rec.autos.simulators

Sorry to start a big thing!

My comment was in regard to the Solstice thing sent out on the iRacing
email list.  To me it looks more like going out to the track for some
fun than marketing to real racers.  But what do I know?  :)

I'd hate to see Tim leave RAS.  Any involvement here is better than no
involvement.  Seems like the best thing to do would be to let the
negative stuff slide and not respond to it.

It is nice to see some activity around here for a change though.

Pat Dotson

Thanks for the confirmation.

Cheers...

GP

As for their real racing focus, consider this.  You've decided to
differentiate your new sim by positioning it as the only true sim in a sea
of games.  An arguable point for sure, but IF you want to do that, how to go
about it?  For one, get enough real racers (of some reknown) involved,
either contractually or otherwise, that it's the obvious place to go to race
with the guys who are doing it for real.  I know guys already do both (Tom
Milner's involvement with rF is just one example), but imagine getting into
say, a virtual 2008 points series race in some class where you know going in
that you're going to be competing against at least some of the same guys who
you're going to see on Speed doing it in the flesh.  Think about how that
would enhance both your viewing of the real events AND your virtual
competition.  That doesn't exist now, and anyone who can make that happen to
a significant degree will have a real differentiating point, regardless of
the other aspects of the sim.

So getting buy-in from the real racing community will give them the "track
cred" they want and need to position themselves.  It's a strategic part of
the business model, which is admittedly not the old one sims have followed.
They've pretty clearly stated they're not going down the old path and are
having to do the groundwork to establish the new one.  Which takes time, and
is almost always conducted in private, accompanied by NDAs and the
occasional press release (which are like all press releases - press releases
being pretty much by definition Not news).

Sometimes, producing sims/games is not about writing code... ;-)

SB

Not to mention that community is willing to spend as much on brake
disks & tires every event as a lot of us are willing to spend on our
whole racing rig for a year, that might have something to do with
iracing's focus ;)

Yup, they certainly are used to dropping a bit more coin than us misers (who
whine for example, when servers that gave us countless hours of free racing
get pulled 4+ years after we dropped what, 30 bucks on a sim that's no
longer in production... ;-))

Thing is, there aren't enough of 'em for that to be the only market.  You've
got to hit the middle ground somewhere with product that appeals to, and is
accessible to, both the real and virtual racing crowd.  If you convince
enough of the real racing guys that is has value for them to use it as prep
and expose them in the right way to the virtual crowd, then you blur the
line enough between the two to maybe, just maybe sell your product as
something beyond a game.  And get more for it as a result.

Say you have two choices in online racing, one where you race with the same
crowd you've been racing with for years, or another where a small, but
identifiable percentage are guys who do it in the flesh for a living.  Both
options have a place of course, but which one's going to have the buzz
that'll generate enough demand to justify higher cost, which is an essential
part of the plan.

iRacing, like any other company bringing product to market, is and should
be, trying to position it to be financially successful.  Hell, they should
try to make as much dough as they can.  Which means maximizing revenue, and
that just about never means hitting one or the other end of the cost
spectrum.  Too high, you don't sell enough; too low and you don't make
enough margin.

They're plowing new dirt here so who knows how it'll go.  Certainly not me.
One thing's for sure though; they have talent, vison and money.  Not a bad
combination... ;-)

SB

Granted that may not be the only market for those companies but they
also have to incur the very real cost of bricks & mortor factories and
distributing, not to mention constant R&D,  iracing is a handfull of
guys and some servers with no real compeditors as of yet.

I'm a big papy fan and I was involved in one of iracings early betas
and I got the real impression that iracings next commercial product
won't be geared for me so I don't get bent out of shape when it's
supposedly "late", nor do I feel they owe me any loyalty for the $100
or so I gave them over the past 10 years.   If you're going to build a
better mousetrap and you've got a choice between gearing it towards a
market that expects to pay $49 and get several years of free support &
upgrades, or a group that's used to saying "I don't care how much it
costs, just make it go faster by the time my jet lands", who are you
going to go for?

Good luck to them I say, now what else is out there for me....

Good post. What you have to keep in mind is that there are 100's of
thousands of RL racers that are fanatical but DON'T get paid for it -
there are exponentially  more of us in the amateur and club ranks than
there are pro racers. While iRacing may get some pros to hook up with
them and race online my guess is the percentage will be wiltingly
small vs. amatuers, and equally as small vs. people that only race
sims (if the pricing structure allows). The cheapest RL amatuer racing
will cost several thousand a year for minimal participation and I race
with guys that spend that EACH race (not me!).. The trick will be
getting a RL racer to start sim racing if he never has done it...

GP

Buy new tires? Or blow the money on a PC that will run a sim reasonably
well? There's also the time budget, but most of us have an off-season.

It's an interesting gambit. If the racers do decide to invest money on
top-notch PCs, and find enough value in a "game"/sim -- that is, shave
tenths or whole seconds off laptimes without burning real gas or *** in
practice laps -- our world just got bigger permanently.

In that respect, I think iRacing is onto something; creating an
environment for good, consistent racing, with courteous racers is
certainly worth paying for, because this is a rare commodity these days
in online racing.

This should also appeal to those of commercial interests in sim racings,
since this environment would draw a great deal of attention from racing
magazines, real-life racers, TV, thus advertisers etc etc.

Oh, and yes, btw, iRacing need to publish a racing sim before all this
will take place... But... Well, details, details.... ;-)

---Asgeir---

RL racing will ALWAYS come first, but reality is most won't have a one
or the other situation anyway. Hey, if they price it high enough i'll
do what i'm doing now with online racing.. nothing!

Hope your wallets are fat cause I will bet that it will not be affordable.
Someone is gonna pay for all this big fancy ***they are doing and it won't
be me. NR2003 would sell a ton of copies if they put it back on the shelves
as nr2008 and never touched the code. Arca sim racing looks to be where I
will end up along with my good ol nr2003.

Rfactor has came a long way since its release date but you have 400
different mods updating versions 10 times a month who the heck can have any
stable racing? Especially when you have to go to 500 different sites or wait
for days to download it all.

If everyone on sierra arena paid $100 a year for their server to remain
sierra would make a boat load of money and iracing would suffer greatly.
Cause ya think they were *** the nr2003 modders...wait for the iracing
mods to pop up. This game will go where the developers want it to go...and
to hell with us.

I guess to sum it all up..My thoughts are is they plan to feed off the
"assumed" demise of nr2003. Watch news post up on their site as the sierra
servers shut down. Id bet my last dollar on it.

Sorry msg not directed toward anyone in particular...:) Just venting.
!

Kind of a strange and self-contradictory viewpoint imho.  One you're
certainly entitled to, but for the sake of discussion...

I don't really buy all that butt-showing stuff; take the modding crowd out
of the picture and where's the gripe?  Or is that who you mean by the "us"
in the "to hell with" bit?  If so, consider that not everyone cares so much
about modding, and some even think it detracts to a degree.  A point you
implicitly agree on when you talk about the mod-fueled chaos w/rFactor.

The trouble with uncontrolled modding is that quality suffers.  It worsens
the overall experience of the product and hurts the Brand.  Papy did, and
iRacing does, want to control that quality and preserve their Brand.  You
don't see Coke or McDonald's smiling at folks who want to tweak their
products and redistribute them, now do you?  Same thing.  They are creating
a product and a company after all, with not insignificant investment
required to do so.  So why should it not "go where the developers want it to
go"?  If I were fronting the money, I'd darned sure want some assurance of
where it was going to go!

As for someone paying for "all this big fancy crap", I personally would
rather like some big fancy crap, thanks.  As to how much I'm willing to pay,
as with anything it depends on what's delivered.  iRacing is not immune to
market forces, and if they want to get more money for what they're selling,
they're going to have to deliver more than the competition.  Simple as that.

I welcome the idea of being able to get more than I'm able to get now in a
sim.  If it should turn out to be more expensive than I'm prepared to shell
out for (which I doubt), I'll have no problem with that.  Already ,there are
plenty of expensive controllers and such out there that are out of my sim
budget range, but I don't begrudge them selling their products to anyone
ready to spend the $$.  I'd like to have a Ferrari too, but am not mad at
them for not making something I can afford.  Not much, anyway... ;-)

There are, and will be, competitive alternatives, be it ARCA or whatever
else is out there at the time.  And I expect matchmaking utilities will keep
NR2003 going once the Sierra servers go down and create the need.  VROC/IGOR
worked fine for GPL and in many ways was better than any other matchmaker
out there, so there will be options like that.  iRacing's just trying to pry
open a new market niche, since they didn't like the economics of the old
one.  That means more choice and if they're successful, it'll pull the genre
towards the direction they're going.

In the meantime, you might give race2play a try for rFactor and other
ISI-based stuff - it pretty much solves most of the current mod-related
issues and offers a variety of good series to race in, including stockers.
Just had a door-rubbing good time at a Pocono race the other day in fact.
Try that in NR2003! ;-)

Cheers,

SB

Affordable means different thing to different people, and I welcome
new technology. If it is affordable to "me" remains to be seen.

Exactly.

Well, I think if "us" means unlimited, unrestricted modding then i'm
all for it. You said it in the previous paragraph, the mods, IMHO,
have gotten waaay out of hand. I would rather a select, licensed group
got paid a small amount for a new track, carset, etc. than be
bombarded with 100 new tracks and cars every month, many of dubious
quality.

I really don't think one has anything to do with the other.

GP