplication, but I enjoy it.
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  But I also feel like that's where it separates the wheat from the chaff.
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  If you want to jump in and create spec racing in the virtual
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  world, you have to simplify it, because I don't have the time.
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  I'm making a gross generalization for a lot of other people.
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  To sit down and build specs or build tunes or whatever for these cars.
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  So you're always going to run back of the pack because you're not willing to sit
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  down and do the math and take the extra effort that it takes to put out a build.
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  You jump into something like ACC and the tuning is limited.
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  And now a Ferrari is a Ferrari is a Ferrari.
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  In GT three against cars that are basically BOP.
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  I don't see a real BOP in iRacing, although I'm not a fan of
• 4:58
  balancer performance in real life.
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  It makes sense in the sim world because in the old days it was pay to win, right?
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  The guy with the most money always won the race because he either had a cheater
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  tune or he was buying his way up for the best mods, all this kind of stuff.
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  So the gaming world.
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  It's still present in IRA saying I've seen it myself.
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  I did a couple of years of IRA saying on and off, it left a bittersweet taste
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  in my mouth where on other platforms, I found it to just be simpler.
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  The experience was more rewarding.
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  I didn't have to spend a ton of money and time in the trenches to get away
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  from what I like to call turn one chaos or all the non drivers, right?
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  The people that are just out there creating havoc.
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  Cause I hear once you cross this threshold, it's suddenly
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  iRacing gets so much better.
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  Yeah, because you're with the upper echelon of drivers, but
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  how much time do you want to spend in the trenches doing that?
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  Yeah, and that's a good point.
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  And I think the main downfall that always sticks out to me for
• 5:55
  iRacing is it's pretty expensive.
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  You know, you got to pay for your subscription every year
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  and then you got to pay for all these tracks and cars and stuff.
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  So that's my only downfall with it just by using it so long.
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  I'm not an accountant, I'm not a business person in any means, so I don't know why
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  everything's so expensive and I don't know if it needs to be that expensive.
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  But I do know that they have those fixed series, you know, we've got our A fixed,
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  B fixed, C fixed, and the iRacing stuff, the lower levels are normally fixed
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  setups, so you can't really do much, and then once you cross the Threshold as you
• 6:30
  called it, then you have two directions.
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  You can go with each echelon of racing.
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  You can go stick with the fixed side where you everything is fixed
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  and it's purely being able to drive the car adapt throughout the race.
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  And then you have the open side, which is the more publicized side
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  where you're able to make that.
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  strategic change to the car, put more tow, camber, put more wedge
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  in it, all that kind of stuff.
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  So it does kind of give you the two different ways to put it.
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  It's also, you gotta get there.
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  That's kind of where it separates the people that are willing to stick it
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  out and the people that are wanting to do it versus the people that
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  are there just to have fun and not.
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  And you're 100 percent right.
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  There's different roots to all these video games.
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  If you kind of look at it like a family tree, there are certain physics engines
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  that have existed for a very long time.
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  And so iRacing is one of the newer ones.
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  Codemasters has been around forever, and they're always the dark horse
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  that we forget about, and they have their tentacles wrapped around.
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  Things like Formula One's official video game and WRC and things like that.
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  And then you have the Sim bin vein, which was like GTR and project cars and all
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  that stuff that came out of that lineage.
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  When you look at it, I often wonder there's been a lot of mergers happening.
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  Like there's a lot of titles that don't exist anymore.
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  A lot of them have folded up underneath of, let's say the electronic arts and
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  things like that, which they go back years and years too, in terms of physics engines
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  with cars from the need for speed series, which started in the nineties on the PCs
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  and whatnot, so this isn't new for them.
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  But again, when you look at iRacing as a polished product, you see the latest
• 8:10
  Gran Turismo come out of the latest Forza come out and you look at the price to
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  your point, the barrier of entry is cost.
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  But you're saying subscribership is up.
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  Laps are up.
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  There's this weird economy here where it's like, does it really
• 8:22
  need to be this expensive?
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  Granted the new Forza Motorsport will come out eventually.
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  It's going to be a hundred bucks, but it's a 4k product.
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  Do you know what I mean?
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  Yeah.
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  So, I mean, if you trace iRacing roots back, they go all the way back to
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  the Polaris times with the NR 2003.
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  That kind of stuff, the NASCAR side anyway.
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  And then EA got the exclusive rights for a while.
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  And that's when I got introduced into the e sports, well, e sports.
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  I was, you know, three months old, but my first video game I played was
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  the EA sports NASCAR thunder 2003.
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  And then I've kind of gone from there.
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  I've always wanted iRacing, always wanted to try it and see what it felt like.
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  Got the opportunity, liked it and went for it.
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  Now, the subscription I pay for is a hundred bucks a year.
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  So that's essentially buying the newest Call of Duty game or the newest
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  Forza game or whatever every year.
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  I'm attacking that for just a second.
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  How much have you spent on your rig?
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  That's a different story.
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  Oh, okay.
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  I didn't buy this rig right off the bat.
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  I had an old...
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  Gosh, it was a Logitech wheel with a Gran Turismo logo on it that is older than me.
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  So it was at least 21 years old now, because I'm 20, and we had that before me.
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  And I raced on a school desk with a yellow Fisher Price
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  chair, probably until I was 10.
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  And then finally, I moved up into iRacing, and I still race on that desk with a Tony
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  Stewart recliner was my seat of choice.
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  After I got into iRacing fully for about a year and a half, I
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  spent 200 on my Thrustmaster T150, which I still have to this day.
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  It's survived about four and a half years now.
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  And now that I've gotten more into it and starting to kind of try to go professional
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  and more on that eSports level.
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  The rig chassis is obviously going to be expensive.
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  I think I spent 300 on that, and then I'm starting to try to get some Fanatec stuff.
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  So, the higher up you go, the more you're going to spend.
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  That's something that you can't necessarily get away from,
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  and you can't excuse that.
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  But, It is what it is, in the sense of, the pedals I have, I have the,
• 10:27
  the Fanatec Club Sport V3s that I literally just plugged in yesterday.
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  They have the vibrating pedals on the gas and brakes, so you can feel that
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  tire chatter, the things that you said you couldn't feel through that kind of
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  first stint of iRacing that you did.
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  Well now I can feel when the back end is sliding, and feel
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  when the brakes are locking up, and all that kind of stuff, so.
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  Yes, there's money in it, for sure, but it doesn't have to be.
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  I could still be running on my 20 year old wheel with a crappy computer and a desk.
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  It depends upon how serious you want to take it.
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  See, and I think that's where my hang up is.
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  I didn't, but turn maybe a couple laps in the oval side of the house.
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  And it's never really been my thing.
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  I've either gravitated towards WRC or endurance sports car.
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  And so the endurance sports car side of iRacing, I felt was pretty lacking and
• 11:19
  having to start with spec Miatas, which I've personally driven the experience.
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  I was like, this Miata doesn't handle like this in real life.
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  I can go through this turn at summit point, flat out.
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  And I don't need to sit here and do all this crazy stuff to make it happen.
• 11:34
  Even a stock Miata from the factory handles better than they do in iRacing.
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  And stuff like that just drove me crazy.
• 11:40
  And one of my litmus tests is Watkins Glen.
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  I have so many laps at Watkins Glen.
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  I use it to compare games and most of the sports car related games,
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  whether it's Forza or Gran Turismo.
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  ACC I recently all have walk ins Glenn.
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  And to be honest with you, the best experience I've had so far is when
• 11:57
  ACC finally released the Glenn.
• 11:59
  It's like, you could really tell they nailed it.
• 12:02
  The physics is right, but they cater to the sports car GT 3 GT 4 market.
• 12:07
  And so they've got all that dialed in.
• 12:10
  So again, I'm comparing not necessarily apples to apples, it's sort of apples
• 12:14
  to oranges because I'm not really on the popular side of iRacing, although
• 12:19
  it exists and there's plenty of races, like you said, the 24 hours of Daytona,
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  you know, and things like that.
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  Real quick, I wanted to touch back on something real quick.
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  You mentioned, uh, Eric, like the top 10 games they listed.
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  Do you think any of that has to do with the fact that a lot of those are
• 12:32
  console based compared to computer based, although they are available on computers
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  as well, as to possibly why some of the iRacing is not as popular or common?
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  Don't open up this PC Master Race Pandora's Box on us now.
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  I'll, I'll entertain it for a second.
• 12:47
  I definitely think there is some PC versus console.
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  I wouldn't call it...
• 12:52
  Bias, but it's definitely there.
• 12:54
  I know that a couple of those games on the list are only PC.
• 12:58
  I think League of Legends is PC only.
• 13:01
  There's definitely, the availability of your PCs versus your consoles
• 13:06
  is drastically different.
• 13:07
  Not everybody's gonna go out and spend the money on a gaming PC.
• 13:11
  You might go out and buy your Xbox X or your PlayStation 5 because it's something
• 13:17
  you're gonna use and it's something that, you know, in another 5, 6 years
• 13:20
  you'll get rid of and I think there's a little bit of bias in the gaming world
• 13:24
  when it comes to Xbox and the console stuff versus the PC stuff but I just
• 13:31
  think there's just a lot of those titles out there You ask somebody if you want
• 13:35
  to drive a car around in a circle for 3 hours versus go Play Call of Duty.
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  Majority of the population nowadays is going to go play Call of Duty.
• 13:43
  But if the iRacing guys were to capitalize on the new systems, the PS5 and the
• 13:49
  Xbox X and the compute power that is, they're like super computers compared
• 13:54
  to The old days and probably a lot of the gaming rigs we have on our desk that
• 13:58
  we've spent thousands of dollars upon the X Box X blows them out of the water.
• 14:01
  Why can't they develop a version of iRacing that runs on the X Box?
• 14:06
  It can handle it and then some, but I think a big asterisk there is in order
• 14:10
  to gain the audience, nobody wants to buy a game that looks like iRacing that
• 14:15
  plays on a console that's like 8K capable.
• 14:18
  There's some truth to that.
• 14:20
  They look like they're trying to do it, because they released their World of
• 14:24
  Outlaws Dirt game on PlayStation, and I think it might be on Xbox as well, which
• 14:29
  is through the iRacing engine, and it's almost like a pilot to see who's gonna
• 14:34
  be interested in something like that, which is possible, and I hope one day it
• 14:38
  is, because that would be awesome, even though I think a few of the people that
• 14:41
  are strictly console players might have a bit of a learning curve ahead of them.
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  I If that were to happen, and if those two worlds meshed, we could maybe see
• 14:52
  iRacing, I don't know, I wouldn't say top five, but definitely in the top 10.
• 14:56
  There's also the economics dynamic there, right?
• 14:58
  Whereas if you get it through Microsoft, you've already
• 15:01
  paid for their subscription.
• 15:02
  So now they've got a broker, all that on the back end with iRacing, and it
• 15:06
  doesn't line up with their cost model.
• 15:07
  So that makes it super complicated too.
• 15:09
  But in a fantasy world, to your point, it would be cool to see iRacing running
• 15:14
  on an Xbox because What does your steering wheel and pedal box care?
• 15:18
  It's connected to a computer.
• 15:19
  All that stuff is built in.
• 15:21
  It can handle it because those same pedal boxes and steering wheels are oftentimes
• 15:25
  used on other games on consoles.
• 15:28
  So there's a lot of good crossover there.
• 15:30
  Yeah.
• 15:30
  My Thrustmaster is actually built for the PS4 and the PS3,
• 15:35
  and it works great on iRacing.
• 15:36
  And I know a lot of the Fanatec stuff is PS5, PS4, and then Xbox compatible.
• 15:43
  So there's a lot of compatibility.
• 15:45
  Except for the games, and I'd love to see any of the sims really, a set of cores
• 15:50
  to get on a console, because a lot of the computing powers, like you were saying, is
• 15:54
  so good that we could have 8K, 4K racing without having those huge processors and
• 16:02
  graphics cards and RAM and all that kind of stuff that you have to have on the PCs.
• 16:07
  One quick thing your mission is like a lot of the high racers get really
• 16:11
  offended if you call it a video game That's why I do it So growing up like
• 16:17
  for me simulators like there wasn't many racing simulators growing up, but
• 16:20
  there were flight simulators Yeah, and it's funny because I look back at the
• 16:24
  ones like Chuck Yeager flight simulator used to love playing as a kid That
• 16:27
  was one of my things where I always enjoyed aviation, but never got into it.
• 16:31
  So I joined the military, you look at the quality of the simulators, then
• 16:35
  look like the cheap video games now.
• 16:38
  And I wonder if it's the fact that our video games have improved so
• 16:41
  drastically with the graphics and the, just the technology in general.
• 16:46
  I wonder if that's why so many people.
• 16:48
  think that it's just a video game and not a simulator because they
• 16:50
  don't realize on the back end how much of the mechanics go into be a
• 16:55
  simulation and not just a video game.
• 16:56
  I think a lot of people don't realize how much technology is
• 16:59
  actually in not only iRacing but most of these high end simulators.
• 17:04
  A lot of people look at your Gran Turismo, your Need for Speed, your car video games,
• 17:09
  and go, well, that must be everything, because they all look very similar.
• 17:12
  They all have slightly different graphics and slightly different physics
• 17:16
  engines, but they all look, just to an untrained eye, quite similar in
• 17:20
  performance and things like that, and they don't understand that.
• 17:23
  These sims are as close to real life as you can get without
• 17:27
  spending 15 grand on a Miata.
• 17:31
  I think a lot of people take that to heart and kind of wear it as a
• 17:34
  patch of honor that if you race on this, you're racing on a simulator.
• 17:38
  It's something that is Built not to entertain, but to engineer.
• 17:42
  There's a compromise there too with compute.
• 17:45
  So to have 8K graphics, you probably have to give up on the computations
• 17:49
  needed to satisfy the physics engine.
• 17:52
  And so iRacing's physics engine is extremely complicated, and so you
• 17:56
  forgo the graphics, and that's why it ends up looking like Xbox 360 stuff.
• 18:00
  There's a compromise there.
• 18:01
  And I, that's where I think ACC does a pretty good job of
• 18:04
  straddling the line between the two.
• 18:06
  I would never qualify that as a video game or a Simcade.
• 18:09
  It's definitely a simulator and especially in the way it operates, you'd
• 18:13
  almost need two boxes to do it right.
• 18:15
  In some ways, one to handle offload the front end and one to do the back end.
• 18:18
  If you were going to do it with a console, although we talked about,
• 18:21
  you know, how to do that with an X Box, it has tons of compute in
• 18:24
  it on a totally separate thought.
• 18:27
  I was thinking about where iRacing came from and you mentioned, you
• 18:30
  know, the NASCAR games and the IndyCar games and I was wondering if it maybe
• 18:34
  stemmed even as far back as your Papyrus games from way back when.
• 18:39
  Yeah.
• 18:39
  I played those and they were a bear.
• 18:42
  You had to tweak everything to get the car to barely go straight.
• 18:46
  That was frustrating back in the day for sure, but again, there's only
• 18:50
  so many branches of the, you know, racing family tree when it comes to
• 18:55
  these platforms, to these titles, let's call them what they are, right?
• 18:59
  If somebody were to map out the history of a lot of these games, it'd be really
• 19:02
  cool to see who influenced who, who picked up intellectual property and carried
• 19:08
  it through into the next evolution.
• 19:10
  The iRacing trees.
• 19:11
  A bit of a funky one, we kind of go up and down and sideways and turn it all
• 19:15
  around, but I think they might have done like a short film on like where
• 19:19
  they came from for their 10th year.
• 19:21
  Yeah, the papyrus and that kind of stuff.
• 19:23
  Sorry, it's a little before my time.
• 19:26
  I'm old school, man.
• 19:26
  Yeah, man.
• 19:27
  I started with pole position like the original racing game, okay?
• 19:33
  But I mean, we go back and we look at things like that and we
• 19:36
  go, wow, those graphics are crap.
• 19:38
  The raceability is crap.
• 19:40
  That's what makes me so excited for the future.
• 19:42
  10, 15 years from now, the fact that Assetto Corsa and iRacing are gonna be not
• 19:47
  good simulators if they don't continue to keep engineering and keep doing all these
• 19:53
  things, that excites the hell out of me.
• 19:55
  Because that means we're gonna have some of the best simulators in the world.
• 19:59
  Because people like yourself aren't satisfied with what we have now.
• 20:04
  They know we can get more.
• 20:05
  Everybody knows it.
• 20:06
  So we're going to get there.
• 20:07
  And in 5 10 years, we're going to have something that doesn't
• 20:11
  look a darn thing like iRacing.
• 20:12
  And something that doesn't drive like iRacing.
• 20:15
  And something that doesn't have the tweakability.
• 20:17
  Something that you can do completely differently.
• 20:20
  And it'll be so much better.
• 20:22
  And we'll look back on iRacing and go, why did we ever run that?
• 20:25
  Or we'll look back at Assetto Corsa and go, how could we stand that?
• 20:29
  And how could we live like that?
• 20:31
  So I can't wait for five, six years from now.
• 20:33
  Uh, VR becoming a big thing.
• 20:35
  The real life flight simulators I've been from a military experience where
• 20:38
  you basically go into a closed container that's set up on hydraulic rams.
• 20:42
  And when you're flying, like the landing, It'll jar and everything,
• 20:45
  almost like you're actually in the aircraft and it feels very similar.
• 20:48
  Do you think that maybe in the future, like some of the rigs will be set
• 20:51
  up with like the hydraulic stuff and maybe potentially even go to where
• 20:54
  eventually it'll be a VR headset?
• 20:55
  When you're looking, it's almost like you're looking out the
• 20:57
  windows of the car around you.
• 20:58
  We have that now.
• 21:00
  iRacing is VR compatible.
• 21:02
  It makes the graphics a little worse, which I know Eric is gonna
• 21:06
  be giggling in his chair about.
• 21:09
  It's VR compatible now.
• 21:11
  I personally don't like the VR.
• 21:13
  I like having a bigger monitor.
• 21:15
  I guess maybe because I wear glasses and it's uncomfortable because
• 21:19
  things squish into my face and it's not great for me ergonomically.
• 21:23
  Well, I'm sure it's horrible for endurance races too.
• 21:25
  Yeah, because then your face is all hot and sweaty and you got
• 21:28
  the red ring of shame around your face when you take it off.
• 21:31
  So, I like my monitor.
• 21:33
  I like being able to No, that I'm not in the sim for wanting
• 21:38
  to be a race car driver.
• 21:39
  I get motion sick pretty easily.
• 21:41
  Like if I'm riding in a car and not driving it, I'll get motion sick or car
• 21:46
  sick, but if I'm driving it, I won't.
• 21:48
  The VR kind of gives me that I'm not actually driving the car.
• 21:52
  It almost breaks immersion for me.
• 21:54
  Personally, I'd like to have just a full canopy monitor.
• 21:58
  That would be cool.
• 21:59
  Full canopy monitor on some hydraulics.
• 22:01
  We call them butt kickers.
• 22:03
  And basically it sticks to the bottom of your chair and it vibrates when the
• 22:07
  car is sliding and stuff like that.
• 22:08
  So that kind of stuff is what I would want.
• 22:11
  I wouldn't want to go on the VR stuff though.
• 22:13
  Assetto Corsa is fully Oculus capable, which I haven't tested yet.
• 22:17
  I have a buddy that has one.
• 22:18
  I am quite curious to try it out as a matter of fact, because I do want to see
• 22:22
  what that experience is like versus, you know, just staring at a regular screen.
• 22:26
  On the other side, you know, I mentioned before Codemasters is always kind of
• 22:29
  hanging out in the dark, you know, that was a weird merger there too.
• 22:32
  They bought Mad Game Racing, which is all project cars.
• 22:35
  The other one is, what is it, Kylotonn that does the FIA, the WRC series.
• 22:41
  And I was reading that.
• 22:43
  You know, WRC 10 came out in 2021, and there hasn't been another release
• 22:48
  since, which is kind of strange.
• 22:49
  And it also has a hyper precise physics engine and they claim
• 22:52
  it to be more of a simulator.
• 22:54
  And when you play it compared to like dirt or dirt rally,
• 22:57
  it is much more complicated.
• 22:58
  It's a lot more difficult, but they're saying WRC 11, if it ever
• 23:02
  releases is going to be the last one.
• 23:04
  They're like kind of closing their doors after that releases again,
• 23:08
  wonder who's going to absorb them.
• 23:10
  Where is that?
• 23:11
  Simulator engine for rally gonna end up that is one thing that I racing is
• 23:16
  missing is that stage rally We've got the rally cross and we've got some
• 23:21
  of the hill climb things like Mount Washington But that's not a rally course.
• 23:26
  That's more of a hill climb It would be interesting to see where that
• 23:29
  physics engine goes and where those go iRacing lost IndyCar to, it's
• 23:35
  whoever makes the, uh, rFactor stuff.
• 23:38
  ImageSpace, ISI, been around forever.
• 23:40
  Which rFactor was a splinter of SimBin way back when.
• 23:43
  So, we lost them to them.
• 23:45
  So there's a bit of a lack of a sport, basically.
• 23:49
  So they might pick that up.
• 23:50
  So I don't know it, it would be cool to have a stage rally in iRacing.
• 23:54
  I thought it would be cool.
• 23:57
  . You know, I have plans for everything, guys.
• 23:59
  So . I would love to see Monster Jam come into iRacing.
• 24:03
  That would just be cool.
• 24:05
  . That would be pretty slick because you know, iRacing, you
• 24:07
  can put any car on any track.
• 24:09
  We did a race with the.
• 24:11
  Mercedes F1 car, the W12, around Dirt Bristol.
• 24:16
  How'd that turn out?
• 24:16
  The one of the funnest races I've ever driven.
• 24:20
  So imagine like, Gravedigger going around Silverstone or something like that.
• 24:24
  That would just be wicked.
• 24:27
  The World of Outlaws game that they released, I've seen a couple
• 24:29
  of advertisements for Xbox.
• 24:33
  I've been highly tempted to get it because, like, the World of Outlaws,
• 24:36
  I like the short dirt track races.
• 24:39
  That's where, like, NASCAR loses me because they're such
• 24:41
  long and more endurance based.
• 24:43
  The shorter races I really like, so I've been half tempted
• 24:46
  to pick it up and try it out.
• 24:47
  I haven't tried it yet because I don't have a console here and I'm I am not
• 24:52
  a dirt guy in that sense, I want to learn more about it, but sprint cars are
• 24:56
  scary and late models are hard to drive.
• 24:59
  I've heard a lot of good things about it, I've heard a couple negatives about
• 25:02
  it, but I think that's what you get with any new game, there's gonna be
• 25:05
  a little bit of weird stuff going on.
• 25:07
  You haven't raced until you've done European super trucks.
• 25:10
  That's all I'm saying.
• 25:11
  Oh gosh.
• 25:11
  Like the, the semis, the boss tails.
• 25:14
  That's where it's at, dude.
• 25:15
  Yeah.
• 25:15
  Where you gotta manage the water in the tank.
• 25:18
  'cause the brakes are overheating and Oh, it's insane.
• 25:21
  Yeah.
• 25:21
  I would do that in a heartbeat.
• 25:22
  Those guys are kind of insane when they drive those.
• 25:25
  I'm like, what?
• 25:26
  Who would do that?
• 25:27
  Just, who would do that?
• 25:29
  But it's, it's brilliant.
• 25:30
  Why wouldn't you do it?
• 25:31
  It's great.
• 25:31
  Yeah.
• 25:32
  There's, there's so many things.
• 25:32
  Just another.
• 25:33
  Discipline of racing.
• 25:34
  That's all it is.
• 25:35
  So your question is all wrong, Brock.
• 25:37
  It's not, why would you, it's like, why wouldn't you want to?
• 25:40
  Yeah, exactly.
• 25:41
  Oh man.
• 25:42
  You ever have those late nights when you're watching YouTube and eventually
• 25:45
  those like crash compilation 2023 comes up and then you get all these wicked wrecks.
• 25:51
  And I always see those and like the whole cab comes off and it's
• 25:54
  just the chassis rolling it along.
• 25:56
  And I'm like.
• 25:57
  Where'd he go?
• 25:59
  Where is he?
• 25:59
  He's in his egg crate.
• 26:00
  He's fine.
• 26:02
  Don't worry about him.
• 26:04
  You've done that in mechanical engineering, you know, drop the
• 26:07
  egg from the side of the building.
• 26:09
  It's the same thing.
• 26:10
  I want to get your opinion just for opinion's sake on
• 26:14
  the Codemasters evil alliance.
• 26:16
  I'm sorry.
• 26:16
  Electronic arts merger.
• 26:18
  What are your thoughts on that?
• 26:20
  Oh man, it's tough.
• 26:21
  I was an EA kid.
• 26:22
  I grew up on the NASCAR titles that were all EA.
• 26:27
  I was that generation of console player, so I miss that.
• 26:31
  I like EA, EA has a bit of a soft spot, but it's not the greatest in the world.
• 26:36
  I'm not too familiar with it because I did kind of go away from it once.
• 26:40
  EA stopped producing NASCAR titles, and you know, I'm not a sports kid.
• 26:45
  I watch my football every once in a while because I have to, but I don't
• 26:48
  play soccer, I don't play football, I don't do that kind of stuff, so
• 26:52
  I stopped paying attention to EA.
• 26:54
  I didn't really hear about it until, what, 20 minutes ago?
• 26:59
  So I don't know, I'd have to do some research about it until I said
• 27:03
  some things on it, but I don't know.
• 27:05
  Mergers happen.
• 27:06
  Unfortunately, business is business.
• 27:08
  So, whether or not it's for the money or for the product, we'll see.
• 27:12
  With how most video game companies have been going, it's more for the
• 27:16
  money and less for the product.
• 27:17
  So, we'll see.
• 27:19
  I don't know.
• 27:19
  I'm really curious to see how it affects the next version
• 27:23
  of Horizon more than anything.
• 27:25
  And I know that's totally out of scope for the conversation because that,
• 27:28
  we're talking arcade, it's like Outrun.
• 27:30
  Yeah.
• 27:31
  If you think about it, only because a lot of people don't realize that
• 27:35
  Playground Gamers is a collaboration between Turn 10 and Codemasters,
• 27:39
  and Microsoft obviously sponsored both of them to make Horizon happen.
• 27:43
  And you could see it in the first versions of Horizon, it was all Codemasters UI
• 27:48
  that was lifted from dirt, or one of their other series like Grid, you know,
• 27:52
  Forza physics engine making it all work.
• 27:54
  And so.
• 27:54
  It was a recipe for success.
• 27:56
  It was an amazing game.
• 27:58
  Great soundtrack.
• 27:59
  If you just wanted to do open world driving, like the old test drive
• 28:03
  series from way back when it was re imagined and it was fantastic.
• 28:06
  But now with EA and their weird rights to things like licensing Porsche and
• 28:12
  stuff like that, which has always been a battle for Forza and for Gran Turismo.
• 28:16
  Why are there never Porsches?
• 28:17
  Why isn't there this?
• 28:18
  Why isn't that?
• 28:18
  Because EA owns the rights to all that kind of stuff for like the next.
• 28:22
  20 years or whatever it is, it sort of becomes a little crazy when you think
• 28:26
  about that merger and the contracts that Codemaster has with the FIA to be the
• 28:33
  official game of Formula One, right?
• 28:34
  F1 2023 is supposed to come out, but it's like under whose flag?
• 28:40
  People think video games are so simple.
• 28:42
  And then you look at the inner workings, not necessarily the technology side, but
• 28:46
  the politics, the politics and the people.
• 28:48
  It's like, Man, it's so hard to follow, and I mean, in the end, maybe some people
• 28:54
  win, but most of the time, the people that are actually playing those games are the
• 28:58
  losers in that, which sucks, because I remember I got an Xbox S, I think it was?
• 29:04
  It was like the generation before this newest one.
• 29:07
  I got it only because I wanted to play Forza, because I
• 29:10
  had never played it before.
• 29:11
  I was a PS kid that grew up on PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3,
• 29:15
  PlayStation 4, had Gran Turismo 5 through Sport, never played a Forza
• 29:21
  game, so I bought it for that reason.
• 29:23
  I was like, oh, hey, a Porsche, and kind of the, I'd never realized
• 29:28
  that they had the Ruffs, but not the Porsches, and I was like, why is that?
• 29:32
  So being able to experience both worlds.
• 29:35
  It, it's nice.
• 29:36
  I really hope that it comes out and it doesn't kill a title because
• 29:40
  one bad game, the NASCAR world saw it with, uh, NASCAR heat.
• 29:45
  The first NASCAR heat that came out, 2016, was terrible, and it wasn't good,
• 29:50
  and people stopped playing it, and people stopped buying them, and now we've got
• 29:54
  whatever motorsports games is pushing out, which isn't very good either.
• 29:58
  It's tough to be a motorsports fan and play video games because, for
• 30:03
  not being in the top 10 at esports, it's such a competitive scene.
• 30:07
  That one wrong move and you've killed an entire sports title franchise.
• 30:12
  So I hope it works out like you were talking earlier for the fact that you
• 30:15
  hadn't tried various different ones.
• 30:17
  And this is just me thinking outside the box.
• 30:19
  The ideal thing would be there'd be one game that we could do any discipline,
• 30:22
  whether it be, you know, NASCAR world of outlaws, you know, road course endurance
• 30:28
  racing, it'd be nice if there was one.
• 30:30
  Game or simulated to do all of those things, but there's
• 30:33
  so many other intricacies that it'll probably never happen.
• 30:36
  And especially like Eric was mentioning with all the licensing
• 30:39
  aspects, that alone becomes a nightmare to make any of it possible.
• 30:42
  And then at the same time, then it comes to the penny pinchers that they're not
• 30:46
  going to do it because they want all the individual games for each genre of racing.
• 30:50
  Well, I think 10 years ago, that was the initial intent of iRacing was to.
• 30:55
  Be one ring that rules them all sort of deal.
• 30:58
  But the problem is what you learn in developing code is after a while you get
• 31:02
  lazy, you start to templatize things.
• 31:04
  You start to do, well, this is good enough because it's front engine rear drive.
• 31:08
  So all front engine rear drive base setups are sort of the same.
• 31:12
  You get these things like Forza 850 cars.
• 31:16
  Yeah.
• 31:16
  Of which.
• 31:17
  They're all the same 10 cars underneath with different skins on top of them.
• 31:20
  And that's what you run into on every one of these, whether it's the best
• 31:24
  simulator on the planet or otherwise, sometimes it's just aesthetics over
• 31:28
  top of a base set of computations.
• 31:30
  And so it's difficult to hone in on the intricacies between, let's
• 31:34
  just say something as simple as the C6R, the C7R, and then you
• 31:39
  make a drastic jump to the C8.
• 31:42
  So you start to question and say, well, Well, how did they build
• 31:45
  this base framework underneath?
• 31:47
  How does it really work?
• 31:48
  And that's where I lose interest in games where it's like 9, 000 cars.
• 31:52
  And I have to spend 9, 000 hours to tune a C8 R to handle like a C8 R,
• 31:58
  which I'm assuming handles a certain way in real life based on experience,
• 32:03
  either coaching in the right seat or, you know, driving one or whatever.
• 32:06
  And so that's difficult.
• 32:07
  Whereas, you know, going back to that.
• 32:10
  Us versus them, iRacing versus ACC, ACC has a much more limited
• 32:15
  number of cars, but a 911, and a Ferrari, and a Benz are not the same.
• 32:21
  And you can tell when you drive them in the game that they're not the same
• 32:25
  specs under the hood, pun intended.
• 32:27
  Yeah, and I definitely have seen that.
• 32:30
  I feel like they're getting more towards the individuality of certain cars, but
• 32:34
  there's definitely tendencies of certain cars, you know, the AMG GT3 Evo that we
• 32:41
  run on iRacing is definitely a heck of a pusher in the middle of the corners,
• 32:46
  and it's the same thing with, let's say, the They both push the same type of ways,
• 32:52
  they're both front engine cars, they have the same tendencies, and I don't
• 32:56
  know if that's so much as setup or just that's what front engine cars do, I'm
• 33:01
  not 100 percent sure on the endurance championship side, but I do know that
• 33:06
  On the, the NASCAR side of things, you know, the Xfinity car drives like an
• 33:11
  Xfinity car, the Cup car drives a lot like the Cup car, the truck drives very
• 33:15
  similar to the truck, all of those are very individual cars, but, like you were
• 33:19
  saying earlier, they're individuals.
• 33:21
  There's only three of them, with different skins on top of them.
• 33:24
  So, I think there has to be a balance between having the eclectic group of
• 33:30
  race cars that everyone will want to drive, and then also having the Modeling
• 33:36
  and the temperamental attitudes of each car highlighted in the correct ways and
• 33:43
  not oversaturating the market as well.
• 33:45
  One of the other things that I feel like the simulators and even the games, you
• 33:49
  know, as much as they talk about laser scan, this and that, and all the other
• 33:52
  things is when it comes to elevation changes, that's very difficult to
• 33:58
  capture because a lot of times when laser scanning is done, it's being done, let's
• 34:01
  say from a vehicle in motion, and so everything is relative to the vehicle.
• 34:06
  So oftentimes it just seems really flat and you run V.
• 34:10
  I.
• 34:10
  R.
• 34:11
  As an example, we just talked about, or Watkins Glen, you're
• 34:14
  coming up out of the toe V.
• 34:15
  I.
• 34:15
  R.
• 34:16
  You're coming down through the roller coaster.
• 34:18
  When you see it in real life, you drive it in real life.
• 34:20
  You realize the game you might as well be driving on a billiard table.
• 34:24
  It's that flat, even with simulated elevation.
• 34:28
  Lime Rock, Road Atlanta, and I've driven all these myself, Road Atlanta, you
• 34:32
  might as well be driving off the side of a building, that's how steep it is,
• 34:36
  but in a game, you go flat out, you know, under the yellow marker coming
• 34:40
  out of 11, and you just stand on it, in real life, that's a pucker moment.
• 34:44
  Cause you can't see anything but sky.
• 34:47
  And when you come down, it's literally like coming down on a roller coaster.
• 34:50
  And you better be in the right spot at the right time and hang the hell on.
• 34:55
  But you can't get that same feeling when you're on a simulator,
• 34:58
  no matter how good it is.
• 35:00
  Maybe that's my bias.
• 35:01
  I'm jaded because I've driven these tracks in real life.
• 35:04
  But it's something that's irreplaceable.
• 35:06
  It's that experience.
• 35:08
  And to Dan's point, come out and try it.
• 35:10
  It can be expensive.
• 35:11
  There's a barrier of entry.
• 35:12
  But we tell people all the time.
• 35:14
  You don't need a full fledged race car to go and enjoy turning laps at a track.
• 35:20
  Just like you were saying, you don't have to buy a Fanatec motion
• 35:23
  activated rig to go simulation racing.
• 35:26
  The same is true of going real racing.
• 35:28
  That's a big point of The reason why I can pick and choose a couple things
• 35:33
  on Sebring is I haven't driven on it, but I have been driven on it.
• 35:36
  And I have that feel, even though it was a while ago, I still remember
• 35:40
  it and I still understand it.
• 35:41
  And going out and trying it, it's the same thing that I was saying with
• 35:44
  people who just think it's a game.
• 35:46
  Come try it, come figure it out, come understand that it's not a game.
• 35:49
  Go try real racing, go ride in the car with somebody, go get coached by
• 35:53
  somebody, and understand it's not just driving around in circles, that there's
• 35:57
  points and so many different things that you have to watch for, not just
• 36:01
  what's directly in front of you, you gotta look 100 yards in front of you
• 36:05
  to make sure the track is dry, there's nothing on the track, there's not a car
• 36:10
  going backwards on the track, you gotta make sure that everything's good, and
• 36:14
  so that's like a bucket list item is to drive a car on a track just doing it.
• 36:19
  It is addictive and you'll want to do it a lot more.
• 36:22
  And you'll be terrible at it, you know?
• 36:24
  That's the beautiful thing about it is in the sim world, you can pick up
• 36:28
  a bunch of different cars and they may drive similar or there may not.
• 36:31
  And you'll be trash at them.
• 36:33
  I could not run three laps at Daytona attract that.
• 36:37
  I have run many times in many different cars with that new BMW.
• 36:41
  I couldn't the power, the downforce, it was all very, very different.
• 36:46
  So I didn't understand it.
• 36:48
  And you know, you put the time in, you put the effort in, and 24 hours
• 36:52
  into a race, you realize, Hey, we just did 400 and some odd laps
• 36:57
  without killing ourselves too much.
• 36:59
  And a month ago, I couldn't turn a lap.
• 37:01
  So, it's the ability to pick up on things and understand that mistakes are okay.
• 37:06
  But not major mistakes make minimum mistakes in real life,
• 37:10
  the little ones and the big ones.
• 37:12
  Everything's bad.
• 37:14
  Yeah.
• 37:15
  That's where the SIM stuff kind of helps.
• 37:17
  Cause I can make those major mistakes.
• 37:20
  Your safety rating goes down.
• 37:21
  Yeah.
• 37:22
  Just a little bit.
• 37:25
  You know, if you ever want to.
• 37:27
  Have a revisit to the plan.
• 37:28
  I'll be sure to make some time up.
• 37:32
  Hey, and you know, if you ever want old guys screaming at the
• 37:35
  clouds, you're more than welcome.
• 37:38
  Absolutely.
• 37:39
  Absolutely.
• 37:47
  I think that's, I think that's it.
• 37:50
  Go team 24.
• 37:50
  Yeah, go team 24.
• 37:59
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