After I stopped racing in real life due to money and loosing the championship in the last 2 races due to rain (no experience in the rain vs other guys who had years of racing and karting experience), the racing became like a drug. I told my friend who is trying to get into track-days with his bike to watch out, because if you do it once it will become like a drug and you will get no other high from anything in life, except maybe sex, he thought I was joking, I told him again with a straight face. It's like sex, it runs through your mind all day, everyday. Taking corners, balancing on the limit on the entry to a corner as you can feel the rear wanting to slip but you don't make it slide out because you stop from giving it too much lock through the entry heading to the apex of a high speed sweeper, figuring out different ways to let off your brakes as you're trying to do all these tiny different things with the car on entry to the corner, things that are not only invisible from a spectator outside the cockpit but unnoticeable from an onboard cam as well, trying to get the perfect mix of brake release car rotation and steering angles under braking and turn in, getting beat up and bruised up as you cannot see anything clear and sharp because everything is vibrating so much and your head and body are bouncing around everywhere from the gs, bumps, wind, vibrations, etc, EVERYTHING you just can't stop thinking about it...... So, after my real life experiences, the only thing I could do to get that high, that fix, that sense of "if you're not pushing until the limit where one wrong move can cause you to spin in the barriers or understeer like a truck" (yes, when you are truly pushing, real life can be, and is often like that, no simcade crap going on here, it all just looks straightforward, under control and easy from onboard cams) was to play the most realistic games I could find. After that I could not stand ANY over-forgiveness, dumbing-down AT ALL, not the slightest. That lead me to F1 challenge 99-02 that someone bought for me by coincidence one day, but very, very shortly after I found out that the same guys that made the PC version for that had a new version called RFactor. The first time I got in the RTrainer was still amazing how much it resembled the real life F2000s and F1600s I raced in and/or lapped in. The bumps, shakes, crazy feeling of speed even though you weren't actually going fast, the gearing, the understeer built into the setup, but the way you could REALLY oversteer it on lifting or if you just had bad/careless technique, the way that the natural understeer and front brake bias made it hard to rotate the rear under trailbraking but if you perfected your technique of how you released the brake at the end of the braking zone and how you used the steering you could then get around the understeer & front brake bias and get good rotation on corner entry. It all just felt so raw and so AMAZINGLY close to my real life experience, even to this day. The only thing it did a little off were the following 1. Having to be a little more precise and less aggressive with my steering angles at real low speed (not entirely due to low speed front grip "bite" issues known in RF, but also due to the real high default FOV I was using, and also using a much more sensitive/quicker steering ratio as my wheel had only 240 degrees of rotation. Once I started using proper steering ratios and low realistic FOVs of under 30 this problem disappeared by probably 60%-70%) 2. Oversteer had to be caught a little quicker and you couldn't get it in as big of an angle of slide as in real life (we all know this, especially RFactor 1). The point where you'd loose it and it'd become un-savable would come earlier/at less of a slide angle than in real life..... .....but whatever I can deal with that. I'm supposed to be avoiding huge oversteer moments anyways like in real life, and I did (except the odd times here n there ), and so I applied the EXACT same mentality and techniques while substituting the lack of real-life feel with my mind and knowledge of how I know the cars are supposed to act/react based on my inputs and......WOW I was driving so similar to real life, the car in just about all stages of the corner was behaving just like in real life, and driving the car with just the small slips almost unnoticeable to outsiders or even an on-board cam, really dancing with the limits and attempting to stay within that area at all stages of the cornering phase, and of course here and there the slightly more noticeable corrections lol. I was in heaven!!! From that revelation moment on, I was hooked, and I would never, EVER, accept anything that was "dumbed down", even the slightest. I would always accept the slightly less forgiveness that I mentioned above over something that went too far the other way, I sort of told myself "at least, like in real life, I still get punished, only difference being the line to cross to get punished is a little thinner. Well I'd rather have a thinner line to get punished than to just completely not get punished at all when I should have, it'll only make me an even better driver. So, no big deal, just concentrate like mad like you did in real life and really pay attention to what the car is doing and treat the little slides, the unnoticeable ones to outsiders that only you can feel, like you would treat those same slides in real life, and then it wont even matter if it's a little more unforgiving than real life, it'll just make you work on your car control/technique & feel that much better and prepare you that much more for the day you get back in the real cockpit, where as something a little easier than it should will only flatter you and put your racecar driving control/feel/technique to less of a test.". I've had that mentality ever since, even though I doubt I'll be in another reallife series again, but never say never . The real life connection made me only care about the pure physics and handling dynamics of the sim. The depth of how all your different tiny throttle/brake/steering inputs make the difference between 4 different drivers in the same car/track/speed spinning, getting into a big slide, fighting the car on the edge, and looking like you are planted to the road (but really you're not, it just looks that way to outsiders and onboard cams ). Then from there the rest is history.
How did I get into sim racing? Well...I was probably 4 or 5. Father bought our first PC. 486dx2 66, heck yeaaaah!!! Used to just fart around in Indy Car Racing II and Geoff Crammond's GP 2. That was hardly racing, just messing around not knowing much about what I was doing. After that was getting a PS1 when I was a bit older, first game was Total Drivin'. Yeah. That was a super dooper arcade game, but I spent ages playing round in it. GT1 would have been the first time trying to actually race properly though, sorta having some idea about what was going on. Except for the time I mistakenly bought a super close ratio gearbox for a Legacy GTB, and wondered WTF was going on...XD Hit top gear before all the other cars were out of 1st, lol I'd seen a bit of racing by that time on TV. Used to watch a lot of rally when they would show the highlights each Sunday, miss those days. Few other PS1 racing games, Toca 2, GT2, Need for Speed Porsche, Colin McRae Rally. All great fun. Went through a few other games on the PC and PS2, just more stuff like GT3 and 4, Tourist Trophy, Le Mans 24hr, etc. Did have RBR on PS2, but I hardly played any of it as it was so hard for me at that point. Didn't help that I only had a controller. First real sim would have been GTL. Father had seen all the old cars on the cover and decided to get it. I only had a joystick to drive it, and man it was hard XD. If you haven't driven with a joystick, you seriously have to hahahah Fell in love with it though, just the sounds and the driving, was bloody great. Had to get a wheel though, so we got a Logitech Momo force wheel. From there on though, I was just going for the sims. After a couple of years, the Momo got loose as a goose and we decided to get a G25, which I'm still using to this day. Got GPL, GTR2, all the other Simbin titles and played them for ages. Also bought RBR on PC as well, and turned out with a wheel it was awesome. Still loving the RSRBR mod today. Then I saw vids of rF2's historic F1 cars going around Spa and Monaco, and I was immediately sold. Got rF2 and that is pretty much all I drive alongside PnG, RBR and a bit of AC for fun. It was in rF2 that I first tried online racing though. I'd done a lot of hotlapping chasing peoples times, but never really raced with a group of other people. Got persuaded into an endurance series run by Fine Line Racing using the Meganes. It was interesting seeing as I'd had very little experience with other people and with endurance racing in general, but hey, always learning. Eventually i won the championship, but it was a bit weird. Quick fulla called KeiKei had a disconnect which kind of mucked things up, DNF for him. Anyway, it was fun and got me really into online racing and rF2 in general. Never had as much excitement in a game before, you can have some real brilliant moments every now and then that you can always remember. Love it. The driving and physics itself is something that has just progressed with me I feel. Going from 5 years old and no idea what I was doing with some of the best sims of the day, to now where I feel I have a reasonable grasp on most of the concepts in racing. It's something I have picked up as the games got more advanced and as I became more interested in racing in general. Never done any racing in real life, but I certainly think riding motorbikes helped things along. All of a sudden, reading up and studying riding technique was important and interesting to me. Mix that with closely following bike and car racing and you get more into the minute details of the sport which can apply to sim racing. That makes learning and applying techniques much easier IMO, and becomes something you really want to work on. I'd love to get into another league and get some organised racing going, just finding something at a suitable time frame seems hard. Ah well, something will pop up.
I was never serious about racing games. A friend got me into some code-master dirt and f1 series a few years back and i bought a g25 for them but never kept playing any of them for longer than a week or 2 before i got bored of them. I had tried rf1 back then too, as that's what he was racing on 24/7 but he chucked me right into the deep end with f1's and after a few days i didn't ever bother trying the game again. Then last year he sent me a video of the rf2 beta tyre physics video and i was intrigued...intrigued enough to purchase into the beta just to see what it's like not thinking about taking it seriously or thinking about it for the long run at all. I jumped into the 60's f1 on some random server at spa and the moment i started to drive it was just a massive "holy s***" moment and without having ever driven a car or kart in my life i still felt that this is truly realistic. I know, that's not exactly a judgement i could honestly make considering i had zero experience but it just felt so self-evident based on the sensations through steering wheel and how the car handled. I was instantly hooked and the sense of realism and enjoyment that comes with it is as strong today as the very first moment i tried the sim (~1.5 years ago). A testament of how much i like rf2 is how it converted me from a 1-2 week only sim/game racer to a full-time sim racer. I've been karting a handful of times (simply awesome) since then and it gave me the kick up the arse to want to take driving lessons. I've bought a bunch of books on racing that have both reaffirmed what i discovered through trial and error approaches and taught me the rest. The community is great too, sharing of knowledge and wisdom to help each other improve their driving.
I got F1GP on the Amiga, that started me in SIM racing, then after a few years I left the scene to play first person shooters. then in 2005 I fancied a change, got my thrustmaster out the attic and just bought rfactor on a whim....never looked back!
Le Mans (C64, late 80's) Indianapolis 500 Simulator, early 90's Stunts, early 90's (modder) NASCAR Racing 1, 1994 (modder) Indycar Racing 1, 1995 NASCAR Racing 2, 1996 (modder) Indycar Racing 2, 1996 NASCAR Racing 1999, 1999 (modder) NASCAR Racing 4, 2001 NASCAR Racing 2003, 2003-> rFactor1, 2008 (modder) rFactor2, 2011(?) (modder) I always had urge to "fix" these games.
Ahhhhhh!! Typed this big long post in Tapatalk and it crashed!! I will retype it on a real computer in the morning. My story goes a lot like Spinelli's though. Goofed off with racing games then later started real racing which got me on a mission to find that same rush (realism) at home to fill the gap between real life events. Anyway, I will leave you with this for now. I was cleaning out my desk at work and found an old cd case with lots of old software (WinNT 3.5 ect) and it also had some old racing games. I took this shot of the MVPs that were in this old case.
Starting in 1992 with grand prix circuit from accolade on a IBM thinkpad with a 25MHz CPU and from there on played almost every racing game that was released for the PC! It took a turn when ea released f1 2000, I got a wheel thrustmaster force feedback GT Racing wheel and it was a blast. Next thanks to Simbin's GTR, GTL, GTR2 I got into rFactor. And rFactor opend my eyes so I got myself a Logitech G25 that is still in use today!
I got a family and thought I might change my FPS/shooting games into something more peaceful. Was always into sims in the form of flightsims, so I was always gonna look for the most realistic experience out there. Never bothered with arcade stuff.
Always loved simulations, of any kind, harder they were to use, more I liked them. With racing I think the first was indianapolis 500 on amiga and PC, played it for years, even if I've never tried to make a 500 miles race (but made a lot of shorter ones).. poor mouse... Then indicar racing I and II , GPL , but at the time had no FFB joystick, so after a while I stopped putting much effort in them and preferred bombing stuff with fighter aircrafts. Then I discovered RF1, just few years ago, bought a DFP that I still use, and played it a lot. I stopped using it after I had never been able to make more than 4 or 5 laps without spinning or crashing, the FFB was simply not able to tell me anything, my PC probably was not enough.. So, another put aside, then, I bought RF2 as soon as it was avaiable, and it was light after years of darkness, now I can lap even a skippy without spinning the crap out of it, and I can improbe my laptimes, I can improve my skill, I see where I lose and I see where I'm faster each lap, it's amazing. After this shock I've never touched RF1 again, until some month ago, I discovered realfeel plugin, and I was amazed at how it's a game changer compared to the plain RF1. Now I'm playing an online champ on RF1 , but when I want to have fun, there is only RF2.
Talk about going back a ways, hehe. I don't have the real life racing experience of Spinelli, but I do have some real racing experience. As a kid back in the 60's and 70's I was always in love with cars and racing. I would watch anything racing related when it came on the telly. I joined the Air Force, and started getting more into performance cars, including 70 Hemi 'Cuda, 74 Challenger, 72 Duster and a few others. When I got out, I moved to Sebring Florida. Naturally you could imagine that I went to a race or two. I found out that there were some people setting up a drag strip on the start/finish straight at Sebring, so helped them out by using my home stereo system for the PA system until we got one that worked. This allowed me to enter into races when ever I wanted for nothing but the cost of fuel. At the time, I had a 78 Mustang II with a 302, and a Dodge Polara with a 360 engine, so I stripped out the back of the Polara and started drag racing. I left Florida because work was almost non-existent, and moved to California. Here I became involved in dirt track racing, starting as a crew chief for a car. I built a car with my friend and entered into enduro racing, though that was short lived. From there, I didn't have the time to mess around with racing any more, so looked at games to see what I could come up with. I tried the NFS series, but hated the fact that you could never really get ahead of the competition, the game cheated and put them right behind you a lot of the time. My first venture into online racing was with Motor City Online. This was mostly street racing, and the physics were totally unrealistic, but it was a blast to get out and see how much better I could be than other drivers. My wife even got involved in it for a while. Eventually, MCO closed it's doors and I had to start looking for something to drive again. I found NASCAR Heat and some mods, as well as a community that was racing series in it on a regular basis, so I joined up to have some fun. From there, it was GTR 2, and then Race 07. I joined up on Race Sim Central until a major server crash caused the loss of most everything on the site. From there I moved to RaceDepartment, and ended up at SimRacingPro. Met a lot of great people at each of those sites, and stay in touch with all the guys at SimRacingPro to this day, but alas, I don't race anymore due to health issues. I do however enjoy reading the forums and creating the odd paint scheme every now and then.
Online gaming got me into simracing fps clans where my thing back in the days, especially ID's Quake and then Quake2. apart from the gaming itself it was the multiplayer aspect that pulled me in bigtime with tournaments, clanmatches, championships and ladder systems. (which is where my nick comes from) Did not even like normal racing back then, or cars even. Until I sat down with my brother for an F1 race and he started to explain what was actually going on. I was hooked immediately So, enter the racing games, I had done attempts before, arcades, amiga, etc. but now I got serious with Gran Tourismo etc. I felt like a real baddass But pretty soon the absence of multiplayer drew me to pc racing, GPL, Grand Prix and then rfactor. years of fun but never in organised form, just random races and making friends along the way. Until I joined a league server, they pulled me in and 8 years later i'm still there, running the league together with my fellow admins Without multiplayer I would still be doing arcade racing games no doubt, nothing wrong with that of course, but multiplayer combined with league racing is the pinnacle of simracing for me, nothing comes even close in terms of competition, excitement, rivalry and friendships. 12 seasons of rfactor1 GP79 in a row says it all I think. I started my league career just trying to avoid collisions and letting people pass me, slowly 'getting' it and becoming faster and more confident. many seasons of learning and fine-tuning, reaching the top 10, then top 5, a few seasons ending in the top 3 and finally starting to win championships. Atm our league is struggling in the transition period having to leave rf1 going into rf2, lots of peeps scattered not fully focussed on one sim anymore but we have high hopes rf2 will deliver. after 20 years this league is not going away just yet and hopefully I will be able to improve my skills a bit more
Decided after I got fast home internet that ... I like cars.. and so illegally torrented every racing sim/game I could. Toca Race Driver 2, GTR, Colin McRea Rally and Richard Burns Rally. I liked Toca.. I really did but it was too restrictive in what you could drive where. RBR is what really got me going. I was board of keys and sprung for a Black momo.. Fast Forward a few years and it was time to play with friends instead of alone. Gave LFS a shot alongside GTR2 and rFactor.. I guess you can figure out which won.
I bought a g27 wheel 3 or 4 years ago to play GT5 on ps3. With the wheel i get a cd with rfactor demo. Tried rf once and find the ffb terrible. Back to gt5 but once in a while reading something about rf and discovered mods from different F1 eras. Back to rf and learn how to install some mods. Discover realfeel and leobodnar plugin and get addicted to rf but find horrible graphics and heard about rf2, that wip screenshots, that tire deformation video on youtube and keep waiting for rf2 launch. Where i am today. But the very beginning was with Enduro (Atari). Played a lot cars games in various consoles, but what caught my attention was Nascar Racing 2 (still have the manual) because i was able to connect to a friend and racing online using a modem where i was the dialer (i think we didn´t have internet at this time) using flying simulator controller as wheel (push to throttle and pull to break lol ). And the collisions. I just love crashing in that game and watch the replay. Never using cockpit view btw. Time goes by and i was never able to learn to play new titles because of the controllers. So i give up on racing games. Then some day my cousin show me Gran turismo to ps1 i think. I love how much graphics improved, tried and get frustrated because i´m still not able to play using playstation controllers. Sometime later he showed Gran turismo prologue. I get a ps3, jailbreak him and got GT5, Shift..... Bought a wheel and... back to the first line.
I never ever liked consoles from the earliest days still don't, while I wanted to go out to crown land and tear around in paddock bashers my mates wanted to play these silly machines. Sometime later after seeing Indy500 in a US mag ( it was not released here at that time ) I got interested. IBM Mono desktop was over $5,000 that was not going to happen. With no experience I decided to build my own after I was offered some XT clones and parts that had been in a industrial fire. I took them home, cleaned it all up and eventually managed to get one running, went out and brought a second hand CGA monitor and 256kb video card. Never looked back. Probably the one thing that hooked me was the first ever Sound Blaster card. Rest is history
RBR Edit - OK I feel like a slacker now so more detail. Too be honest I can't truly remember exactly but I will try. My dad bought a PS3 to play blue ray movies and suggested it might be a good idea to buy my son some games to play. I asked the local Game Stop guys what the best racing game was and they said Grid. When I first played it I could not believe how amazing it was. My son liked it OK but it was me who coukdn't stop playing. After about 5 visits where I wouldn't speak to anyone as I was glued to PS3 my dad gave me the PS3. Soon after I discovered Dirt which I loved even more and then Dirt 2 which stole so many hours of my live I cannot even estimate how many. Now is where things get fuzzy. I simply do not remember how I learned about rf1 or RBR or even which was first but what I can remember is that I never looked back to console games again. I also have and loved GTR2, Race On, and GSC. rF2 is all I race now.
First love: Pc Rally games... There was a "golden era" many years ago: Colin Mcrae I&II, Mobil 1 RC (my favourite), Pro Rally 2001, Rally Trophy, Xpand Rally, RBR... Online Rfactor and RFT08 first, only fun races. Then Race07 and GTR Evolution, the first championships. Then Rfactor again, championships with Historics, TCL, V8 unleashed, Enduracers, Formula Nippon, DRM, Toyota Ae86...best of the best. Then GSC2012 and now GSC2013 and Rfactor 2. And of course Asetto Corsa when we can...
I don't know which one was the first but there were 3 major racing games for me on the amiga. Lombard Rally, Vroom and Indianapolis 500. I loved the diffrent details in those games, the cockpit look from lombard rally where u could see the driver and co-driver. Vroom the pitstops and circuits and Indy 500 for their tires loosing grip over time and the feeling of speed driving this game. Later i played alot on the PS1 and PC. Formula one and Formula one 95, Andretti Racing, Gran Turismo 1+2 and Colin McRae 1+2 on the PS. On the PC i loved Nascar for their crashes and that u could destroy your vehicle. Was a bit dissapointed about the game cause iam from europe and i didn't really know what nascar racing was about, so i found it strange that there are just 2 road circuits ingame. I think i drove Watkins Glen the most. My first MP expierience was Quake and so i played a lot of quake and its mods over the years. Simracing caught me over a clan mate about 3 years ago with race07. Startet playin with joypad and thought why not give it a go and buy a cheap wheel. Thrustmaster RGT FFB was my first wheel but i just lasted about 7 months. Broken downshift paddle, broken breakpedal, 2 Buttons on the wheel were also gone. Bought a Fanatec Porsche GT3 v2 with the CSR Elite Pedals and iam happy to this day with it. I also bought all expansions for Race07, GTR2, GSC, GSC2013, Formula Truck. Simulations get me hooked because i like a learning curve. Don't get this curve in regular games anymore. And on flightsims i like reading manuals and getting into the stuff.
i raced console for yrs and very little PC. was told about rfactor and iracing made the jump to PC and never looked back. did not like iracing. rf1 was great but rf2 kicks butt.
I started around '96 or so with NASCAR Racing and IndyCar Racing II on the Mac. I raced with a keyboard, then a joystick, then a cheap wheel and pedals. When I saw what racing games were available for the PC (there weren't any others for the Mac), I bought my first Windows PC, something I swore I'd never do! The addiction set in, and over the years, I've gradually upgraded my equipment and computers, culminating in this setup:
