The Chicane Podcast
Welcome to the Chicane Podcast, keeping you up to date on everything sim racing. As we venture into this dynamic realm of esports and virtual racing, we'll be exploring a variety of topics, from the cutting-edge gear that's transforming the way we race to the newest games, hardware and software that are pushing the boundaries of what's possible in this virtual sport. We'll also be giving you an inside look into the lives of some of the top virtual racers in the world, through in-depth interviews that will give you a unique perspective on what it's like to compete at the highest level in this rapidly evolving eSport. So, buckle up and get ready for an unforgettable ride as we take you right into the cockpit of this exciting digital racing world.
The Chicane Podcast
The Passion and Craftsmanship Behind Lovely Dashboard with Constantinos!
What does it take to turn a passion for motorsports and design into a game-changing tool for the sim racing community? Join us on the Chicane Podcast where we chat with Constantinos, the visionary behind the Lovely SimRacing ecosystem. With a journey that started as a self-taught digital designer in 1998, Constantinos shares his relentless quest for knowledge and the evolution of his sim racing setup—from a humble PlayStation and T300 wheel to a top-tier rig. His story underscores the importance of continuous learning and self-reliance in the world of tech development, all while maintaining a light-hearted humor about the financial realities of sim racing.
Throughout this episode, Constantinos takes us on a detailed tour of his innovative developments, including the creation of the Lovely Dashboard. Originally a YouTube channel meant for personal enjoyment, it quickly evolved into a versatile telemetry dashboard that addresses gaps in existing tools. Hear about the challenges and triumphs of integrating various plugins, optimizing performance, and tailoring the dashboard for different simulation games. The conversation also touches on the importance of community feedback, and how it has driven the continuous improvement of the Lovely Dashboard.
Looking forward, Constantinos shares exciting plans for expanding the dashboard’s capabilities, including support for more simulation games and the introduction of physical products. We discuss the broader landscape of the sim racing industry, from licensing issues with major consoles to the increasing accessibility of high-end gear. Get ready to be inspired by Constantinos' dedication and passion, as he reflects on the significance of genuine craftsmanship in tech development and looks ahead to the promising future of the Lovely SimRacing ecosystem.
Check out the Lovely Dashboard, you can support LSR below:
Join Lovely Sim Racing https://lsr.gg
Shop the Lovely Merch https://store.lsr.gg
Become a Lovely Member
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
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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
The Hello and welcome to the Chicane Podcast, Eric, and a very special guest today, proudly introducing the creator of the lovely SimRacing ecosystem, aka Constantinos. How's everyone doing today?
Erick:Doing good.
Jeff:Doing awesome.
Constantinos:Oh, I'm great, I'm great.
Jason:And there he is. There's a guest. I was waiting for some signs of life here.
Constantinos:You got scared, huh.
Jason:A little bit, a little bit, a little bit. We had some technical difficulties, but hopefully all is well. So, without further ado, I want to go over the background, the origins, on how this all began, but before we start there, please tell us about yourself, mr Constantinos.
Constantinos:Okay, well, I'm not young, that's one thing for sure. So, starting off with that, now it's basically the background I've been a digital designer for in my entire life. So I think my first job I think I know my first job was like in 1998. And it was always, you know, back then it was web design, digital design, but in parallel I've always enjoyed motorsports. My entire life. These two things have always been paramount, like ever since I was a small kid, like all my memories.
Constantinos:I remember Formula One and designing cars and houses and all that kind of stuff. So through the years, as they progressed, motorsports obviously is not something I can do because it's too dangerous, it is too expensive, but design was something that I focused on. So I grew up, got my bachelor's in industrial design. The first thing I focused on my entire career around was user interfaces. So you know, back then 98, it was web design, progressed slowly and up until today where I do UI design for mobiles and design systems and all that kind of stuff. It wasn't until COVID hit where I realized that I can actually get involved in motorsports, virtual motorsports, so around May of 2020, that's when I started putting these things together. So my two passions, basically design and motorsports.
Erick:Okay.
Jason:That's cool, that's awesome.
Erick:Yeah, so tell us about, I guess, specifically your background with JavaScript and programming and how that ties into design.
Constantinos:Oh, you're taking me back a lot. So I'm not a programmer per se. I've never studied programming. It was always a hobby.
Constantinos:As I said back in 98, when you would do design, it was web design. You didn't have schools that would teach you web design. You didn't have schools to teach you HTML or CSS. It was just something that you had to learn on your own. So if you wanted to create something, you had to get your hands dirty, and that's pretty much what happened.
Constantinos:I progressed from very basic HTMLml. I learned how to do that. Then I I learned some java back then, because we didn't have javascript in web. Yeah, then went to javascript. Um, css came and it just blew our minds away. We're like, yes, this is finally the best thing ever. And then we, you know, then flash came along and kind of destroyed everything. Again. The nightmare continues. No, I mean, yeah, Flash was just. I never liked it. Anyway, I'm not that kind of, you know, flashy in my designs. It's more technical stuff and more, you know, strict in the way I design my philosophy it's more informational than anything. But yeah, but yeah, I mean, my background has never been programming. It's always been dabbling with programming in order to get what I want, the results Like I've even I.
Constantinos:When I first created a, my very one of my very first projects I ever created was back in 2000. It was a Greek um online design community site called project Neo, which still exists but it's just defunct. It's not working. To get that working, I need a database, and at the time I was working for a big telecom company here. We were in the marketing department doing the websites and stuff like that, and I was going from desk to desk asking how do databases work? How does this? How can I do this? How can I store things in a database? What is a database? I had no idea. I just kept on asking until someone said, okay, just just sit down one hour, Let me show you. And I learned how to do that. And that is basically the story of my entire life, that that is how I've done everything in life even, even here, even even even what we're discussing today by the lovey dashboard.
Constantinos:I just keep on asking until I can get what I want, and not asking people to do things for me. Asking so I can learn and do them on my own, because then I can control it more. You know, I can control the end result and, yeah, and you don't depend on it either you don't depend on on the people's, don't depend on on the people's work, so I don't.
Constantinos:I don't mind, I don't mind depending, like, if I find someone that is as passionate and committed as I am, I'm perfectly fine. But usually you see that, um, it's not a bad thing, right? I've done it myself. You know it's the same thing. You see people um, get passionate about something and that thing just goes away after three months. So I try and learn as much as I can so I'm able to basically do it myself. I can rely on other people. But I also know that, if needed, I can continue the work on my own. Because I can't, I don't know, it's the way I was raised or the way I grew up in this industry. If you can't do it yourself, then you're probably going to be let down at some point. That makes sense, unless you're paying. Unless you're paying, then they have to be committed because they're taking money. But again, when we come to today, eventually in this conversation, you'll see that it's really hard to find people to commit to that in this day.
Erick:Well correct.
Jeff:Hey, constantine, I got a question for you. You kind of glazed over real quick. But how did you get into sim racing? How'd you find it? You know what was your jump into? Uh, you know the sim racing world.
Constantinos:Okay, um, that's a good question. So sim racing, as I said, it started for me in the COVID era. So, before we get even to that part, I have never been a gamer, so I've never played Fortnite. I've never played. I don't even know the games, I don't even know the names, I don't play these things.
Constantinos:I've never been a gamer'd. I'd hear friends my age saying, like you know, my son's playing fortnite and where we spent like the last night, all night playing and like what is it? And he explained the whole concept like oh okay, it's not my thing, like I honestly would never do that. So I've never been a gamer, but any games that I like, I had an atari back the day. I don't even remember what it's called, that wooden one, you know, with the little knobs on it.
Constantinos:I had a Commodore VIC-20, a Commodore 64 growing up. I did have a PC early on and then switched to Mac. But if you go back and look at the games that I was playing on these, it was always some sort of simulation. So I remember a friend of mine had an Amiga 500. I think it was the Amiga 500. And he had this game, lotus Challenge or whatever that was. I would just visit him just to play that game and it wasn't a simulation, it was just driving a Lotus around streets in la, I think, or something like that. I don't remember that well. Um, so it was always simulations. Driving on the game boy, it was tennis. So I never enjoyed. Okay small thing.
Jason:I did enjoy bubble bobble a lot on the game boy oh yeah, that was the truth, but for me it was on the playstation and tetris, but for the most part it was like simulations, sports and and whatnot.
Constantinos:But I never had, never did. I imagine I would be able to like have a steering wheel which is a real life steering wheel and and have triple monitors and all that and drive in the car Like I never thought that would be possible to have at home. So when COVID hit, I was nowhere with gaming. I had my Mac for work, I had a PC for work, so I had all that workstation set up and everything. And when COVID hit, formula One ceased to exist. So no races, everything was was, you know, cancelled.
Constantinos:And at that point I saw that they were doing the virtual grand prix, right. So there was all the drivers and some guests from home, from their homes, driving and competing online and I was like, oh, I'm gonna watch this shit. I mean, this is this is, this is good, right. And I did see it. Of course it was Formula One, the game Formula One, and what I noticed was that some had triple monitors, you know, like really, really posh setups. Others were just like sitting on their couch or on a chair. So I'm like, wait a minute, this thing doesn't seem to be either too expensive or unapproachable. And I Googled. That was the first time I ever Googled on how can I do this. And I figured out, not figured out. I realized it's not going to be expensive.
Jason:Oh, you went down a rabbit hole, man. That's what you did Exactly.
Constantinos:I've had many hobbies in my life Like my most expensive prior to this was photography, where I got like a dslr and all that because, again, it was creativeness, yeah, it was taking photos and everything. And someone asked me at some point, like, like these, these hobbies are expensive. Photography is expensive, for instance. Um, yeah, and my response was well, if it's not expensive and if you're doing it and you're making money, it's not a hobby. Hobbies are black holes. They're they're rabbit holes, like a hobby has to be something where you, you commit your money to it, but what you get isn't money in return, it is mental stability and mental health. You have a place to put your mind to.
Jason:So dopamine yeah, shots of dopamine fun.
Constantinos:That's a cool analogy yeah, I like that if, if, look, if, if you're, if you say you're doing a hobby and you're making money, it's not a hobby, a hobby is just for pleasure. Okay, true, I agree. So that's where everything started like. Once I realized that this thing isn't that expensive, that I can do it. I started looking into how I can get into this. So, as I said, I had a Mac, which was my workstation, and I also had a really it's a really lousy PC, a laptop PC. I don't really use PCs and work, but I do have it for testing purposes, so it wasn't something I can use to game, especially simulators. So, yeah, I think the my first setup was, um, uh, a playstation 4 pro, uh, and the thrustmaster t300 ferrari alcantara edition, which was I saw it on the holy. This is amazing, this, I think, playstation huh, um calm down calm down huh, calm down, calm down.
Constantinos:This was over here. His face is about to fall off. This was mid 2020 when I got that. I have pictures I actually have pictures of my office desk at home, um, where I have the t300 mounted, the t3pa pedals and the playstation is snug on the side and I had my 27 inch monitor, um, running ac. I think back then, um, but that's how I got started.
Jeff:That was my first setup ever wow, wow so you're gonna start somewhere yeah, it's cool to hear people how they get into this hobby. It's just, it's interesting to hear people's experiences it's.
Jason:It's almost the same pattern. It, it, it follows the the same trajectory. You know what I mean. Um, all right. Well, constantinos, can you tell us what hardware you're running currently right now? What does your setup look like compared to what with what you started with? You know?
Constantinos:yeah, it's night and day um.
Jason:So right now, I have, I mean it's it's not anything lavish, it's not.
Constantinos:you know, it's not some of those things you'd hear like holy shit, that costs like 4,000 or 5,000. No, it's, it's nothing like that. I, this has been built organically. Um, so we can take it step-by-step. Just to see how the progression got to me here which I think is also interesting, because I've heard a lot of people like how much does this cost? And I give them a number, a budget for my current setup. I was like, oh, that's a lot of money, yeah, but I started off with like 500, you know, for the PlayStation.
Constantinos:It's slowly, you slowly build to that you build up to this, yes, and along the way, you also sell other parts. But if you were just going to buy this day my setup, yes, it's very expensive. A friend of mine who's also a co-driver in rally cars said you know what? You could have bought a real car. I'm like, yeah, but I couldn't buy tires after that.
Jason:And then what about the maintenance too? The maintenance, yeah, I mean so this is far cheaper, let alone if you crash it. If you crash it, no more car.
Constantinos:And I would I would.
Jeff:We never tell our wives how much it costs. It gave it to me, jeff. It gave it to me. Well, look, I mean guys, I, here we go.
Constantinos:Flex time, oh my God, they gave it to me. Yeah, I just did a video.
Jason:You know we're taking donations. We might even set up a GoFundMe. I don't know.
Constantinos:See how it goes yeah. I do have some what aundMe?
Jason:I don't know See how it goes. Yeah, I do have some. What a massive flex. I love it, though. I love it, so go ahead and keep explaining.
Constantinos:If I would have bought this, I would be flexing, but you know it was given to me for development purposes initially and now it's flexing purposes.
Erick:No, I mean Of course.
Constantinos:All right. No, I mean all right. So I started off with the PlayStation and the T300. I later realized that, you know, I can't actually every single day swap everything out and in the office. So I thought I'd basically come up here in the attic, which has now turned into a huge playroom. I had an old 55 inch TV, so I just got myself a play seat. I put everything in front of the TV and that's where it got a bit more serious.
Constantinos:Later on, I started dabbling with creating my own hardware as well. So I created a steering wheel, which I also have on GitHub. It was an Arduino steering wheel and I just everything started getting a bit more serious. And then that's when I started. I wanted to basically stream, so I got my mac up here and I started dabbling with how to stream and all that. But hardware wise, going from from the initial um t300 and playstation 4, uh, I got the play seat. Then I swapped out a play seat for the gt1 evo from sim lab, which is the one I'm actually sitting in right now. I still have it and that is a massive jump. Nice, yes, so that. And I got a 32-inch curved screen. So that was like the first foray into a proper rig.
Jason:That was V1, version 1 or version 1.2. Playstation, though Still.
Constantinos:PlayStation.
Jeff:Oh, PlayStation Okay.
Constantinos:Yeah, it was going slowly. After that I got three new monitors and a monitor stand and the gaming PC, because you can't do triples with PlayStation. So that was like the next step, and the screen that I already had before became my fourth monitor, which is actually what I still have. It's the same thing. Yeah, after that I got the DD1 from Fnatic and a steering wheel, so I upgraded the base. I did move on to the Load Cell pedals from Thrustmaster before I switched the base, so I had that.
Constantinos:I had those for quite some time to remember what they're called, but you know which ones. I'm talking about the Load Cell pedals from Thrustmaster, the first ones they came out with. I'm talking about the load cell pedals from Thrustmaster, the first ones they came out with. After that I swapped those out for SimRacing Alien pedals, which if you ever looked at them it's a small check company. They make some pedals that look a lot and function a lot like the Hussingfeld Sprints. They're all load cell and everything. So those went in the rig and I think the last thing that you know.
Constantinos:And then I had had all these peripherals. So I did get a DDU. I got some StreamDecks, I don't know Go, xlrs, all these different things, especially for the streaming so cameras. Those were small upgrades here and there. The next big change that I made was I got a streaming PC. So right now in my rig, right behind all the screens, there is the gaming PC and on top of it is the streaming PC. So I split those two up and that was the smartest thing I ever did regarding streaming and gaming at the same time. And today this is where I am. I'm sitting in front of three 32-inch Samsung's the 32 inch AOC for the. For the fourth monitor, dd1 still is here, I haven't swapped that out.
Constantinos:Ompc GT 1 Evo for the fourth monitor dd1 still is here I haven't swapped that out um, ompc, gt1, evo, um, pretty much very nice change that. But, as you can, this, this was a progression for the past. I guess these changes happened in the first three years, I think so, from 2020 to 2023, I kept on updating stuff. Now I've I've stopped because I think I'm okay, I'm happy with everything you think you're good you think you're done but, you're kind of never done with sim racing.
Constantinos:I mean you can ask jeff it's still a hobby, man it's still that rabbit hole, so you still will be spending stuff um I just didn't have. I I I honestly haven't had a chance to spend as much as I would or I could if I didn't have all these very generous partners sending me a few things. So I would definitely have absolutely swapped out my steering wheel. The Fnatic Formula V 2.5 would have swapped it out with something else, but they beat me to it so I didn't have to spend money on that. I was lucky. That's beautiful.
Jeff:I just switched out of that one. Yeah.
Erick:Yeah, so I know that you're spending a lot of time on your hobby and it's beautiful, but is there something outside of sim racing that you do with your spare time, like any other hobbies or anything else you're working on um?
Constantinos:I don't think so, oh sim, racing is life.
Jason:I, yeah, I love it, amen amen.
Constantinos:Okay, so no more so there's family, obviously, and I have this thing where weekends are family. So I don't do any work on weekends. But no work, sim racing or not, so like, whenever I get invited to like a six hours race on sunday, I'm like yeah, I can't, or three hour race or whatever. So it's usually monday through friday. So, besides the motorsport part and the design which has always been in my life, and then it's family. So I don't think like currently I don't have any other hobbies, any other hobbies or anything else, I put my, uh, my time into this, is it?
Erick:this is it all right, yeah, that makes sense. I was gonna be impressed if you you managed to cram some more stuff in there. I was like man he's working with more than 24 hours, man, but but there's a huge glutton here.
Constantinos:It's the elephant in the room. It's not just like when you say sim racing, I spent nearly zero time actually driving now, so sim racing when I say sim racing, I don't mean spending time driving, it's the thing that I do the least right now. I don't mind because, again, I enjoy doing these things. But, yeah, everything has progressed. So I wish I'd be able to do more driving. But now sim racing has taken over both of my interests in design and motorsport, so we'll get into that later. But there's just more than just you know, sitting in a rig and driving.
Constantinos:There's a thing called the dashboard, if you've ever heard of it.
Jason:Right, and what a transition, what a transition.
Jeff:Constantine, let's dig into this. You tell us and our listeners what Lovely Sim Racing is and what it does and all of the other things sim racing uh is and what it does and all of the other things um, so lovely.
Constantinos:Sim racing was born as a youtube channel just for me to share my sim racing uh experiences and growth. Um, nothing more than that. There were no other expectations. So, you know, I had maybe one follower, two followers I would usually go stream. These things actually still exist. So if you dig into my channel, you will find myself or not even my face, showing um driving around and crashing like doing ridiculously um slow times around every track that I raced.
Constantinos:So lovely sim racing was that it was just an alter ego. It was just a persona that I had for the online stuff. I didn't even show my face in the beginning. Um, and yeah, I guess, as as as anything goes it, it got bigger and bigger and bigger. Not so much for, like, the YouTube channel never grew before lovely dashboard, but I did have a few um subscribers and I would stream and I would get like one viewer and I was excited and you know that one, that first one um uh viewer while you're online and sends you a chat message. It is, it's like being born into something you know, um, it was. It was exciting and I thought, yeah, yeah, I could do this. I never thought of it, as you know, making money off of it, like having millions of viewers. I never did and I still never do, um, but that was lovely.
Constantinos:Sim racing, it was just a place for me to an outlet, you know, um. But through that, uh, everything else came as well. So it's just under that same umbrella, which was just something for me to just race and have something online. I always look at my creative side, right, so making things, and either it was that old steering wheel that I created or, up until now, for the Lovie dashboard. It's always just creating things and putting them out. And that YouTube channel was just that. I was focused on OBS, like how does it work? Let's figure this out. As I said, you know, I love dabbling in things and learning things, transitions, like I always try and figure things out, how to make things or learn things. So that was a creative outlet for me.
Jason:All right, amazing, amazing, cool story, yeah. So the next question is so how did the actual dashboard begin, like the actual story? Because we all know that you have different products, or I'm calling them products, but you know different styles and different dashboards and different, uh, you know, you have the flags and you have the, uh, the pit wall and you have you know what have you, but it started with the dashboard. So can you tell us how that happened and how did it? How did it begin?
Constantinos:if you may, um, so it all obviously started after I got my PC and I got SimHub and I was looking at all these software and things people are using. So the first thing I think I ever ever installed was like Crew Chief. I was always. I always loved how I was watching streams and I would hear someone talk and say their name. I'm like how the hell does that work?
Jason:That's Jim for you, yeah that's Jim.
Constantinos:Yeah, I love Jim. I actually don't.
Jason:We, that's jim for you. Yeah, that's jim. Yeah, I love jim. I actually don't. We we're on and off. We make jim curse too. We, you gotta turn that that that button on for to make him cuss. It's funny as hell um.
Constantinos:So I discovered simhub. I downloaded simhub and the first thing I saw in simhub was dashboards. I really love the idea of having um telemetry which isn't bound to the car you're in, right. So for that, that was like every time I would go into Lambo. I'd have to understand what the dashboard says. Then I jump into the Audi. What's this? This is new. I go into the BMW oh man, where's the ABS? Where's the traction control? I would always have to discover these things in every different car. So I would you, I would just scour the internet and find new dashboards and load them.
Constantinos:At this point I was just trying out, and that's when I actually got my first DDU, which was a five-inch 3D-printed, really low-end version of a DDU. Again, it was a Vocore screen, so it was pretty fairly standard, even for today. And when I got it, that's when it kind of kicked me in the butt. I'm like, wait a minute. I downloaded a dashboard that was good looking but didn't offer any useful information. I downloaded one that has a lot of useful information but looks like ass. I downloaded some that were perfect in both senses but only work for iRacing and not for ACC. I downloaded one for ACC but didn't work for anything else. I'm like, wait a minute, there's got to be something going on here, like there's got to be something that works for everything, and I couldn't find one. I couldn't find one that had my standards, like what I wanted, um, and then it, uh, yeah, and then I'm like I'll make one. You know, uh, I opened up dash studio and sim hub. I'm like what the hell is going on here? I have no idea. I put like the end for the gear and in the middle I I bind it to the, uh, to the property I run acc, and I see that thing going for one, two, three, four. I'm like shit, I can do this right, it's, how hard can it be? Little did I know? Little did you know? Um, so, yeah, so the first thing I did before I even dabbled in sim hub creating the dashboard. Like after I understood what can be done in sim hub, um, I went down to my, to my office, uh, uh, launched sketch, which is the app that I use for UI design, and designed a dashboard.
Constantinos:I designed a dashboard not with what SimHub can do, but with what I had in mind, like what I want to see while I'm driving. So the design of the Lovage dashboard has always been about glanceable information. It has always been about information architecture. So priorities like what is bigger, what is smaller, what is good and gray is neutral. And then you also have the FIA standard colors for green, you're faster than yourself, yellow, you're slower than yourself and purple, you're faster than everyone else. So that was the idea I designed it first what information I wanted to use and see. I tested it locally for myself and it was working. It was working and I was happy with it. And yeah, that's how it began. As I said, little did I know.
Jason:Wow.
Erick:Yeah, that's spoken like you designed a thing or two in your lifetime. But speaking of that, I know you mentioned the dashboard, but just give us kind of like the full portfolio of just products that you've got available.
Constantinos:So, as far as SimHub is concerned, I don't remember, sometimes I forget them all. So there's the lovely dashboard, which is the standard-sized 16 to 9 ratio screen which you'd find in most dashboards, ddus. There's the lovely dashboard Excel, which is the widescreen it's not the ultra-wide, it is the 10-inch, let's say the 10-inch you'd find with grid engineering their dashboard. It is the 10-inch, let's say the 10-inch you'd find with Grid Engineering their dashboard. I created one, which is the Lovie Dashboard Curved Edition, which is for dashboards that have a curve on top, because apparently squares don't fit really well.
Constantinos:On that I had the opportunity to meet online, not in person, and partner up with Tony Kanaan. So we created together the Lovie Dashboard TK edition, which essentially is the same, exact as the Lovie Dashboard. It only has a new theme, new color scheme, a different splash idle page and it is set up the way that Tony wants to drive. So when you first load it, if you don't have any of your own settings the dashboard will be exactly the same thing as tony has in his rig and in all of his rigs that he has in his studio oh, wow, that's awesome.
Jason:I didn't know that I I knew about the theme. I didn't know about the settings being catered to him.
Constantinos:That's awesome if you haven't, if you haven't overridden any settings, if you haven't used the configurator for the dashboard, if you just install it, everything you see is exactly how he has it in his rig. We basically sat for a couple of hours going through every single option, even the timings, like when you finish the lap and it pops up the information, even how long that stands there. It is customized to his liking. This is something you can do anyway. You can do it for yourself as well, but we did it together to be the tk edition. Basically, that's cool. Um, what else is there? Um, so when I got the asher wheel that has screen on it, I created a lovely dashboard companion, which is a companion to the first, because because, when I got, like everything, everything that I've created has been created because there was some sort of need or a problem that I wanted to solve. So when I got, when I, when I received the lovely dashboard sorry, the Asher racing wheel and I had a screen, I realized I was. I had two screens in front of me and having the lovely dashboard on both made zero to no sense. You can have a Lovie dashboard on your wheel, but if you already have another dashboard, then it doesn't make sense and it was kind of like what am I going to do? So I created a Lovie dashboard companion. So now if you have a DDU and you have a screen on your wheel, you can use a companion.
Constantinos:And the companion is a very stripped down version of the Lovie dashboard. It only has a map. It gives you weather conditions, track name and track turns and all that kind of stuff, and it also has information about your next race. If you signed up for LFM or Pitskill and Simgrid, it will be following as well. So there's the Lovie dashboard companion. Another companion dashboard are the flags, where all it does is just show you flags in a race during race. So if you have a secondary bdu, like I do, um, you can have that. Um, what else is there? I I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot.
Jason:Honestly, I I always forget a pit wall, the lovely pit wall is the end.
Constantinos:The pit wall is something we'll just talk at the end that's my favorite.
Jason:The pit wall is my favorite, hands down I need to, I need to launch.
Constantinos:Uh, what else is there? Oh, we have the lovely dashboard. Well, the lovely overlay. So when I was streaming, I wanted to put the information that I have in front of me on the stream as well. But I didn't want to have the dashboard because that would be silly. Like you don't really want to see the dashboard. So I created a version of the lovely dashboard, which is made for streaming, so it has information, um, on your gears and all that kind of stuff. It doesn't have information on the car itself. So that was done. Then I created a lovely tower again a need for my streams, um, so I run the tower to my streams.
Constantinos:Thank you very much there's an update coming today for all of these things. So, if uh, so, whenever you watch this, 2.7.5 will have launched and there's an upgrade on on a lot of the stuff there. Let's go honestly, honestly. I keep on forgetting how many things are 2.75 reveal. Live here with with the man himself it's not that, it's not that well, we can get into details, but it's not going to be. It's not for. It's not for this podcast.
Constantinos:I'm not gonna sell that? Um. So yeah, just looking at the stuff that I have in sim, so it's the love, the Lovie Dashboard, the Curved Edition, tk Edition, the XL, the Lovie Dashboard, companion, the Flags and for overlays, the ones that are publicly released are the Lovely Overlay and Lovely Tower. So I have a few other stuff that I'm using on my own streams, but those are not going to be published because there's no need for them. And finally, I guess the most important one, the largest one, in actual size as well and work, is the lovely pit wall. And again, the pit wall was a suggestion in my Discord and I'm like, why not? You know, which was a very wise and a very stupid decision. The pit wall is one of the largest undertakings.
Jason:I know you had many challenges with that thing.
Constantinos:You have no idea. I had no idea. If I knew, I would just say it cannot be done.
Erick:But eventually it has been done, cannot be done.
Constantinos:But eventually it has been done. I remember I released a version of the Lovely Pit Wall. I was so happy about it. I discovered and this is going back to the in the beginning of our conversation, when I said that I don't want to rely on other people's work unless I can actually fix it myself. This is what happened, and this is no judgment or criticizing other people's work. It's just facts. So I had discovered a plugin there's no need to say which one it is. I discovered a plugin that gave me a lot of information for all drivers, which was perfect for the pit wall, installed the plugin and I updated the entire pit wall. This is a week's worth of work. Right, everything was using that plugin. I ran it locally. It was great. Everything was perfect. I loved it. I'm like, wow, this is great and I released it. I'm like, guys, this is the largest update for the pit wall. You can see everything for other drivers. It is amazing. 10 minutes later, someone says it's stuttering.
Constantinos:I'm like it can't be stuttering that was probably me, man um, yeah, let's just say like within the day, everyone oh my god that is not working at all. I'm like what do you mean it's not working? It worked great. Eventually I realized I was running um a really small replay in sim hub to test it, but I never actually ran it. Online, where the resources are higher, the computer is actually rendering 20 different cars in real time, so the replay doesn't do that.
Jason:You're just running, uh, a piece of text that's just replaying information, not, it's not doing anything else this is looping and then I remember too you had a similar situation with the nordschleife track that it was just a beast of yes, the problems keep on compounding.
Constantinos:So the first one like that problem with the plugin was solved by throwing the plugin out and redoing the entire dashboard, not going back to what it was, but trying to redo everything that I had manually with code and making it be as efficient as possible. But again, having so much information is never efficient, especially for SimHub, because the way it works it's every single item you see is just a small loop going back and forth and it's all linear, so you can't stop one part, start the other. It's very weird. It works a lot like Arduino does, if you've ever dabbled with that. So it's very linear the way it works. You can't control it in ways that you would if it was like a React app or normal JavaScript. So at some point after I fixed that and released it it was working good. Then I made some updates. I made a version for like two pages for overall and then for class only results, and that was okay.
Constantinos:And then, norsh life, a hit on the acc oh, yeah, yeah so there's this thing, and this is something I solved and it basically completely changed the performance throughout the ecosystem. So there's this thing that I had created which it basically stores your tire data for one or two or three laps and it gives you an average number over those. So this again, this was just born out of need that specific feature. So I did a three-hour race on Paul Ricard it was the only endurance race that I've actually done and I was. My co-driver was it was Martin Hoyer and he's more proficient, he's more experienced in all these things, and when we did some practice sessions, he showed me something in MoTeC. I was blown away. I'm like, oh shit, you can do that right. Yeah, he's like, yeah, he showed me and I couldn't do it a second time, like MoTeC. If anyone has seen it, it is basically telemetry.
Jason:It's a professional. Anyone has seen it.
Constantinos:It is basically a telemetry, it's a professional, it's a tool that's used in real life race cars and cars.
Constantinos:But you look at telemetry and the virtual games we call them sim racing games but essentially the output, the telemetry we get, is similar to real cars. So you can use the same application and scan through your telemetry from ACC or iRacing or whatever and get the same results. So he was showing me how we can manage the tires over time. And he showed me a thing where he would just show me the pressures of the tires over the last two laps. You'd have to open it, you'd have to bring in the data, set this, that, that and select it and then hit a button. And it was complicated. But essentially what happened is it would show you over the last two laps the average pressure for each tire and then you'd know if you're pushing too hard or not pushing enough or you need more pressure or less pressure.
Constantinos:It was great and that's when I got the idea. But I can do this without any of MoTeC. So I wrote a script in the Lovey dashboard which collects the data for the tires. You can set if it's going to be one, two, three laps, how much you want to get the average, and it would show you that. And it was great. It worked fine Until the Nordschleife arrived. Nordschleife killed everything.
Jason:It also revealed stuff for you, though. I remember some of your live streams yeah.
Constantinos:So the thing is, when nordschleife came in the acc, the lap is so long the information gathered for each lap, let alone three laps, would burden the dashboard and the pit wall, which already had a lot of information. It basically made them come to a crawl and the more you ran, the less performance you'd have. Like you 'd literally see your gear, you'd hit the gear and it would go from fourth to fifth after like three seconds, which obviously is not ideal. Wow, I dug into it, I found the problem, I solved the problem and I released the problem and that basically fixed any performance issue I had, even in the Lovie dashboard as well. So that one negative instance with Nordschleife fixed everything.
Jason:It made it better.
Constantinos:Yes, it did, but it wasn't for the Nordschleife, I would never have found it, and it was a memory leak, essentially it was just storing information.
Constantinos:It didn't have to. It didn't really Like if you were doing a 12-hour race and you had the dashboard on for 12 hours you would see the problem. But that's not the case for most of us. So we do like 25 minutes, 45 minutes, 2 hours, 3 hours, it wouldn't show up there. It three hours, it wouldn't show up there. It only showed up with the nordschleife because it was the laps were so long, um, and the data was so much. It was it would. It would make its appearance like after three laps, you would see the problem, whereas in other races it wouldn't be appear that much because the data, the data set, was a lot smaller, um, but yeah, it was fixed that's an unbelievable story.
Jeff:hey, I got a question for you Now. You don't have to get into the secret sauce here, but these aren't problems or products that are created over 15, 20 minutes here and there. How much Give us a spitball Again, not secret sauce, but how much time are you spending to do these updates, for us to create some of these programs and stuff?
Constantinos:So I, I have a full-time day job, right, and that starts. That's eight hours in the daytime. I finish work around 7 pm, 8 pm, my time, because I usually, like the people I work with are in Paris or London, so I always am a bit, you know, a bit ahead of them, so it's a bit later for me. But when I'm done, let's say 8 pm, I'm finished my work. I go downstairs, I see my family, my wife and daughter, we say hello, probably the second time in the entire day. We may have dinner, we might have something to drink or something. 30 minutes, one hour tops. And then I come up to the attic from 9, 9.30 pm up until 1 to2 am.
Erick:Oh, um so that's I don't know.
Constantinos:Four hours, five. I've gone longer, so I would say on average about three to four hours per day.
Jason:Um, for the lovely dashboard so three to four hours so, but you don't work weekends, though you don't work on it on the weekends, or you try not um.
Constantinos:So this weekend, for instance, I was alone. I was home alone. So instead of fighting crime like kevin did, uh I was already on the dashboard I literally, I literally spent over 24 hours working on the dashboard in the last two days, so it was around 12 13 hours per day saturday and sunday working on the dashboard, because I that's why I said the 2.7.5 is a really nice release.
Jason:So I worked a lot I can't, I can't wait I can't wait to wrap this up so I can go and download it it's not released yet.
Constantinos:It will be released sometime today.
Jeff:All right, all the lovely members, we hit us with that sometime today.
Jason:What time zone when it's a secret, so okay. So, konstantinos, what is a lovely member? How much does it cost? And I know you have a tier system, so if you can just break that down for us, you know a little, summarize it for us please.
Constantinos:All right. So first I just want to explain why there's a need for the memberships. It's important. It's important. So, as I said, I started designing, I published the dashboard I think it was in May 2022, end of May 2022. I published it for the first time, put it on race department. It started growing and growing and growing. It was a simple dashboard, no screens, nothing and then I started getting requests. It started growing with more features that people were asking for, things that I didn't think of, didn't know was required, for things that I didn't think of, didn't know was required. At some point.
Constantinos:I also created the lovely Discord that blew up as well, and I realized that this is great, but I'm spending way too much time taking it away from my family, sometimes from work as well. I need to make this thing sustainable, like, if I'm going to spend this much time on it, it needs to provide as well. So you know, there's a certain balance and for me, it wasn't about the money. At first, as I said, I already had a full-time job. It was a really nice job. I loved it. So it wasn't about the money, it was about commitment. So if I'm going to commit three to four hours a day working on this. I would like to see some people commit support to me. Of course, money is the only way you can commit. You can't come up to my house and ring a doorbell and say I love you. You can't do that.
Constantinos:So you know, memberships were the first thing. So the first thing I did was I created I don't remember when this was, I don't remember I created the Love of the Membership, which was just a coffee. So I was using Buy Me a Coffee, I think, and that was the first one I used. It was three euros for a monthly membership and at first it wasn't even a membership, it was support. So if you enjoy the work, just subscribe and become a member and give me three euros per month, one coffee per month. So I assumed, like if I had a hundred people giving me coffee, that's a lot of coffee, you know, that's a lot of that's a lot of support.
Constantinos:I'm getting Right yeah.
Jason:And a lot of coffee.
Constantinos:And a lot of coffee. So that's how it kind of went. I never got to a hundred supporters. I think there were like 50 or 60 supporters, uh, for the first four, five months. So that was okay and it was. It was like the streaming pc I mentioned they that, I added, was purchased from that money. Um, like I, I think it was like four months. Four months of collecting money from these support were enough to get me a basic streaming pc. So that's the idea. Like I didn't, I didn't ever think that this would be a job. It would just be like I'm committing time, you're committing some money as a supporter and we're all good. You know everything's jolly. But that again changed at some point when there were more products, more stuff to work on the pit wall the pit wall was killing me, honestly, because it was.
Constantinos:it was a lot of work going into the pit wall. So it was in September of 2023 where I decided that it won't be a supporter, will be a membership. It's important change in the concept. So memberships were born in September of 2023. So it's less than a year now. Supporters at that time I think there were around like 90 or 100 people supporting me and that's when I introduced the memberships.
Constantinos:The memberships are really simple. Okay, there are three tiers. There's the starter, for one euro per month, the pro members that are three euros per month. And the gold members at nine euros per month. Member. Okay, let's go back. I just want to explain what you get if you're a member, right? So I create a love dashboard. I give it away for free for everyone. But the free versions, the major versions so 2.6, 2.7, 2.8 in the future, all these major versions are given for free for everyone. But every quarter, so every three to four months, I release a major version and that's free for everyone. But during these three to four months, I release almost bi-weekly, sometimes weekly, new versions. So 2.7.1, 2.7.2, and all these versions are not test releases, they're not pre-releases. There are actual releases with new features, new functions and stuff like let me butt in here.
Jason:There's no better feeling than getting on the rig after you get out of work and you turn the dashboard on and there's a red stripe on the bottom that says new version available. I I get ecstatic every time. Sorry to steer your thumb, I had to throw that out there.
Jeff:Man, me and jason have like a go back and forth over who can get set text the other person that there's an update out for the first, the, the quickest let me know who does that today challenge accepted, so that's tier one.
Jason:Let me, let you get back to your, to the tiers yeah, so, um, so everyone gets it for free.
Constantinos:You don't have to be a paid member to get the dashboard. It's free, but if you are a member, at any level, you join automatically. If you, if you, if you become a member, basically you get assigned a role in my discord and you have access to the private area where, every week, every two weeks now in august, I'm probably not going to release anything because I'll be working on other stuff and it is kind of like a downtime anyway. Um, every week, every two weeks Now in August, I'm probably not going to release anything because I'll be working on other stuff and it is kind of like a downtime anyway. But you have access to all these, the latest versions. So any any paid member, from the lowest tier all the way to the most expensive one, you get every single version that I release on all the products. So either it is the dashboard, the companion, the flags, the overlay, whatever gets updated, you have access to it.
Constantinos:And this is where the tiers split the pro member and above also get the lovely pit wall. The only way to get the pit wall is if you are a pro member or a gold member. It is the only product that is not available for free. Okay, so if you want the lovely pit wall, you have to become a member, and I did that because, as I said, the lovely pit wall has so much work, it is so intricate the way it works and things that are happening to it that are changing it right now. It just it needs. It needs to be supported as a proper product. So everything else I create is given away for free on major versions. So every quarter, if you're a paid member any level of pay member you get all of the products as they are released, the versions, and pro members and above get the pit wall. It's as simple as that. And gold members, because someone might say what do gold members get?
Constantinos:Well, gold members exist only as well. I mean, if you become a gold member, the moment you become a gold member, I automatically send you a gold member sticker. Right, I know it's not important or big, but gold members only exist because someone said I don't want to give you three years, I want to give you more, I appreciate more and I can do that for you. So I never thought of creating that gold tier. It was the members themselves that suggested that I do create it and I did, and the gold members are now at a really nice number. It's not the levels of number, you know, the pro members or the starter members, but they are there to give me that extra support, that extra kick in the butt. So gold members don't actually get anything more than the rest. They do get a gold member exclusive sticker. I don't even have one.
Jason:And we get to go to the gold member lounge too.
Constantinos:Yes, there's an extra area in a discord which is rather quiet because they're not that many people, but in the gold member discord, um, it's just, you know, lavish, it's all gold inside.
Jason:So I think it's all go spoons and forks, gold cars, gold cups um, there is.
Constantinos:So there is a distinction, though, in my Discord, because the Discord now has over 7,000 members and they're all there for the Lovey dashboard, right, and when someone requests something, I usually engage. I'm trying to be as active as I can in my Discord. I usually engage. I'm trying to be as active as I can in my Discord, but I do have and this is not something. I don't like saying this but there is a preference. When a member suggests something, I will most likely put a bit more weight to it. I'm not being preferential here, but it is something. When you're a member, you do have access to the private releases, which means you can give me more feedback on what's coming and also let me know if you like it or not. So you'll see, in public areas of the Discord as well, you'll see me chatting with pro members and engaging a bit more, because they have seen things that normal members have not. So people that have the free version have not seen it.
Jason:That makes sense.
Constantinos:Yeah, so if you're a member and you have access to all the pre-releases, chances are that we will engage far more highly at a different level and, you know, possibly add features, fix things and before anyone else gets to see it. So that's also something that I think is a really good incentive to become a member. You have access to the latest versions and also new features. You can suggest stuff.
Jason:I will most likely respond, like I respond to everything, and let me add this here but the system that you created on Discord is awesome for features because you have when, if it makes sense for the dashboard, right, you'll put a check mark on it or something that says that it's in progress, or that way you can go through the features that were already requested and essentially not repeat yourself like, hey, I want this feature, but hey, it's on the list here and it says here that it's being worked on. It's kind of nice.
Constantinos:It's a simple task management thing. So in the public part of the and this is all intentional Like you are a member, you have access to version 2.7.4. So you have things that other members don't have, other people don't have, not members don't have, and you're posting in the bug report that that doesn't work. That is intentional. Having it public Because I want people to see that aren't members that don't have that version that that version exists. It's the only way for me to promote it without promoting it, right, I see, and I also have a roadmap, a public roadmap, showing what's coming in, 2.7.5, for instance. So if you're not a member, you know what's there, you know what you're missing. It's it's a way to promote it, because I don't like promoting my work. I like the work to speak for itself and that's how it's gotten up to where it is today.
Constantinos:So, as I said, in the public part, there is a bug report and a feature suggestion for the dashboard, and when people can have a crazy idea, they can post it in there. Um, and usually I just scour through those like once or twice per week and just hit a to-do tag on it, the stuff that I want to work on. If I do it. I just switch the tag to done and also say which version is coming in. So there's a good report there where everyone can suggest things or have a bug report, and which I can just when I'm sitting in a rig and like what I'm going to do now. I don't have to think I don't have notes. I just go to Discord and look at all of the list of things that people have already mentioned and I start off with a bug report, which is probably the most important thing, so fixing things that don't work well, and then I move on to the suggestions and features and I add stuff to the dash.
Erick:You know that sounds like somebody with a background in marketing and UX design. Just you know, I would not know.
Constantinos:Guilty, yeah, no, I mean you need to have that, and if you are a member there's also, if you're a pro member and above, there's also in the private area, there's also a pit wall features and pit wall bugs. Those are not available to anyone else other than pro and gold members, simply because, um, if you're not a member, you don't have access to it, and also there are things in there that sometimes we discuss and you know it's it's irrelevant to anyone else, right, it's the pit wall gotcha awesome.
Erick:So you've been talking about all this, all this goodness, and I feel like you're gonna break my heart, but I got a question what all sims, uh, do the lovely product support?
Constantinos:um, well, the very basic is everything. There's no limit. Um, okay, the initial version of the dashboard was limited to aac, acc and I racing, for instance, and if you loaded up a different sim, it would just give you this stupid screen that said it's not working. And I did that because I didn't have a lot of users. There were not a lot of people using it.
Jeff:The people that were using it were very yeah, I mean, I hated it.
Constantinos:I hated it, but I couldn't put myself to put more time in and make it work. So, um, I did do that, I made it work. So now the libya dashboard whatever sim you load up, it will show you information. Okay, so it will show you the very basic stuff. If there's tire data, you will see it. If there's gears and throttle and brake, you will see that. If there's tire data, you will see it. If there's gears and throttle and brake, you will see that. If there's timings, you will see that. Whatever the game gives us, we will display it. It's as simple as that. But there are sims that are made natively to work with the dashboard. So that's ac, acc, I racing rf2, lmu is, but it is supporting um, what else is there? Uh?
Jason:ams2. Did you mention ams2?
Constantinos:yeah, I don't remember everything, guys. Honestly, my memory sucks, so um, I'm thinking f1, the f1 games f1 games. All are supported, the entire franchise uh f1, rf2. Yeah, and I haven't listed lmu on the site because lmu is kind of wonky at this point it is.
Constantinos:It's a pre-release, it's not really yes, but also it's not, it's not fully there, um. So it does have telemetry, it does work, but there's not full documentation on what they're sharing with us, so it's really hard for me to follow up, and every update they do, they could break things. So, although if you do use LMU, it will work because the dashboard supports RF2. So RFactor 2 and Le Mans Ultimate basically are the same thing, but Le Mans Ultimate is not there yet. So if you do use it, you will be able to see it, you will see you um, uh from mgus and battery and ers and you will see specific things for lmu. But I just don't go out shouting about it because it can break any moment or it might not work perfectly, because the game is still not fully released. So they're coming out with dlcs but the game is still in beta, so I know, that's the part.
Jason:That's the part that is another discussion. Trust me they're charging us DLC now and it's like the game's not even fixed. You need to work on. You need to focus on getting the game out and getting it right first yeah, sorry, I, I see it, I see the. I have strong feelings on that one yeah, I don't have any feelings and.
Constantinos:I don't really run Le Mans Ultimate. I see the reason why they're doing it. Um, I don't have any feelings. I don't really run Le Mans Ultimate. I see the reason why they're doing it. I don't have hard feelings against it. I think creating a product generates requirements, either to build it, to develop it, and I'm pretty sure they didn't. I don't think anyone in Le Mans Ultimate, in whatever the company's called I forgot their name a bit and I'm pretty sure they didn't. Like I don't think anyone, uh like, in in limon ultimate and whatever the what the company's called, I forgot their name. Um, I don't think they got up and said like, oh, today we're gonna make a million dollars. It was more like shit. If we wanna, if we want this game to actually be released, we need to generate some money at this point it's not like their call of duty and you know it's automatic money.
Jason:Yeah copy and paste.
Constantinos:I think that's pretty much where they were. So like, okay, we need to get some revenue or else we're dead in the water. So I don't judge anyone, I don't criticize anyone. I know what it's like to create a product and I'm pretty much it's the same for them. This is a very niche market. Like simulators are not Fortnite. Like not everyone is playing Le Mans Ultimate, there are a lot of players, but if you look at the numbers, I think AC peaked at 16,000. Ac peaked at 16,900. Peaked at 17,000. Do you imagine what?
Constantinos:Fortnite is peaking at. I think yeah.
Jason:That was back in 2016,.
Constantinos:I think, no, no, no, no. This was recently. Ac is going up because of evo it's going.
Erick:I don't know where they are now yeah, oh, acc.
Constantinos:I don't know. This number may not be um, the actual number um, but what I'm saying is roughly the number that ac peaked. That was a couple of weeks ago, because they're seeing a tremendous spike because of ac evo coming up soon because of the news headliner.
Constantinos:I see I see, and it and it peaked. They said the all-time high for ac was that number. I'm like, wait, that number is just like. It's just like nothing, a little piece of what everyone else is doing. So this is a niche market. So I'm pretty sure lmu had a really good reason to to sell. That makes sense, that makes sense so I'm just being, I understand it. I understand it yeah yeah, yeah.
Erick:So I did have a question, because you mentioned kind of made a distinction between the lovely dashboard basically you'll take whatever telemetry you can get but there are games you have native support for, are there? Is there a difference between a game you're just grabbing telemetry from and one that there's native support for?
Constantinos:there is. There is. So if, if, if a game comes out and, um, I want to get, I want to give you a good example formula one, for instance. So formula one, for whatever reason, I still believe it's a game, it's a simcade, it's not a simulator, for whatever reason. Formula One has traction control and ABS, but that's not how Formula One works.
Jeff:Preaching to the choir.
Constantinos:So what we do in the dashboard is, if the game is Formula One, we remove some of the information on the dashboard and add the stuff that's actually more required, so the fuel mix differentials. We don't show ABS, I think I don't know. So the dashboard, depending on the game, adapts as well. Now, if this is the game that we know, so the experience is customized for Formula One. Yeah, you might not see ABS, but, dude, if you're doing a Formula 1, turn it off. It doesn't exist.
Jason:Thank you. Thank you so much for putting that out and touch control as well.
Constantinos:I don't think we show it Turn the damn assist off.
Constantinos:Although in-game, as an assist in-game, you can have it and you can change it. It does exist in the game. We just don't show it as part of the UI. So that's the customization and the experience we create for the natively supported games. Now, if you jump in Gran Turismo 7, which is a game that can connect to SimHub through a PC and share telemetry, it's got nothing. Gran Turismo doesn't even have maps. You can see your gear, you can see RPM, throttle and brake input, you can see lap times, I think, and your position, but basically that's it. But that doesn't mean the dashboard won't work. If you fire up Gran Turismo 7 and you're using your setup, you've got it all working. You can use the Lovie dashboard. It's just that the information is very, very poor because Gran Turismo does not share all the information. So that's pretty much it. That's the distinction between a natively supported game, a simulator, and something that's not supported natively. It's basically the experience.
Erick:Okay, that's cool, that's good to know.
Jeff:I'm going to jump in. You got a lot of products, but then you also are so connected to us as end users you have to get some. You got to be getting feedback a lot with hey, it's good or bad, but that's one question is kind of what is the response from the community? And then the second follow-up was there must be some crazy stories of people asking you for help here or there, walk you through. I don't get this. Has there been any odd stories you'd like to share?
Constantinos:In the Discord there's different types of support requests I have. So there's support requests that are related to the dashboard itself. So fortunately there are some mods inside the Discord that jump in and do all the footwork, the stuff that's just repetitive. Then there's support for hardware, which I usually just direct. If it's a partner, I'll direct directly to the partner or just, you know, say like I can't help you there, but you know what you can try this or that. So I try and support everyone that's in the discord and my mods are also amazing guys and and they jump in and help. A lot there have been.
Constantinos:Well, just I'll just focus on one case, which was the odd one, where there's a user. He has a rig set up at home, such a lovely guy, but he has no idea of computers. He literally I can't hold it, okay, go ahead. So this guy is computer illiterate, zero. I mean you have no idea. And he messages me and his question at first is I can't get it to work. I'm like, okay, did you go through the FAQ? You know RTFM dude. I mean we have an FAQ, go through those one or two things, it'll probably solve your issue. And he says, yeah, I went through it, but I don't understand what I need to do. Um, and then that's where the conversation starts. You need to double click which button. How do you install other dashboards? What?
Jeff:are dashboards.
Constantinos:Um, can you launch sim hub and tell you? You see where sim hub, oh man, it was? It was computer illiterate. So it turns out this amazing guy, this truly amazing guy in london, loves driving and motorsports, has been into these things as far as he recalls, but has nothing to do with computers, like zero knowledge. I think it was his son that helped him set up and purchase and set up a simulator at home, which was a fairly good one. It wasn't, like you know, just like on a desk, it was a rig. But he didn't know how to. He literally had a piece of paper and says push that button, it turns on. Use your mouse, go go there, turn it on, set up a game and he started driving. That's all he knew. So I knew I needed to help him. Right? This is a person that deserves helping. He loves motorsport so much, so much so that he's doing something he's very uncomfortable with.
Constantinos:Imagine that, yeah, yeah, you know like imagine loving to do something but having to do something you have no idea of and it's terrifying you that that's. That's a lot of love you have for that right to go through that.
Constantinos:So, um, you know, going through discord, I realized that discord isn't something he is familiar with as well, so he just jumped on the call. Um call lasted about like an hour, an hour and a half. Um, he is familiar with as well, so we just jumped on a call. Um call lasted about like an hour, an hour and a half. Um, the call was not through the PC.
Constantinos:The PC. The call wasn't through the PC, he was holding his phone. He had discord on his phone. We were doing a video call and he would just show me his computer screen through his phone. He couldn't share screen. He was completely illiterate. Eventually, after one and a half hours I think, we set everything up. I basically created a configuration file for the dashboard. I sent it over to him and through his phone. You can imagine it was very awkward, the whole conversation thing. Awkward, not because it was him, awkward because I couldn't see what he was pointing at. And anyway I got him up and running, um, and that was probably like the most challenging support request I had. But I loved it every second of it. It was like his face at the end, like I can't believe it. It's working.
Jason:Thank you so much you probably made his day, man, for real.
Constantinos:He made my day as well like for me, when you have, when you have someone coming up and saying, oh, that doesn't work, and you're like, did you try that? And he's like, oh no, oh no, it works. Yeah, that was a boring interaction, wasn't?
Jeff:it right, move on yeah there's og tech support right there that dude better be a gold member for that.
Constantinos:Let me tell you he was a gold member before pro or something he was, he was, he was a gold member even before we had a he. We got on a call oh, I see, I see him a gold member and again, I didn't know he was loyal before I. I didn't know he was a gold member because we were in dms. When you're in dms in discord it just shows your name. It doesn't because you're not in the servers.
Constantinos:I don't know if you're a gold member or not right, yeah so we got on a call and everything and he's like, um, uh, he asked me, he oh, he told me at some point, like there's a goal, there's a red bar you know your favorite jason on the dash. He's like what is that? And like that's for members only. Um, he's like what is that? And I'm like that's for members only. Um. He's like, oh, I am. I'm like, oh, you are. This is like towards the end, right, oh, after you after the fact this was this?
Constantinos:was this? This supported nothing to do with memberships and stuff. Explain that in discord and I showed him around in discord. You can go to the private area and you can download that. And yeah, I mean he, he was a gold member. He, he told me basically he was watching all my streams and all the videos and everything he couldn't get. He couldn't get it to work. Um, and even before we got in contact, he became a gold member because he really loved what, what I was doing, even though he wasn't using it, like even though he didn't have it set up. So, yeah, I get that.
Jason:That is probably the You'll never forget about that one man. That's a cool story.
Constantinos:I will. No, I will never forget about that one. That support was probably the best one, like the best story I have for support. But also like day in, day out, I get a lot of people just saying, like you know, I love the dashboard, I love what you do, thank you, um. So that's a lot. Uh, I haven't gotten any hate yet. Maybe one or two people um have shown me like the dark side, um, but in general I try not to be negative like at any point in time for anyone I can comfortably say that all three of us are fans of your work, a hundred thousand percent.
Jason:I mean, your work is amazing. It's exciting every time I get on the rig and, like I said, I see that update popped up. I read the roadmap notes. You have everything organized, it's just, it's a pleasure, man. It's like what else can I do for you? You know what I mean? That's how I feel. What can I do for you? I feel like you give me so much. You know you're bringing, you know, my rig to life. You know, without that data being shown, it's kind of like I'm lost. You know what I mean? I can't live without it. I'll be honest with you Live on the show. I can't live without the dashboards. So I mean, that's what went through my mind when I became a member. I was like I don't want this to die and I think I've told you that many times. I said you can't quit, bro, no matter what is that?
Jeff:you can't quit, you cannot stop. I mean you got me onto the uh, the, the um, the pit wall. I mean I was like, jason, is the fourth monitor really needed? Do you really need it? Yeah, I can't live without it. Can't live without it. That's, that's some strong words. I was like, all right, I'm gonna get it. I got it, got the pit wall, it may may not kill without it. Well, I can't, I can't, I couldn't imagine going to race, go back to racing without it. Now, yeah, and like to the point is, I see people online sim racing and I'm like, oh, he don't have lovely dash. I can't take him that serious. It just is way. I mean like you're either in it or you're not you're being, you're being too kind.
Jason:Um yeah, because the truth, I mean to be honest with you. At first, you know, I was drawn into it by the aesthetic right, all this data being shown. It kind of looks cool for my streams and everything. But then you start to depend on this stuff because you made it. You made it when you said, uh, it has to be glanceable. That makes a hundred percent. That makes sense, because I have a ddu right here in the frame of my you know, of my view, and then I have all the data on the top. It's kind of nice man.
Jeff:So it's not kind of nice, it is nice no, it's great.
Jason:So one one question, you know, regarding all the, all your stuff. Right, if you can change one thing I had, I had to throw this question in there. Okay, from the start, what would you do differently if you can, if you could change one thing?
Constantinos:change, as in the, the product itself or anything right anything, anything, but it has to be.
Jason:You know lovely sim racing, you know products honestly, I don't think I would like um love it, no regrets so no, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's not.
Constantinos:I'm not having regrets, um, it's just a philosophy, it's, it's how you think and you know I, you know this is the second take. This is the second take of this. Uh, this interview the first one kind of failed, but I did, I don't know, it was part of the conversation.
Jason:No, you threw it, it is what it is.
Jeff:No, no, no we started.
Constantinos:We started in. The first one failed, so we didn't even get this far. But that's not the point. The point is sorry In in that conversation we had, I mentioned about decisions and decision making. Right, and this is relevant.
Constantinos:So when we make a decision in life, it doesn't matter which one it is. When you make a decision, the decision is always the right decision. Right so you might make a life decision, a professional decision, a decision for what you're going to do today. Right, so you might made a life decision, a professional decision, a decision for what you're going to do today. Right, it doesn't matter the decision, but when you make the decision, the decision you make is the correct one, given the circumstances, given the context, given the information you have at time. Usually you hear people saying that was a bad decision. Actually, the decision was right. The outcome is what we didn't like, but we couldn't expect the outcome. Right, the outcome is something that will happen. It is based on the decision, but the decision is always the right one. You always make a decision based on the information. You have, the context, where you are, the time of day, if you're hungry, if you're not. You always make a decision based on what you know at that point in time. It is never a wrong decision. We may not like the outcome of the decision, but the decision was always correct.
Constantinos:So in that sense I cannot change anything, like I can say that that wouldn't have done that. But that's a wrong thing to say, because when I decided to do that, that A or B b thing, it was the right thing to do. It might like, yeah, the pit wall. I already said like I used a plug-in and my, my, my view is never used plugins again unless I know the creator, unless I know that this is going to continue working. The decision the first one to use the plugin was a wrong decision. But I can only tell that after that fiasco with uh, with everything crashing, when I took the decision, it was correct, it wasn't a bad decision, it was a right. It was a right decision, right. So in that sense, I don't think I'd change anything. The dashboard is in the place where it is today because of all the decisions, the mistakes and right things I did right. So I don't think I would change anything. Um, yeah, I love that. If anything. If anything, I would have tried to build partnerships sooner again, okay not a bad decision.
Constantinos:Not a bad decision like it's not something I did wrong or I regret right now not doing sooner, but if I did do that sooner it might have been a bit different today, right now that we're speaking um. But it's not like it's. It was a bad decision, like when I sent um. I do want to talk about a bit about my partners, because they have been supporting me and helping me in many, and I think the first one, I.
Constantinos:In life in general, good words or, you know, praise for someone's work when it actually is deserves it, never goes unwelcomed or never goes to waste. This is, this has been the same thing throughout my life. I've made friendships just by sending an email telling someone dude, I saw that website, I saw that you made it, I don't know who. By sending an email telling someone dude, I saw that website, I saw that you made it. I don't know who you are, but it's fucking amazing and that built into one of my largest, my greatest friendships and professional and private. So the same thing happened now.
Constantinos:I am a McLaren fan you already know that but I saw Tony Kanaan. He was showing off something in his rig and I sent him a message sayinganaan he was showing off something in his rig and I sent him a message saying oh, he was using the Lovie dashboard. Tony Kanaan was using the Lovie dashboard and he was showing something off and I sent him a message. I'm like, dude, that's amazing. I'm Konstantinos, I made the Lovie dashboard. If you ever want to maybe chat, this was a long shot. I was just throwing a dart in the dark on a wall that didn't know existed, right.
Jason:Into thin air.
Constantinos:And expecting it to land. Five minutes later he responded.
Constantinos:Five minutes wow, yeah, it was immediate. It was immediate. He responded saying, yeah, I love the dashboard, let's get on a call, let's talk. And that transformed into a partnership and that also brought the lovely dashboard TK edition. And now we chat as often as we can because you know he's extremely busy in general. So we chat as often as we can. You know things that are going to happen in the future, things we want to do and whatnot. But that was like the first partnership with with a legend. I didn't actually know that that would be possible. So that opened up the doors.
Constantinos:And then, um then you know partnerships um uh, with Martin Asher from Asher racing. Um Federico Campi from gray Wolf. Um uh, really nice partnership with uh Zach from turn racing racing. Uh callum from simutech. Um daniel newman, obviously. Well, daniel newman is a bit different. Um, he started through my discord, but again, um, all these people building stuff and helping me and helping themselves as well along the way, because you know, no one does. There is I'll. I'll revert back to Friends, the series, when I think it was Joey that said there is no selfless good deed, like there's something, there's nothing you can do, that you say it's a good deed, but it was always, never, selfless. So everyone's gaining from these partnerships, right, and I'm enjoying them, them, every single one of them, meeting all these people um. Most recently, I released a dashboard for none other than I have to get this right the right name mercedes amg patronus, formula one in racing team steering wheel.
Erick:In parentheses 2024 so wait a minute wait, wait, wait.
Jason:Is that the new? Yes, uh, that's the new one. Right, that's the new one.
Constantinos:Yeah, I was under nda, I was under nda. I couldn't talk about it for the longest of times, um the moment they released it. I sent them a message like I can tell you're gonna have to buy it, bro.
Jason:You're gonna have to break down, we're gonna have to break the bank in august and yeah, that was that was a really nice project.
Constantinos:So, um, you know, apart from all the stuff that I'm doing for lovey dashboard, I have done work for gomez sim racing for their hyper p1 wheel, their dashboard. I also did um for turn racing for the TDU5, their dashboard. I've done some consulting for other companies as well Sim Racing stuff, dashboard, stuff. Right, I'm currently speaking with Moza, so this is our second run with Moza.
Erick:Sim.
Constantinos:Magic as well.
Jason:Oh yeah, I'm trying to get all these different companies to work with. Sim Magic. Yes, well, oh yeah, I'm trying to get all these different companies to work with sim magic?
Constantinos:yes, yeah, but for um, but for the mercedes wheel, uh, I, as I said, I'm talking to a lot of the industry leaders has has, you know, like what's up, what's going on and it's chatting right. So the same thing was happening with with sim lab and grid engineering, so Grid Engineering more than SimLab, but they're the same company now and they said would you be interested in a project? Nothing else. I'm like yes, because, as I said, this is something I like to do, but I also like to work with other things outside the Lovey Dashboard, and we signed a few NDAs there and made sure that I wouldn't talk and they shared the information, at which made sure that you know I wouldn't talk and they shared the information, at which point I also had a call, uh, with the offices in brackley, with mclaren, with mercedes um, the dashboard that I created for that steering wheel is a one-to-one replica of the w13 mercedes wheel. Um, I had a legendary w13.
Constantinos:That was I had documentation sent from brackley with the dashboard and all the technical requirements. Of course we're sim racing, so we don't have all that stuff. Um, but it was, it was an experience. So it would be a dashboard that I you know, I personally don't wouldn't use. It would fall into the category of this is a replica and it's exactly the same for immersion, but it doesn't work for me. It works for lewis, I think it was. Who was uh in w13? Was it russell?
Jason:both us both us and lewis I don't remember.
Constantinos:It works for them right, it wouldn't work for me, but the dashboard itself is 100 a replica. I even created a fake gear sync because when you're doing an outlap, when you're doing I didn't know these things right when you're doing an outlap I mean, this is something that's known, it's not a secret but when you're doing an outlap, the outlap um is basically um, uh, what do they call it? The install lap? They call it for the for the first time every day, when you, when they go out, they do the install app and the install app has a gear sync, sorry um. So it, the driver, needs to uh hit the gear at the right moment and it syncs the gears and that telemetry information is fed back into um and into the team. So I made a fake gear sync as well. So when you go into the install app mode and you're gearing, it just shows you like one, two, three, four, five, six and if you hit down it resets everything. So it's it's fake, but I try to make it be as as immersive as the original steering wheel and through the steering wheel I've also got to meet a few of their drivers and I'm getting feedback from them as well, not not Lewis or George.
Constantinos:I'm chatting a bit with Frederick Vesti, who is their simulator driver, the guy that does all the setups. So he's the guy. Vesti is the guy that when they do all the runs on Saturday and on Friday, he's the one that goes into the simulator Friday night and Saturday night spends like four or five hours until morning preparing the setups for the next day. Wow, yeah.
Constantinos:I'm getting feedback from everyone on that. That was a high profile project.
Jason:And I really thoroughly enjoyed it?
Erick:Oh yeah, it is. That's awesome Congratulations. Would have liked if Zach Brown called me, but whatever. If you're listening.
Constantinos:Zach call me.
Erick:There you go.
Constantinos:I have a peek at your IndyCar dashboards and you need a designer. Zach, you need his help. Yes, he does. Treat yourself.
Erick:Zach Treat yourself man.
Constantinos:I think, I think, from this whole endeavor, um, the most important part that I really enjoy is meeting all these people. Um, you know, like, some people are just legends in their field, others are just people trying to do something you know nice. Others are creating products, already big, but meeting and talking with them, it's just something that I enjoy a lot and, like you as well, like for me, having this call, having this interview, having this, this chat is so much fun. It's, it's it's what I love most about the life that I'm in.
Jason:Likewise, man, it is an absolute honor to have you on the show. Man, I mean I I can't thank you enough. I mean, just just seeing you in the flesh here right now is amazing. Yeah, this is awesome, man, your story is is great, and your story racing yeah, your story is a lot deeper than than than you know what we think. Right, we don know. We just downloaded a dashboard and installed it.
Jeff:Watch the videos and watch them.
Constantinos:Everyone needs to have their story told. I think yeah.
Jason:No, thank you so much for being on the show for real. Thank you, Thank you. We can't thank you enough. Yeah, this is awesome. I'm ecstatic. I'm ecstatic right now, Just filming right right here.
Constantinos:Right now you and your Aston Martin shirt.
Jason:Sure, Alonzo man. I mean we're slow right now, but it's all right, We'll, we'll, we'll figure it out.
Jeff:Jason can. I can I? I made a version, yeah.
Constantinos:I made a version version of the hyper p1.
Jason:The dashboard specific for aston martin and lance stroll you did so close to fernando, but you know come on, fernando's a legend, bro, and tomorrow's his birthday, or today is his 40?
Erick:uh, he's 43 now and the man still doing it don't, don't date yourself, man.
Jeff:Yeah, go ahead, jeff, with the question I got a question for you, for a guy that's so dedicated to these, to these uh products. When you get in and you're and you're driving, and you got an hour or whatever one race, what's your game, what's your class, what's?
Constantinos:your car? Um, it's acc gt3s. I don't have time to dabble like, honestly, I try to get I racing. Every time I'm like I'm gonna do something quick. And I racing, I launch it and says 1.5 gigabytes updates before I continue, so I let it update like 10 minutes go by. I'm like, nah, I just can't do this that's jeff's life, right there it is.
Constantinos:It is simply um a case of practicality. So acc is very easy to set up, with the triples and everything. Um, it works well, I like it, I enjoy it. So the first thing I do, uh, if I want to have like a quick race, um, I jump. Acc. It's going to be LFM usually, or pit skill. Uh, I don't, I avoid, you know, ai racing and stuff like that. It kind of bores me. Um, so, yeah, that's that's it. Uh, as simple as that. I have all the games purchased and installed, but ACC is like my go-to because everything just works out of the box. Uh, for my system, right, I racing, i'veracing, I've never.
Erick:I've never, ever got it to work perfectly, but that's fair.
Jason:I don't have much time to be honest, yeah. So okay, constantinos, what do you, what do you think of the current state of sim racing, and where do you see it in five years?
Constantinos:Well, if we look back at where it was five years ago and where it is now, you'll see that there's like a thousand percent increase in interest and the companies getting involved and the money being spent in investments is huge. So I would dare to say that in five years from now we'd probably see another thousand percent increase. It really is a small market right now, given the fact that motorsport is such a huge, huge part of everyone's lives. Like what is it? There are countries that, like Brazil it's football and Formula One and given that you can do this in an affordable way at home and not just race in a game, but race online and participate in high profile races and be competitive even with your G23, you can race against guys with Simucube Pro 2s and still win. The equipment is completely irrelevant to your talent and your capabilities. I see sim racing growing exponentially. Like if we have this call, in five years from now it'll be a completely different landscape.
Jason:It's not going anywhere. In my opinion. It's only going up from here.
Constantinos:They thought it was Like. The initial impression was, COVID has spiked it because everyone's at home. But once it goes away it'll die out and just the original people and maybe just a few more will continue. But it's not going anywhere when you see companies like Porsche, BMW, McLaren, Ferrari.
Constantinos:Mercedes, like all of these big players, stepping up and investing in this. It's not going anywhere. They see something that obviously we can't. We just feel it. I feel it the way the dashboard is being used and and and the usage of the dashboard growing and my membership's growing, you realize that this is not going to slow down. It will eventually plateau. Everything does but it's not gonna happen.
Jason:I don't think it's gonna happen for the next five years at least, and it's it's too, too early, five years, I think I think you know my opinion is um, the hardest thing with sim racing is the cost, right, and I know we all mentioned that there's affordable ways to get into the hobby. But then most people want, you know, the higher end stuff, right, they don't want to start from the bottom. I'm guilty as charged. But now we have a player like SimMagic saying, hey, we can make those products at a decent price and get you into the hobby and get you what you're looking for, you know, for a lot cheaper, for a lot faster or whatever. So I think that if that trend continues and products like that continue to come into the market and it makes it affordable for more to come over, then, yeah, it's only going to continue to grow it's going to happen.
Constantinos:It's going to happen, what you said is going to happen. So products will get better and they will get cheaper right, more affordable, not cheaper. Cheaper is the word I don't like to use. So product will get better, more affordable. Let's go back like when I started direct drives only fanatic, only fanatic I own the fanatic too, and it was like a 1700 purchase for me right euros um ouch, go buy a dd drive now. How expensive can it get? Eight, five newton meter, eight newton meter, you don't need more right and how many?
Jason:how?
Constantinos:many options do you have? And this is four years in four years, just came out with a 309 wheel and wheel base bundle, five newton meters, 399 yeah, so you understand that in five years from now, we'll be talking about simucube 2 pro active pedal kits for less than a thousand, like the whole thing please hear him please, because it's going to be, it's going to be, that it's it's mathematically, it's a progression if they were a thousand dollars I would have ordered them right now.
Constantinos:No, I mean I'm, I'm, I'm betting that the active pedals, unless there's a patent for it, will be way more affordable in the next couple of years. Hopefully this is like a strict patent, that you cannot copy that specific design, which I'm pretty sure they do have. But even even simucube will come out and this is I don't. I've never spoken to simucube so I don't know them. This is just my assumptions here. They will come out with a more affordable active pedal. I don't think it'll stay with that, and if they don't, someone else will.
Jason:I know SimMagic is going to release one. I just have a gut feeling that they're eyeballing the market. They're like, yeah, we want. Look at the market you have SimMagic is going to release one. I just have a gut feeling that they're eyeballing the market. They're like, yeah, we want….
Constantinos:Look at the market. You have SimMagic, you have Moza and now you have, from the left field, coming out of nowhere, conspit. What are these guys? Yeah, they released a new wheel, they're releasing DD bases, they're releasing pedals, they're releasing high-end equipment which is affordable at some point, and they're just keep on pumping new stuff out at a pace where I don't know how they're doing it. I don't know what their quality is. I have zero. I have no interaction with them, but they're doing it, and if they're doing it, someone else is going to do it as well and as long as they're going to look at that, as long as they keep the quality high at a at a decent pace place, I think um this market, that makes sense you know what that you?
Jason:you make a good point there because the more options you have on the market, then there's more. How do you say, um, competition? Yeah, there's more. Competition. Fanatec had the market cornered for years. They cornered the market. It's like well, if you want to use a DD wheel, we're the only ones that are making one and we're the only ones that are making them that are compatible with a console. That is the other caveat here, and that is another thing that they need to make these products more accessible to console, because a lot of the user base on console would love to SimBrace using that gear and that hardware.
Constantinos:Does any of you remember or know the Minidisc?
Jason:Yeah, Minidisc, like GameCube, like what do you?
Constantinos:mean. So you know, after the cd came out, I think it was sony a mini, yeah, the mini discs, cine.
Constantinos:Sony invented the mini disc, which was like a little like a like a game boy cartridge which had a little laser disc in there, right, right, and you can use this. It was far safer and easier to use and, you know, like portable devices at home or whatever. What happened is sony licensed it at a very high price. So if you were a company that wanted to create one, you'd have to pay a shitload of royalties to sony. If you wanted to create mini discs blank mini discs so you can write on them, you'd have to pay a lot of royalties to sony. Sony thought that they're golden. They made a minidisc, which is an amazing device, really practical, really small, fits in your pocket, holds thousands of songs, whatever and they're done. They just need to get royalties and sit back and relax. It died because no one was willing to pay those royalties. I think we're in the same place now with the, with the councils right.
Constantinos:Xbox playstation the reason a lot of playstation councils is because the licensing is huge, right, and if there's no equal return, it's harder for someone to invest in something like that. And don't forget playstation and xbox have different strategies. X Xbox has the chip in the wheel. Playstation requires the chip in the base, so it's a different strategy. I think Xbox is a bit better because you can buy a base that works with the Xbox and you just swap the wheel and you're done, whereas PlayStation, you have to change your base and that's something you don't do. I'm assuming that the royalties are really high and that's why not many people are doing it, and the ones that are doing it are charging more, which for me is ridiculous. But if anything, I would place the blame on the people that are asking for those ridiculous royalties than anything else. Like why wouldn't simucube want to create for the council? Why wouldn't they? It's stupid. They would. They would exactly. Does it make sense business-wise? Maybe, maybe not, I don't know what the details are, but I would not.
Constantinos:I can give you it would sound. I can't imagine companies like Asetek or Simucube or, I don't know, Simagic. I don't know the exact specifics of these. I don't imagine why they wouldn't want to make something for the consoles they would wouldn't want to make something for for the consoles it would.
Erick:So I could tell you right now gt7, just gt7 has sold over three million copies, just that one game alone on it's playstation 5. Gt7 three million copies. Like when I, when I put pictures of my rig in a chat, when people find out I'm using Sim Magic stuff on the PlayStation, I get swarmed. I get messages all the time of people asking questions like I would love to use Sim Magic stuff. How'd you do that? How'd you do that? Can you post a video?
Erick:I mean, I'm about to start a channel just for the Facebook groups of men, one of the Facebook groups I mean one of the facebook groups, I mean has a hundred thousand people in it. It's just sim racing and these people have. There are people that are racing on pc and everything, but when I post about gt7 and using sim magic stuff, I mean I'm getting swamped so the the desire is definitely there.
Jason:I think it's like you're saying the licensing is right and a lot of them don't even think, yeah, a lot of them don't even think to to look right, because they're like, oh, I'm on a playstation, I'm not even gonna look at these products because they don't even work. You know what I mean.
Erick:But when they see some yeah, go ahead I was gonna say. The thing now is the issues with fanatec. That's got a lot of people looking around now to see what other options are out there, and SimMagic has been making a lot of noise. They're affordable. People rave about the quality. You got the flexibility. You can put a shoe on a SimMagic base and drive with it like it doesn't care, I still want to see that shoe thing.
Jason:There he goes with the shoe thing, but you know, it's a lot of opportunity there.
Erick:I think, like Konstantinos was saying, the companies just have to figure out how to make it. You know, to where it works for them. Yeah.
Constantinos:It's going to happen. I'm pretty sure it's going to happen. And imagine PlayStation 3, million copies for GT7. Imagine how many copies in total for sim, if they could, exactly. So I think the pressure is going to rise. Um, it's you know, demand will rise, so things will change. That's why I'm saying in the next five years, we're going to we're going to be a completely different landscape.
Constantinos:And these councils, man, they are so freaking powerful. They are so powerful like ps5 is, like you can. You can power an entire space station with a ps5 now, like it wouldn't even, it wouldn't even break a sweat. They went to the moon with a watch computer. Like my watch is more powerful than uh, than the challenger that went up to the moon. With a watch computer like my watch is more powerful than uh, than the challenger that went up to the moon or whatever that the apollo mission. So it's not about power anymore, it's just royalties and who gets to keep the more money, most money. And I think that's going to change. They're going, competition will change it. They won't have an option. They will not have a competition?
Jason:yeah well, pressure it'll, it'll apply, apply the pressure, let's not forget.
Erick:We've been talking about that. Okay, go ahead.
Constantinos:I'm sorry, I was about to say about Fanatic, and the company has been getting a lot of shit, and rightfully so, as far as their support and everything else. Thank you, Thank you.
Constantinos:I'm calling it out first. Yes, their support has been lousy. I have never, ever experienced bad support. Personally, I ordered a few QR2s like two sets and they shipped and arrived within like three or four days. But I'm in Europe. Maybe that's a big difference, I don't know, but for a company receiving so much shit, we're forgetting that they were the absolute pioneers of sim racing. Let's not forget that. If it weren't for Fnatic, I don't think this market would be where it is today.
Erick:This is true. I'm not talking about.
Constantinos:Jekermire and the family and what they're doing today and what's going on. No, I'm talking about the company in general. If they didn't have a DD1 or DD2, I seriously doubt we'd have any DDs today. We'd have them eventually or they wouldn't be in a place where they are now, like they're ubiquitous and you're buying a base but you're not thinking should I get a belt gear or DD? It's not a question anymore, it's a DD. And I think it's a lot to do with what they have done.
Constantinos:They took the risks. They created a DD at a really high price when, when there was no competition and some might say, yeah, but they're making all the money, but they weren't selling that like they were selling, yes, because they were the only ones, but it wasn't what we have today. Only because more companies got in, more affordable, has this thing blown up. But if it wasn't for them, I don't think like they. They were the pioneers of sim racing. For me, um, I don't care what's going on with the company now. I have my, express, my views on what's going on and why and whatnot, but I truly believe that it was. If it weren't for fanatic, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't be talking right now. We may be talking a few years later, so for them it's um.
Erick:We really need to acknowledge that yeah, I agree with that, for sure good perspective I just want to say um, you know we've been talking a lot about the future. What, I guess, what is? What do you see the future being for lovely sim racing, or what do you have kind of planned for the future of lovely sim racing?
Constantinos:oh, that's a big question. So, um, where's my list? You know, just unfold a piece of paper. It falls down. Um, so the future of the lovely dashboard um, immediate future, and this is something that I've I've shown on streams and I've demoed as well. So, the entirety of August that's why I said I'm probably not going to release new things in August.
Constantinos:For the entirety of August and some of September, I'm going to be working on the lovely plugin, so getting rid of one of the hardest parts of setting up the dashboard, which is the configurator and the files and all that. So I'll be working on a plugin for that. Um, and august will be plugin and yeah, I think that would be it. Like that's what I'm going to be focusing on. Uh, for the immediate future. But, going on from that, there are a lot of partnerships that I'm working on.
Constantinos:The Loving Dashboard itself is changing. There will be a big change sometime in September or October on how everything works with the memberships. So if you're a member, I want to make it a bit more obvious why you should become a member. So membership perks are going to be changing. That has to do a lot with the plugin. The products themselves should be getting better because of the plugin. So everything right now, this is a strategic move. What I'm doing with the plugin, I'm trying to change the way it works, make it for the best you know, for the better, using the plugin and the experience you know first install and setting it up and getting it up and running after that. After that, I also have the lovely sim racing store, which has launched the brand new store. I do have merch and stuff you can support by buying and and so forth. So we have the team kits, these simple shirts, a few products you might want to have with logos on it.
Constantinos:But the next big thing as a product, a physical product, are the sticker sheets. So I don't know if you've seen them or you know what they are, but they all began after I got the Asher wheel. So this is why I say the partnerships are so important. When I did the partnership with Martin Asher and he sent me the wheel, the immediate thing, the first thing I did, was what I do with the screen. So I created the dashboard companion and after that I realized that they have these really smart buttons, the switches here in the front that can do many things, and I have videos on that and what they do and how you can set it up. But I also figured out you can have stickers here that can guide you, like what you would see in real life racing cars. So depending on what position it is, it has a different label and stuff like that.
Constantinos:So I created those for myself and on stream a lot of people were like where'd you get those? Can I get those? Can you help me? And there was quite some demand for those. You know verbal demand, like people were saying I would want them. So this is my first foray into creating products, right? So up until now it's all digital and downloadable and stuff like that.
Constantinos:So I got into the stickers. I invested in some hardware, I did a lot of research in material printing, cutting, shipping and handling and labeling and like all that. And now I also have the store. That's why the new store was created so I can actually sell these sticker sheets. So the sticker sheets for now.
Constantinos:If you go to the storelsrgg I think the links will be in the description you can get these sticker sheets for, specifically, the Asher Racing wheel today.
Constantinos:But I'm also preparing sticker sheets for the Simagic GT Neo, the Gray Wolf as well, and I'm also working with a company in Italy creating button cap stickers. So I know for a fact that the Simagic wheel, when you buy it, you have the little stickers for the buttons but if something happens to them you can't buy them again. They don't sell them. So I'm creating those as well, not just for the SimMagic but for GrayWolf, and I think it'll look for cube controls and all that. So, in general, the future for me is progressing on the development of the Lovie dashboard and the ecosystem, putting more effort in the pit wall, which is a paramount product. It is a reason why you want to become a member, essentially but also working a bit on the store and creating products. One of the things you'll see in the store is I have a new shirt which says my other car is a Sim rig. I need that, yeah.
Constantinos:There's four different colors and stuff like that. So that is, you know. I went from from designing, then switched over to doing the marrying, the motorsports and everything, and at this point I kind of miss just free designing stuff that are not the dashboard. So that part will be the sub hobby outlet where I will be creating more t-shirts and more products that have a creative aspect, that revolve around sim racing but are not lovely sim racing. So you won't see like the logo front and center. It won't be about the lovely dashboard, it won't be about my partners. It'll just be, you know, t-shirts or whatever I can get my hands onto, um with a design perspective on something you'd want to wear, um, not necessarily, you know, lovely sim sim racing product. It'll just be something creative for me to do.
Constantinos:Right now there's just one t-shirt, um, but I'll be coming out with with more as time goes by. All right, um, one thing I I I said I wouldn't. I don't want to really talk about this, but I will. I hinted at it on streams. But my time on the project jason, just so you know, is not going to diminish, it will increase. So there is a plan for me to start working far more on the dashboard wow, putting more time on the dashboard, the pit wall, all the products and the store yes, working on partnerships and new products. So that is happening. Um, I will announce something more formally in the future. So, yeah, you can keep an eye on that Stay posted, so okay.
Jason:So, constantinos, this pretty much wraps up. You know our interview about sim racing and the lovely dashboard and the ecosystem, but I do have one final question for you, and there seems to be a sim racing expo happening in germany yes, coming up. Will you be attending this and will you have any sort of coverage over there, or what is your plan?
Constantinos:so, um, the plan is that I will be at the sim racing expo, the adac sim racing expo in dortmund. It's in october, I don't remember the exact dates. Um, I will. Well, the plan is that I will be there. I I will be hosted by asha racing and in the plan is that I will be congrats. I will be with them in their booth and demonstrating the lovey dashboard on their sim wheels. So it'll be kind of like a hosted sub booth within Asher racing. Yeah, and the plan is I will be there all three days. So if anyone is out there and anyone is planning to go there, if all goes well, I will be there I days. So if anyone is out there and anyone is planning to go there, um, if all goes well, I will be there.
Jason:I would love to meet everyone in person.
Jason:I I wish I wish and I'll put the final details in the description. Guys, um, I'll also put how to reach um constantino's, where to find the lovely dashboard, how to to get to his Discord, his YouTube and everything else. And we'll have the dates too for the expo, just in the case you're lucky enough to be in Germany for those dates. But without further ado, part of the Chicane Podcast show, we do the roundtable. So the roundtable is the final chance for you to get a question out or something that you wanted to put out on the show, and I'll give Konstantinos the honor of being first of the roundtable. Do you have anything else that you want to put out on today's episode?
Constantinos:I think I spoke about everything. I even said that I'd be putting more time in the dashboard, said that I'd be putting more time in the dashboard, so I think the only thing that I can add, if it hasn't been apparent, is that I am extremely passionate about this project. I have already invested so much time. My plan is to invest even more time on it. I want to make more partnerships work with more people, make this thing work with more products like we did with the Asher Racing and the Gray Wolf steering wheel and expand it as much as I can. I really hope that this will become my new gig, my new job, so, and that's what I'm working towards. So that's all I think I can add. Um, all right, if it wasn't already apparent. You know I'm crazy about this shit I'm pretty it's.
Constantinos:It's been pretty noticeable uh one thing that, uh, that isn't on the site and anywhere else is that I'm I'm talking. Well, this could be the ad. This could be the big, big, big announcement. I'm working with David Perel trying to get SimGrid in the dashboard as well, and maybe more damn maybe more stuff. I don't know oh but wait there's more just one more thing just one more thing, just one more thing. Yeah, as I said, I'm trying to expand this and make it ubiquitous, Like I really would love it and you?
Jason:will man? I believe you will.
Constantinos:I would really love it if someone said sim racing and they're like oh, the lovely dashboard. That would be the ultimate goal. I mean you should check Google, man, because you're pretty much the top of the hit when you put dashboard sim hub.
Jason:Lovely dashboard pops up. I'm not even kidding, I don't google myself, but I will do now as it should. So, jeff eric, anything, hey, I'll go first a uh constantinos, to listeners.
Jeff:I just wanted to say thank you. Uh, you're more than just a person behind the keyboard building stuff for us. Hey, I'll go first, Constantinos. To the listeners I just wanted to say thank you. You're more than just a person behind the keyboard building stuff for us. You're just a good dude and a good person. So thanks for everything you do and to all the listeners drive fast and break late.
Jason:There it is, there it is. I've been waiting for it All right, eric, did you come up with something, and it better not be. You already know what the restrictions are on this.
Erick:Yeah, I think I'd have pushed the limits on just about everything else. I have to come up with something.
Jason:Don't be mentioning Android or PS5s on the show man. I already told you.
Erick:Hey, man, it's real man, it exists out here. Man, we real people. But, constantinos, it was an honor meeting you. Man, just as a tech person like I work in cyber, I worked in tech support, you know engineering and just hearing your story and how you were able to apply your passion to the lovely dashboard and response, again, it's inspiring for me. I'm so hyped, man. I can't wait to share this, this podcast out, um, and and just your, even your foresight as far as the future of it going to work. I probably have about four or five guys who are going to get in trouble with their wives Just just talking about beginning to talk about showing a picture of my firewall.
Erick:That's what I call it like the number of people that would be excited about this and the fact that you've already kind of done the work to make it a seamless process, building something so useful. I just like watching jason race and watching the pit wall and everything that he's using, and I'm excited about being able to use it. Yeah, thank you.
Constantinos:I'm more honored than you guys think of being here and talking with you and meeting you.
Jason:I don't know, man, I don't know.
Jason:No, no, it is, I don't know, man, there's three hearts on this show and then there's you, man. So we're kind of like we're feeding off of each other, because you, as a person, you're not just the same thing that jens said, you're not just some guy that says here's a product, buy it. You know what I mean. You actually, you're a real person, you're a real man and you, you actually care about your craft and I'm your biggest fan. You already know that I'm your biggest fan. I I've told guys, everybody that comes up to me and asks me about anything sim racing and I was like but do you got the lovely dashboard? That is my the first question. Or do you know about the lovely dashboard? Do you know how to use this board? By the way, this court is the thing, and then I'll give you the link to to Constantino's. Follow them, support them, because I don't want you to go anywhere. I want you to succeed, we want you to succeed.
Jeff:Amen True words.
Erick:That's when somebody asks Jason where the bathroom is. That's his response.
Jason:That's right. Yeah, 100%. So with that again, on behalf of the three of us here on the show, I want to thank you so much for giving us the time and the pleasure of having you on the show. Thank you so much, and to all our listeners out there, have a great start of your week. Thank you.
Constantinos:I thank you.
