The Chicane Podcast

Upgrading Your Sim Rig: High-Tech Software, Virtual Pit Crews, and Personalized Racing Setups

• TGS Sim Racing • Episode 11

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Ever wondered how to take your sim racing setup to the next level? Join us as Eric Kelly returns to the Chicane Podcast to share his latest gear upgrades. Eric dives into his experience with the SimMagic GT Neo racing wheel and the SimMagic haptic motor paired with the P1000 pedal set. He discusses the remarkable precision and intensity of the force feedback, the ease of installation, and the minor hiccup with the PS5 compatibility, sparking a conversation about potentially switching to a PC for enhanced performance.

We also shine a spotlight on Crew Chief, an essential tool for any serious sim racer. Think of Crew Chief as your virtual pit crew, providing real-time telemetry, situational updates, and voice command capabilities to keep you at the top of your game. Whether it's keeping track of lap times, getting updates on the positions of other cars, or customizing voice options, Crew Chief’s features are designed to elevate your racing experience. Best of all, it's free, making it a no-brainer addition to your setup.

Lastly, we explore customization tools that can truly personalize your racing simulator. From ghost setups and CDA setups tailored to specific track conditions to platforms like Race Department and Trading Paints offering free mods and personalized liveries, we cover it all. Plus, we encourage community engagement by inviting you to share your favorite tracks and experiences. Tune in to keep your passion for sim racing alive and discover new ways to enhance your performance and enjoyment on the track.

CrewChief: https://thecrewchief.org/
Lovely Sim Racing: https://linktr.ee/LovelySimRacing
Daniel Newman Racing: https://www.danielnewmanracing.com/
ACC Commissioned liveries: https://felixdicit.com/

Please e-mail the show for any questions, comments or stories/experiences at thechicanepodcast@gmail.com

Watch the show in video podcast form on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@TGSsimracing

Follow all my social platforms below:

https://www.twitch.tv/trackghost
https://www.instagram.com/TGSsimracing/
https://www.youtube.com/@TGSsimracing
https://twitter.com/TGSsimracing
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566360513781

Intro/Outro Rights below:
Song: Low Mileage - Hold You [NCS Release]
Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds
Free Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/holdyou
Watch: http://ncs.lnk.to/holdyouAT/youtube

Jason:

The Hello and welcome to the Chicane Podcast, where we discuss all things in the sim racing world. I'm your host, Jason Rivera, and I'm joined here again today by Mr Jeff Smart and Eric Kelly. How are you guys doing today?

Jeff:

Doing good, doing good. I hope you guys got in the rig as much as I did, or more than I did.

Erick:

Definitely not. Let's get into it.

Jason:

It's good to hear Eric man, eric's voice again.

Erick:

He couldn't join us last week.

Jason:

But hey, welcome back. So before I even get into what the show is going to be about today, I want to hear uh, I, I think eric has a lot of things that he wants to put out here on the show, so I'm going to give it, and give him the mic and step back here yeah.

Erick:

So, first off, ps5 is master race when it comes to sim racing, I want you guys no but uh, but but for real, um. So I got a couple of things. I got the sim magic uh, gt neo racing wheel probably the most important racing wheel that's out right now. Um, and also I got one of the sim magic haptic motors. Good news and bad news start with the good.

Jeff:

The gt neo is amazing I wish everybody could see the smile on his face right now for the price he's got this permanent grin.

Jason:

This is permanent. This is permanent bro bro, it's.

Erick:

So. This is my first butterfly style wheel. I've only driven round rims. So there was some things that stuck out to me, one of them Jason mentioned before, where, because you have all the force feedback coming into such small areas in your hands, it's more intense, more detailed.

Erick:

And I noticed that immediately and it was not scary, but it definitely was, you know, it woke me up when I first started driving with it yeah, um, but also being able to set my degrees of rotation to, you know, match the car more directly and just aesthetically it just feels like you're steering, uh, you know, gt car or whatever. More naturally, the customization is crazy. The build quality for the price unmatched right unparalleled. I mean it is rock solid 100 build materials like they're. Obviously it's not magic. They have to actually Cut costs somewhere. Whoever comes up with those decisions from SimMagic, they need their flowers.

Jeff:

They don't get paid enough.

Erick:

They don't. Whatever they're getting paid, they don't get paid enough. So that's the good news. I've been playing with it in sim hub, imported some led profiles. I've um.

Jeff:

Look at you, look at you, damn man, man, he said, yes, I'm getting emotional. He started talking about this stuff hey man, that's the.

Erick:

That's the good news. So the bad news I got the happy motor. I was able to experience it a little bit, plug it into my PC, just kind of tested out some profiles and things like that with it. But on PS5, as of right now, there's no way to use it, and it's really because SimMagic is so well integrated. The haptic motor plugs natively into the pedal set. It there's no way to just get data to the haptic motor without having that pedal set plugged into the pc. Obviously the pedal sets plugged into the pc, it's not plugged into the playstation, which means I can't use it. So right now it's just a sad reminder that I need to hurry up and get a pc. Um, but as far as the integration is beautiful, like they kind of thought of everything and I'm excited, I'll probably be a little more irresponsible when it comes to getting a pc now, just so I can add that to my, you know, to my arsenal. But, um, I'm excited man.

Jason:

So I got a question for you. Um, so you got the P 1000 set pedal set and how easy was it to just upgrade your pedal or install something on there that that that you know that didn't come in the box.

Erick:

Crazy, easy. The pedals have native slots for the mounting bracket for the haptic motor. So the haptic motor mounts, so there's a bracket that you just bolt to the back of the pedal. Whichever one brake, throttle I don't have a clutch, but it'd be the same for the clutch Two bolts, put that on and then the haptic motor has four um little hex bolts that you screw it on with. You unscrew the face plate, screw on the haptic motor and then screw the face plate back on and you're done like it's like oem is kind of like disappears like oem disappears, but also, once you put it on, it looks and feels like it came on there like it looks like a piece of equipment.

Jeff:

Yeah, like that's. Eric. How long did it take you to do all this stuff? To install the haptic?

Erick:

to install the haptic, like 10 minutes maybe. Yeah that's pretty nice and that's with me taking it off and putting it back on, because the way I had it on originally the sim magic logo on it was upside down, so I rotate it. I rotate it around because I wanted to make sure it looked right I know we're friends.

Jeff:

We're all friends for a reason now.

Jason:

Yeah, man Wow.

Erick:

I was like, even though I can't use this thing, Perfectionist.

Erick:

It's going to look right. So I had to run the wire, and even just being able to run the wire through to each side of the pedal because it's a certain on the pedal set. There are four little barrel style plugs on there and they all do different things One's for haptics for the clutch, one's haptics for the brake, one's haptics for the throttle and the other one is a uh power for the led light bars you can install, and all this is native as far as being able to add it on, and so you have to run the haptic motor to a specific one of the barrels, and it's on the left side of the brake pedal, the way I have it set up, and so I just run the cable across the back of the faceplate and it looks like that's how it's supposed to go.

Jason:

So it's real easy to grow with these pedals, and that's kind of why I'm a little jealous of the ecosystem that they have put together, because you know you can add hydraulic um hydraulic brake now to the pedals you can have. You can add a damper to the gas pedal. You can add those motors that you that you just installed, you can add a different heel plate or a longer gas. This is awesome, man.

Erick:

That's very awesome yeah they what they're doing at sim magic with them being my first foray really in the sim race and I had a lot of say g29 or whatever. There's no ecosystem like you buy the parts and there's some aftermarket stuff you can mod it. But as far as the oem level, customization, the sim magic, I can't authoritatively say it's unrivaled, but it's damn impressive I think for the doll.

Jeff:

I mean, I got the, the, the almost the same setup for pedal wise and dollars per. What you get is head and shoulders, In my opinion. Now I haven't tested everything but incredible for the, what you pay for, what you get and how easy it is to set up and all your stuff's in one place. Eric man, I'm with you, man, it's, it's really nice. What have you been driving the last couple days with it?

Erick:

So when I first got everything set up and once I got over my disappointment in not being able to use the haptic motors, I stayed up until about 2 o'clock on ACC just driving.

Jeff:

I had to break it in. Good man, I'm not telling you thinking you don't already know, but like you get in that rig with that neo and like damn, I'm fast.

Erick:

I might not be fast, but I feel fast bro, you feel like you're driving a space shuttle man, like it's it, and what do you think of the?

Jason:

comfort dude like, because that's the one thing that I like about this wheel the most is the comfort on the wheel.

Erick:

So I actually ended up adjusting my wheel base so before I had it at a top mount on the crossbar and what I ended up doing was taking the mounting it from the underside so it sits a little bit lower. So it's kind of more in a not in my lap, but kind of a more natural position, because now I don't have a steering wheel that I'm going to be rotating a lot now I need something that's kind of in the pocket, and so I was able to make that adjustment because I do have an 80-20 rig and not my little wooden ghetto setup before I was able to adjust that and just the comfort of doing that now it feels like I'm in a cockpit versus driving a road car, which makes sense.

Jeff:

That's cool. Do you notice any difference? I'm sure there's a learning curve, especially because you drive VR now that you've got a new wheel, learning button location, things like that, or is it pretty quick pickup?

Erick:

That's interesting With the Neo, the way that it connects to the PlayStation. There's a default PlayStation button mapping. You can go into um, simhub, I believe either SimHub or SimPro, one of the two. I haven't customized it because it's just easier for me to use it how it is out the box, but essentially it maps a G29 style control button set. So there's some rotaries like you get two rotaries, you get some, uh, multifunction dials that you can assign the normal place. There's controls like triangle, square X, l2, l1, l3, you get all those Um and so they're kind of arranged a little bit differently than on my GTS wheel. But once I kind of know where everything is is kind of easy to easy second nature yeah, all right, good, so that you know.

Jason:

and to wrap this up, you know it's a great time for anyone that either already purchased this wheel, the GT Neo, or you know it's had it for a while, because they just received a firmware update. So I don't know if any of you have updated your wheels yet, but they added on firmware update 1.3.6, they added absolute value encoder function. They added absolute value encoder function. So what does that mean? So that means that the encoder now is a hard encoder, so it'll remember its position. So if the car is set to ABS1, then your dial will be the way your dial is Wherever it's indicating. It'll sync up with the game type of deal. It's nice. So if you load up a setup and the car has a six ABS, the wheel is going to automatically switch it back to one because you have to manually turn it. You know what I mean Because it's not just a free spinning knob.

Erick:

You know what I'm trying to say.

Jason:

It has a memory function. They just updated that and it's 100 free. So go in there and uh, you got to use sim pro. You can't update it through anywhere. You know you have to use their software, sim pro, to update your gt, neos and it took.

Erick:

Yes, go ahead I was gonna say so. Is that the? I saw when I plugged everything up and updated it? Is that the the encoder update that they were mentioning in there?

Jason:

so this came out five days ago, so then you're probably on the latest firmware.

Erick:

I was reading the go ahead sorry, and I was gonna say I was reading the um, the release notes for the update. It mentioned something about the encoder but I wasn't sure what it was. But it sounds like that might have been what it was.

Jason:

Yep, the absolute value encoder function.

Jeff:

Yeah, I heard on a couple of the groups I follow that a couple people had some problems with the update. So I purposely did not do the update but I'll probably give it a day or two and just kind of make sure that it's got it all sorted out. But I know that was one of the big gripes when the NIO came out was those rotary dials were like buttons, not like a true dial. So it seems like they got that sorted out. That'll be awesome.

Jason:

Right, I think the Fanatec. If you look at the Fanatec wheels, they have the multifunctional position switch, which is the same thing. You know, that's what it is. So it's one dial per per encoder. It's awesome, you know, because you can think about it. You can map all kinds of things now using sim hub. Uh, by using this function, you know you, you, if you set one dial to a certain position and then you move another dial, that can be another option. Or you can set option number one to control ABS, and then the other dial controls it up and down, and then so on and so forth. But I am glad to have you back on the show, eric, it is awesome to have you back.

Erick:

Today we're going to cover.

Jason:

Hey, that's what's up, man. Today we Last episode we wrapped up hardware tools that are commonly used in sim racing and today it's going to be another part two episode, because sim hub is going to be its own episode and it's technically part of the software side of things. But today we're going to cover crew chief. We're going to cover lovely sim racing, we're going to cover setup software, uh, for setups, for car setups specifically. Uh, we're going to touch a little bit about race department and also, um, some tools for your liveries, um, that are free. So, without further ado, I'm going to give this to jeff. He's going to cover the first tool and that tool is called crew chief hey, thanks, jason.

Jeff:

So, uh, just a little background for everybody on what crew chief is crew chief's a program that kind of just runs in the background, um, and communicates with the program and basically reads the telemetry and is more or less a spotter for you as you're driving. So you know if you can listen to any of the F1 drivers as their spotters are talking to them, or NASCAR or really any type of motorsport. As a car pulls up on, you know they're coming down the straightaway and a car pulls up to the right, you'll hear in a different voice. Come over, you know the speaker saying you know, car to your right, car to your right, still there, all right, you're clear, you know, and he is. You know reading the, the, the, the telemetry or what the game's you know sending out for data, that their car is still there.

Jeff:

It's, it's pretty impressive. Every time you come across the, you know start, finish line. He gives you another, he gives you a data point on your lap how it was in reference to your. You know your, your previous laps, your laps, that day, um, he will pretty much do everything um that you could have asked, ask of him and honestly, I'm interesting that I said, that is, you can actually and jason help me out here. You can actually, you know, um initiate him to give you some you can talk to him.

Jason:

Yeah, you talk to him. So you have different options on how you want to do that. So you can either always have crew chief listening, so he'll always listen, so he's always listening to you. So if I tell him track update, if I say that, then he'll tell me everything about the track, the temperature, the weather, et cetera. And there's also a button press which I love to use because in iRacing I like to chat, so I have one button press to open up the chat in iRacing and then I have a separate button to press to talk to crew chief. That keeps it separate. You know, it's kind of nice and it's basically a. It's like a, an assistant man, it's like a, it's like a google assistant for you basically yeah, you

Jeff:

can even tell them yeah, you can even tell them to set an alarm, like you could tell them, hey, um, set a timer for 10 minutes and he'll alarm you about whatever it is that you're trying to do or doing on track one of the, the big, the best updates that I really like and probably one of the biggest reasons why I use it is he tells me that the delta to the guy in front and to the guy in back, um, so I know, relative to front and back, if I'm closing on the front or if I need to start worrying about, you know, start driving my elbows out that somebody from behind me is catching up, Um, cause there's a lot of stuff going on.

Jeff:

You know those that that that have raced, you know, uh, other people, um, you kinda at least I, you know, I do is I'm get that tunnel vision on the car in front of me and I kinda you know that rear view mirror gets really small and it's nice to have that guy in your ear chirp and you know, hey, you know gap to gotten guy behind you is down to, you know, 1.8. I probably should start paying attention to that guy in the back, Um, so it's really helps with the situational awareness of the car, um, fuel wise, um, you know, and how everybody's driving around you to, um, helps out with, uh, you know, crashes, um, et cetera, Um, it it's pretty cool, it's a pretty cool tool, Um, and the best part about it is it's free Um you can.

Jeff:

You can pick different people's voices that you want. Um, I think the main guy's name is is, uh, is Jeff. So that's kind of cool, uh, jeff.

Jason:

Jeff uh, you know I get to hear Jeff all day on the show on text.

Jeff:

And now I'm my simulator.

Jason:

I can't get away from him. Yeah, I don't know if it was Jason, was you?

Jeff:

You was telling me that there's a, there's a, there's a setting buried in there that you can. You know he can cuss at you if you're really doing driving pretty crappy. Yes, please enable it.

Jason:

It's called swear words. You click on that checkbox and the checkbox oh. And another thing is that when you put your name in, he'll call you out by your name yeah, super cool yeah, he's like oh, that was an excellent lap, jason. Or keep pushing, jason, good you know.

Jeff:

Or earlier today he was like hey, jeff, you're faster than that and the car's faster than that, let's pick up the pace. I was like damn man, like I'm doing the best I got right now I love it when he curses man.

Jason:

It's like I. I crashed one time, I think it was on spa. I lost the car on the on the turn. You know what turn? I'm talking about the nasty one at the beginning yep and he's like we really really fucked up the suspension on the car uh, expletive, uh warning on this one, yeah oh no, no, they're all explicit yeah, it's cool and it can switch from game to game with a click.

Jeff:

One click and it's got all the major games ACC, assetto, corsa, iracing, wrc, all the stuff you know that you could F1, all the games you could want it supports. It's a cool app. It's free. All the stuff that you could F1, all the games you could want it supports. It's a cool app. It's free. You're missing out if you don't have it. I think it's the best way to say it.

Jason:

And it's really light on your system. So don't think that by running this you're going to lose on frames, on the game or whatever. It's really light. And there's also, uh, an app that's called cc start two c's charlie, charlie start, and what that app does is that it's a little coding app and it'll automatically launch, uh, crew chief for you when the game's launched. So if you haven't had that set up yet, jeff, you need to, because sometimes you forget to launch crew chief before you launch in a new game, or you switch a game and the and crew chief is set to control acc and you jumped into iRacing.

Jeff:

So it's kind of nice yeah, my stream deck saved me today as I jumped into iRacing. Luckily, I was using iRacing previously but, uh, as the game was loading, I just you know, luckily, those that listened to the stream deck episode previously uh, just a quick button it launched and got me right in. But yeah, I'll have to take a look into that, buddy.

Jason:

Thank you yeah, man, I mean it's. It's that one extra thing that runs in the background. That doesn't hurt, it's just that. It's just a line of code that says, if this game launches, launch crew chief using this profile, which is the acc profile or the ac profile or whatever, what have you? So it's kind of nice, um, to have that's pretty cool man yeah, the only thing is it's only on the pc, eric, sorry so yeah, yeah, I picked up, I picked up on that yeah, I mean it adds to it well it's pretty cool when it says you know, so you're driving slow or something.

Erick:

Go ahead, eric so you said that it reads the telemetry from the game. Does it have to? Is it doing that outside or is it doing that? Does it work with sim hub at all?

Jason:

yes, yes, because SimHub uses a port, right? Okay, so whatever port that that data is being fed to, kruci can see that and spit out data using the same. So it's real time, there is no lag.

Erick:

It is amazing. So I wonder, because I'm getting some telemetry from GT7, I wonder what all is getting, Because I want to look at the telemetry from like a haptic motor standpoint. But I wonder if it's getting anything else. I don't know it might be worth playing around with to see Right.

Jason:

You know, we might be, butchering it. I've never seen anyone use it, but who knows, know we might be. We might be butchering it and not. I don't think I've never seen anyone use it, but who knows, we might be wrong.

Jeff:

It's worth a shot, it's free yeah, I don't know how it works. It's magic, it's cool.

Jason:

That's all I use you might, you might still need to have a pc running somewhere else and connected to your headphones to kind of transmit the data. So I mean you still need some sort of computer running, you know what I mean.

Erick:

Yeah, yeah, because, um, even when I got my haptic motor in my mind, I was gonna, like I talked to you about the raspberry pi thing or even just having a laptop over there, I was gonna I plan on having a pc just over there, just not one that I was running the game on, to actually so listen, eric, read the telemetry stuff.

Jason:

You need to stop playing all these games, just stop playing the games.

Jeff:

Hey, man, stop ducking and dodging and get the damn pc when you start up, I could go find you page yes, you know what I'm saying that pay me later.

Erick:

Don't tip me, pay me later thing.

Jason:

You know what I'm saying, dude, just put a little bit of down, a little bit, you know don don't take a little was that uh n nzxp nzxp. Let's go.

Jeff:

That's the page I'll get you in trouble in a heartbeat. Hey man, I know they'll ship out a machine. I may or may not have a whole pc part picker system set up you don't need that.

Jason:

You go to you. Go to nzxt, they'll build it for you. It'll show up to your house in a box.

Jeff:

You plug it in for I think it's 100 bucks right that thing showed up, my house, my office like how much was that? It's like they gave it to me. You know that movie yeah it was a gift. They gave it to me. They gave it to me.

Jason:

So yeah, crew Chief is awesome. Crew Chief has been around for a long time, so definitely, highly. That is a must-have. I'm sorry, whoever's on PC and you're not using Crew Chief, you need to get Crew Chief. It'll help you and it'll keep your mind at ease. Like Jeff said, when someone's creeping up behind you and you don't know you turn into a corner somewhere and you're not paying attention, you just hit the guy With crew chief. You at least know hey, somebody's there. Dude, it'll tell you hold your line too. It's kind of nice. Hold your line Meaning all right. So I need to hold my line and allow space with racing, but then if he's approaching me, that's time for me to shut the door you know what I mean and start defending. So that's crew chief.

Erick:

That sounds invaluable man, to be honest.

Jason:

Invaluable, amazing. It's like a few megabytes of storage size. It's like a few megabytes of storage size. So the next one is lovely sim racing. And I say lovely sim racing because lovely sim racing is now become an ecosystem. It's multiple products that talk to each other and immerse, immerse the user into you know the, the racing or whatever you're trying to do, lap times, whatever. And he started out. The gentleman's name is Constantinos, he goes by Constantinos, and he started out making a dashboard that works with SimHub, called Lovely Dashboard, and his vision was why do I need to have so many different dashboards for so many different games? I want to have a single dashboard that works with all titles and gives me all the data that I need. That's relevant. And let me tell you that I cannot live without the lovely dashboard, so much that I became a supporter immediately when he opened up support for it, cause he has a. It's a, it's like a patron, but it uses um uh, kofi to to buy him a coffee.

Jason:

And it's because he's based out of Greece, he's based out of Europe and it's a lot cheaper. He keeps more money. So he does it that way. Um, I've had this talk with him many times like, dude, just make a patron, it's like easier for me and it's like no, but you lose a lot of money with patron because of the fees. And I was like, all right, fine, so Ko-Fi, check him out. So you have your main screen and it has something. It has four quadrants, so it has your middle quadrant, the two sides and the bottom. The bottom one is your fuel and the bottom one has three pages on it. So the bottom one tells you how much fuel you have. When you skip the page, it tells you how much you have remaining, like in time, how much time remaining to run out of fuel. And I ran out of fuel on one of my live streams. It happens even with the lovely dashboard.

Erick:

So I'm cursed. I remember that I see Jeff laughing over there.

Jason:

Dude, I had a nice race and I, freaking, ran out of fuel. Oh my god. So and then the other one is telling you when to pit. You know what I'm saying? Like it's telling you he's updated it now. Now it flashes. It tells you pit now for fuel. And then it tells you the average of how much gas your car is burning, how many liters you have and how many liters are being used per lap on that track, in real time. So that's just the bottom quadrant. And then it tells you your ABS, your TCS, your engine map, and the two left, the left and the right side screen are customizable, are customizable. You can have one side showing lap times or sectors or relatives, or the grid right, the standings, or you can have it show you a live map, which is awesome because if you don't know a track, it's hard to learn a track that you don't know right, and it's a little easier to have a little reference point on a heads up display, right, like that. So you could play around with that and you can also set it to to um, have it default to a certain screen based off the SIM.

Jason:

So for for me, I love to see who's in front of me, who's behind me at all times. So I see my opponent and it shows me who they are and if it's iRacing, it tells me what kind of license they have. It tells me what their fastest lap time was and what their last lap time was. So I'm looking at my lap time and I'm looking at their lap time and I'm like, whoa, I'm losing time. So then on the other right side, I have the sectors and I can see I'm yellow in sector two, I'm slow in sector two, I need to pick it up in sector two, and so on and so forth. And then the top, the middle quadrant, shows you the speed, the gear, and then you could cycle between the delta, you could cycle between the actual race clock and the actual time that it is in real life as well. That's just on the first screen.

Jason:

The next screen is just the same thing, but blown up with a map on it, and I think yeah, I think it's technically two screens, I believe. So it's just a bigger map. So you can see a huge, a bigger map. So that's a lovely dashboard. It is free, but I highly recommend supporting the man, because he'll give you access to his beta software and he updates this thing almost every Friday. And it's not just fixes, it's features and features and features. And it's like a dollar, it's like a Euro, one Euro per month to get you started with the lovely dashboard.

Jason:

And then on top of that he has another dashboard that's called Lovely Flags and it shows the flag and in what sector the flag happened, you know. Um, he also has the pit wall. So the pit wall is a large um, it's a huge blown up screen of the entire, basically the entire dashboard and it has a big map. It has all the quadrants nicely placed, it has you name it, it has everything, man, it has everything up there. And I use that on my top screen, on my fourth monitor, to display everybody's lap times, everybody's um license, everybody. You know every where people are on track at one particular you know moment. And then he picked up a wheel called the asher racing artura ultimate, which it is in my sights, and when I look at something it it usually ends up at the house. So how much.

Jason:

They gave it to me I don't know whose package this is.

Jeff:

It just showed up it'd be wrong of me not to use it I know right, I'm not gonna.

Jason:

I don't know where this thing came from yeah.

Jeff:

So if I could pile onto that pit wall, you know, I was maybe like three months ago I was talking to jason bucket and the fourth monitor, um, and you, you were, oh, I can't live without it. Now that I've used it, and I'm like, oh, that's a lot of BS, like you just want me to get it, uh, so I got it, and then you get that pit wall. It honestly like, damn, jeff, the truth hurts sometimes. Uh, I ran that pit wall in, in, in qualifying. It for me is really when I use it the most, because I'll run my first lap and I'll look up and I will check where I am in reference to everybody else that's running their qualifying at the same time. You know, like, if it's telling me p20, I'm like, oh man, like I am going to be struggling this race and I know I'd really need to hammer down that second lap to move up in the field or I run it. You know it says, hey, p3, okay, like I don't need to push it too much. If I can get a little faster one, that'd be great.

Jeff:

But you know it, just because it gives you that live feel, the live timing, um, it's pretty, it's a pretty cool, especially in practice. You look up there because it does have the map layout. As you're coming through, you can see if anybody's jumping out of the pits. Um, it, it's awesome. Before I switched over to lovely dashboard on my ddu, I was like I don't know, like everybody makes a big deal about this thing, it can't be that good. So I I got it, downloaded it, put it in and raced it, and now I look at people, um, like, oh man, like you don't, you don't, you don't run the lovely dashboard. Like I just can't take you seriously.

Erick:

like what are you doing?

Jason:

what are you?

Jeff:

doing like what, what, what are you not like? Rowing fast, like yeah unfortunately, like it's that good, that like it's it's good. I don't know how to explain it, but it's got everything you can need in one place.

Jason:

That's boom right there right, it's, it's readily available and it's again, it uses sim hub, which again I keep saying this every episode we're gonna get to sim hub, but these are part of the. You know that's part of his ecosystem. It works very, very tightly with sim, with SimHub, I think I know Konstantinos speaks to Nikola all the time and that's the developer, nikola, the developer of SimHub, the creator, and he's been patching SimHub to work better with the lovely sim racing ecosystem, which is awesome. And I'm sure there's more, there's a lot more that goes to that. There's also his story and we'll get to that, trust me, we will get to that at a later date.

Jason:

But that, yeah, that covers lovely sim racing and I want to also throw in there Mr Daniel Newman racing as well. So Daniel Newman works closely with Constantinos, which is the creator of lovely sim racing, and he um developed a LED, leds that sync to your car, one-to-one, to what? The car to the game and the, you know, to the vehicle that's being driven in the game. And there is a step forward because the lights on your wheel, the lights, everything, the lights on the wheel, the lights on your DDU, it's all being synced together with the lovely dashboard. So he is another pioneer that's putting out some amazing stuff. You need to check him out as well.

Jason:

I'll leave links in the description of this episode for all of it Crew Chief Lovely, sim Racing and Daniel Newman, because those three together is going to step up the immersion and your the usability of the data that you have. You have all this data and it's going nowhere, but with this data just coming being fed right at your face, it's kind of nice yeah, the daniel newman stuff for me is just pfm, pure freaking magic.

Jeff:

How all the led profiles work. Listen, it's a lot of work. You just download, yeah, yeah, hours. I mean both of them for lovely like and and daniel newman. You see these dudes on youtube and you can just ooze is the passion for sim racing? Uh right, they've the products that they got. Have saved what could save you days of programming leds and buttons and lights and colors and so on and so forth.

Jason:

Yeah, they make it real easy for you that's all the stuff.

Jason:

You follow their guides. They both have discords, they both have youtube and they both have websites. Daniel newman is also subscription based and he also has free. He also has a free um tier that you could try it out. If you want to try it out, check it out and see if you like it. I'm telling you now, if you try it, you're gonna want to subscribe and highly recommend both of them um and also sim hub and I've covered this. But the SimHub license the $10 forever lifetime is 100%. Yeah, it's a no-brainer. You need to go ahead and do that Definitely.

Jeff:

Just do it, just do it and forget about it.

Jason:

Yep, All right. So the next few are going to be quick. We're going to go over these briefly. So set up software. The next few are going to be quick. We're going to go over these briefly. So setup software.

Jason:

I'm going to mention two, because these two are the most popular and they're the most developed. So we have ghost setups and CDA setups CDA meaning Coach, Dave, Academy, and what they do is that they have drivers that are we call them aliens. They do these lap times on the car based off of a setup, and they let you download that setup and put it in the car. You can try these setups, but I don't want you to just try them and run them. I want you to try them, run them and then make adjustments, because there's no one setup for everybody. Everybody drives different, Everybody has different habits. But these setups will get you way faster to those lap times than with just building something from scratch. There's still nothing better than building a setup from scratch, but we're talking about saving a lot of time and a lot of headache. You know what I mean With these.

Jason:

And they have a software. Gosetups has a software that will automatically plug in the setups for you. So when you hit load setup on a car in ACC, it'll just show up. Now CDSA has one program called Delta and that's what I use and that thing is awesome. So Delta, it will not only just it'll create a setup, it won't just put the file inside the folder and then you can load it. It will create a setup based off the track condition. So if the track is 38 degrees or 30 degrees Celsius, right, It'll make a setup based off the temperature and the air temperature, I believe, the weather, the time of day, the tire pressures, all of it will be ready. All you have to do is just hit the load button and you can compare your data to other drivers, to other setups, and that's happening in real time using telemetry. And I used to use an app called MoTeC, which is a real life data app that's being used on automotive cars around the world. But it's very complicated to read that data and to have it nicely presented with a nice graph and all this stuff. So definitely check those out.

Jason:

Those are not right this minute. You need to subscribe to them right this minute. You need to subscribe to them, try them, do a free trial if they offer one and then make the decision if that's going to work for you or not. So the next thing is it's just a website, it's called Race Department, and Race Department has a lot of nice, you know, up-to-date articles. It's hosted by Overtake. They have a YouTube channel, but Race Department where it really shines is that if you want to download mods for your game or any dashboards or any icon packs, you know they're available for free. You just have to log in and download them. And then, for the last bit, I'm going to give this over to jeff, which is a tool that he recently discovered and is excited about.

Jeff:

So I'll give this to to jeff here yeah, uh, last bit of software that we got covered, we're planning to cover today is uh, is trading paint, trading paint, and it's really for, uh, for iRacing, and it is uh kind of two, two different sides of it.

Jeff:

The first is the I think it's the free side, where you can just download liveries for whatever car you're using and driving in iRacing uh, so somebody else has done the hard work, designed a car, um, you know, like, for me, I'm driving that, the f4 car, and there's legitimately hundreds of people have designed f4 cars um to look like whatever you want. You know they got the old um senna style cars, the malbro mclarens, and then they have the new modern day red bulls, um, if you want to drive, you know, if you like in the F1 style, you know liveries, they have pick a company or you know whatever, and they have designed one for it. You want rain, rainbows and unicorns. Somebody has designed a car with rainbows and unicorns on it. The other side of the house is one where you can design it yourself, and that's what I've kind of got into lately is I designed my own car, for my F4 car, so when I jump in there, it's my car. Nobody else has got one like it.

Jason:

It's got the things that I like and products that I use on the side of it and I'll be honest with you, I didn't know you designed that, that skin that you showed me.

Jeff:

Oh, yeah, boy.

Jeff:

That was all me, homie, that was all you, oh man um, and when I pass people, I'm like, damn dude, I'm passing you and my car looks better than you. Uh, I don't get to say it very often, but uh, yeah, it's cool. It's cool like you can put your name and your flag of you know, your nationality on the car. Um, it's cool like, whatever you know, if you have companies that you like and you support, you can put their logos on there. Um, color combinations, and it's it's well. If you're going to design it yourself and want to upload logos, I think it costs a couple of bucks a year, um, but really, I mean like that's the cost of a car in in iRacing, so I mean there you go.

Jason:

The way I justified it was pairing coffees, man, they did the same thing the other day. I know, I know but kind of the.

Jeff:

The way I looked at it was is I'm gonna drive that four car for a while, so you know a couple bucks to have it look my way and really like I like it. It's my car and it's the way I want it right now and no one has it.

Jason:

no one, well, they could download it, but then your name is all over it, so it's kind of nice.

Jeff:

Yeah, I mean, if they want to run it, hey, okay, it's cool. I don't think I've uploaded for public, but okay, that's cool. I didn't know I did that good of a job that somebody would want to drive my livery.

Jason:

But, jason, I'll send it to you, it out, man, Send me the link to that. And there's a similar tool. It's the same thing that we're talking about, but it's for ACC, for those people that use LFM. So the skin that I have, I had it commissioned, I had it made and then I had to upload it to LFM and it goes through this verification process. They look at it, they make sure it's not going to crash the game or whatever. And the thing is with LFM you have to have it's called LFM ACC livery tool and you have to have that installed to be able to see the skin. So if you're racing with me and you don't have this tool installed, you won't be able to see my skin. It'll look generic, you know.

Jeff:

It'll look like a like a yeah, I don't know if it's like that for iRacing, I don't think so and honestly and honestly, I've noticed, I would say, the vast majority of people are running custom liveries. So the vast majority of people I I think are have trading pain because iRacing doesn't have skins like they really don't have yeah yeah, they have like a, the color of your driver.

Jason:

You know if it's blue, red, like very basic skins and but you know to be able to put like you know, if you want to, if you're racing an f3 car and you want to put fernando alonso skin, I promise you they have it on trading, yeah.

Jeff:

But yeah to your point, to your thing about, uh, lfm and acc like that skin you got is dope. Like sometimes you get what you pay for in this world, that's a dope skin. Like that's worth paying for. That dude, yeah, that dude delivered yeah, I.

Jason:

It was nice man, because he would send me a schematic over email and with my ipad I would draw on it and tell him no, I want this, I this, I want that, I want that. Then he'll make me another version and then it's kind of cool, I got to get I'll. I'll add the name, the link that I use to the service, in the description, cause I don't remember right now, but the cost of it was about 30, 40 Euro to get that. And again, it's not, it's not a cup of coffee, but you know, that's my car In ACC. I drive one car. I have two cars that I drive the Ferrari 296 and the McLaren 720S and I have the same skin for both of them. It's just a little different variance of them.

Jeff:

Yeah, that's how I justified the F4. Like that's what I drive now, that's what I'm into and I want it looking the way I want it to look and if it was a? Couple boxes, a couple bucks. But, god man, they change those tracks on iRacing all the time.

Jason:

It's like god yeah, another 14 god bless america come on, dude, you better buy buying threes, bro, because you get the discount yeah, you save like two dollars I know, I know killing me. So there's one thing with iRacing if you own, is it 20 or 30? I it's a number 20 or 30 pieces of content then you get a permanent 20 off. It will still rack up because if you are dumb like me and you looked at how much it would cost to buy everything in iRacing, you're looking at over a thousand dollars.

Jeff:

Yeah I mean some stuff you're never gonna let that sink in yeah, like, like there's a lot of cost yeah dude, that's a video card for eric. Come on, that's a super nice video card for eric.

Erick:

I'm telling you top of the line, man, that's, that's yeah so when you say buy the tracks, are you, when you say the tracks change? Are you saying that they, like spa changes, you have to buy it or they change what tracks are available? No, they change the schedule.

Jeff:

Yeah, so like two weeks ago or you know, it was like a track in japan and one other one um that they really used. So like when I jumped in the other day and I clicked to let me jump in this race, it was like, hey, it's gonna cost you 14, you don't have the track we're looking to use, but that everybody's gonna be like god, like. So you either sit up you don't race that thing or you swipe your car for 14 or so, or you go to rookies or you go to rookies and race.

Jason:

You know they're the free content.

Jeff:

I didn't grind out of rookies to drive rookies I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

Jason:

So the season is in, so the season progresses like.

Erick:

They put out the schedule of the next upcoming race and it's like you might not have.

Jason:

No, they switch this stuff every week so you look at an event, right and well, this, this is gonna be the the end of the show, right here all right, go for it, buddy, we're going long here today so formula c, right? Let's say you race in formula c, you click on the schedule for that season and it lists all the tracks in that season. If you don't and let's say this week it's Spa that same race will be happening all week on Spa.

Erick:

Then the next week it'll change to a different track.

Jason:

It's not like you have to rebuy stuff, Eric, if that's what you mean.

Erick:

No, you're not rebuying anything, I it's. It's dictated by the schedule for the season, so as the season, yeah.

Jason:

So whatever it is, it is dictated, yeah, but it's not. But it doesn't change every week, it'll change by the season, like, season because it did just change seasons, like we're season three right now and it just started. Not just started, but it clicked over relatively recently and that was your time to up to, to promote to the next license. If, if you don't do it the safety way, you know what I mean.

Jeff:

Yeah, as long as, yeah, I got no business going to see right now I'm yes you do I'm grinding. Yes, you do I'm grinding. I'm grinding my d, I listen, it's fun. It's fun, I have a good time.

Jason:

And that's all that matters, man. I mean, think about how many if we're going to rationalize this the amount of hours that you put on racing versus the amount of money I used to track race in California motorcycles Eric could tell you A track day for one day was $500. Easier bro, a track day for one day was five hundred dollars. Easier. Yeah, with with tires, tires. Forget about your tires. You know you need to set the tires for that day and once you're done with that day, those tires go into garbage they're gone they're gone, and a set of pirellis, even if it's just two yeah, the p word

Erick:

italiano but they're the best man I.

Jeff:

Yeah to your point like I get out of the rig and my heart's going, like you know, it gets hot in the room.

Jason:

You're sweating, you're like damn dude I want to jump on right now. I'm about to get on. Right now.

Jeff:

I'm trying to wrap this episode all right, let's wrap this sucker up here. No, it's good to hear from all to.

Jason:

I was going to say all three, but it's good to hear from all. I was going to say all three, but it's good to have the whole gang back. So I'm just recovering. I was sick this week as well, so you know things happen, but I'm glad that everybody is in good health and is still racing in good health and it's still racing and we're all still excited about the hobby, because that's the one thing is, we have to make sure that we keep this relevant and we keep it. You know we keep pushing and that doesn't mean spending money. It doesn't have to be spending money, but we keep. You know we'll share these tools with you guys to expand and make it better and better and better. So, without further ado, the round table. So whoever gets to it first, please, do you have anything to put out?

Jeff:

I got a quick one. I got a quick one. Hey, the email address the chicane podcast at Gmail. Jump in there. Tell us what your favorite track is, why it's your favorite track, and we'll talk about our favorite track maybe next week, real quick as the intro. So get in there and let us know what your favorite track is to rip around, other than that, drive fast, break late.

Erick:

Yes, sir.

Jason:

Thank you so much for that, Jeff. That's very important to us. We want to engage in the community a little better. Excuse me and anything questions, share with us something you bought or something that you're thinking about getting Anything, Anything to that email and we'll put it out on the show. So with that, with all that said, and 50 ish minutes later, it's been an absolute pleasure to come on here and I hope you all have a great start of your week. Thank you.

People on this episode

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Jason Rivera

Host
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Erick Kelly

Co-host
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Jeff Smart

Co-host