[Abhi_abarth]

Question :
While the Logitech G29 comes with paddle shifftters do we still have the need to purchase the gear shifter separately ? When the shifters do the job of a manual transmission ( of course not at the level of the gear shifter) is it still advisable to go for it.

I am a newbie trying to get into sim racing hence asking before I get into the purchasing mode.

[sid_deb]

Originally Posted by Abhi_abarth

Question :
While the Logitech G29 comes with paddle shifftters do we still have the need to purchase the gear shifter separately ? When the shifters do the job of a manual transmission ( of course not at the level of the gear shifter) is it still advisable to go for it.

I am a newbie trying to get into sim racing hence asking before I get into the purchasing mode.

Recently purchased a G29. You don't need to buy the gear shifter separately unless you want to experience the fun of pressing the clutch pedal every time. Paddle shifter works well otherwise on the G29.

[sauravpat]

Originally Posted by Abhi_abarth

Question :
While the Logitech G29 comes with paddle shifftters do we still have the need to purchase the gear shifter separately ? When the shifters do the job of a manual transmission ( of course not at the level of the gear shifter) is it still advisable to go for it.

I am a newbie trying to get into sim racing hence asking before I get into the purchasing mode.

Just got my G29 with a shifter a month ago. It depends on which games you play. If you play more arcadey games like Forza which I do as well, the faster cars in these games are so fast that it is practically impossible to use a shifter in a race. But for cars up to around 0-100 kph in >7 seconds, I have a great time using the shifter and it is a lot more satisfying.

If you primarily play GT racing or F1, there is very little use for the shifter.

However I also play Dirt Rally which again is a lot of fun with the clutch and shifter. You need to take a decision based on what you will be playing I feel.

[rana_kirti]

anyone with a Thrustmaster setup able to find a local repair person in their city who can fix/repair a Thrustmaster Wheel?

Thanks.

[7.83hz]

Heya folks,

I have a Thrustmaster T300RS GT edition. I got it around mid last year and as amazing as the rig is, I have had very few opportunities to actually use it. Less than 50 hours in total.

It's as good as new if someone's interested, reach out to me on wa.me/+919864138997

Going at 30k.

[adwaith]

Hi all!

Just got a Thrustmaster T300RS GT edition wheel and so far the experience has been bittersweet. With the controller I've playing on Unbeatable on FH4 and I've been reasonably good but with the steering wheel I'm having a tough time catching up. I've gone back to driving with assists and a lower difficulty now but that's been working out well and I'm slowly learning.

Anyone looking for company FH4 or FM7 please DM me.

Thanks!

[csnanjappa]

Does anyone have any connects to repair a PS3 Logitech G27 wheel in Bangalore. I had left it unused for a while and now it is not calibrating, I tried to get it repaired and they said that motherboard needs replacement.

[adwaith]

Originally Posted by csnanjappa

Does anyone have any connects to repair a PS3 Logitech G27 wheel in Bangalore. I had left it unused for a while and now it is not calibrating, I tried to get it repaired and they said that motherboard needs replacement.

I've heard that Logitech replaces the entire wheel itself. I'm not sure what the terms for that is though. Logitech support for racing wheels are rather good I hear.

[blahman]

This is a good thread and adding my 2 cents based on my experience.

After having used the Logitech G29 for the past few years, mounted on my table and playing Forza and WRC, the paddles work well. However, if you want to have the best driving experience you'll need the wheel, pedals, and shifter to be mounted solid on the sim racing rig.

The table vibrates as is when you go off the track or hit bumps; mounting a separate shifter will add to the table moving around. Getting a sim racing rig will solve these problems and give you a whole new immersive experience. I'm sure like me, dedicating a permanent space for a rig is not an option so after doing some searching online I found INRacing's sim rig to be ideal for me as it is foldable and modular, so you can use it when needed and fold it if it's not being used. Here's how it looks https://www.instagram.com/p/B7uphV9lBj-/

[dazdandconfuzd]

Virtual Racing Hub (https://virtualracinghub.com) is running a sale on the Moza R5 DD bundle including pedals and a racing wheel! All for 55k plus shipping!

It is still almost twice as much as a G29 but the difference in feedback will be substantial as its a direct-drive base! Will prove to be a good upgrade from the G29 or other gear/belt driven bases.

Note: I am in no way affiliated with them. Just wanted to share a good deal.

[JediKnight]

People my 6-year-old son is getting interested in Sim racing and downloading random games on my and my wife's phones. Though we strictly enforce screen time I am still worried about the damage the small screen would be causing to his eyes. Hence please suggest a game to be run on a non-gaming Windows 11 laptop connected to an external display. Also suggest how to get the game legitimately. I mean ideally should be available via the app store. Lot of online resources talk about using Steam. But have never used it. Also, the game should be mostly free. Else my kid has the tantrum capacity to create a giant hole in my wallet.

[starke]

Originally Posted by JediKnight

Hence please suggest a game to be run on a non-gaming Windows 11 laptop connected to an external display. Also suggest how to get the game legitimately. I mean ideally should be available via the app store. Lot of online resources talk about using Steam. But have never used it. Also, the game should be mostly free. Else my kid has the tantrum capacity to create a giant hole in my wallet.

I would blindly suggest Assetto Corsa. Let me guide you quickly on why and how to get the same,

Why?
AC(AssettoCorsa) has been a benchmark for real driving dynamics from a long-time.

It was released around 2014, so less graphic intensive. You could run it on any normal PC (Adjust the graphics if you feel it is lagging)

Since the driving physics are simulated close to real, Your son can struggle in the beginning and finally have a good understanding of how a car behaves which help in the future as driver.

How

Download Steam from here

Create an account and download the game from here

The Game is not free, now it runs around 880/-INR, but in sales, it mostly comes around 250/-, but I would say go for it as it's just one time payment.
(There is enough basic cars and tracks to explore or if you got time you can install free mods easily too)

Like I said it would change the perspective of your son as it is not forgiving to drive like a typical casual video game, but again if he just wants to have fun, you can try some old NFS video games as it handles easily.

[7.83hz]

Assetto Corsa is fabulous but might not run smoothly on a non-gaming laptop.

You could try Dirt Rally / Dirt Rally 2.0 - neither are very demanding and I doubt they'd cost much if anything at all.

Great games to get in and offer a gradual learning curve.

[racing_panda]

Obsessive fancies can take hold of our sensibilities anytime, and not addressing them can become debilitating. This pushes some towards reckless thrills like skydiving; or recording themselves dancing in a museum utterly oblivious to the dreary spectacle being foisted upon everyone else and being perceived as possessing the intelligence of a squashed apricot; or online dating; or trying a new restaurant. Some it pushes towards nerdy pursuits like model making (the airfix kind), collecting artwork, or simracing.

This is an account of how I succumbed to the latter.

But first, Gentlemen, a short view back to the past.

I have always been what could only be characterised as a nerd, and perhaps a mechanical nerd by some, in every sense of the phrase. As a child, no R/C car or helicopter would survive a month in our house without having its guts taken out, and put back together. My sister and I once spent days trying to build a motorised boat, only to haplessly watch it sink like a load of lead despite a trillion iterations. Perhaps the wax coated cardboard floor with a hole for the motor was not the optimal choice for a hull, but we were only kids. And, as with probably everyone else on this forum, this was the time that the interest in all things with wheels first bud, then flourished on a healthy diet of magazines, books, and TV shows. Then, the discovery of motorsports happened. The colourful tales of ingenuity, heroics - and once you remove the rose tinted glasses - of histrionics, politics and backstabbing meant that I grew up nursing an intense desire to be involved in it.

But providence does not always conform to your expectations, so as I exited my teens, I stopped day-dreaming, and confronted the reality of the dream being just that.

In 2016, I chanced upon sim racing. The discovery was serendipitous; I was ambling through the YouTube feed and saw a video from (the then nascent) Jimmy Broadbent’s channel. But the elation of re-kindling a fading dream, admittedly in a virtual world, was swiftly subdued by the eye-watering prices of the equipment. There was the DIY route, which although not much less expensive, was at least utterly bewildering. Heart-broken but entranced by the increasingly realistic simulation softwares and hardware, I kept coming back hoping to, one day, finally have my own setup.

Come 2021, Fanatec dropped a bombshell on the industry with a very affordable direct drive wheel. The prices of load-cell pedals were also steadily dropping, making pro-level sim-racing, for the first time, available widely.

For us in India, it was so close but no cigar. Fanatec did not (and does not) sell directly in India. So spending 1-2 Lakhs, and not getting warranty - on a pioneering product produced on a small scale? It was a cul-de-sac.

Things took a happier turn. Enterprising people, fed up with this non-availability while newer brands flooded other markets with similar products, took matters in their own hands. Today, some of the very best in sim-racing is available, with warranty, in India.

The equipment

I brought a Moza R9 wheelbase, the CS wheel, the SRP pedals with the load cell brake, a pedal accessory kit with various springs and dampers, a bucket-ish seat, and an aluminium extrusion frame to mount everything. Everything was brought from Virtual Racing Hub in Delhi.

The R9 is a wheelbase with a peak output of 9Nm. It is extremely smooth, and contrary to some reviews online, I could not feel any ‘notching’ in the middle. It is also very fast. I run with zero damping in the Moza PitHouse software, and during slides, the wheel takes off like a stabbed rat. I was afraid of getting my thumbs injured, but the zero damping conveys every little detail, from road texture, curb impacts to weight transfer, so well that I have not been able to bring myself to reduce it. The wheelbase is passively cooled, but even in the sweltering Delhi heat, cooling is not an issue.

The CS wheel is, in my opinion, versatile enough for most cars, except probably formula cars. Moza does sell lighter and smaller wheels that are perfect for open wheelers. There are enough knobs and buttons on the wheel to befuddle most racers. Almost all of my mental capacity is devoted to keeping the car pointed straight, so actuating DRS & changing the brake balance is all I do in-race. But you can always melt your brain by mapping, understanding, and changing many things in-race on cars that support it (diff, engine braking, ERS recovery, the lot).
The SRP pedal is sturdy, and all metal (in fact, on most Moza products, you will be hard-pressed to find any plastics, structural or cosmetic).

The pedal faces are single pieces of brushed aluminium. The brake has a load cell, although for the life of me I cannot find the maximum load it can read. On Moza’s website I have read everything from 75 Kgs to 100 Kgs. Moza also includes an encoder to read the brake angle, and the software defaults to using a combination of the load cell and the encoder output. I find this pointless, like buying a Monet then hiring a builder to touch up the details. Thankfully, the fusion can be turned off to solely rely on the load cell. The clutch and the accelerator have a solitary spring, and do the job. More expensive clutches can simulate the ‘bite-point’ feeling, but this one can not. In the PitHouse software the input curves can be modified from linear to non-linear to very non-linear indeed.

Lastly, the aluminium extrusion cockpits. They are rock-solid and can easily handle the 9Nm the R9 outputs, but barring the seats, which are on rails and can be adjusted as in your car, adjustments are a pain. Want to modify the angle of the pedals? Or the height of the wheel deck? Or its angle? You need 5 arms and the strength of a forklift to stand a chance. And usually, you will need several iterations to find the ideal position for you. By the time you end, you would have broken 3 of your arms, and cursed enough to make a sailor blush. Moreover, mine does not have the plastic end-caps to, well, cap the ends of the extrusions. So your face would also be scarred enough to make a sailor blush.

The Game

I bought Assetto Corsa (AC). The full game with all the DLCs could be had for ~1400 on Steam, which is much less than some other, even-arcadey, titles. Assetto Corsa has a mighty modding ecosystem, but to take full advantage of it, the full versions of Custom Shaders Patch (CSP) and Sol are needed. The full versions can be had by making a donation to the devs, and they open up the game to thousands of high-quality cars, tracks, weather conditions and even skins (you can have a GTA skin too). Even though AC was released in 2014, it is one of the best simulation softwares.

RaceRoom is another excellent simulator, available with limited free content.

These are the only titles I have used so far. There is no dearth of options however. Assetto Corsa Competizione (a hardcore GT sim), iRacing (has a subscription model), BeamNG, Richard Burns Rally are all great from what I have heard.

A lot of sim-racers show incomprehensible disdain towards non-sim titles. I find their arguments ostentatious drivel. Sim softwares create an approximation, admittedly good, of the real thing. They are not the real thing. Looking down on those who want to enjoy a stress-free drive is made all the more pointless by the fact that the vast majority of sim-racers will never drive a real racecar on a track. So what are you preparing for? And why can those who want not have some harmless fun?

Final Thoughts

When I bought all this, I thought of myself as the best driver the world had ever seen (don’t we all?). So surely, racing would come naturally and be enjoyable? Right? No. For the first 15 days, I never completed 2 laps without spinning. The car seemed recalcitrant, almost vindictive. The handling seemed capricious, the same inputs in the same conditions seemed to not produce the same results. So much for being the best driver. With time, your brain starts to better model the weight transfer, and you start to guess when the tyres will break traction, and the experience becomes a lot more enjoyable. But it is still not relaxing. Music and peaceful walks are relaxing. Even computer games can be, but I am never on the sim to relax, in fact I need to relax after a session. Maybe with time things will change, but this is how they stand today.

Sim racing today is in a great place. The community is small enough that manufacturers can address a large proportion in a fell swoop. A lot of free tools and softwares are available to add realism (case in point: SimHub - allows adding bass shakers, vibration motors, and Android phone dashboards). The setups are becoming more affordable and the titles more realistic. Racing, a preserve of snobs and aristocrats, is being democratised.

The risks

Sim-racing is a money-pit. Once you step in, the temptation of adding bits to your setup never stops. Just a few base exciters. A sequential shifter. A handbrake. Just one more wheel. A better set of pedals. A VR headset. The list goes on and you lust over every new product. But at least it is cheaper than a project car!

[arijitkanrar]

Originally Posted by racing_panda

But first, Gentlemen, a short view back to the past.

I see what you did there. Nice!

German racing journalists apart, I'd say that is a fantastic setup!
If you dont mind, could you please share more details? Like the configuration of the PC etc and the approx prices?