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5dollarpromo_160x600 Simcraft

February 2012

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M T W T F S S
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iRacing TV

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The Team

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  • David Phillips
    Editor and Chief
    David Phillips is a long-time contributor to print and electronic publications in the U.S. and abroad, including Racer, Autosport, AutoWeek, Motor Sport and SPEEDtv.com, oversees the daily updating of news stories and assigns, edits and contributes feature material for inRacingNews.com.
  • Chris Hall
    iRacing.com Series Writer
    Chris Hall has been writing since the nineties and moved into motorsports reporting in 2005, covering series such as ALMS, British GT, FIA GT, Le Mans and 2CV racing for Full Throttle magazine, Motorsport.com, The-Paddock.net, GTGateway.com, L' Endurance and, of course, inRacingNews. During 2008 and 2009, he worked with the RSS Performance Porsche Carrera Cup Team (and former British GT(C) champions) as a data engineer for a variety of drivers and models of 997s.
  • Jameson Spies
    Contributing Writer
    19 years old, Jameson Spies lives in Quartz Hill, California. He grew-up surrounded by racing. His mother raced late models throughout Southern California while his father built and setup the car. Not surprisingly, Jameson began racing go-karts at the age of 13, and is now racing Spec Trucks at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale. He has a passion about all forms of racing and hopes to make a career out of it.
  • Jason Lofing
    iRacing.com Series Writer
    Jason is 21 years old and was born and raised in Elk Grove. California. A big time NASCAR fan, he hasn’t missed a race on Sunday in years. Lofing is also a huge San Fransisco Giants fan and tries to take in at least a couple games a year. Other than sim racing, his biggest (and far more expensive!) hobby is photography. Although he is rather new to sim racing, Lofing has already accomplished some pretty impressive results, qualifying for the 2011 iRacing Oval Pro Series in Season 1, 2011, winning the inaugural Landon Cassill Qualifying Challenge and finishing runner-up in the second one.
  • Ray Bryden
    Technical contributor
    Ray grew up in Nova Scotia, which means he’s a hockey nut, but in Nova Scotia’s two non-winter months he had to find other diversions, which meant watching F1 racing on weekends with his dad and brothers. Without the resources to get started in racing, he gravitated to computer versions of racing – first Atari games like Pole Position, followed by PC racing games like Indianapolis 500: The Simulation. Dozens of others came and went, until Grand Prix Legends came along and he decided sim-racing was his official hobby. Years were spent enjoying this both offline and online until a few years of fatherhood took priority. When free-time reappeared he heard about iRacing and signed up in 2008 and became so involved in the service that he wrote one of the first books on the subject of sim-racing, iRacing Paddock. When not writing for inRacingNews.com, his main occupation is as a research associate with Saint-Gobain working on advanced ceramic materials.
  • Patrick Atherton
    Contributing Writer
    Patrick Atherton, originally from Adelaide in the state of South Australia, currently resides just outside of Melbourne, Victoria with wife of 17 years and 3 kids. A business manager by profession, but also dabbles with blogging, cartooning and fine art, having been published both as a writer in a short-lived South Australian motorsport yearbook and later as a cartoonist in a niche trade magazine. At the age of 19 he competed in club circuit events in an Austin Healey Sprite, later indulging in sprint karts between 1994 and 2000. Following the move to the State of Victoria he raced Road Race Karts (“Superkarts” as they are known in Australia) in the popular Rotax class, competing at Phillip Island, Oran Park, Mallala, Wakefield Park, Eastern Creek, Calder Park, Sandown and Winton. It was during this time he met former Australian F2 champion and inventor of Australia’s first, and most prolific race simulator rig, Jon Crooke. This culminated in an introduction to Papyrus’ legendary NR2003 simulation, and the subsequent sim racing addiction which brought him to iRacing.
  • Tim Terry
    Contributing Writer
    Tim Terry, aka the voice of Maritime stock car racing, fell in love with sim racing in 2004 after he joined the Sim Racing Network crew as a pit reporter. From October 2004 to SRNtv’s closure in June 2007, he’s covered prestigious races and leagues such as the Online 500, FLM Fall 400, Real Racing Online and the DMP Racing League – each as the lead broadcaster for the company. At the same time the wheels started to turn in another direction as he began announcing stock car racing locally. Terry became the assistant announcer at Scotia Speedworld in May 2007 and took over full duties in May 2009 when long-time voice Mike Kaplan retired from the track. Terry also became the series voice of the Parts For Trucks Pro Stock Tour in ’09 and continues to hold down both posts in 2011. He has also announced races for the Pro All Stars Series, Atlantic Open Wheel and Maritime League of Legends tours and has called races at six different Atlantic Canadian tracks. Terry can be heard online at WebRacingNetwork.com, RLMtv.com and OLRtv.com covering sim races. He also makes occasional appearances on PSRtv.com. In addition to inRacingNews, his articles and columns can be read on ScotiaSpeedworld.ca, MaritimeProStockTour.com and his own website at timterryonline.com.
  • David Allen
    Contributing Writer
    North Carolina born and raised with over 15 years of computer/IT experience, I combine two of my biggest hobbies -- racing and technology -- here at inRacingNews. In my spare time I run a Nascar fan site and cure my own need for speed riding atvs. If it involves technology or racing I'll be there, but combine the two and I'll be looking a front row seat. Stop by and say hello anytime!
  • Allen Krier
    Contributing Writer
    Allen was born in West Palm Beach, Florida but grew up in Atlanta and attended Georgia College and State University where he received a BS in Information Systems. Currently a resident of Albany, GA, he started sim racing in 2008 while in college when iRacing was first released to the public. Since then, Krier has been a two time iRacing Pro Series driver (2009 and 2010), picking up one Pro Series win at Daytona in ‘09. Besides sim racing, Allen’s other hobbies include RC Car racing as well as “attending and watching any sporting event that I can including going to the local dirt track.

2D or Not 2D?

by Katier Scott on January 13th, 2012

158

Is 3D the way forward for sim racing? Probably sim racing’s biggest technology ‘buzz word’ during 2011 was 3D.  What with the growth of 3D TV, the vast increase in the number of 3D films being released and 3D’s cause being championed throughout the gaming world, inevitably, 3D is a subject the sim racing world is keeping its eye on, be it in 2 or 3D. 3D is also a technology that visitors to the Autosport International show are getting the chance to sample for themselves, as the VRX simulators running at iRacing.com’s booth at the NEC this weekend are both triple screen, nVidia 3D setups. However, with one setup running in 2D mode to allow spectators to view the racing easier while the other is running in 3D, it’s [...]

Racing the Plan

by David Allen on January 6th, 2012

178
motorsports simulations

I get up every morning just like most people and I have a plan.  That plan is carried-out based on the events of the day, what I have to do and when I have to have it done. Now, I can see that funny look on your face already, one that says “What does this have to do with iRacing?” What this has to do with iRacing is this: It’s all about management.  We manage tasks in our daily lives.  We know when to give a task everything we have and when giving a task a little less is enough. Sim racing is no different. iRacing has advanced in so many ways that we are now forced to manage our resources during a race.  We have to think about when [...]

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream . . . and Go Faster

by Chris Hall on November 19th, 2011

703
She's getting ready to kick your butt on iRacing tomorrow . . .

Looking for those extra tenths? Try sleeping on it. At its fundamental basics, racing is about being the fastest driver on the track on a given day. It sounds simple, but when you extrapolate that to the thousands of competitors on iRacing, it soon becomes apparent the battle isn’t just with fellow competitors, but with the track that rolls out ahead. Because to be at the top in virtual or real motorsport, means being the one to hustle their car around x miles of circuit the fastest. Whether it’s practice, qualifying or racing, time is one of the governing indicators of who will rise to the top of the pile. In the search for those few extra tenths of a second, sim-racers have been known to spend a small fortune [...]

Got Setup?

by David Allen on October 9th, 2011

454
racing games

Boy, this new iRacing 2.0 is something isn’t it?  Personally, I really don’t have any complaints, but I do enjoy the depth that iRacing goes to in order to give us an accurate racing simulation.  Entering various sessions soon after the build was released all I heard was complaints  . . . which, to be honest, was somewhat expected.  Thanks to the new tire model, those super-loose or “alien” setups as referred to in the forums no longer worked effectively.  If they did work at all, it was only a few laps before the tires were virtually melted-off the car.  Human beings in general seem to resist change and having to redo testing and research to achieve a fast lap didn’t make anyone happy.  However, if you take a moment [...]

Divi’s Guide to iRacing Driver Aids

by Divina Galica on October 3rd, 2011

730
driving games

Listed below are some really awesome iRacing assists for “Rookie” drivers like myself who are challenged by the intricacies of racing simulations. I truly wish some of these aids had been available when I started racing the sim in 2006, but now I use them frequently and find they help a lot. I’m listing them in order of my preference. Splits For some reason for several months I had no idea that if you hit your tab key you brought up a green and red line at the top of your driving screen. Now I use it all the time and find it helps with my lap times especially in qualifying. I usually run in Best Lap mode.  The great thing is that it remembers your best lap for that [...]

The State of Sim Racing

by David Allen on August 19th, 2011

319
racing games

I was cleaning out my office a few days ago and under the mounds of paperwork an old memory was revived.  I found my collection of old racing games and simulators from years ago.  I flipped through the pages of some of the manuals and read the system requirements and kind of chuckled.  Back in the day, 16MB of ram and a 1MB video card were considered state of the art, and hooking a steering wheel to the computer made your house the local hangout for everyone.  Then, I got to the back of some of these manuals and started reading the credits.  Some of the names from 15 years ago are still involved in sim racing development.  Ironically, I thought of the idea for this article before the release [...]

Let the Tournaments Begin

by David Phillips on August 4th, 2011

189
racing games

One of the most exciting aspects of iRacing 2.0 is the new Tournament Racing feature.  Now you can organize, host and stage your own sim racing tournament, with multiple heat races winnowing the field down to the crème de la crème in the final/feature. To learn more about staging your own tournament, check out this great “how to” video: http://youtu.be/F3QDoIpAsKE

Introducing: The Allen Wrench

by David Allen on June 4th, 2011

266
racing games

Editor’s Note: inRacingNews is pleased to introduce David Allen who will be contributing a regular column focusing on the technical side of iRacing.  A long-time sim racer himself, David brings two decades of experience to bear on some the technical challenges associated with sim racing.  Ray Bryden fans relax.  He’ll still be contributing to his, er unique perspectives to inRacingNews.  In other words, it’s a win-win situation for our readers. Building a competitive race car can cost a considerable amount of money right?  If you’re a racer, rookie or not the decision on how to spend that money to run up front can be a brain-numbing decision.  Racing on a simulator in your game room can be the same way. Confused yet?  Don’t worry that’s why I’m here. As a [...]

ROWA: Goddess of Filenames

by Ray Bryden on December 21st, 2010

8
ROWA: Goddess of Filenames

The world will not end on December 21, 2012.  That momentous occasion will occur sometime the day before, on December 20, 2012. The story of this revelation begins with my breakfast, for when I was about to ingest my toasted English muffin, I noticed the image of a god-like figure in the toasted pattern of butter-infused crispy porosity. Though I marvelled at its comforting portrait, my stomach was even more curious about it, so I sent it down directly for its opinion. Immediately I was struck by its loud verbal proclamation: “ROOOOOWWWAAaaaa!” Thus, I concluded, I was possessed by the great goddess “ROWA.” I was taught to always trust my gut. First among the things taught to me by ROWA – long may she be jam smeared – was proper [...]

IndyCar Aero Primer

by Henrik Müller on November 20th, 2010

1,915
IndyCar Aero Primer

Most of new (as well as many experienced) IndyCar drivers feel a bit overwhelmed when they look at the aerodynamic setup options the Dallara IndyCar offers them. However, this subject is not as daunting as you might think. Since most sim racers lack a bachelor’s degree in physics but do know how to race the car, iRacing has developed the aero calculator just for you. You can find this extremely useful tool in the garage on the “tires /aero” screen (see screenshot below). So what does the aero calculator do? This tool calculates the amount of drag your current aero settings generate in relation to the amount of downforce they produce. For example: A high rear wing wicker setting combined with a low rear wing angle can generate the same [...]

Knobs Explained

November 13th, 2010

4
Knobs Explained

Extracting the maximum performance from the fiendishly complex new Williams-Toyota FW31 figures to be a major challenge.  Luckily there are some simple things to remember when dealing with the few controls available for in-sim adjustment of the car set-up. First don’t be distracted by the colors of the buttons – they are meant to keep help you keep your bearings when selecting parameters from the LED display menu. Luckily the colors are rather intuitive: Green = Yes/Enter Red = Drop/Subtract Yellow = 6 Orange = Repuldurance Blue = Re-introvert/Start Over The blue dials correspond to the monopodial shaft vibrocompensator settings. On the left is the ENTabulator, on the right is the EXTabulator, and in the middle is –of course — the MID range retro encabulator. For right hand turns one [...]

My Netflix Queue is ‘Going Faster’

by Ray Bryden on September 18th, 2010

104
My Netflix Queue is ‘Going Faster’

I’m in the doghouse at home. Perhaps I deserve it. I convinced the family we needed to subscribe to Netflix because of the streaming movies we could watch on our new DVD player, and also get a steady stream of DVD’s sent to the house to watch at will. Of course I had an ulterior motive – I had learned that Going Faster, the Skip Barber Racing School DVD, was part of the Netflix library and I was eager to study it. Several weeks later it is still in my DVD player and we still haven’t nudged the queue to the next DVD on the family list. It’s not an addictive disc to watch, and it does cover a lot of the same ground as the iRacing driving school, but [...]

iRacing Takes Realism To The Next Level

by John Bodin on August 8th, 2010

832
iRacing Takes Realism To The Next Level

With the 2010 Season 3 build, iRacing unveiled a new transmission model that introduces a much higher level of realism to the online racing mix in terms of shifting options.  Previously, clicking out of a gear or into another gear would instantly do just that – regardless of whether or not such a gear change would actually be physically possible.  The new transmission model changes that by properly modeling fully-automated sequential, dog-box sequential with throttle cut, dog-box sequential, dog-box h-pattern, and synchromesh h-pattern transmissions depending on the car type and the transmission type associated with the car in real life. This sounds great, but what does the new transmission model really do, and how do these changes affect the cars in iRacing? According to the Season 3 release notes, when [...]

Fixed Setups — Creating A Level Playing Field?

by John Bodin on August 7th, 2010

67
Fixed Setups — Creating A Level Playing Field?

All of this talk about fixed setups got me to thinking, and when it comes down to it, I realized that I don’t really have a good idea of how fixed setups would impact me, personally.   So as an experiment I ran an online race in the Rookie Solstice last night, just to see what jumping into a fixed-setup race would be like. Laguna Seca is a track I’m pretty familiar and comfortable with.  I did my time in the Solstice as quickly as possible just so I could move on to the Spec Racer Ford at the Advanced Rookie level — I’ve run a few races in the Solstice this season for fun, and even though I’m more comfortable and safe in it during race conditions than your typical [...]

Fixed Setups and iRacing: Empowering Your Inner Driver or Frustrating Your Inner Engineer?

by John Bodin on August 4th, 2010

751
Fixed Setups and iRacing:  Empowering Your Inner Driver or Frustrating Your Inner Engineer?

When iRacing unveiled the 2010 Season 3 schedule they also announced the addition of two new fixed-setup series — both of these fixed-setup series will be B-Class series, featuring the C6.R Corvette on the road course side, and the Impala SS Class B on the oval side.  These new fixed-setup series will run in addition to the existing open (adjustable) setup iRacing GT Championship and NASCAR iRacing Class B series on the same schedule but with race distances set at 50% of the adjustable setup events. Fixed setups are nothing new to iRacing — every member initially stated out in fixed-setup series:  The Rookie Legends on the oval side is a fixed-setup series, and the Rookie Solstice on the road racing side is also a fixed-setup series.  Moving up the [...]

Sharp Abe’s Short Tracks

by Ray Bryden on July 17th, 2010

1
Sharp Abe’s Short Tracks

My old buddy Abe was a tall imposing guy; kind of scary-looking in fact. I found out how scary one time when I asked him to remove a tree for me. I came back hours later and he was still getting his axe ready. You see, Abe was kind of a bit crazy about preparation. His axiom was “give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” I learned a lot about preparation that day. Like when you see Abe heading in your direction with an axe he’s been sharpening for hours, find a soft patch of grass when the wooziness hits. After I regained consciousness, I realized Abe was a wise man. My light-headedness was solely from a fear [...]

Hot and Tired

by Ray Bryden on July 3rd, 2010

83
Hot and Tired

I have always been confused by sim racers who complain about the tire temperatures being meaningless and wrong in iRacing, as I have always had the opposite experience since they tweaked the tire model last year. In fact, I find that reading the tire temperatures is vital when trying to tweak a setup. There are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, tire temperature is highly transient and tends to spike as the result of high corning loads. Thus the temperatures you observe will depend somewhat on what has happened to the tires the seconds immediately preceding your exit from the track. For instance, a long progression down pit lane at slow speed will cool-off the tire and may reflect the straight-line aspect of camber on the contact [...]

Tips from a Human Sim-Racer

by Ryan Terpstra on July 1st, 2010

248
Tips from a Human Sim-Racer

Welcome to tips from a human sim-racer.  Unlike the alien iRacers I only have two eyes, two hands and two feet.  I don’t have eyes in the back of my head and my reflexes are only slightly better than average.  This article is designed to help you increase your iRating and lower your lap times.  While many of you don’t know me as I am relatively new to iRacing sim racing isn’t an entirely new concept to me.  The techniques that I use to be fast should be able to help anyone improve their times. The first thing I like to do is start with a base setup depending on the type of track I’m driving.  A track like Road Atlanta with a lot of elevation changes and some fast [...]

Sim Racing Setup Advice from a Blockhead

by Ray Bryden on June 5th, 2010

56
Sim Racing Setup Advice from a Blockhead

William Blake said that only blockheads copy each other, but obviously he’s never tried to set up a racecar, real or simulated. While working on setting-up the Dallara for the iRacing.com Indy 500 event, I was struck by some of the detailed advice Dale Jr had made on the iRacing forums about setting up the COT, which was a great ‘teach a man to fish’ kind of moment. But I also relied upon some other advice I stumbled upon on the Buddy Fey blog site called ‘The Race Engineer’ (http://buddyfey.blogspot.com/). I hesitated to post the advice here for fear of being called-out as a plagarist/blockhead, but a couple of things convinced me that it is ok. First, they are not his words, but those of a colleague of his named [...]

Adjusting the Nut Behind the Wheel

by Ray Bryden on May 15th, 2010

25
Adjusting the Nut Behind the Wheel

We are often in search of the perfect setup, for obvious reasons.  But doing a lot of tinkering in the garage can be quite intimidating, and at the end of it all there may not be a perfect universal setup since driving styles can differ from person to person. So a setup that feels optimal to one person may be undriveable to another. But there are some golden rules to keep in mind before worrying about getting dirt under your fingernails in the garage. Primary among them is that you have to know what the car is telling you, and this can only be achieved by running consistent laps until you know for sure what is happening. Don’t feel frustrated if you are not sure, just do more laps. If [...]