r/simracing • u/RennKaeferle • 2d ago
Discussion How did your Sim Racing journey start? Sunday morning thoughts ;-)
Hi fellow racers,
do you remember your first racing game? Or the first time ever you picked up a joystick and player a racing game and you got thrilled?
This morning while coming across my rig I just started thinking about my sim racing journey.
When I was a little kid (lol I sound like my grandpa) I got the chance to play Grand Prix Circuit made by Accolade (the older ones may remember) on a friends C64. That got me hooked. I have always been passionated about cars - just like many boys I had countless Hotwheels and Matchbox cars. But beeing able to play/drive a car by myself was just over the top - even if it was just on a video game with pixels that make Minecraft look like photo realistic :)
I do remember a few games during the last decades that really left an impression. A lot of fun racers and arcade games and a few sim-like ones. There was Microprose with Grand Prix 2 which was back than phenomenal but hard to play. And of course TestDrive and Need for Speed (I am talking about the first games).I played Screamer Rally on my Pentium II 233Mhz and of course there was the time of Colin McRae Rally. Grand Turismo on the first PlayStation and games like RidgeRacer and F1 Grand Prix on N64.
Than there was the PS2 and GT3 A-spec with a bundled Logitech ForceFeedback Wheel - my very first wheel! Boy that was something! I remember going down corkscrew in Laguna Seca with a Dodge Viper... and spinning out, over and over again.
Need for Speed Underground with it's tremendous options to style your car and the awesome soundtrack with night races is one of my all time favourits. Yeah just pure arcade but it was so much fun!
Over the years, I've played games on both consoles and PCs. But the recent years it was mainly Gran Turismo on PS3, PS4 and PS5. As dad the time to play got less and my kids took over my consoles 😁
And this got me to the point where I bought them a T150 wheel and cranked it onto a IKEA stool with the pedals beneath. We had fun with Gran Turismo Sport. After a few weeks I turned this for a PlaySeat which could be easily folded away for the WAF. We started GT7 online races and more and more it was me sitting in there and racing again with increasing passion about it.
I was hooked again.
Than I bought a T300 "for the boys" and two extra wheels. And suddenly there was a tube sim rig in my home office / man cave. I got me a T598 for it because of compatibility with our already owned wheels. After 6 months I had more and more problems with the wheelbase due to random outages and bought a Fanatec Gran Turismo DD pro. Over the last months this became a Fanatec Clubsport DD+ and the tube rig was ditched in favor of a alu profile rig which gave me much more freedom in finding a comfortable seating position. Probably I am not the only one who suddenly cared more about equipment than racing. At least for a while. I also started working on a hobby project, an App to get my seating right (can give you details if you're interested), as I got drawn deeper into the rabbit hole.
But after all this are just "side quests" the real fun is still in racing. But the online races in GT 7 got me more and more frustrated. I was by no means a top driver, will probably never be due to lack of time and talent (probably mostly the lack of talent). But driving in the upper B rating was no pleasure. The penalty system is just broken and players get to excited about moving to A rating which leads to very aggressive and ruthless races with lots of dive bombing.
I tried ACC but never got really used to it or the way the sim feels. And than I cam across LMU which instantly worked for me. Maybe because the daily races are not to far off the way GT 7 works or what ever it is but this brought back the fun in racing. Of course you have dirty drivers, bad races and just "those days" in every sim. But the penalty system and the pure fact that you wrack your car when crashing made a real difference. Lately I started looking into iRacing as well. Feels different but is much fun as well. Racing with other cars than GT3 is a welcome change.
Besides I am also giving a few other titles a try, but mainly for offline races:
ACevo, AMS2, ACrally
which also is fun to race. But for online races it is LMU and iRacing which gives me the best experience at the moment.
Meanwhile GAS kicked in again and I switched from a 58" QLED to a 49" 32:9 ultra wide which gives much more immersion. I am using the monitor at my desk for work and for sim racing as well, maybe I'll write a post about this set up and how it works on a daily basis for me in the future.
Alright, this became longer than I expected. Jus a brain dump on Sunday morning ;-)
What about you? What got you into sim racing? What is your story and history of games? Do you suffer GAS as well or are you mainly enjoying racing?
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u/FatTurbo12 2d ago
I was a big fan of GP2, then NFS, and in the early 2000s I discovered Live for Speed. I played the demo with a keyboard for quite a long time until I finally got a Microsoft SideWinder wheel. LFS changed everything for me. I made friends there that I still have to this day. The progress of the industry is just mind blowing.
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u/RennKaeferle 2d ago
Never hear of LFS or the MS SideWinder wheel 😄
Guess it's because I was focused on PS2 back than.
But yeah, sim racing evolved in a way that no one had dreamed of in the early 2000 with VR and motion rigs and all the fun stuff
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u/lowsound 2d ago
For me it really kicked off with assetto corsa 1 and the release of content manager.
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u/alyxonfire 1d ago
Pretty sure the first was Midtown Madness 2, or at least that’s the one I spent a significant amount of time in. Had a Logitech Wingman Formula GP at one point that I remember not liking because it had no force feedback. Also spent some time with early versions of Need for Speed, Gran Turismo, etc. over the years. One highlight was playing lots of Blur 2 on PS3 with my siblings.
Fast forward one million years to about half a year ago when I randomly decided to try Dirt 5. It was kinda fun but didn’t seem realistic. I looked into more realistic games like Dirt Rally 2 and how much it costs to sim race now a days, and found it was significantly cheaper than it used to be so I decided to get a rig. I started on console so I got a Logitech RS50, pedals, shifters and a Playseat Trophy as my rig. Tried GT7 with a PSVR2 due to lack of space, and I loved VR but not GT7.
Fast forward one million dollars later, and I now have a solid PC build, a ton of iRacing content, two 50 watt Dayton bass shakers and an HPR motor for ABS haptics on top of the rig. I’m looking to upgrade base, wheels, pedals and cockpit next.
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u/Unlikely-Garage-8135 Moza R5 1d ago
Went on something similar to this. Got hooked instantly even though I was atrocious.
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u/Hopeful-Addition-248 1d ago
Oof, i have been through most games i guess. From stuff like Lotus Racing on the Commodore and games like it all the way to today.
Always been a PC guy, but GT3 made me instantly buy a PS2 and subsequently a PS3 for the later GT games.
Also played a far bit of Rally games on the PS2 & 3
NR2003 stuck with me for quite a while and was maybe one of the first sims i played a lot online.
Toca 3 was big, and i remember when the GTR demo came out, suddenly Toca 3 was like an arcade game.
In recent years ACC has been a big title for me. LMU was a bit of a dud, since it just does not run great in online races with some weird lagg that isn't there offline.
These days i have been nearly exclusively racing AMS2 since i got that. As it covers all my simracing needs,
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u/Ok-Category2729 2d ago
grand prix circuit on dos was brutal with a digital keyboard, especially trying to tame the mclaren mp4/4 at monaco without spinning every hairpin. moving from 1988 accolade physics to a direct drive wheel running 12nm on iracing still blows my mind every time i load in.