With the announcement thread stuck at 146 threads for the time being, I thought it would be nice to tell about our typical sim racing session for the members on here.... -- How often and how long do you race for each week? Me: probably 6 or 7 sessions a week, anywhere from 30 minutes to hour, rarely more. Normally i get in 2 races or so. --- Do you prefer AI or online? Me: Online, enjoy racing real drivers, even get a laugh out of it sometimes. -- How are you doing with going fast? Myself: im getting faster, maybe "average online racer". I grab a pole once in awhile if no aliens present. I still suck at passing but surprise myself sometimes with a slick move. This weekend i was really leading or top 3 an unusual amount of races, but rarely maintained that lead.(concentration, must work on) -- When you sim race, how often do you play R3E vs other sims? (Trucking does not count as sim race!) Me: Probably 85%. I fire up Assetto Corsa from time to time. Its still a good sim. -- Last one - what apps do you start along with R3E? Me: logitech profiler, dashmeter pro, simvibe, telemtry translater, and of course Crew Chief. Edit: Feel free to add more questions that may be useful or interesting.
Clear my desk of all paper work. Mount my steering wheel to the desk. Move the triple screen monitors into place. Attach my android dashboard to the wheel. Start up crew chef. Click the R3E icon and wait for the game to load...........still waiting ...nearly there.......yay Select a car and track. Wait for the track to load......still waiting ....press the qualify button and then.............................."Hey Dad, come and shoot some hoops with me.....PLEASE" grrrrr a pretty typical session for me LOL
Fire up Crew Chief in debug mode just in case and start recording all the data it reads (so I can play it back later without having to race) Start R3E Join a race Race for 2 minutes Notice a bug in Crew Chief Quit Replay the recorded data Spend 2 hours rummaging through code fixing stuff Go to bed
Actually it *should be* 'go to bed regretting ever starting this ridiculous vanity project and wondering how many happy hours sim racing I've traded for long evenings banging away at a keyboard or talking crap into a microphone'
5-6 days a week. Depends a little on how tired I am after work. As for how long the sessions are, that entirely depends on what I'm doing. If I'm fiddling with the AI files, it usually goes on for several hours, testing this, that and the other. Races are rarely longer than 30 minutes. I tend to zone out after that. These days, I'm strictly AI. It's not that I don't like online I do enjoy the banter that is usually involved when racing the same people regularly (RD in my case) But there are several limitations when it comes to online racing. You're limited to racing one particular combo, at one specific time. The timing thing is a severe problem in my case since I get up very early, and most online races take place fairly late. Second, online doesn't guarantee close racing in the same way that AI does. I have spent countless races just doing laps because I had nobody at my level to race against. Third, AI doesn't complain. Don't get me wrong, I have met several very fast online racers who can do amazing things with a virtual cars. But oh my god, there are some f*cking primadonnas out there, and I, for one, have grown weary of having to cater to peoples egos. Well, I'm going nowhere fast, does that count? Seriously though, I am getting better although usually by accident than by design. And I'm fine with that. I do this to have fun, not to have a second job. So I don't take it seriously enough to practice for hours on end. I usually just jump into whatever takes my fancy that day, and have at it. 70%, or something like that. The rest is spent on AMS or GTR2. With R3E, only CrewChief (Assuming that I remember to switch it on). With GTR2 I usually also have MoTec opened.
Only add on crew chief, generally only get to play Friday and Saturday night after the fam have gone to bed, about 2 hours each time. Never played online, can't be bothered having to wait to see if people are online, only limited timeframe to play so ai it is.
- Start raceroom - Quit raceroom because I forgot to start TrackIR - Start raceroom again - Do some hotlapping - Drive car with H-shifter, get up to find aquasocks because I do heel and toe wrong and it hurts wearing socks only - Drink beer - Once beer kicks in, blame sector3 for making cars not suitable for my "skills" - Drink more beer - Blame everybody faster than me of cheating - More beer, drive Ford Capri erratically, turn up the volume because it sounds so mean - Angry girlfriend - End of session Edit: Actually to answer the questions: Usually every 2-3 days, I'm not fast, don't play a lot online due to horrible internet in the Philippines. Almost exclusively play raceroom ever since they improved the FFB, awesome now. Sometimes play AC, but that's because of Porsche and a romp in some of the older models, not really because of AC itself. No apps except for Crew Chief at times to hear mr_belowski pronounce names wrong (It's all in jest, awesome app )
Ah yes! I should have added this as a branch of my flow chart. Great answers! On trading time to code crew chief...surely that must be quite the showpiece to potential employers...id call it a careerbuilder, in addition to stratospheric fame in the sim racing community!! (I guess thats the vanity part)
I put my wheelstand pro in front of my TV, get my IKEA Poäng "Racing" Seat in front of the wheelstand. Start Dashmeter Pro on my Android, start it on PC. Start Crew Chief. Start R3E. Getting in my racing/rocking chair with wireless keyboard and mouse on another chair to my right. Forgot to pee, so I get up again. After peeing I usually select a training session with AI to get warm. Then I jump on a server, usually WTCC or GTR3, sometimes DTM or an open wheeler. I stay on one server for maybe 3 races. More if possible. After that I watch the replays to see how stupid I drove. I'm a very mediocre driver... not very fast but also not very slow. Midfield I would say. I think I won an online race once. A few times second and third but usually I'm placed something like around 10th place (with a 24 cars starter field). What bugs me out the most is that I race alone most of the time.. there is a group of cars fighting some seconds ahead from me, and a group of cars fighting some seconds behind... but I stay alone But when there is the time I get a challenger.. I lose my nerves and jump into the graveltrap. Not always.. but I'm very prone to drive like the first human when someone is smelling my booty. Also I get so nervous that my hands and feet start to tremble... jesus christ it's just a game but I get so fuckin nervous. halp.. Oh and I usually race on weekends, maybe once during the week. So 2 to 3 times per week. Would say 1/4 against AI and 3/4 against you guys. I play 90% R3E, 4% GTR2, 3% Race 07, 2.9% Project Cars 2, 0.1% Others (AMS, Assetto Corsa, rFactor2)
Watch youtube videos: See Jimmie B have amazing battles with AI on RRRE Watch Over the line video's to see how fast I should be able to go on a track with proper practice. Get very excited to start and try for myself Spend 2 hours racing only improving 0.4 seconds on laptime and that was probably already after the first 10 minutes. Still 2 seconds behind the over the line videos... Get annoyed, quit and go to bed I have a lot to learn still...
My ''racing'' days lately: Watch WEC videos on youtube try to find a endurance league that uses LMP1 Don't find any Get angry Turn on Football Manager
My routine, 2 or 3 times a week. PC on. Kettle on. Do the washing up (brownie points.) Make coffee. Offer to make the wife a coffee. (I have instant, she only likes 'proper coffee.') Squeeze into chair (normal office chair but 'wheels' removed.) Load Crew Chief or Sound Shift (game dependant) Load up game (40% RRE / 40% iRacing / 30% other racing / 5% something else.) Race/practice. Remember my coffee. It's gone cold. Squeeze out of chair. Make coffee. (make sneak roll past WOWarcrafting wife, no need to offer her a drink.) Pee. Squeeze into chair. Race some more. Drink coffee on straights. Send Steam message to my boy, telling him to get off his PC Race some more. Squeeze out of chair Kick boy off his PC. Dad Stuff Husband Stuff Bedtime. Star Wipe to Credits......
> How often and how long do you race for each week? Actually, too much. I got my first wheel few weeks ago and R3E driving has been promoted to my main hobby. > Do you prefer AI or online? I had some fun with AI when I discovered R3E, maybe in January. And since I tried a terrible race where it was impossible for me to do a lap without being pushed by AI, I restarted maybe 20 times... Since I only played online. On payable content servers, you can find fair races with great drivers. On free content servers you can also sometimes find chaos, and that's somehow fun to try to escape alive from this chaos, it's like a game in the game. ^^ > How are you doing with going fast? I find I'm not as fast as I would like, my main issue in races is probably about consistency, I'm also bad at car setup so actually I mostly play with default setups. For example, on a 3 laps Nordshleife race I can do a good race in P6 (on 20+ drivers) for the 2 first laps, and then I decide to push more on a turn for any reason, I do a mistake, loose 4 positions, and so I'm deconcentrated and will do more and more mistakes until I'm P19 before end of race... :'( Sometimes it's even a rage quit... I like to play leaderboards and competitions, but didn't play them a lot since I have the wheel. It seems I'm not bad at hill climb competitions, I still have to beat 0.3 s to take back the lead on the current one, but I'm afraid to drive it again for hours before to record a better time, I already played this map for days when I won the last competitions (with gamepad ^^) and this is getting boring. In competitions on regular tracks, there are really fast drivers (and setups) and that's motivating to try to get as close as possible to their time. But I'm still trying to understand how they can be so fast... ^^ > When you sim race, how often do you play R3E vs other sims? 100 %. I always played a single game at a time of each game category I like. For the past years my sim was Gran Turismo (not a full sim I know ^^), my FPS was Battlefield and my rallye game was the not-so-good official WRC series (was playing on PS3). > Last one - what apps do you start along with R3E? Like WuWu I start some beers but we probably can't consider a beer as an app. > Typical R3E session (at least for the last days) - Calibrate pedals: better to do it before to drive, to avoid crashing in another player in qualif session cause the breaks didn't work "as expected" ! - Choose my current drift training car. Since some days I tried to drift in R3E, it's not a good idea with race cars equiped with race tires, but as I said I play only one sim at a time, so if there's a place to drift, it's in R3E! Actually it's the Opel Omega from DTM92. Before it was the Audi Quattro, it's really easy to drift but lacks of power, and the next step in learning is to drift a RWD and the Opel appears to be a good choice. I think about writing a topic about drifting in R3E, where I'll give my tips about easing the drift in R3E (easiest cars, car setup, FFB setup) cause I find I'm not the only one to love drift. But don't be wrong, I'm not a pro drifter and won't teach anybody how to drift! ^^ - Drift warm-up, sometimes on an online Nordschleife server. The Nordschleife parking is perfect for this, and I often find funny people who also want to drift and race the parking! - Drift the Nordschleife, good way to practice. - When arms are destroyed by the drift training, I do a pause, then look for an online regular race with a regular driving. Or I do a leaderboard on a car/track combo I want to play. > Me: Online, enjoy racing real drivers, even get a laugh out of it sometimes. Ha, you remember me a guy I saw recently on Nordschleife, he was at work trying to drive a Group 5 with keyboard... Hahaha I had lot of fun following him, in fact I would have been able to follow him on a bicycle, he had so much pain just to align with the road and start driving. So he was spinning, spinning, spinning, and sometimes with a bit of luck was able to "drive" to reach the next turn and start spinning again. LoL No offense to this player, it was just really funny to watch.
Currently, I'm trying to get my master's degree in software engineering, so my typical sim race session consists of watching popular YouTubers like EmptyBox and other members of the league I occasionally race in while I'm studying matroids, linear programming and other "interesting" stuff. But the addiction is strong, I must play at least a few short single player races every weekend.
@Mr_Mints_Taboo ah yes the coffee, how can i forget...integral part of my racing and why i love ETS and ATS so much...very coffee drinker friendly. As for it getting cold, ill microwave a cup before throwing out a good pot, provided no more than say 24 hrs have passed. Yes, its not as good....
Put in a jar and into the fridge at around 1/2 hour old. Then it will be much fresher for nuking it. Its an integral part of my life as well.