Howie47: OH. I forgot the upcoming RTR. It will be exciting to see what they come up with. Beating the real deal. Now that is prestige.Competition is good. It brings prices down and quality up.I might even buy iRacing some day. Once they come off their elitist perch.

If you can pry yourself away from your beloved uber-sim Shift, please describe the reasons why you see iRacing as “elitist.” I’m all eyes.

She has been singing for a long time now. I have been to see her more times then I can count. She has her hobbies, I have mine. That is sort of how it works.

eiwfihaaa: why would real race drivers use iracing to practice on……..when they obviously can afford to do the real thing. Because they do the real thing.so dumb. that graph youve posted shows a peak of 5000 people playing. which is nothing. if you log on on any given day there’s maybe 200 people playing regularly.
as an iracing member for the past 2-3 months i can tell you that, even on the forums, grids with more than 5 or 6 people are scarce, and people aren’t prepared to sit there for a whole hour.

That is not true at all. You make a point about the highest series, but it gets totally lost in the pointless false exaggerations. Grids with more than 5-6 people are not scarce at all. Up-to-date stats can be found at http://statmonkey.is-a-geek.net/ilom/whatWhen. Many series have dozens of drivers almost 24/7.

By the way, real drivers on all levels of motorsports use simulators to practice nowadays. If you don’t understand why, that’s your problem.

Howie47: Once they come off their elitist perch.

Lol, that pretty much sums up your endless plug of Shift….

stabiz: Its thursday, and Howie still hates iRacing because its to expensive. Stay tuned.

It’s Friday on my side of the world.

Howie47I’d rather invest at a place like “Simraceway”, or “Racedepartment”,that has prizes, TV coverage of races, and prestige before a much wider Sim community.

Prestige? Then why are the most talented sim racing studs in the world — guys like Gregor Huttu, Richard Towler, Shawn Purdy and the like — competing in the Pro Series at iRacing?

so dumb. that graph youve posted shows a peak of 5000 people playing. which is nothing. if you log on on any given day there’s maybe 200 people playing regularly.
as an iracing member for the past 2-3 months i can tell you that, even on the forums, grids with more than 5 or 6 people are scarce, and people aren’t prepared to sit there for a whole hour. its absurd.

Why do you think they’re actively trying to get more people to participate?

‘Finally, the new Race Participation Program, an earned credit of up to $40.00 per year ($10.00 per 12-week season) will be available to all iRacing members regardless of subscription type, replaces the previous subscription purchase incentive program. Existing quantity purchase discounts of up to an additional 25% remain in effect.

“We want to encourage our members to race more frequently, and we’re going to reward them for doing so,” Gardner said in making the announcement. “Really, it’s a win-win deal for our members. People enjoy racing against other drivers, and bigger fields just add to the fun and make the racing better. Someone who takes full advantage of the ‘Credit for Race Participation Program’ will earn $40 per year.”

………………………………….. what does that tell you.
because that tells me not enough people are playing, and they’re having to do all this to get more people to play, more often.

This graph might not work due to the odd URL, but it is a participation graph.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chg=0,19.6&chtt=Weekly+Active+Members+Since+Launch&chs=300×150&cht=lc&chco=0077CC&chds=0,5100&chxt=y&chxr=0,0,5100&chd=t:3030,3161,3075,3194,3129,2878,2732,2554,2599,2567,2430,2462,2425,2978,2869,2820,2730,2700,2697,2710,2560,2671,2635,2658,2736,2897,3544,3513,3557,3403,3464,3369,3362,3247,3193,3114,3145,3514,3616,3898,3999,4025,4128,4098,4054,4148,4023,4105,4102,3962,4044,4192,5054,4960,4957,4842,4940,4686,4521,4337,4358,4158

Ive been on iracing for 2 months now, grids are scarce, and higher up the classes there’s hardly anyone playing. Its in a terrible state.

Last week they announced plans from November onwards to let people fastrack up to higher licenses, instead of having to wait 12 weeks, which was ridiculous. Why? Because people aren’t prepared to pay a load of money to get a Class A licence, and race a nice fast car, only to find there’s no one else around.

Now they’ve FINALLY dropped prices loads. Why? Because it was a bloody ripoff in the first place. It’s okay if you have a full time job, but for the decent simracers, who aren’t 40+ years old, had no reason to change when they were getting good competition on rfactor, with potential prize money (simraceway).

Its so clear from this that they’ve had to drastically rethink their business model to try and attract more people to join.

There’s still problems with it, I bought the Star Mazda car – but the faster the car, the longer the races. Star mazda races are 45 minutes, the class A cars races last ONE HOUR.

It’s ridiculous. Who is going to casually sit there for a whole hour for goodness sake. Which is why there are now plans to create optional sprint races.

Finally. iracing is being sorted out.