Sim racing

iRacing is my drug of choice, embarrassing the amount I have spent on my gear under the assumption it will make me quicker

Speaking of which, the Fanatec CSL direct drive wheelbase I ordered is getting sent out early. Shame it will be sitting in a UPS warehouse for months and will cost an arm and a leg in tax thanks to dipshits that got their partition from the rest of the world

I bought a CSW2.5 in their black Friday sale last year. Very happy with it, although my only point of reference was my old G25. It's night and day better than that.

I expect I'll go DD next, but am in no rush. The reviews of the CSL DD are largely very positive and it just shows how much the hardware keeps improving. Kind of excited to see what's next as their replacement mid tier offering will presumably be a 10nm+ DD which would be perfect for me.

With 8nm on my CSW it's mostly enough but there are some occasions when a little more oomph would be nice. Not sure I need or could justify a DD1 though.

The Brexit thing is indeed highly annoying. Fanatec should really add a checkout option saying 'I confirm I didn't vote for this, knew it was a stupid idea and should not get penalised' and the UPS admin fee gets waived. The actual tax situation should work out about the same, you just pay it in the UK on import rather in Germany at the point of sale.

I ordered all my Fanatec gear pre Brexit, but the Mclaren GT wheel dispatch got delayed into the new year and was, therefore, subject to the new procedures which added a bit more expense and a lengthy shipping delay.

Essentially we now don't pay German VAT at the point of sale so the buy price is now 20% cheaper or so for UK customers. Instead, once UPS get the item into their warehouse in the UK, you'll be contacted to pay an amount comprised of UK VAT @ 20%, a UPS Brexit admin fee of £15 and possibly some additional duty. I'm a bit iffy on this last part as it is only applicable on goods over £135 and depends on the commodity code. I believe computer components are tariff-free and I don't think I got billed anything extra on my Mclaren rim. In the end, I think receiving the rim post Brexit cost me an extra £15-20, for the privilege of UPS holding it in a warehouse in Essex for 3wks (I could see on tracking where it was, but they refused to deliver it sooner due to 'Brexit related delays'). Do update us with how you get on, as it'll be interesting to see if things have improved as UPS were a definite bottleneck in Jan/Feb.

Regarding good FFB, have you tried raceroom since they completely rewrote their FFB to be entirely physics-based? It was a proper revelation and was the main reason why I gravitated away from iracing and ACC.

In RR I can jump in a new car and drive by reacting to the sensations through the wheel as they tell me if I'm approaching the limit and then I can ease off a bit.  If I do go over the limit I can often recover understeer or catch oversteer. It's just intuitive and I don't have to think, I just react. It means I can usually lap safely within 5 laps and be more or less on midpack multiplayer pace within 10 laps. I don't have a huge amount of spare time, so being able to spend more time competitively racing and less time practising is great for me.

In iracing, even with the irFFB app, I find I have to put in 20-50 laps of practice to learn and memorise where the limit was through trial and error, and overstepping that limit was rarely recoverable. Might be because I only have a D license but I also find it makes the racing more attritional rather than competitive and a lot of wheel to wheel stuff ends with one party in the wall. In many ways, it doesn't feel that different to me now than it did 10 years when I first tried it. It's a pity as the multiplayer infrastructure and stat tracking is way ahead of the others.

ACC is somewhere in the middle. Less lethal than iracing near the limit so is less frustrating, but doesn't convey what the car is doing as well as RR so it takes me much longer to find that limit and be competitive, so again requires more practising, less racing.

I've heard it basically nails one core (not unlike iracing actually), so although it's pretty archaic it could be that? Pretty odd otherwise as it seems comparatively undemanding.

FWIW I have a 5600x, 3080 FE and am running 7880x1440 which is more pixels than most VR headsets and it's always above 100fps with everything maxed. The only stutter I've noticed is during replays, occasionally FPS will drop for about 3secs before going back to normal. Suspect that is just some bad code related to how it buffers when streaming the replay from disk though.

Might be a VR specific bug as you say.

I don't know why I keep going back to F1 2021 online. Constantly getting warnings for hitting someone when it isn't even my fault.. really poor.

Not a fan of Codies arcade leanings, though I am all about open wheel racing

Shame they have the only licence, seems shortsighted of F1

Could almost be a live broadcast, long way from Grand Prix Legends that started it for me

Isn't the £75 quid just the 20% VAT you'd have paid in Germany anyway pre Brexit or have you been stung for more?

Just added RFactor2 to my collection as it's £6 on Steam this weekend.

The UI is bloody awful. Spent 20mins trying to get my triples setup correctly without success. Will have another go tomorrow.

I did do a quick lap of Monaco 66 in a Brabham BT20 on s single screen and that was pleasingly GPL-esque.

Don't think it's a sim that'll become my main but looks as though there's enough interesting content to more than justify the low price.

I picked up RFactor 2 in the sale and only now getting to grips with the ui and content, weird workshop intergration didnt help but enjoyed some Clio racing and looking at the f1 1988 mod.

Is that with a wheel yeah? Is it much of an improvement on 9 with the wheel? Which I thought was pretty shit.

Cool I'll give it a go. Seems to drop steeply in price about 6 days after release too.

Another thing I’m liking about WRC 10 is that they’ve finally made Quick Play into proper time trials with different leaderboards for each era of cars, rather than just one for all cars lumped in together.

They’ve clearly swiped how DR2.0 did it but that’s fine with me. The TT are probably my most played way out of playing rally games.