Finally some replays...

Without any further chat, and any fanfare here's a bunch of replays that I finally got to uploading.
You'll need to have a look to see if you're featuring in them, I know I am...

550PP V8s at a Custom Track

GT350R Racing at Trial Mountain - OldSchool's room for this race...

500pp at a Custom track

500pp Racing at Deep Forest

Another Custom track race - this one at 500pp

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And there we have it. Finally!

Semi-Pro

It's easy to get into the spirit of meddling and fiddling until something is broken. I think being a parent is the ultimate expression of that in fact. But in the instance of my steering wheel I think I know where to stop and that's about now.

It all started with a GT Force Pro...

But what of the "Custom Sim Rig" that I've ended up with - lol!

First came a slipped disk, which meant that I had to raise the wheel, no biggie, it was like I'd been racing a dodgem car for a while anyway...

So I bought one, one that folded, one that never got folded. But if you're at all into basic engineering you'll know that the 'hinge' was always doomed to failure, more on that below.

Time flowed, and so did the money, as along with a PS4 purchase I had to get a new steering wheel.

So along came a G29, the haters hate, but it's really not a bad wheel at all, and the smell of dead cow stretched across the wheel is always welcome!

It could have ended there, but there are a few issues with the basics of my setup of PS3/PS4 and a G29 on a less than stable wheel stand:

1. Switching PS3 - PS4 meant USB unplugging, and they don't like being unplugged all the time (and I kept forgetting).
2. The bit at the bottom of the wheel stand was getting worse, only I knew not to put any weight onto the wheel, anyone else just stuffed the half arsed clamp.
3. Cables. So many cables.
4. And for good measure, my headset didn't work on my PS4, and was mostly flat in any case...

Queue the A-Team music...

First up was the switching, see the post below, but the addition of a USB source switch meant that at the click of a button I could switch four USB ports between PS3 & PS4, which meant....

I could get a cabled USB headset (got one of these: https://shop.turtlebeach.com/us/recon-60p-2071). 

Probably not to everyone's tastes (especially the over-ear thing) but these have a USB plug for audio that works with PS3 & PS4 so no need for charging. They also have inline volume and mute, which I've actually found very handy indeed occasionally. Ultimately they tick all the boxes!

Next was the wobbly wheel. I had visions of some heavy gauge steel affair, but the typical crushing defeat that is a visit to Bunnings actually became my salvation...

A much lighter, and frankly better solution to time with Mr Welder was a threaded rod that I could attach to a couple of bits of bent right angle brackets. At the top I just bolted it on with a capped nut (Tidy see!) and at the bottom I used some wing nuts and washers so I can adjust it if I want to..

Overall a total success actually. In doing this I've "built the triangle" so it's pretty rigid, but there's enough give that I'm not stressing the wheel if things do get a bit messy. It might fail at some point (hard to see how) but if it does another $10 at Bunnings and I'll be sorted.

And the eagle eyed amongst you will have noted that in doing this I've been able to route my cabling down the bracing rod, there's plenty of foot room and so few cables now in the way. Much tidier!

And that's where it ends?

Nope.

If you've got a G29 you'll know that the brake feel consists of a rubber wall that you have to push into at around 80%. What this transpires into is never actually getting full brakes.

So I removed it.

If you're racing bare foot then I recommend doing this, you lose end travel feel but you can at least get full brake travel without imprinting a Logitech logo backwards on the ball of your foot...

But there's more...

In my quest to get perfection, or indeed break something every expensive I did a bit of research and I found this:

http://www.gteye.com.au/

This is a progressive spring for the G29 (and friends). What it's done is made my racing exceptional.

The best example I can give is that in Assetto Corsa I used to have ABS turned on as it was next to impossible to get the feel of the lock up point. Now I don't.

I also spent up and bought the set of three, and whilst I can't say the clutch and accelerator have made a monumental difference I think both feel more weighty now, I can't believe that Logitech didn't make all three springs (especially the brake) like this in the first place!

And that pretty much is it. Though I'm tempted by this:

It can be found here: https://www.3drap.it

Not sure it's the best idea I'll have, and even they say it's a beta test, and in effect it would be installing an Italian gear box!

Still, got to be worth a couple of thou' on the track eh....

Final word - Race Vids on the way, left the drive at work!

Lazy Product Review

Maybe some of us have the carbon tub of an ex championship winning F1 car in our gaming room, but I suspect not. I doubt we've got the full force feedback multi-monitor gaming "rig" that many of our PC brethren have, no - I suspect that many of you are in the same space as me, a gaming set-up that's at best a dedicated seat and monitor and more likely if you were to describe your gaming pit as a car interior it would be velour interior & bench seat of a mid-western old GMC pick-up, or a couch as we call it.

Anyway, like a few of us I have a PS3 and a PS4, and funds for one wheel, a G29. What's more with the two systems I have a USB keyboard and had bluetooth headset for one and the PS4 cheapo single line earpiece for another. All in all more wires snaked across the living room than a mad scientists laboratory.

But I’ve solved it I think!

Behold, a USB four into two switch box:

Aten 2 Port USB Peripheral Sharing Device

What’s good about this, pretty much everything actually…

With this, I have four USB ports available, that with the push of a button on a long cable switches between two sources (four if you go large). And so, now I don’t have to be pulling cables out left and right to switch consoles, I’ve plugged in my steering wheel, keyboard receiver and now a USB cabled headset to the box. And now I can flick between PS3 and PS4 with ease, and no risk of damaging plugs.

Personally I can’t tell of any delay caused by using this, I’m just as bad at racing now as I was, so for now it’ll stay.

Of minor note, the other thing I did was get some cable tidy stuff like this:

And with this the plethora of cables coming out of the steering wheel are kept nice and tidy and away from my legs. All up less mess, and a lot less cable management as I switch between consoles...

More DriveClub

It's true I should be spending more time in Assetto Corsa, if my peers are anything to go by I'll certainly be the one at the back, and stay there thanks to a sim level of boosting - i.e. none...

But that's OK, because I have my happy place, and that's somewhat sideways in a game that compliments my sloppy driving whilst giving enough realism (a lot in the visuals) to make me feel like I'm playing a grownup game.

And they've just released another 15 track configurations - not 15 actual tracks, but close enough....
Here's one of them;

I do love ragging around in this game, and there's enough to make it worth comming back to fairly regularly - I've not even tried the bikes around these new tracks yet!

Oh yeah, and slow as I might be (nearly 10 seconds off the fastest run) I'm running in hard-core mode with manual gearbox. So no traction control, no auto braking, no steering help - all of which is on by default (bleh!).

SVG Races in Easy Mode...

We all do it...
We want the win, and we're not worried about racing half the race 20seconds up. So we set the difficulty to easy. We tell ourselves that it's because the AI is terrible and will collide just in front of us, and we know that with 'easy mode' on we'll blast past half the grid off the line.

Shane VanGisbergen seems to have done something similar: Porsche Racing

Yes, but no...

So I've put a bit more time into Assetto Corsa, you know for science and all that and I have good and somewhat bad things to say.

Firstly the good, the very very good. I have raced and I have run many cars on many tracks and I'm happy (indeed relieved) to be with the mainstream in saying that the game is a great driving sim.

I'll even comment that once I got into some of the faster/older cars that the gear box seemed to work better. Not least as I turned off the auto-clutch malarkey. Which incidentally fixed it for the paddle shifters too.
And the video below is me in something Lotus and old, around something that's Monza and old, with full clutch and gearbox, and of course factory abs (none) etc - basically as it should be.

Behold:

Was it as terrifying as it looks. No not really, but sitting on my couch helped. And am I the next Fangio? - no, I'd have been very very much one those grainy black and white fireball videos long before making this lap count.

Of the experience though, the satisfaction of pounding out laps in this car on this track is nearly worth the investment by itself. I can't wait to do the same to some of the other tracks to be honest!

But what of the bad news?

Well, there's no private lobbies. So a league night of racing is kinda out. It's worse - I took the time as I wound up my night (read waited for the ultra on-sale pod racer to download!) to watch some live streaming of the racing. 

Enjoyable as it was to watch what turned out to be a very good racer qualifying 2 seconds up on the competition at Spa, I shared his frustration at being punted so very wide at turn 1, and then subsequently share in just about everyone's drama trying to make it up through the field. Fair to say that without a private lobby and/or the ability to exit a numpty racing online in this game is going to be a lottery at best. 

So not really bad news, but I wouldn't be buying this as a social game any time soon. But I would be buying it as an all round excellent racing game. Watch this space.

Assetto PS4 Early View

Yes, I did stay up until midnight last night to play Assetto on my PS4.

That's not as hard as it sounds though. I normally end the night with a bit of gaming, and it's a mere flick of the controller to end the game and let the weight of my eyelids overwhelm me for an hour or two. Truth be told, the true zombie games are the ones I play long after I need to be in bed and asleep  - there's nothing like waking up and finding you've flown your spacecraft out of the cosmos...

But to Assetto....
This will be a very brief tell, I've got work to do and really you'll see many more reviews from everyone else on the planet. No, is a view from somone you know, so you can add some balance into all the rave/hate reviews that are sure to follow.

Initial Thoughts.
Assetto puts itself out there as a sim first and a game second basically. Having put physics ahead of all else. And how good did that feel (At 1am...)?
I think initially, once I'd turned on the steering wheel support in-game, I was a bit underwhelmed to be honest.

But this is a good thing.

Why? Well, after all I drive a car every day of the week, to have something that feels so very different or behaves in some odd way would mean that physics were one step beyond - I'm thinking Driveclub here.
So, yes, the physics are arguably so very good that you really can get in and drive successfully.

And so it was that I was in a Zonda hammering around Spa within a few minutes. And much fun it was.

The handling is good (as it should be with a Zonda), the track was great, the noise was OK and the graphics weren't terrible.

Is this a go-to sim for me? Yes, it's a next gen racer that'll keep me entertained for some time I think.

But I must confess I do like pretty games and it wasn't really that to start with.

And then I found the colour options, and changed from standard to extended - not sure what that is, I'm not a Mantis Shrimp so I don't know if anything else is going on, but the tracks did seem a little more vibrant and the cars also had a bit more depth, exhibit a. being the F40 above.

And of the F40 - I'm glad I don't own one of these, if this sim is accurate (and it's meant to be) then anyone brave enough to take one out on real world roads would be a nutter to attempt a roundabout on a busy day!

Of the game usability - yeah, all there and pretty much standard fare, you're not going to be blown away by this game in any way. It's as functional as a Countach dashboard to be honest. And again, that's OK.

If I had a major gripe it's the gearbox. Firstly if you want to enable the H pattern box it's a game option from the front screen. Why it's not like Driveclub I don't know - in that if you select a gear then it's stuck in that gear, if you have it in neutral then the paddles work. It's great.
What's more, in Assetto when you shift using paddles and auto clutch in an older car (think Countach again) then there's an element of clutch slip or something, I guess it's 'real' but really I'd like to have the fantasy of actually driving these cars be bit more friendly. Finally, and I do admit that I was tired at the time, but I got into a right mess with gears and clutches, I seemed to be stuck in one gear sometimes and stuck in neutral in others - I think it had a lot to do with me shifting too early (so over revving) but really this isn't an issue in other racing games, why introduce it. Is it a sim thing?

I think once I'm dialled in it'll be OK, and for multi-player racing in old F1 Lotus race cars around the old Monza, I think this is going to be a blast.

Final word, the king (for our league at least) of GT6 is not dead yet - though the vultures are circling with Project Cars 2 being a very strong candidate...

Dirty Rally

I want...

Dirt Rally (probably) +  Red Bull + $$$ = Awesome Sim

Just popping to the shops...

So here's a guy from work giving his car a good thrash up the recent Noosa Hillclimb.

Respect to him as he had no roll cage and gave it his all in what was ostensibly a street car up a hill with some proper drops on the right hand side.

Now if I can convince him to come and race online...

Been a while...

Promise to put some more replays up here, honest!
But it's so much harder on the PS3 than the PS4, I have to change output on the PS3 and errr yeah, some other stuff probably. But in any case, I did find it much easier on the PS4, so I did this, the oft' lamented (for it's lack of simness) Driveclub, which gives me good driving time and again. And of course looks lovely...