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PC Games (Games) Games

New Racing Simulation Distances Itself From Gamers 208

waderoush writes "In an unusual move that could alienate a large segment of potential customers, iRacing.com, an online racing simulation company that opened its site to the public on August 26, is calling its system a 'driver development tool' that isn't designed for PC or console gamers. 'We don't think of ourselves as a game company,' says one exec. 'World of Warcraft has a real appeal...But our system is more serious, frankly. If you are serious about racing, our product is for you, because getting on a [simulated] track with a full field of other drivers and racing against them safely involves as much commitment and time investment as if you went to racing school.' In fact, to distinguish its system from MMOs, the company has come up with a new acronym to describe its simulation: MMIS, for 'massively multiparticipant Internet sport.'"
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New Racing Simulation Distances Itself From Gamers

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  • by bonkeydcow ( 1186443 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @12:46PM (#24781109)
    I think you can.
    Come on. Oh we are too good to be called a game, but come play it. Give me a break.
    • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:10PM (#24781497)

      You make fun of it, but it's a real issue.

      Have you ever been in game development? If so, what was the reaction of people outside the IT biz when you told them you're making games?

      Creating games is usually a whole lot more complicated and requires a lot more knowledge and experience than the average business application, due to quite a few reasons. You need considerable mathematic knowledge, you need(ed) good assembler skills, you need to know a lot about the APIs you're working with, your code is incredibly time critical so optimization is a core issue for you, etc. All that and more does not apply at all to business apps. I've seen people in business app development that went straight out of some sort of evening school and were put behind a project to create productive code, with little care about stability, safety or reliability. Some bozo at Q&A will do that.

      Yet when you talk with people outside the biz, the guy doing business apps will certainly get a lot more credibility than you, who're "only" making toys.

      I can see why a company does not want to be associated with "toys", that their product is a "serious" racing simulation. Whether it's a marketing stunt is debatable. It certainly is. I just doubt it's just to get some publicity. I can very well see why a company would want to put some distance between themselves and the "toys".

      • by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:16PM (#24781607)

        And I thought they were just trying to appeal to the elitist instinct in many gamers.

        • by PinkPanther ( 42194 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:38PM (#24781959)
          Unlike the rest of you, I am not an elitist.
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by somersault ( 912633 )

          I think it's more likely (or at least I hope so) that their game is just very realistic and that most 'gamers' wouldn't even enjoy it anyway. I've been playing GT: Prologue over the last week on 'professional' physics mode as opposed to the default 'standard' physics. While it is still fun, it can also be highly frustrating compared to most driving games. You have to be very controlled and sensible, just as with real racing.

          In some cases (especially with the Ford GT on 'sports' class tyres rather than racin

      • by polar red ( 215081 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:50PM (#24782161)

        Creating games is usually a whole lot more complicated and requires a lot more knowledge and experience than the average business application

        I would prefer to say different rather than harder. Creating business apps also requires some skills that are not found in games, for example : disentangling the business rules, interacting with users, making sense of the 20 year old system which consists of cobol-programs, jcl, ... all written by 20 different people which aren't there anymore, and you're stuck with a database which is a melting pot of 3 older systems ...

        • Have you seen some of these mmo's?

          I used to do accounting application support and some games have business rules that are as complex as the games I've played.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Opportunist ( 166417 )

          As someone who has done both, I can vouch for business apps being heaps easier to code than even the simplest game you could imagine.

          Disentangling the rules: Yes. One person. Often, not even that. It depends on what exactly you're doing and how complicated the system is you're working with, but generally you need one person, if that, to "translate" the requirements of the business people to the requirements of the IT people. From there on, it's straight coding, and easy coding to boot.

          Interacting with users

      • by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @02:43PM (#24782935) Homepage

        You see this elsewhere in the gaming world. In europe, there is a huge market for historical simulations for obsessed history buffs. They could tell you how heavy a particular shell fired in WW1 was, how long it took to forge an average pike, death rates in small vs large villages in the renissance, etc. And of course there are a lot of different names to these things (historical simulations, etc) to try to differentiate these from the more casual "games" people play.

        In America, we have groups of people obsessed with flight simulators. These are both the people who take 8-hours on a saturday to fly from Boston Logan to SFO in their kitchen, and the more esoteric people who take 3 months to fly a moon mission. Sure, you could call Microsoft Flight Simulator a game, but it is more accurately described as either a Simulator, or a Borderline Creepy Obsession.

        Calling a game which requires that kind of creepy dedication a "sport" doesn't seem all that far off from a categorization standpoint, and it helps them to connect their game with people looking for that kind of thing. I can't comment on the game itself, but this positioning seems understandable.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Blakey Rat ( 99501 )

      It's the same thing as, say, Microsoft Flight Simulator as compared to Crimson Skies. Both are "flying simulations," but Crimson Skies is obviously a game, while Flight Sim is designed to run as accurately and realistically as possible.

      I don't see why there's any confusion here at all. What they're offering is a racing simulation that isn't designed to be a video game, it's designed to be as realistic as possible. Even "realistic" racing sims on consoles aren't all that realistic if you look at how they han

      • by sumdumass ( 711423 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:35PM (#24781907) Journal

        Your probably on to something here. I'm betting they want to make this distinction early on so when the start banning people who cause crashes or drive recklessly, they can say see, I told you.

        • by arth1 ( 260657 )

          Few things are as irritating in Microsoft Flight Simulator X Accelleration as a bunch of people trying to hold an open racing game, and then some kids join who want to crash as much as possible.

          Yes, if they can keep the "gamers" away from it, they will attract more of the serious people. Who have wallets of typical 30-50 year olds, and not 10-20 year olds.

          But in order for this to succeed, they need to provide for plenty of opportunities for people to train. Not just train in a race, but train on their own

          • I'm sure there will be a practice pit and/or training areas. I'm thinking they won't keep the gamers away, they will just keep the ones who aren't serious away. Of course I can think of several places/games where it would be nice to not have all the fools around messing stuff up.

      • by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @05:39PM (#24785579)

        You're on the right track, but I wouldn't use MSFS in the comparison. It is still mostly a game.

        I draw this distinction, because MSFS uses static profiles to draw the physical reactions of their models. This has the drawback of limiting the model to known configurations and conditions. They have a Cessna 182 modeled very closely, but the realism goes out the window if you try to alter the model to add a spoiler or clip a bay off the wings.

        I would have used XPlane against Crimson Skies. XPlane builds a dynamic model based on pre-generated airfoil data. Extend or move the wings around and the plane's behavior changes accordingly. XPlane began life as on guys attempt to create a simulator to save him money in pursuing an IFR certificate.

        However, in either case, your are correct. The realism based programs don't include such things as guns or targets. It's not a game, as much as a simulator. Go to an XPlane fly-in and continously fly around where you're not supposed to and they will eventually kick you off the server. Things are tied closely to the real world. I expect that this racing simulator is similar.

    • by philspear ( 1142299 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:11PM (#24781523)

      Pubwiictstund..

      No, I can't. Damnit! There goes your funny mod.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Quasar1999 ( 520073 )
      Maybe... but I truly hope it isn't a publicity stunt, but rather a simulator.

      I remember buying the original Need For Speed 'game' and enjoying the relatively realistic simulation they pulled off. Ever since then every game out there has been about arcade style play. I do think there is a market for those of us that want simulator style racing/driving games, and why not make it an online community thing.

      The new acronym they came up with to describe it, now that was just stupid. But perhaps it helped ge
      • by Xner ( 96363 )
        Need for speed? Realistic? You were obviously not playing the same game I was.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Quasar1999 ( 520073 )
          Road and Track's The Need For Speed released in 1994 was for the time, pretty realistic simulator on a 486 PC. All other NFS titles since then have been eye-candy arcade style, but if the original was certainly aiming for the simulator feel (even if it wasn't as realistic as it could have been). NFS porsche unleashed attempted to go back in the realism direction as well, but EA killed it and instead went for the stupid wannabe street racer modding crowd, with arcade physics. I just hope no stupid kid plays
          • I just hope no stupid kid plays the game and then tries to drive his Honda Civic at 150km/h on city streets.

            ... actually, you should just hope that kid removes ONLY himself from the gene pool.

            Then, we'd all get what we want... No more damn kids on my lawn!!!

          • Try the Forza Motorsport series for the xbox and the xbox 360. It's a fairly good sim racing game.
      • by Goldberg's Pants ( 139800 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:57PM (#24782285) Journal

        iRacing is simply the MMO business model applied to the racing genre. Sadly a bunch of my race sim buddies have fallen for Dave Kaemmer's bullshit and subscribed. However the reviews I'm hearing from folk are primitive graphics etc...

        Papyrus know how to do racing physics. Grand Prix Legends is ten years old and still holds it's own on the current crop of sims from ISI, Simbin etc... But this just screams of publicity stunt. It's basically a subscription based ranking system. It's kinda like a virtual SCCA.

        Dave Kaemmer stuck a stake through the heart of the NR2003 community when iRacing first came into being as First Racing, and threatened a bunch of folk with lawsuits, actually DID take Tim McArthur to court if I recall (ultimately settled out of court), just so they could reuse code from NR2003 for this thing. Apparently modding a now five year old video game was somehow damaging their business. They changed their name to iRacing after all the bad publicity of threatening their potential customers with legal action.

        I'll stick to sims made by DECENT companies who don't screw their users over, thanks.

        • Grand Prix Legends is ten years old and still holds it's own on the current crop of sims from ISI, Simbin etc...

          ... STUNT is a good driving sim, with good physics that holds its own as well. And it runs on hardware that is 20 years old.

          Can't beat that... unless you're driving a real car, I suppose (oh, now I sound like those anti-guitar hero 'tards...)

        • ...because people know about it.

          They don't call it the "Secret Car Club of America" for nothing....

          DG

        • by Scoth ( 879800 )

          I love taking my friends who think GT4 is so amazingly realistic and sticking them in front of GPL at something like Nuerburgring or Monaco and see if they can make a lap without spinning out. Some of them aren't even able to get to the first corners without traction control.

          (Yes, GT4 is pretty decent as far as console games go, and is probably the most realistic of the console sims, but still doesn't hold a candle to some Papyrus games. I've done some SCCA autocross in a MR car so I have some idea about ho

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by 427_ci_505 ( 1009677 )

        Howdy.

        Try out any title made by Simbin on the PC: GTR, GT Legends, GTR2, and RACE.

        GTR is FIA GT1 and GT2 cars, like in Lemans.
        GTR2 is more of the same.

        GT Legends is FIA GTC65, GTC76 and TC65 classes in a game.

        RACE I believe is WTCC racing.

        They are very realistic and have a pretty active community. They also support a clutch pedal and H-pattern shifter setup, if you have one.

        Disclaimer: I don't work for Simbin, I'm just an avid racing sim gamer.

    • They're not a game, just like Marget Atwood doesn't write science fiction [sfwriter.com]

    • Come on. Oh we are too good to be called a game, but come play it. Give me a break.

      Yeah, it may be a publicity stunt, but I don't know if it's a well thought-out one. Is the number of people who want something even more extreme than present racing sims really that large? How many of those are going to readily say "Why yes I -am- an elitist, thank you for marketing to me"?

      I read the headline and translated it as "New Racing Simulation Distances Itself From Money".

    • by 2short ( 466733 )

      "It's not a video game, it's a driving simulator."

      I can't even remember what game I heard that said about, but the guy sounded like he was sure he was imparting some deep insight. That was 1987. It was a video game; so is this.
    • Setting a goal is also important.

      A good *game* is quite often *not* realistic. Take the whole controversy over the graphics in Diablo III - it can look a lot better, and its unrealistically bright, but they chose it for gameplay. Taking racing games - why did the Need For Speed saga do so well? It aimed at casual gamers who don't care about realism...and thus it's fun to play.

      It takes a bit more seriousness to tackle a more simulator type game. I play Forza Motorsport, which aims to be a simulator. It's fuc

  • by nickswitzer ( 1352967 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @12:47PM (#24781111) Homepage
    'MMIS, for 'massively multiparticipant Internet sport.' That is one hell of a tongue twister.
  • I like it! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rmadmin ( 532701 ) <rmalekNO@SPAMhomecode.org> on Thursday August 28, 2008 @12:47PM (#24781119) Homepage
    As an autocrosser (SCCA SOLO II), I must say, most "racing" games don't really take the edge off in the winter. Gran Turismo 4 for the PS2 did an OK job, but not a great one. I look forward to this nice little niche. =)
    • by Amouth ( 879122 )

      same here.. although looks like they are going to rape the money out of you

    • I did Solo II for a while too, and there's nothing like being in a car. Racing takes at least 3 senses: Sight is obviously important, but mostly to look at what's coming next. To get through the present turn, you rely on the memory of what you saw on the approach or the practice laps, feeling the g's, and listening to the engine. There's not really any time to look at the speedometer, so without those sensations (as with "sims"), you're basically making an "blind guess" as to how hard you're turning or

      • by DG ( 989 )

        Oscoda CENDIV 1999, I'm coming out of the "big corner" onto the "long straight" hard on the cas when the car suddenly starts shaking and stops pulling. Puzzled, I drop my eyes to the dash and see the tach sitting at 7700.

        The shaking was the rev limiter.

        On the next run, I shifted. The following week, I installed a sequential shift light http://farnorthracing.com/seat.html [farnorthracing.com] and never had the problem again.

        I found that when I was really rocking and rolling that I got auditory exclusion. A gun could go off next

  • A better headline: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Thursday August 28, 2008 @12:48PM (#24781139) Homepage Journal
    New MMO startup is completely full of itself, wants to sell you overpriced hardware.

    It's clear that this is a game, they're just targeting it to people who normally sneer at "gamers", and who have a lot of disposable income.
    • by martinw89 ( 1229324 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @12:53PM (#24781215)

      Yeah. From the article, it's a $20 monthly or $156 annual subscription. THEN, to get anything more than absolutely shitty cars (Pontiac Solstice??) and shitty tracks you have to buy your way up.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by hardburn ( 141468 )

        Solstice is an oddball choice. Miata would have been a better one for that class of car. Looks like they're associated with Skip Barber Racing Schools, which leans towards using Mazdas. They're based out of Laguna Seca, which is a Mazda sponsered/owned track (not sure on the exact ownership status), and they use Miatas in their racing program. I see they also have the Formual Skip Barber 2000 in their car list.

        Tracks look like they're heavily set on American tracks. Silverstone is the only European track th

        • that's the point of GT5 prologue, IT IS half finished.

        • Agreed.. the Mazda is basically the best stock-handling car you can get for under $60k, let alone under $20k. The fact that its 0-60 is measured in minutes is more than surpassed by the fact that you can just drive with the pedal down the whole time. (Exaggerating.. please don't try that at home kids). Throw on a few aftermarket suspension components and you'll dust pretty much anything else in at least your price range, if not your racing class. And I say this with equal measures of contempt and admira

      • by hurfy ( 735314 )

        Very interested...

        But i want to know more about buying the upgrades before i get wrapped up in a new game of this level. Seems to be zero info. $2, $20, $$$ at least they could say from $x to $y but it seems you have to plunk down at least $20 to even find out :(

      • by Luyseyal ( 3154 ) <swaters@NoSpAM.luy.info> on Thursday August 28, 2008 @02:42PM (#24782927) Homepage

        THEN, to get anything more than absolutely shitty cars (Pontiac Solstice??) and shitty tracks you have to buy your way up.

        Well, as this is a simulation and not a game, I expect you will be able to sell advertising on your rig to make up for the extra purchasing costs.

        -l

    • I'm not sure they're full of themselves so much as trying a marketing gimmick they know to be a gimmick. So maybe it's that they think the public is full of themselves, which some of the racing fans probably are.

      Many games try to claim they're not part of a genre. The guys who made metroid prime 3 were trying to say it was an entirely new genre, a first-person adventure, not a first person shooter. I mean, sure, you shoot in it, but this is an adventure, not like doom or anything. Of course, this was mo

      • by grumbel ( 592662 )

        Many games try to claim they're not part of a genre.

        They certainly are part of a genre, but a genre which pretty much died out years ago and was never existent on consoles to begin with, we used to call those games 'simulations'. You might remember the kind of 'games' that tries to make things primary real, not making them primary fun (i.e. no leveling up, no primary focus on graphic, no unlockables, etc.). Its pretty obvious why they try to distance themselves from the rest, since most of what qualifies as 'simulations' these days is really pretty laughable

        • I think the lack of crashes is not a failure of simulation, it's an artifact of it being a simulation. Crashing is part of the real-life experience of racing, but then again so is driving to the track, doing days upon days of maintenence to the engine and car, time trials, getting endorsements, giving interviews, making professional connections... in other words, there's a lot that goes into real-world racing that's not racing.

          You wouldn't want that in a racing simulator because that's boring.

          Much the same

          • by grumbel ( 592662 )

            Much the same, crashes are arguably not important for a racing simulation.

            Sorry, but that is quite seriously complete and utter bullshit. When you don't have crashes you have no penalty for driving into walls and other cars and when you don't have that penalty such crazy unrealistic driving becomes a valid practice to race around the track faster and to take over opponents, turning what might have been a reasonable simulation into a game of bumper cars. And no, they didn't fixed that, since I used that tactic throughout all of Grand Turismo games I have played, include 4 and it w

        • I thought they cut crashes because the car companies didn't want to license the image of a damaged vehicle - they only way they could show off a car was in perfect, pristine form. I guess they think that we'll come to believe that their cars are indestructible in real life too..
    • by bidule ( 173941 )

      New MMO startup is completely full of itself, wants to sell you overpriced hardware.

      As opposed to /. pundits so full of themselves. Well, we know the drill.

  • Guys (Score:4, Interesting)

    by martinw89 ( 1229324 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @12:49PM (#24781153)

    Stop taking yourself so seriously and lighten up a little bit. Requiring a subscription and a racing wheel should be enough to weed out the mad 1337 gamers. Do you really think all the WoW people are going to suddenly poo their pants over a racing game?

    • by hurfy ( 735314 )

      Might be worth a try since it seems to limit the idiots a tad. If i can ever get my wheel calibrated correctly.

      I wonder how they 'require' a wheel? Does it check? That implies only certain wheels. Mine is not really name brand and the company only does profession sims now and bailed on the retail altogether. And do i have to actually use it? lol, faster with joystick usually :)

      Funny timing, i just tried out my wheel last night after a year.

    • by kabocox ( 199019 )

      Stop taking yourself so seriously and lighten up a little bit. Requiring a subscription and a racing wheel should be enough to weed out the mad 1337 gamers. Do you really think all the WoW people are going to suddenly poo their pants over a racing game?

      Um, I figure 1337 gamers would be the only ones interested in their game. Why? Quite simple. Who else already has a racing wheel? Um, only 1337 gamers. I don't even have a racing wheel, and I have a few car games.

      Actually, I'm curious if any racing people/fan

      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        Who else already has a racing wheel? Um, only 1337 gamers.

        Nintendo has sold a lot more than 1,337 copies of Mario Kart Wii in each region, each with an adapter to convert a Wii Remote into a Bluetooth racing wheel.

        • by kabocox ( 199019 )

          Nintendo has sold a lot more than 1,337 copies of Mario Kart Wii in each region, each with an adapter to convert a Wii Remote into a Bluetooth racing wheel.

          Well of course Nintendo is a smart game company. This company is turning their nose up at the entire Mario Kart audience though. I'd think that this company would want to sell it's own classy sim racing wheel and pedals though.

        • by eln ( 21727 )

          Well sure, but the Wii Wheel isn't really the kind of wheel you'd expect someone to use if they were seriously into racing simulations. It's not terribly realistic, since it's not attached to anything and has no ability to do any sort of real force feedback. I like it fine for things like Mario Kart and Speed Racer, but I'm not a serious racing simulation fan. If I were, I'd expect I'd want something with a base that offered an experience closer to a real steering wheel with resistance and vibration and

      • 1337 gamers aren't the target market.
        1337 gamers with more money than brains are the target market.
      • I am a NASA member (national autosport association member) and NASA has hyped it up a bit on their own website/emails to members along with advertisments in Grassroots Motorsport.

        People who actually race at an amatuer level, or do HPDE have the cash to spend on such a sim (a track weekend runs at least 400+ when you consider at least access fees plus tyres/brakes etc).

    • by Scoth ( 879800 )

      LFG Heroic Nuerburgring. Must have T6 Tires and Engine, 550hp unbuffed pst

  • Not a game. So? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bieeanda ( 961632 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @12:52PM (#24781203)
    The only difference between this and a hard-core flight sim (whose players --pardon, enthusiasts-- have been known to sink multiple thousands into a simulated cockpit) that I can see, is that your tires aren't supposed to leave the ground.

    Now, that silly MMIS acronym? That's 100% publicity stunt.

  • A game is a game is a game... whether you call it a simulation or a VE or a VR...

    Or maybe not.

    I've had the opportunity to go on a track a couple times, and have also driven a couple interesting cars. My take is that the games are really a lot of fun, but don't quite give the same experience as, you know, real life. For example, accelerate hard from a stop and some cars will torque steer, some start to fishtail, some compensate electronically. When I shift gears I often go more by the sound of the engine rat

  • Sport? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Trojan35 ( 910785 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:10PM (#24781503)

    If driving in a hot car for 5 hours @188MPH isn't considered a sport... ...sitting in front of your computer for 5 hours DEFINITELY IS.

  • by r_jensen11 ( 598210 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:11PM (#24781529)

    If you are serious about racing, our product is for you, because getting on a [simulated] track with a full field of other drivers and racing against them safely involves as much commitment and time investment as if you went to racing school.

    I don't know about you, but nothing gets my adrenaline running like feeling those virtual G's I pull when taking sharp turns. I mean, seriously, that shit is more realistic than driving my sports car on the open roads.

  • by dorix ( 414150 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:22PM (#24781701)

    I like how these guys think. I too am producing a serious online simulation project that isn't really aimed at lowly "gamers".

    My "iShitting" bowel movement simulation is an exciting new way to experience the joy of a good crap with thousands of friends from all around the world. iShitting will allow serious shitters to compete in such areas as Stench, Log Size, Color, and Composition (with bonus points awarded for visible undigested food, gum, etc). World of Warcraft has a real appeal... but seriously, folks, do you think that somebody who pretends to be an elf has what it takes to produce (and survive) the truly gargantuan masterpieces that professional shitters are famous for? Get real.

    For the sake of realism, iShitting requires a full-size USB or Bluetooth toilet controller. iShitting will not support any gamepad, keyboard and mouse, wireless wand and nunchuk, Spaceball, trackball, joystick or paddles.

    Like the good folks at iRacing, I also feel that iShitting should not be called a simple MMO. I have devised my own clever acronym that captures all that iShitting is: MMSGBMBMSOPF (Massively Multishitter Stinky Gigantic Brown Messy Bowel Movement Simulated Online Production Facility).

    • by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @05:26PM (#24785337) Homepage

      Like the good folks at iRacing, I also feel that iShitting should not be called a simple MMO. I have devised my own clever acronym that captures all that iShitting is: MMSGBMBMSOPF (Massively Multishitter Stinky Gigantic Brown Messy Bowel Movement Simulated Online Production Facility).

      Hey, that's neat, it's an acronym and an onomatopoeia.

  • by SendBot ( 29932 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:25PM (#24781753) Homepage Journal

    getting on a [simulated] track with a full field of other drivers and racing against them safely involves as much commitment and time investment as if you went to racing school.

    Oh, so it takes less time than actually playing WoW.

    • Oh, so it takes less time than actually playing WoW.

      Do people still play that? I thought they just botted through the entire thing.

      • by SendBot ( 29932 )

        ha! after 12 months, I actually paid for glider and got banned three weeks later. It wasn't worth it for me to play without that and now I don't have to worry about wow at all. That game is too repetitive in so many ways and it's so slow running around everywhere that I think it actually discourages exploration. Plus it's a lot of work to manage all that inventory and auctioning.

  • For those of us who WANT true simulations, this is a very good thing. There are few simulations out there, but a lot of games.

    Now, if only they'd come out with something similar for flight sims...

    • Now, if only they'd come out with something similar for flight sims...

      It'd never happen, not in america (or any of her allies) at least... too many terrorists who want to learn how to fly.

      On a completely different note, I'm glad I'm not american.

  • If you are serious about racing, our product is for you, because getting on a [simulated] track with a full field of other drivers and racing against them safely involves as much commitment and time investment as if you went to racing school.'

    And of course spending thousands of hours behind a joystick to learn to pilot a 747 in Microsoft Flight Sims and do it properly, is not the same.

    Personally I won't play this. For my money, if I'm racing, I'd rather shoot some pedestrians, or run them down, and have t

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Exactly. Why pay for a simulated real life experience? I get videogames so I can do stuff that doesn't normally happen in my day to day life.

      I guess it is the same reason people rent porn. C'mon, who would rent porn that is realistic with normal/ugly people .. and the sort of thing that your mom and dad do on their anniversary?
    • Personally I won't play this. For my money, if I'm racing, I'd rather shoot some pedestrians, or run them down, and have the cops chase me in GTA, much more fun.

      I agree. I love GTA racing online. If you're behind a car, you shoot out his tires and then pass him real fast before he shoots out your tires!

  • WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by llZENll ( 545605 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @02:10PM (#24782477)

    "because getting on a [simulated] track with a full field of other drivers and racing against them safely involves as much commitment and time investment as if you went to racing school"

    So you truley believe that:

    buying a $50 USB steering wheel
    paying $10/month for your racing game
    racing from the comfort of your home in your underwear
    the biggest fear of dying is malnutrition

    Equates to:

    renting a $200,000 racecar or using your own car
    flying or driving to a racetrack and renting it for $50-$1000
    suiting up with flameretardant clothes, full face helmet, full body restraints
    feeling G forces, pure adrenaline, and the fear of bursting into flames at any moment

    Of course, why didn't I see it!

    • He didn't say it matches the experience. He said it matches the commitment and that's an important distinction. Having spent many years racing online, and having participated in a number of online racing leagues, I don't find his comment all that out of touch with the reality of that particular gaming community. There were folks in the leagues in which I raced that would practice 30-40 hours/week, which in my not so humble opinion bordered on the pathological. And that didn't count the seat time wh

  • Life for Speed (Score:3, Informative)

    by MaWeiTao ( 908546 ) on Thursday August 28, 2008 @02:22PM (#24782643)

    There's an excellent racing simulator out there already; Live for Speed [lfs.net]. I was impressed by it's realism, cars handle as expected. They've modeled suspensions well and the game even accounts for tire flex. There are guys out there who've set up cars specifically for drifting and that's pretty much all they do. If you've got a controller that supports it you can even play with a clutch pedal.

    It also scales up nicely to high resolutions, and it performs well. I had it running at 2560x1024 across two monitors and it ran consistently at 50-60fps on a 3ghz P4 with a Radeon 9800 Pro.

    Where the game is likely to disappoint is in the lack of cars. Most of the cars are inspired by actual models but not the real thing and the tracks aren't based on actual courses. Although they did manage to get approval to include a BMW Sauber F1 car in the game. That car is impressive.

    Contrast that with Gran Turismo which has a huge library of actual cars. Although despite the amount of work Sony supposedly has put into those games I've never been impressed by the physics and even worse, the AI.

    So I'm curious about iRacing but not yet impressed. And I can't say I'm keen about all the oval tracks and the Nascar leanings.

    • It also scales up nicely to high resolutions, and it performs well. I had it running at 2560x1024 across two monitors and it ran consistently at 50-60fps on a 3ghz P4 with a Radeon 9800 Pro.

      Are you sure about that? You might want to check those figures -- I'm quite sure an old Radeon 9800 Pro doesn't go up that high in resolution, nor could it maintain that sort of framerate unless this game is beyond ancient. :\

      • by Molochi ( 555357 )

        85 Hz @ 2048 x 1536. 100Hz @ 2560x1024 falls in that range for the RAMDAC. I don't remember being limited to 1024x768 on my old dual monitor r9800pro setup. I think it ran at 1880x14xx and 1600x1200.

        LFS is an older OGL game. It looked pretty good and played well though all things considered.

  • So let's review (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28, 2008 @02:33PM (#24782799)

    1) iRacing buys rights/code/everthing related to NASCAR Racing 2003, Sierra/Papyrus's final great NASCAR sim.

    2) They then chase off a lot of modders for the game (who were making custom tracks, etc), threatening legal action etc etc. (see: http://forum.tmcarthur.net/viewtopic.php?t=52) After meeting resistance, their lawyers presumably move on to more productive activities, like kicking puppies.

    3) Now, years later, they finally get around to releasing a new "racing simulation" based on what's now 6 year old code. And they want people to pay out the bum for it.

    4) rFactor is probably better anyway.

    Good luck with that, guys.

  • MM seems to require O. Particularly that first M.

    Diablo 2 at your LAN party was Multiplayer, and sometimes O, but never Massive.

    Are there games that are O, but not M or MM? Eventually we could just say ORPG or OFPS and the MM will be implied.

  • In an unusual move that could alienate a large segment of potential customers...

    You're kidding, right?

    Tell me if you've heard this before:
    "Ampheta-Slim is too powerful for the casual dieter. Only use it if you need to lose at least 40 pounds or more."
    or
    "Possible side effects of Erectrify are a boner that lasts more than four hours..."
    Yeah... those really scare customers away. So, again, we hear "Oooh. Our product is so good, it's probably too good for you... so you'd better not use it."

  • "Also, unlike game programmers, our poo doesn't stink."
  • If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call it a duck. This looks like a game and sounds like a game. I call it a game. That doesn't mean it's not a faithful simulation of racing; it just means the publishers are either really full of themselves, trolling for publicity, or both.

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