Yesterday, we ran a 2500+ word article that detailed our time spent in iRacing’s Rookie Street Stock Series using the three month free trial promo code. Myself, Chris, Sal, Mike, and Vince spent a couple weeks messing around with the entry level car as a way to try out the alleged improvements to the new tire model without having to spend money and renew our subscriptions. The article was not meant to be a slam piece, but a detailed look at the current version of the popular racing sim from a handful of sim racers with the credentials to back it up on track.
And it most certainly wasn’t worth our time. In short:
iRacing’s clearly built in some scripted tire wear with the current build. As of this writing, we’ve done ten races at Charlotte. In all ten races, in turn four of lap sixteen, it’s almost as if a switch is flipped on the entire field and the car becomes noticeably loose. While we didn’t exactly have a problem with this sudden change in handling, it was not uncommon to see a large portion of the pack completely lose it, all at once as if the game magically turned on tire wear at the exact same time for everybody. At this point in the race, you still can’t pass anybody, nor can you get a proper run on anybody, but at least the car is sort of enjoyable to drive for the final two minutes of the race.
Yet this is not the end of strange physics oddities. In one race, Sal’s force feedack inexplicably turned off without warning while on the pace lap. For reasons even he struggles to comprehend, his car miraculously found two tenths of a second, and he proceeded to run down the leaders after starting mid-pack, eventually winning the race. Wanting to replicate this, Mike turned down the force feedback on his own wheel and attempted a qualifying session, and he improved his personal best time by a tenth of a second – a big deal on a track where there is no need to lift off the throttle.
iRacing believes the best way to ease newcomers into the daunting sim is to place them into a car that is almost mathematically crafted to exhibit all of iRacing’s biggest flaws – you can’t draft properly, can’t get runs on anybody, can’t pass anybody, can’t run multiple groves, the tires are scripted to become shit at precisely 16 & 3/4 laps, and then surround them with other drivers who will cuss at you for shit that sometimes doesn’t even make sense and drive as if they were never given a chance to wheel mom’s sedan around the block. Better yet, in the same breath they will advertise a yearly subscription price of $90 and then expect you to spend $15 anytime you want to check out a new track or car.
These claims were backed up by one commenter, who experienced the exact same tire model issues and force feedback discrepancies:
As I do with many articles from this site, I drop links to them amongst people who will be interested to read them. Assetto Corsa articles get linked in the Assetto Corsa Forums, pCars articles get linked in the pCars subreddit, and anything else interesting gets linked in the Sim Racing subreddit. As most iRacers spectate bottom split rookie series for the sheer entertainment value, they would have no problem reading through an article written on the fabled series, and I created a thread linking to the Street Stock article around 10am.
Wanting to check the comments on the forum post, I was instead greeted with the traditional “You’ve been banned!” screen:
At first I figured I must have been protested by someone in a previous race because Rookie Races can get pretty hectic as we described in yesterday’s article. iRacing always sends you e-mail notifications if someone has filed a complaint against you, and upon checking my e-mail, there were none to be found, just a generic iRacing.com survey.
Vince sent me a screencap of my account details on the iRacing member forums, showing that I had exactly zero posts. They deleted the thread linking to the article.
This is pretty fantastic. Again, this wasn’t a slam-piece article designed to rip on iRacing; we sat down for an entire day talking about our experiences and crafted a lengthy article that described both the positives and negatives of iRacing – in particular it’s entry level class.
- We openly advertised a promo code that would potentially bring more people into their sim.
- We clearly stated our previous credentials that adequately backed up our opinions.
- We praised the car’s handling at USA Speedway and admitted we enjoyed how the car drove.
- We explained, to our European readers, what a Street Stock is.
- We described some of the instances of bad driving we experienced from other opponents.
- We described the personalities you could expect to compete against in a Rookie Series race.
- We explained how to drive the car at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
- We went into detail about how and why the draft model isn’t realistic, and why it affected the racing in a negative way.
- We went into detail about the game’s tire model and how it affected the racing in a negative way.
- We went into detail about the new adjustments made to the tire model, even noting the exact lap the tires exhibited odd behavior.
- We conducted an experiment to see if turning off force feedback made you faster – and it did.
- We gave several examples where the competition around us were cunts to us, backing up our stories with both video as well as fancy screenshots.
- We gave a direct example of how your average iRacing member handles on-track incidents.
- We then summarized why the overall experience was unsatisfactory.
According to iRacing, this is all worthy of a ban without explanation.
Here I was seriously considering getting into iRacing and even taking into consideration the physics model limitations. I can accept limitations in implementation as there are many variables that go into what can and cannot be done since different teams have different abilities to implement different aspects of racing. What is unacceptable is poor response to criticism and professional criticism at that. It represents a lack of respect for customers and a lack of maturity and confidence in their product. Poor showing by iRacing. Maybe their ‘service’ isn’t so much about racing as about huddling together with a bunch of other like minded people that insulate themselves from any outside opinions.
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Please don’t let this one site, run by a guy long ago banned, with an insane vendetta, stop you from joining. He’s not telling nearly the whole story, and rest assured that he was not banned for no reason.
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except hes totally right about how the street stock drives
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He wasn’t banned for the article. That much is certain.
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iRacing stooping to SMS/Bell levels of immaturity with insta-bans ?. Haha, how wonderful.
Seriously iRacing, your ‘move’ has been exposed, and unless you can defend this move publicly. I’m not going to bother with the remaining 2.5 free months I still have, there are other games I’d rather support.
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They’re not going Ian Bell on him, they’re just banning the second account of an already banned person, it’s how it goes and for the better. Austin has no place in iRacing anyway, good riddance.
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Austins first account was never banned. He was suspended for a month though, but that was years ago.
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Because… ?
You make assertions but you don’t even provide an argument. That gives you zero credibility.
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Although you did a couple things that probably could have got your account suspended if the protest system was anything other than a total farce, simply banning you with no explanation at all (other than the obvious) is absolute weaksauce.
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iRacing sends you an automated protest receipt if someone files a protest on you. Never got one. Account was only banned a few hours after I made the forum thread.
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Is it true that you guys were spamming the chat boxes?
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Is it true that you guys were spamming the chat boxes?
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One of your previous account is already banned, therefore they are going to ban any other account you create or use and they don’t need to send you another reason than the one of your first ban.
It would be too easy to go around a permanent ban by just getting a new account.
What I just mentioned must be no news to you, but it’s funny how your article doesn’t mention any of it.
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He already had his explanation in the e-mail they sent him when they banned his first account, you can’t create a new account when you are banned, that would be too easy.
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You guys are continuing to make friends all over the industry. Thanks for once again telling it like it is.
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http://members.iracing.com/jforum/posts/list/0/3319585.page Posted 17:00 finland central time, we’ll see how long does this thread get to be there
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Ogo, i thought you were banned from iracing a while back for being a douchebag. iracing would’ve just banned your new account for trying to get around the ban.
but oh no, wah wah, iracingsux as usual.
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You got pretty badly rekt’d in iRacing forums.. Wonder what have you done before to get this hostile reception? :D
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It’s just like the people trying stop him from viewing the project cars forums. For the record I play iRacing. But I don’t take it too seriously. Hopefully it is just a case of him actually just being banned on the service for some other reason, which led to them closing his new account without notice. But at the same time, they did remove the post he made about his article about iRacing as well. So they probably just wanted to stop him from sharing his article. Which is pretty lame if you ask me.
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He’s been banned for a long time, for a good reason. iRacing doesn’t have to let a guy who is ban-evading post links to a personal vendetta site.
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And he’ll probably censor this, just like he hates so much about iRacing.
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He was suspended once in 2013, but not banned completely. Saw him in a Mclaren race this year.
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man there is a reason no one likes you in the sim racing world :P:P:P:P:P:P:P:P:P
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Well, if iRacing is consistent in something, it’s the “if we delete these threads from forum, they dissapear”. GG iRacing mods
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I bothered to read through that thread you posted. The interesting thing is that there is plenty of insults, “it’s not a finished game”, “he’s a hater”, “he was banned before” and so on…. plus massive butthurt that someone criticized their fav game.
What is completely missing from the thread though is anyone trying to actually refute a single one of his arguments.
That always makes me suspicious. If someone is dead wrong and “just a hater” then it is usually very easy to win the discussion by refuting their arguments.
I guess iRacers rather don’t win the argument?
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lol
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You were ban-evading, and they banned you again. Why are you surprised?
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im sure all 5 people who visit this website are on your side. get over it, your bitter shit after all these years is getting old.
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more like 50k per month faggot
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lol, you’re delusional
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too bad i know the site owner and his user statistics. stay mad faggot :^)
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post up the analytic then. 50k per month, fuck you are such a liar.
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eat it, bitch: http://www.trafficestimate.com/pretendracecars.net
And that’s not taking Unique visitors into account either, which is likely 15% of that number. Which means you 5 emo bitches sit and hit refresh all day looking for attention, thus accounting for the majority of your shitty ass traffic to your shitty ass website.
Eat shit. Bunch of liars.
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Wow you sure showed me with some hyper-unreliable 3rd party tool there! I guess wordpress is way less accurate in counting hits than fucking trafficestimate of all places :^)
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Just wait, it will be hilarious to see you get btfo you little faggot :^)
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then post the numbers and prove it, dumb asses.
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And your Alexa rank is over 1 million – not indicative of a site with 50k+ visitors per month. But let me guess, not accurate either?
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Well, serves you right for doing professional and independent sim racing journalism. :P Jokes apart, if they got angry at you, that’s because you’re doing it right. Cheers, mate! Keep up the good work. :)
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Considering the only view of iRacing is the one he lets you see, why do you simply believe everything he says? He deserved his ban originally, and he deserves a ban again for ban-evading. Not to mention, they ruined the rookie SS races they were in, spamming the chat with constant crap.
He’s anything but professional. He takes advantage of the fact that iRacing is a closed service; nobody can verify one way or the other.
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He literally promoted a free trial of iracing, so that anyone who wishes could go and try it for themselves, so I don’t see how he’s only letting people us see what he wants us to see.
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you’re the guys that were spamming the streetstock races chat with shit and ruining it for everyone else. and you left it out your article too?
good riddance.
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to be fair, when arent people spamming the chat with quit yo jibber jabber?
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Gotta love all the elitist iRacing pricks coming out of the woodwork! Keep it coming guys, we need at least one nonbiased simracing site.
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This is one of the most biased simracing sites. You can try iRacing yourself for free like he did, if you want to verify what these “elitists” are saying. Just head to the forums and ask for his backstory. It’s entirely different from what he’s let you see.
And I don’t care if you like other sims, I won’t try to tell you you’re wrong. But he is 100% misleading you.
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and how did people on this site know they could get a free trial?
because he told us we could…
backstory is he beat ray alfalla in a race. ray got pissy and got his buddies to report his paint scheme. oggy got banned for an “offensive paint scheme”. oggy had previously asked someone at iracing what the limits were for paint schemes, what’s deemed offensive, what could get a ban (as he likes to run semi-offensive and distracting paint schemes) and was told point blank he could do anything, as users can self censor paint schemes they don’t want to see, and to ban someone for something individual users can self moderate would be dumb.
the offensive part of the paint scheme were the words “motherfucking foofs” which at the time was some sort of sponsorship agreement he had with a youtube vlogger.
he had been suing the paint scheme for a long time.
if i’m wrong about any of this, please correct me.
hell, i think i even have a screencap somewhere of ray encouraging his buddies to report him.
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I tried it last year, around Oct/Nov IIRC. Drove a couple of races with a Miata and the Street Stock. Mazda felt like on ice, no feedback from the rear. Str.Stock was pretty fun, until I got revenge wrecked. Never drove it again. No thanks, I’ve got a lot more choices.
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Actually, I think he’s screwed up this time. Anyone can simply use the same free trial he did, look up his history on the forum, and find out that it’s not at all as he says.
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The same thing you said have been repeated at lest five times in these comments (presumably by you again and again?). If the “backstory” is so damning then why the fuck don’t you post it here and win the argument? Why hide behind “register an account and go ask in the forums”? Just post this supposedly damning backstory, provide some kind of convincing arguments (or better, evidence) and you win and I promise, if you are right then I for one am ready to believe you.
Until then… well, sorry, you sound like you are the one who is butthurt and full of shit.
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Please use the promo code and try it for yourself if you haven’t used the service before. The article was only to inform somebody what they are in for, not to discourage them from trying it themselves. Everybody should learn on their own exactly what the ‘iracing mentality’ is; that snipped from the forums is a beautiful example of it actually. People assuming that he was countering a ban when that is simply not the case.
Another example: I have lost count of the number of times I have heard this quote, “I am going to fucking protest you, you fucking piece of shit’, usually right after somebody is wrecked. This is hilarious because there has never been a successful protest for anything that happened on track in the rookie series, and it is doubly funny because used to be the only thing that was a guaranteed successful protest was if it was for vulgar language. Apparently now, even that is no longer taboo.
After personally knowing that Chris lost his voice chat priveledge for several years simply because of asking somebody if they could please hold their damn brakes after spinning, it is pretty crazy to come back a couple years later and here F bombs fly, N-words flow like water, and all kinds of other crazy shit flow like water through the microphone like it is no big deal. Even the posts by Brian and William and Travis in the snipped above contain language that a few years ago would have taken away your right to post, but it seems that anything goes now. I will protest them just for good measure though; anybody want to place bets on whether anything happens to them?
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We’re not assuming anything. He was banned, I was a member at the time.
So please, do use the promo code and look up his history. :)
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“So please, do use the promo code and look up his history”
I have a better idea:
You post his supposedly damning history right here and you can win the argument if you are right.
Either that or STFU.
How does that sound?
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Here is the funny thing, speaking for myself and one other buddy who have been out of the “iRacing scene” for about 5 years and 3 years respectively we both agreed that iRacing and the NTM v6 are about as good as they ever have been. I personally have re-upped my main account for an entire year! I haven’t been a member for more than 3 months consecutive since 2010 or 11.
Austin if you actually read the article from an objective point of view and not have the predisposed view of him being a troll you would see that he is actually saying that the street stock is good. I agree, RickyBobby agrees and so does just about everyone on our teamspeak. A teamspeak not filled with iRacing haters, but people who if you told them in 2009 when we all registered for the first time that in 2014 iRacing would still have bad physics and the highest price- we we probably would have laughed in your face.
I have a second account to race street stocks, yes I like the fixed street stock enough that I think it is worth having the second account to run a race every hour on short tracks. As far as I know there is nothing against people having multiple accounts, so long as they arent using them to evade bans (which austin is not doing, not was I or anyone else we know). He was banned a long time ago, not currently. Well until he was banned yesterday :/
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Today we learn about: “ad hominem” attacks.
Often used by shitheels, Fox News anchors, shills and iRacing members. Ad hominem attacks are often used by complete fucking morons, attacking the traits of an opponent as a means to invalidate their arguments.
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Nobody is attacking him. We are refuting his story, because is is simply not true. He claims iRacing banned him for his article, we are saying that he was banned for other reasons.
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Then go ahead and tell us what the other reasons are. Go ahead. We’ll wait.
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Damn you for making me write the same thing over and over.
Nobody is refuting his story!
You are merely asserting that it is not true.
You do understand the difference between these two things, right?
Shit, I don’t even have an opinion on iRacing except that it’s too expensive.
I’m just reacting to people NOT refuting what sounds like a set of reasonable arguments.
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Just noting this as a casual observer, I keep seeing posts saying he was, “Banned for a good reason” but never actually state what that reason was. No screenshots of a forum burnout or hard evidence, just the same statement over and over again. Similarly, the same people keep saying to “Join the service and look up his history” which sounds conspicuously similar to the Project Car types trying to get people to buy their favorite video game.
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people think he was already perma-banned from iracing, when he infact was not.
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But he in fact is.
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But he’s not faggot
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Nobody is suggesting you buy the game. We suggest you join for free, never download the software, and cancel auto-renew as soon as you find what you’re looking for.
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Half the fucking comments here are an Anonymous twat saying “he was permabanned on his old account so he was banned for ban-evading”. Repeating it over and over doesn’t make it true, dude.
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How about one of you current Iracing members who are saying he was perma banned go screen cap the proof and then come back and post it?
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They can’t, cause there is no proof.
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That’s what I was going to say, after seeing this got 50+ comments and catching-up on them.
If they can’t show/validate this ‘proof’, then what makes their word any different from his ?
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Over 4 hours and so far just crickets on the perma ban proof.
I don’t know if it’s true or not but if you state something as true, you should be able to back it up otherwise you’re just blowing smoke out your ass.
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From the current post on the blog, looks like the perma ban was in fact BS and was just Iracing fangirls talking straight out their asses!
Love the blog guys. Keep telling the truth and smacking down fangirls with facts and proof.
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Figured as much, if the iRacing die-hards wanted to prove it, they could have done it by now, yet here we are, with no proof provided.
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