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
ADAC 2024 Expo Debrief with The SimRacing Den
Join us on the Chicane Podcast as we reconnect with our adventurous friend Michael Pagliaro from the SimRacing Den, fresh from his exciting journey through the global sim racing scene. His tales from the ADAC Expo 2024 in Germany are not to be missed, especially his firsthand experiences with groundbreaking sim racing gear like the luxury pedals that have every enthusiast buzzing. We dive into the world of pre-releases, including the much-anticipated AC Evo, weighing the benefits of user feedback against the ever-present risk of delays in the gaming industry.
Sim racing enthusiasts will find a treasure trove of insights as we recount the electrifying atmosphere of the expo, where Michael had the chance to test out the latest in sim racing technology. From high-performance wheels to innovative motion systems, it's a gearhead's paradise. We also touch on the camaraderie that makes these events feel like a family reunion, sharing stories of meeting fellow fans and creators who make the sim racing community feel like home.
The episode wouldn't be complete without a peek into future events and exciting announcements in the sim racing world. With new expos on the horizon in Chicago, Austin, and Dortmund, there's plenty to look forward to. Plus, Michael shares the unforgettable experience of attending the expo with his dad, highlighting the importance of family support in pursuing one's passion. Whether you're a seasoned sim racer or just curious about the scene, this episode offers a thrilling insider look at the past, present, and future of sim racing.
Check out The SimRacing Den and his Facebook Group links below:
https://www.thesimracingden.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@simracingden
https://www.instagram.com/simracingden/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/476277217678724
Check out The SimRacing Den's Recent Videos on topic:
My Top Picks from ADAC Sim Expo 2024: New Products, Gear, and Demos! https://youtu.be/KtpQszwD6Ug?si=e12rJvhFnAAIb0jG
Hands-On with Sim-Lab’s New Direct-Drive Wheelbases | ADAC SimExpo 2024
https://youtu.be/wmOiJidEDNM?si=m_f_I-F9Lj3oTCGA
Assetto Corsa EVO Pre-Alpha Demo: First Drive Reactions | ADAC SimExpo 2024
https://youtu.be/nkY1PzLucQQ?si=ToHL2xDcQHBXBaKr
ADAC Sim Expo 2024 | FULL Walking Tour, (almost) Every Booth!
https://youtu.be/04I2QhD4-CI?si=zvRdCVD5U0fWn6pp
Please e-mail the show for any questions, comments or stories/experiences at thechicanepodcast@gmail.com
Watch the show in video podcast form on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@TGSsimracing
Follow all my social platforms below:
https://www.twitch.tv/trackghost
https://www.instagram.com/TGSsimracing/
https://www.youtube.com/@TGSsimracing
https://twitter.com/TGSsimracing
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566360513781
Intro/Outro Rights below:
Song: Low Mileage - Hold You [NCS Release]
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Free Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/holdyou
Watch: http://ncs.lnk.to/holdyouAT/youtube
The Hello and welcome to the Chicane Podcast, where we discuss all things in the sim racing world. I'm your host, jason Rivera, and I'm joined here by Jeff Smart and Michael Pagliaro. The sim racing, then. Returning to the show How's everybody doing today?
Jeff:Good, we're doing good Jason. How are you?
Michael:I'm like the nosy neighbor that just doesn't go away.
Jason:Dude, no man, it's awesome to have him back here. Man, dude, I'm telling you we had so much fun the last time recording, uh, the video, and we've been chatting, you know, back and forth about the possibility of you coming back, for I don't care if it's to eat popcorn, man, or just hang out with us, but it is an absolute pleasure to have you here on the show and to hang out with the guys you know, hang out with the boys and chat about sim racing and, yeah, it's going to be a fun one today and, uh, always welcome, always welcome. Friend of the show guys love it.
Jason:Man, seriously, if you guys haven't noticed yet, I know we're like one minute into the show. We and for those listening, just picture this in your head we're all jet lagged, we just got off. We're all jet lagged and we. It was kind of funny because, uh, michael was in germany, I went to japan and jeff went over to the east coast, united states, I'm not sure where. I think it was dc, right, jeff, you had some business in dc and it's kind of like we did like some sort of weird who knows. We probably crossed paths.
Michael:Yeah, our planes probably flew over each other. Who knows right? I know I was giving you the, the hawaiian shaka from the, you know, from the air.
Jason:Who knows, we probably crossed paths at some point. Yeah, our planes probably flew over each other. Who knows? Right, I know I was giving you the Hawaiian shaka from the air Like, hey, what's up?
Michael:Yeah, we were all over the place. But yeah, it's cool, we still keep in touch.
Jason:I know you see the message when you see it and I see it when I see it. It is what it is. So I want to let everybody know here that Michael's been an awesome friend and just contributor to the show. He was the one that introduced us to Daniel Morehead, so we're fans of him before he even got on the show. I mean, his content is amazing. Just recently went to the ADAC Expo 2024, which is the main reason he's here today, and we will definitely get into that.
Jason:But I have a few announcements to make. And AC Evil. We're just catching up here. Ac Evil had his trailer released and it had the actual release date. It's a pre-release. It's coming out on the 25th of January. Did I get that right? No, excuse me, out on the 25th of january. Did I get that right? No, excuse me, on the 16th of january of 2025. Could save, um, save. I know I had to catch that. I don't know what. I don't know where. I got 20 again jet lag. So, um, just before I move on with announcements, how do you guys feel about that like this, this pre-release thing? Because we just went through something similar with LMU and it's been stuck in there for a length like months now, and I'm worried. You know what I'm saying. I'm worried about about pre-releases. What do you guys, what are your thoughts?
Michael:I get it. I think it's a good opportunity to get feedback right, to put the game out there, to be able to get feedback and then make those adjustments. I don't know, I'm not a believer in pre-release like just. I'd rather wait.
Michael:I'll wait longer to have the final version right right but but also on the other side, you know, putting like even them, just having it at the expo allowed them to get feedback, criticism, good or bad from a lot of different people. That will ultimately help shape the final product Right. So yeah, I don't know, that's my take on it.
Jeff:Yeah, very similar. Just let me know when it comes out. Take your time. I'd rather wait and get a solid product than, like the lmu issue we're kind of dealing with now, that just kind of lingering and lingering and lingering what is the other one?
Jason:uh, rent sport. Right, rent sport is another one. That's kind of technically they don't call it pre-release, they call it beta, but I mean pre-release beta Tomato tomato. Right. I think I have high hopes because they actually showed off the gameplay and I'm getting a lot of good feedback from creators like yourself. Also, michael has some firsthand experience on that and we'll get into that in the show today. I do have one final announcement, and it's a Christmas came early, you know, I got, I got me yeah, buddy there you go, but you're in the big leagues now.
Michael:Dude this thing is.
Jason:Let me tell you guys, it took me. I'm relearning everything that I thought I knew and I'm not even kidding you know how people. You know the pedals I'm coming from are Hewson Buck Ultimates. You know those were $1,500 pedals when I got them and I thought that you can't get better than this. Like, how can you get better than this? And this piece of gear is amazing. But we'll cover that in a future episode, but I'm excited to share details.
Jeff:I've got no lie 700 text messages over the last three days.
Jason:A lot of fighting, a lot of fighting back and forth, a lot of bash talking. You know I always do that with the guys. You know it's all love. I hope you know Jeff.
Jeff:It's all love, absolutely dude. Oh yeah, it's good.
Jason:You know I love to talk to Smack, but and I also want to throw this in there Mike's review of these pedals are coming up soon, right, Mike?
Michael:So yeah, I actually have. So I was supposed to get my active pedal. So I have the active pedal. Well, it's called the Ultimate now the original active pedal, but I was sent an active pedal pro. I was supposed to get it, kind of in the same wave that a lot of companies do this. Right, they send out a wave of them to a bunch of reviewers. You have an embargo date, like.
Michael:I knew about the active pedal pro months ago so, and I had to keep my lips sealed, which is always tough, because I'm like especially people like you, uh guys like, I want to like I need to talk to somebody about it, like you know or like and it was tough because they were teasing this product to everybody and I've I didn't feel bad, but a lot of people were getting.
Michael:I think they were getting their hopes up that it was something else. I think everyone's like oh, sc3, it's gonna be a new wheelbase, it's gonna be this, gonna be that, and I'm like I think some people might be disappointed because, yes, a cheaper active pedal is great, but I think everyone was like making it out, simucube really made it, made it look bigger than it maybe was and to get the going, which is it is what it is. But yeah, yeah, so I got it sent to me. It came late, but my wife received it while I was in Germany. I was literally at the Simicube booth and I was like oh, pedal, just got here you know Great, so I got home and I've got it hooked up now so I've got both side by side.
Michael:So I've been kind of running it as a break. And you know, I mean my end plan for it when it's when I'm done reviewing it is, I'll probably just use it as a throttle, honestly, because I'll just keep the ultimate as the break.
Jason:But yeah, I'll save my yeah. You have the better product right next to it, of course, yeah, so I'm gonna be able to do side by side.
Michael:I mean, I think I I tested it at the show too and I mean not to spoil the review, but it's it's the same. It feels the same as the ultimate. I don't think you're anyone is missing out on anything, I think it's just. This is I would look at this as a gen 2 product. I think my opinion and I'm just saying this I think renaming the original pedal as the ultimate is just a way to sort of make sure early adopters are not upset or or feel like right, you know right, because they got cheated out of a early release product.
Michael:Yes, you, do have a more powerful pedal, but but to me the Pro is just a refined version. They found a way to shave a little bit of cost off and take out some of the features that are probably overkill for 99% of us. A lot of other people have said this, 99% of the people. You just need the Pro, you do not need the Ultimate. All the effects are the same. Everything is the ultimate. Like you're not, all the effects are the same. Everything is the same. It's bigger physically.
Jason:You're talking five millimeters of travel difference.
Michael:Yeah.
Jason:Dude 110, I think it's kilograms, if I got that right. Yeah, I don't go near, where near that. I mean A lot of us don't. Even Jeff can tell you. He came over the house a few weeks ago and I adjusted my um use and both uh brakes, and those brakes can go up to 120, yeah, and I'm using like 60, 50 and that seems to be the sweet spot for them. And then Daniel Morad comes on the show and he talks to me about the very same pedal and he's telling me he didn't reveal anything, he was really careful with that. But he told me hey, man, I'm running 68 and that's what the real AMG car feels like. So I mean that, right, there was kind of like I was 99% sold, sold, and then I went on vacation and the pedals came out. I had to buy them.
Michael:yeah, I had to do well he, he mentioned the same thing on your podcast which, for me, the biggest selling feature of the pedals is just the ability to change profiles yes, bro let's obviously all the haptics and the force feedback. That's crazy, it's amazing, that's. That's the reason.
Michael:Come on, jeff, that's what makes the pedal, what it is, but I don't know. I mean, once you get used to that stuff, it's becomes a part of the experience, but for me it's like changing the profiles is cool. Like you know, my brother-in-law was here and we were. I put him in the sim because he, you know, he's from out of town and he doesn't get to try it often. So, you know, I put him an f1 car, gave him an f1 pedal, you know, put him in a gt3 pedal right and he was like, wow, this is crazy.
Michael:So yeah, anyways, I'm not surprised, I knew you were going to get them eventually.
Jason:It just you know yeah, you knew and you know, but you had, you had a lot to do with that on the show on on our episode, you, uh, that we did with you, you, you mentioned the same thing. You were like, hey, man, you know, there's no better pedal than this and I'm telling you they are a luxury.
Michael:Anybody like I'm not. I don't think everybody needs to rush out and get them right. If you can afford them or eventually you you know you keep stashing some money away for your active pedal fund you're not going to be disappointed. I don't think you're going to be disappointed. I haven't talked to anyone that's bought them and is like oh, it was the worst mistake ever there might be some of those people out there, but I don't know.
Jason:Well, maybe if they put themselves in a financial hole, because I don't recommend anybody doing that. I don't recommend doing that For sim racing, racing, you know what I mean yeah, and look we, we do do it.
Michael:Look, I'm guilty, I've bought stuff that I should have, you know. Okay, didn't really need that, did I?
Jason:oh, I do it all the time, bro, but this right here was worth every single. I would pay double the price. And you know what the problem is? Is that the price. You know, no one's gonna try something that cost two thousand dollars. I mean, the pedal costs 1700, but when you factor in, you need the link and then you need the. Uh, you don't need it, but you need the base, the base plate is yeah, you kind of need it because the pedal, the pedal is huge.
Jason:If you try to just straight bolt this, it's not gonna work, man. It's it might work, but it's gonna're going to end up damaging it somehow.
Michael:It was one of the most popular things at the show. There were lineups, huge lineups, to try the actor.
Jason:At the ADEC Nice.
Michael:Because, if you think about it, it is one of those things where everybody's reserving their decision to try it. You just kind of have been, you've been getting all this information and hearing it from multiple people and then it finally clicked for you right. And that's how things kind of happen eventually, you convince yourself right, based on everything, and you make the informed decision. But there was a lot of people there that were like waiting for that opportunity to try it at the show to go. Okay, is it? Is it really that good? You know?
Jason:right, because it's hard to spend yeah that kind of money.
Jason:It's kind of like that belt tensioner thing. I'm pretty sure the belt tensioner thing is sick, but it's really a tough pill to swallow to pay out that much. And then good, I mean you could ship it back, but this thing is heavy. I mean they're probably going to want you to pay to ship it back and it's heavy and you're like man, that's kind of a risk and that's how I feel about these. I mean I'll tell you firsthand when you spend $1,500 on my old set of pedals and we'll move on from this. I know we're kind of talking about the pedals a lot here and we're trying to get into the ADAC. We're kind of talking about the pedals a lot here and we're trying to get into the ADAC. But when you spend $1,500 on something, you're thinking, okay, the next set of pedals, the newest generation of pedals, is 2,000 or 3,000 back then, how can it get more? How can it get better than this? And it's usually diminishing returns, right yeah that's a good point.
Jason:Yeah, diminishing returns, right, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, diminishing returns. Usually, if you have a Simicube 2 Pro and you look at a Simicube 2 Ultimate, what are the differences? It's going to be really hard for you to weigh that in and say, well, I need an Ultimate. Well, I don't think you do, ben, because I tell you now, there's not a feature there. That's kind of drawing me. That's saying that I need that extra newtons of power, or I need that extra slew rate, or I need that extra smoothness. The pedals are a brain and it's an actual machine that's working against your foot. It is 100,000% the craziest thing that I've put on the rig. I'll tell you now, and with that I appreciate your guys' insight, but we're going to go right into this and the ADAC 2024 in Germany. I'm so jealous that you were invited. I'm going to share here on the screen some of the participants here and look how much we've grown in the sim racing community Like look at this.
Jeff:I didn't even know that there was that many companies in the environment.
Michael:Yeah, there was companies there that I mean I like to think I'm really in tune with this stuff, but there are so many companies that I'd never heard of, products I've never seen before you know or heard of. It was crazy, like as many times as I walked through that show floor I got back and I go, I missed some stuff because it was just tough. I should have had a checklist to make sure I hit everything you know, hit every booth, but I had limited time. You kind of have to just, you know, prioritize.
Michael:Well, there's queues, right, you got lines and stuff there is yeah, I mean some of the booths had sort of specific rigs set up for media and creators so that you know they could kind of move through quickly and do their piece. Because you know these companies, they want that exposure right. So they would set up a booth so that you know you didn't have to wait in line and stuff. But like I didn't, I would never be the guy that like, hey, let me skip the line because I'm a youtube creator, like I. Just I waited in line for to try a lot of things like everyone else. Uh, just don't in doing that. But it was nice that some of the booths had specific areas for me to spend some extended time. And yeah, we can get into that.
Jason:Well, yeah, but I mean, I respect that way of thinking, I really do.
Jason:But you are a content creator and you're trying to gather data to update the masses you know on your channel and on your sim racing group on Facebook, which is awesome, by the way. If you guys haven't checked that out, you need to. It's a great community over there. But I mean, I think, I think there's a level. It's not a flex thing, I think it's a level of responsibility. That's what the expo is for. The expo is to expose hardware to more people in a single day or in a single event weekend, what have you? So I wouldn't feel too bad you know what I mean.
Michael:Yeah, I mean I had to maximize my time right and you know they, most people understood that.
Jason:So, um, yeah, it was cool okay all right, so we'll move on from this and we'll get into the discussion portion. Or excuse me, jeff, do you have anything to put out since, since you last came on the show, anything new?
Jeff:dude, my poor little rig back here looks so sad.
Jeff:It's like if you don't use it like you get back in there and there's something always wrong. Man, like my Nvidia surround is just like a dumpster fire right now. I'm having problems with it. So after this tonight or tomorrow morning I'll jump in there and I'll have to wipe it and reinstall it and stuff like that. The poor little thing just a struggle on the struggle bus right now. So she'll be back and running here shortly, but uh, no, I'm ready. I can't wait to hear about this expo.
Jason:Okay, seeing a bunch of action, but I'm ready to jump into it, man all right, all right, that's, and you know, you can always call me for any help on this stuff, you know?
Michael:yeah, me too. I know what you're talking about with surround. I think I have some suggestions around. Is the biggest later, jeff? No, okay, appreciate it, thank you it is the biggest. I've been through the struggles and I've learned how to come out of it yeah, it's a pain, bro, and it's an ongoing pain.
Jason:god, all right. So all right, uh, michael, thank you so much again for being here with us. It's always a pleasure, yeah, so tell me, please reveal the secrets, the sauce. How did you get invited to this expo? How did that happen?
Michael:Well, to correct you, honestly, you don't get invited. You can just go, oh With the expo, like so, oh, uh with the with the expo. So if you, um, so what I did, right as a creator, is I applied for a press accreditation, basically. So I did this. Um, I knew this was possible and I honestly, I wasn't even sure if I was going to go to the show this year. Obviously, it was something that was a goal for mine to, like, you know, eventually get there just a as a sim racer, let youtube as a creator, outside of that, like, I just wanted to go as a sim racer because people kept asking me to kind of describe it or sum it up it's like it's disney world for guys like you and I like it's disney world for sim racers. There you've got all the rides, different combinations of the rides, um, tickets, a ride, huh, it's everything in one place. Like it's everything, it's literally everything in one place.
Michael:Every product you've heard of you've wanted to try is there and it's it's. They're on this. That product is on multiple rigs at different booths. You want to try if you've never tried a semi-cube to pro wheelbase, do you want to try it? Different booths you want to try, if you've never tried a semi-cube 2 pro wheelbase. Do you want to try it with motion? Do you want to try it without motion? Do you want to try it with a gsi wheel? Do you want to try it with an asher wheel?
Michael:like you, had all these different combinations of things scattered throughout the show, dang and in fact, like, if you're shopping for a new wheel like this is the thing like this we always talk about this how hard it is to decide on sim racing gear. You got to rely on reviews. Watch mine, watch other youtubers and go okay, it looks good. But I could literally walk around and put my hands on 10 different wheels. You know, and I did that, you know there was a lot of stuff there that I mean, obviously I'm privileged. I I mean I've tried a lot of things that were there. So for me it was a bit of like I know I've already had experience with all those products, but to try some of those products in different scenarios. But anyways, to answer your question, yeah, I mean you can apply for a press accreditation. They do do a review of who you are like, they're not just gonna like. You know you can't just kind of apply if, if you just started your channel, they might not approve you.
Jeff:Right.
Michael:You know. So I knew who the organizers were and I put in my application, so to speak, and they come back and you know I asked for two passes for me and my dad. So then it's really just came down to the decision. This year was like the budget the time, because it's for me, traveling from Canada is not like a lot of the people that are there and a lot of the other creators YouTube creators are from Europe. Right, so to make a trip from the UK to Germany or from Italy to Germany is not as intensive as eight hour flight from Canada.
Michael:Right, right, um, I think I was probably maybe one of the only, or if very few, canadians that were actually at this show. I know it was the only Canadian YouTuber media. I was the. I was representing Canada as sim racing media at the show oh yeah, there was nobody else there from Canada, at least that I ran into so.
Jason:Well, that's kind of cool man.
Michael:You get those honors yeah but I have to shout out I mean how I got there. I have to shout out my dad, because I was talking about this show with him like long before we had applied and and decided to go, I was just like I don't know if I can do it this year. It's a lot of money. Obviously I'd love go, but maybe it's something I'll do in 2025. I'll save up every little check from YouTube to get me there because it's still expensive for a lot of people. For me that's a big trip. My dad's retired and he has some more disposable income than me. He said look, I love what you're doing. I want to support you. How do I get you there? Let's do this together. So he helped me out quite a bit financially to do that trip and we looked then we looked at it as not just me going to the sim racing expo, it was a father son trip to yeah.
Jeff:And it was awesome.
Michael:It was a trip just cars racing. I described it to someone it was steak, scotch and cigars and sim racing and cars. It was the most masculine trip you could think of.
Jason:You are speaking to the correct people right now.
Michael:Yes, sir special trip, not only just the experience of the expo, but this time with my dad traveling with him, and so I wouldn't have gotten there without him.
Jason:Um, so yeah, had to just make and I'll tell you this, michael, you know, you know, some people don't have their. You know we're lucky, yeah, I'm. Some people don't have the, the their parents to. To that you know what I'm saying.
Michael:Yeah, he's very supportive of me. He was really proud of me.
Jason:Yeah, this is a trip that you'll never forget. This is smart.
Michael:No, no, we'll never Like there was. You know, we talk about core memories, like there's some memories and moments from that trip that will stay with me forever. So yeah, man, it was a blast.
Jason:I saw the pictures, man and I. I gave you a few shout outs. I was like man you're. You were probably the only person out there that brought over some family. That I can tell. That I can tell from my, from my yeah, I mean there's some.
Michael:I think what was cool too is like some of the manufacturers are like family-run businesses, like, for example, like um. One of my favorites some racing hardware companies right now and I'm I keep shouting them out because they just make really great products is bavarian sim tech um you know it's a father and son, that the whole family was there.
Michael:The whole family put together their booth like it was. You know, I saw a lot of that actually with some of the smaller manufacturers there. A lot of them are like family-run companies, right, they're not big manufacturers that are backed by big parent companies. They're, like you know, father and son that decided to start making some racing wheels or something. You see a lot of stories, which is I saw your review on that. It's interesting, I just yeah I don't know soon, yeah, well, one of the.
Jason:It was Well, one of the. It was a screenshot, but one of the. But I can't remember where you spoke about this wheel before I've heard it. I've heard you talk about the wheel before. I just wish it had a screen. I don't know.
Michael:Well it's, they have two wheels. Basically, right now they have the.
Jason:Alpha.
Michael:Alpha is their latest product, product right, which is just your, your sort of standard butterfly gt yeah, you've mentioned this wheel.
Jason:You've told me hey, man don't sleep on, I think it's just you and I chatting.
Michael:Yeah yeah, no, no, they're. They're a really cool company. I I it the design, language and the quality of the wheels I think they're getting. They were really popular at the show. I think they're one to watch. I had a lot of conversations with them at the show. It's yeah, man, there's just so many wheel companies out there and they're all doing amazing things in their own right.
Jason:I know man it's hard.
Michael:Like GSI Asher Racing racing bavarian soul pack, like like soul peck. Bro, soul peck is the. Yeah, I gotta talk about soul peck because I never had.
Michael:Let's go, I know you, I know you have the spectra xr, but I actually never had a chance to try it and so I finally got to drive with it at the show because they just it was one of the it's, not one that I've reviewed before I did. I did get to meet the owner there, so maybe we'll see a review in the future, but, um, I was interested to just try it out for myself and uh, yeah, I was it. It it was in my top five video is for me it is for me.
Jason:It was one of my wow, one of my favorite wheels that I saw there as well. So, yeah, oh, and your top five. So that reminds me, um, as we go over this expo, don't forget to check out it's already live uh, the sim racing den's top five things that he saw at the uh expo this year. So don't forget that one, and we'll include links in the description for that as well. So thanks for sharing that, michael. Yes, so I think Jeff took a big risk. I told him you know I don't see many reviews on this SoulPick and he bought it and Jeff I mean he, absolutely.
Jeff:You know, I like it. It gets me to get in the rig, like I look at it and I'm like oh man, it just speaks to me.
Michael:I get it now why it got so much praise, now that I've actually tried it and it makes sense Like they didn't send out a lot of review units because they are a smaller company, right, it costs money to send out a review unit, but yeah, it's nice man.
Jeff:Okay, Awesome. Well, hopefully we can get a review here from you. Uh, sooner or later, maybe. Um, to get back onto the expo is this was this one of your first times going to a sim racing expo like this?
Michael:yeah, though, this was my first time, um going to the expo. It was my first time going at really anything on this. I mean, there's really nothing else like this right now. Um, there are going to be some things next year which will we can talk about later on on this episode, but um, yeah, this was my first time at the expo. I mean I was. I remember I had to pinch myself when I was there, honestly because I, you know, like I'm so jealous, bro, I'm so jealous right now.
Michael:I'm sitting here, and I'm like I'm smiling, but I'm like, damn man, I wish I was over well, we're gonna get, I think you'll there'll be some opportunities for you guys to attend something like this, because there's some us shows coming up which I would I would love to talk about with you, because there's there's actually two, one of which I'm in kind of involved with now, so we'll talk more about that.
Jason:But yeah um yeah, I had to.
Michael:I had to pinch myself because I mean, I would watch the coverage, watch the, the live, to watch the tours of other creators there, when, when they were there and even before, I had the channel right and um, it was just so. It was sort of a strange, surreal, like I know, it's just sim racing, but it was kind of a surreal moment for me to be there. It just felt weird, right, because I'm like I can't believe I'm here, like I'm looking around, I'm seeing the felt, you know other creators that I watched in the flesh and like, like I said, it was dis Disney world for sim racing. You walk in and you've got everything you've ever wanted to see and try in one place. And, um, and I and I think the biggest thing too was I've never felt more at home, being so far away, because, you know, like I, I sort of feel like sometimes the hobby for me is a little, it feels small.
Michael:It is like in my little studio. This is where all the sim racing stuff happens. I have my friends, like you guys and people that I keep in touch with to talk about this, but when you're there and you're everyone's there for the same reason, for the same, like if you're at that show, you're not just that, you're really into sim racing. If you go to a sim racing show, I feel like right especially if you fly there too.
Michael:Well, there was I was meeting people that were they didn't do as big a trip as me, but like there was a guy from serbia that was staying in my hotel in dortmund we were checking at the same time and he just like he saw my shirt and he was like, hey, you want a sim racing expo? I go, yeah, and I was like where you from? He's like, oh, serbia. You know I made the trip here.
Michael:And it's like wow, you know, like yeah, it's just no-transcript yeah it's just a chat bubble on discord and then be able to like shake their hand and talk to them was like so cool. Like I said, yeah, it was. It was my first time and I'm now trying to figure out how do I go every year. Like I want to go every year, but it's like it's a big, it's an expensive trip. Right, I could probably do it. I mean, we went, we kind of balled out a little bit, my dad and I like, because we wanted the whole idea was to make it an experience the whole week. If I was to go back.
Jason:You got to, bro.
Michael:I always say, if I was to go back again on my own. I might be a little more targeted a little more economical and look at it as a true business trip. We'll see how much I can write off.
Jason:I saw you with the Porsche man. You rented out a Porsche.
Michael:Yeah, just to talk a little bit about that. So that's part of the thing with my dad kind of getting involved, and I think there were some bucket list things that we wanted to check off.
Michael:And one of those was, you know, to be able to. We love driving, like if I was. If you wanted to do this the most efficient, economical way, I would. You know you take the train, maybe, or do something else or rent, like a much more economical car. You know, we decided to rent a Porsche Taycan. We had a Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo 4S, which is the it's like a wagon version of the Taycan. And yeah, I mean we my dad and I love cars and poor I, you know, got you know anyone who watches my channel. It's no mystery that I'm a huge fan of Porsches. That's my dream car eventually one day. But yeah, we got the Taycan because my dad is really into electric cars. He drives a Tesla Model 3 as his daily.
Michael:So I think we were just curious about driving an electric Porsche and to get a 911 or something is like a lot more money, but the Taycan was like the second most expensive car that this rental company has.
Michael:I think the next one up was a sl, a mercedes sl convertible, and that would have been cool too, man yeah, me and my dad driving but I think, I think the porsche yeah, I think the porsche no, the porsche was a perfect road trip car because we had the the wagon, so all the luggage fit back there really easy, super comfortable man this is how I feel about this.
Jason:Yeah, if and and jeff can attest to this, he went to singapore, he balled out in singapore, because we don't do these things all the time. You just you just told us that it was your first time. You know, sometimes you gotta, sometimes you have to treat your. You know you have to get the pampering. I'll show you guys a picture of the car here, yeah, let's see it, man, let's see it, let's do it.
Michael:So this is my dad here posing with the tie. Can Nice?
Jason:I like that black dude Is that the only color.
Michael:Sorry, we were pleasantly surprised because you don't really know what color you get when you book the rental. Really, this rental company or that location at the airport, only had like one tie can Like this thing had. It was like brand new, there was barely any kilometers on it, because, look, let's be honest, people are not renting this every day when they go to Germany. So it turned out to be black, which my dad, all my dad's cars have been black um, so he was happy. And then we got the wagon version, which is the sport turismo version, which is just, you know, and it's just has the hatch versus, you know, the coupe version. But, um, we're like, oh, that's kind of a bonus.
Michael:I mean a wagon in Germany. Everyone drives wagons in Germany, like you know. You see the Audi RS6s and wagons and the Mercedes. It's just a popular type of vehicle. But it was great for luggage and yeah, man, it was such a comfortable car. Like I was just surprised with how comfortable it was. The seats, like the seats were so comfortable and they kind of hug you, these sports seats. What's crazy is when you get in the car, when you open the door, the seats widen out like they're almost like the sides widen out automatically.
Michael:And then when you sit down in the seat, the seat like automatically grabs you, like it gets tighter like a racing seat, dang like it does it automatically, like it's super cool and it does.
Michael:There's all these gadgets and gizmos in there in the car, like it's it's a top of the line car, right. But um, yeah, charging driving an electric car in germany is really easy. Literally every gas station, every road stop has a charger and they're really fast. Um chargers so like we would go to the washroom grab a coffee and we would get a little more juice in the car pretty quickly and so very, very easy. You just tap your credit card.
Jason:You don't have to have an account or anything like super easy to drive around an electric car in germany there that's what's up, man, yeah the infrastructure is is pretty set up for for something like that okay, and and it's left-hand driving, so I mean, yeah, pretty standard across the board, uh I did get it up pretty quick on the autobahn. I'm not gonna tell you how I was just gonna get into that.
Michael:I don't want germany to not let me back in, but um.
Jeff:There's no speed limit, there's no speed limit areas.
Michael:But I gotta tell you one story, just because it was such a very first germany experience let's go the minute.
Michael:I got on the the first highway. So this is like we literally picked up the car from the airport rental place, you know, get onto the first sort of autobahn highway to to make our journey to dortmund. And you know, I started, just you know, kind of let's see what this thing's got pushing it a little bit. I look in my review mirror and I knew what it was right away Porsche 911 GT3 RS is on my ass and I thought it was going fast. This guy was like no, you need to get out of the way. So I moved over and this GT3 RS just blows past me.
Michael:I'm like, yep, I guess I'm in Germany. Like it couldn't have been a more German car experience, you know, and you just see 911s everywhere. Like it's weird, like even in Toronto, when you see we see a lot of high-end cars here, like I'll see lamborghinis and ferraris all the time on the highway. It in germany all I saw was porsches. So I was just very rarely did I see another supercar on the highway I wonder if it's cheaper to buy them over there it might, I'm sure it is, but I mean it's, it's.
Michael:It makes sense, that's their car there, like that's their that's you know it's a freaking GT3 car on the road.
Jason:It's still a quarter million dollars.
Jeff:I saw a lot of older 911s pull up beside me.
Michael:I mean there was one guy driving a 996 generation GT3, which you don't see those very often, actually in yellow, and he had it all. It was all modded and everything. The exhaust sounded amazing and we were kind of playing around with each other driving around like you know they some of the Porsche guys would kind of give you a little nod, you know, um, because you're in a Porsche. But yeah, I mean that that kind of made the, the experience of the trip. It made the driving part like like something we looked forward to versus just the like, oh, we gotta drive two hours to get to the next place. It was like that was kind of the idea of, you know, balling out on a yeah, you had fun all the way to make the driving part of the experience.
Jason:100, yeah, anyways, definitely man no, I mean, we'd love to hear that. I'm a huge fan. I mean, porsche is not dream car, but the very specific model you mentioned is kind of. It's an amazing vehicle. I would not mind having that downstairs.
Michael:I miss it now. I miss it now. Actually, I don't have a terrible daily driver Like I have an Audi, but oh, you got an Audi, I have a Tesla man. We got two of them, I got my wife oh yeah, you would like the Taycan then, especially being electric.
Jason:Mm-hmm.
Michael:Yeah, so I miss that car dearly.
Jason:Model 3 and a Model Y. Yeah, performance, yeah, they're fast enough. I mean, they get you where you need to go, trust me. Yeah, all right, so you're at the Expo. You drove two hours, you're at the expo. Now I'm jumping a little ahead here because a lot of sim racers, a lot of listeners want to know.
Jeff:Ac Evo or Evo, excuse me.
Jason:I don't know if it's Evo or it's.
Michael:Evo. But basically the development director from Kuno's was there and I noticed he was correcting a lot of people. They would say Evo and you're supposed to say Evo, because it's short for the Italian version, evo Lizzoni. But yeah, I'm probably going to say Evo a couple of times, but I'm trying to say it the right way. I like to always pronounce I like pronouncing people's names the right way. It's just. I think it's a respect thing. I'm gonna try to pronounce the game the right way, um, but yes, this was this was a big uh.
Michael:This was a main uh feature highlight for this show. Probably I would say it was probably when it was announced that, that it was going to be available there as a demo for everybody to try. It wasn't just like a behind closed doors just for youtubers and media, it was like a lot of different booths had a copy of it and and a few rigs set up with it so anybody could try it. I guarantee you that sold a ton more ticket sales before the show oh, easily.
Jeff:It was all like a couple different uh yeah well, okay, so you didn't have to wait in line, or just for their booth so I could.
Michael:I'll describe it this way you could go to, like, for example, logitech's booth and experience ac evo with you know, a logitech wheelbase and their setup. You know they had they like logitech had, I think, three or four rigs side by side and they had a separate line just for trying ac, ac evo there. And then, like you, could go to the fanatec booth and they had a couple setups. So, and also fanatec, which was cool. Fanatec had a. It was like a glass box and it was just for creators and you had to I had to book time to go in there and they had a, you know a nice rig set up and they had ac evil in there and you could go in there and it was quiet so you could record which is really cool.
Jason:That's probably why we seen the majority of them. Film wise came from that fan attack most of us filmed in there because that they smart probably the best way to make content and kind of get your like.
Michael:So I did a video it's up on my channel now if anyone wants to check it out which is just literally my candid first impressions. Like, I literally jumped in the rig. I had my buddy, ian there from ReadySetSimcom that I've been working with on his website and we just sat in there and I just kind of took a first couple laps and just raw unfiltered my reactions to it, right, um, but yeah, like, but you could go around the show and so the other cool. I wish I had tried it, but there was a company called M sim there and anyone that I think a lot of people have seen this rig before. It's this beautiful red looking rig, looks like a supercar. Um, maybe we will put a picture of it up, maybe later, but it it was like you could try ac in a full motion setup there, right.
Michael:So you had all these different like experiences along the way. Not every booth had it, but there was enough that you know if you got stuck in a line at one place, you could go to the next place and try it I do have a question now that you mentioned, because I didn't know that it was being showcased on different rigs yeah, please tell me that there was one rig with triple screens on it?
Jason:no, because I want to know. No, yeah, I want to know.
Michael:This was one thing um, that I noticed right off the bat is as I walked around all the different places that had it. Um, they were all using ultra wides. Um, so I think it was clear to me, and I confirmed later, that because it was a pre-alpha version, they didn't have the triple screen support for it yet.
Michael:So the only really the best way to try it at the show was with an ultra wide, which most of the setups were and for my like, first real reaction, my extended time, like I think I spent like 20 minutes or 15, 20 minutes with it in the fanatec room. Um was just an ultra wide screen, but the game will have triple screen support. It's just it. I guess it either. It wasn't available in this pre-alpha version, because they're still. They were really super honest about what you were going to try. They said look like the game was crashing for people like it was crashing. Uh, at times I jumped in one which is normal, yeah, and they were.
Michael:Just they said, look, it's going to have issues. Just, we're going to be straight with you on that. All these things are going to be fixed. Obviously it's just a super pre-alpha version but honestly, even for a pre-alpha version it was very playable, like I mean for for if you got it running properly and you had it, you were in a rig that had it going pretty smoothly. It was good. But clearly there's there's still a lot of performance things they can tweak there. But, for example, I was in the logitech area and I jumped in a rig to try it again and the frames were just choppy, like everything was messed up, and I literally said to the guy I'm like you got to reset this, like I can't even drive right now.
Jeff:So yeah, there's a lot of that, but well, yeah, because it's you gotta, you gotta give them credit for rolling their product out knowing that it wasn't courage, yeah you know, like I tip my hat to them. Okay, that's pretty right. Like we know, we're not squared away, but we want some feedback or get start getting the name out there, so that I mean, because that's not ideal as a business plan.
Michael:Right is to put your first no, it's tough, because if you don't have, if you don't truly understand that that's a pre-alpha version and you just jumped in a rig you can write it off right and you know, I think most people are smart enough to know what they were trying. But yeah, that was a brave thing to do as a company.
Jason:And how did? It feel man, how did the game feel? Because I don't really care. I don't really care how it looks.
Michael:You already know this yeah we're like I'm racing all the way well, I could tell you it looks good, like it looks really good, and that's still a pre-version. So they're going to be able to fine-tune graphics and I mean I mean the system. A lot of the systems we were trying it on are high-end systems. So I don't we, I don't know like what this minimum specs are going to be. I mean, I think you're going to. If you want to take full advantage of all the graphics, you know you're going to need a higher end computer. But um, in its form at the show it looked really good. Um, it it is, I would say, comparable to acc, but a little bit better. Uh, definitely it looks better than high racing. Um, a lot of things do high bar there yeah it is, and but.
Michael:So here here's my thing with, with, with the game um, I jumped in and I was immediately impressed, so it immediately felt very good. Immediately it was fun, it was um drivable, it was challenging, but in a fun way. It was very approachable and, like I didn't really have a chance to play around with settings or know what assists and things I had turned on, like you just didn't have really the time or access to do that but, in its form you know there was.
Michael:It was still challenging to drive, but in a good way, and I would say a lot of people were saying like it's the best. There's some best of AC and best of ACC in it For me, like it was not like iRacing, but like I was enjoying it as much as I enjoy iRacing and I don't want to turn people off because some people don't like iRacing, but what I'm trying to say is like, for someone who's an iRacer most of the time, I really enjoyed this game, um, because it was challenging enough, but like forgiving enough. It just I don't know, it felt good. Okay, it felt very, very good. I think my um worries are gone and now I left that experience going. I cannot wait till I can install this at home on my rig wow, I think that says enough right there, that is I'm excited for it.
Jason:Those are big words, man, wow and what's cool is that.
Michael:So they had basically every rig had three sort of demos within the demo. Okay, and and for a lot of people they might have got a they lined up to try a five minute demo of one of those demos. I was able to sit in the fan tech booth and try all three back to back. So the first one was a porsche 911 cup car, the 992 generation um at I think it was emula um circuit and it was you would.
Michael:You were in a race. It was like a five minute. You have five minutes to run as many laps as you could with other cars on the track, and it was. It would start in the day and and by the end of the race it would be nighttime, so you'd see the sun setting and going to dusk and like it was really pretty. The thing I noticed the most about looking around as I was driving is just the way the track was lit like even the little lights you'd see the lights in the homes, because there's people that live around imala and you could see the little lights in the houses.
Michael:Just it was. Was it ray trace or was it just?
Jason:regular. Did it look like ray trace to you? Didn't look like ray tracing to me thank god, because ray trace bro yeah, and I don't know like performance killer yeah, and I don't know, don't know what graphic options are going to be available.
Michael:I know for a fact it wasn't the best of what that game can be because there was clearly some performance issues there, but even in its current state it's a very pretty game. It looked a little bit better than ACC.
Jason:ACC is beautiful, by the way. Yeah, I think it's amazing. It is, I think so too.
Michael:But I'm saying the way I mean yeah, I think it's amazing, it is, I think so too. But just I'm saying, like, lighting the way, lighting the yeah the weather effects. That's awesome, man. Everything and they're using their own engine too.
Jason:Now, guys, they're I read that they're using their own brand new engine and it's using dx12, which the only that's the one thing I'm worried about is DX12. Dx12 is still very new. It's hard to get, you know, the graphic drivers to work correctly with that, and that's the other thing. Right Are these video cards? Do they have the right drivers to take advantage of the you know, basically of the. You know the game and the hardware and you know mash it up all together? I'm pretty sure. Well, I mean mean, this is gonna be a next gen game.
Michael:This is gonna be a 2025 game, which means hell yeah, we're gonna have, we're gonna have I'm ready man, I'm so ready. We're gonna have new graphic cards in 2025 as well, right?
Jason:no, I don't want to upgrade, leave me alone.
Michael:I know, I mean like I'm probably gonna upgrade because for me what are?
Jason:What are you running right now?
Michael:I run a 4090.
Jason:I don't think you need to upgrade from that, bro, maybe not, maybe not. That's what I'm running a 4090.
Michael:I try to keep myself really current, just because this is kind of part of what I do now. But it's like I said. I mean, I saw the game. I don't know how that game is going to run in triple screen at the highest graphic settings, like I just saw it in an ultra wide, um you know, and probably 2k resolution for the most part. Most of those ultra wides I tested it on were not 4k or anything like that.
Michael:So you're running 32s, though right which is on my rig. Yeah, yeah, so my rig, yeah 1440 anyway.
Jason:I mean, I'm not trying to discourage you if you want to upgrade. I'm just saying you know how it is with inflation and these things and it's hard to get hold of them. I remember when I was shopping for 4090, it was like three grand just for 4090 three.
Jeff:Yeah, you picked it up like right at the worst time, or if I remember correctly.
Jason:I mean they were brutal I got lucky with this jeff. I paid retail for this card.
Michael:I don't know I think I waited till that sort of things leveled out. I remember.
Jeff:But well, michael, what I'm taking away is you're optimistic about it. I am played the game and I think that should be everybody's takeaways, right? People that have played.
Michael:I talked to a lot of people there, so, like one of the things I would, I was doing is that people were hell yeah, bro trying it and I would go hey, how was it? And unanimously, everybody was really excited about it, and even my colleagues yes creators.
Michael:I think we all agreed that it's very good. You know, there's still a lot we don't know, obviously, but I would say most people's first impression nobody left there going oh man, this is going to suck. You know, like I didn't talk to anybody that felt that way. So I think that we are going to be in a good place with this. I'm excited for this type of sim because I think, you know, this is the sim that's kind of been. Yes, we have a set of Corson now with mods and I get that, but this is, you know, this is going to be a next gen, a true sim to be able to drive road cars. They did confirm there's going to be like some sort of free roam yeah, sure, which?
Jeff:yeah, I was reading about that that's going to be.
Michael:I think that's going to be really cool yeah, man with traffic too yeah, I think this is going to be like look, this is. People sometimes use the statement like oh, this is going to be an acc killer, this is going to be an iracing killer, it doesn't need to kill anything. I think ac evo is going to be its own um thing, you know and it's going to like for me.
Michael:I think it's going to be I'm still going to be very much an iracer, but I think when I want to, just you know, jump in a road car and go for a couple laps or go for a cruise in a sim experience, because it that's the thing is the handling felt like a sim. It didn't feel like.
Jason:It doesn't feel like a forza motor thank god, man, thanks for letting me, thanks for letting us know I'm not bashing.
Michael:I'm not bashing those games. Those are fun games but what I'm trying to say is that what impressed me the most was it feels like a sim, you know, but you're in a road car. You've got different. It's a different experience and I think you know. Obviously, ac in its current state right now is great with all the mods, but I'm looking forward to just a uh, a proper release title that I can boot up and play, and it's going to be a cool experience. So, yeah, I'm excited to, like I said I think it was it was cool that they had this at the show. It was clear that to me that a lot I talked to a lot of people that were attending the show and a lot of them said in the last minute they decided to go to the show because they wanted to try that and then they just got the other stuff obviously was a bonus, but that was like a driver for people like going to the show because they're like that's kind of crazy.
Michael:I want to try this and like I'm curious.
Jeff:I want to know what this is going to be like. I mean honestly, yeah dude, take a short drive just to go to an expo, to do something like that?
Michael:Yeah, there was people that drove like five, six hours from wherever they lived. Oh my God, To go to the show.
Jason:That would be me, that would be Jeff and I. I promise you we will be in the car taking turns.
Jason:Hey man, I got the first three hours listen. I just want to. I just want to make this this quick, you know thing announcement before we move on to the next question. The boys and I chatted about ac evil before this episode air uh recording. Right, and, to be honest with you, if there's any creator that we honestly take cues from is yourself. I mean, because I mentioned this. I know creators want to make content for a game, but that's not what you do. You know what I'm saying you.
Jason:You review hardware yeah you know what I'm saying. It's not like you're going to live stream ac evil and make videos on it, and make a sequence of videos, kind of like the f1 games. You have the streamers that won videos kind of like the F1 games. You have the streamers that won't say anything bad about the F1 games until the new one comes out. And a month before the new one comes out, then they'll tell you well, I really didn't like this, I didn't like that, and it's kind of too late because people made the purchase.
Jason:So by you having come in on the show and letting our listeners know, the Chicane podcast is huge. On honesty, we want to be honest. We don't monetize this type of stuff. We want people to have the best type of information going in before you even spend a dollar. I want, we want to inform you all and let you know hey, we, we had a, we had a, we had the privilege of talking to someone that's big in the sim racing world and has hands on on this product or it's not a product, it's a game sim and yeah, just thanks a lot for that and thanks for always being, you know, no, we appreciate experience for me, right like I, like you said, I don't review like sims, I don't stream regularly in one sim like I yeah, just play what I like to play and and I think, being that I'm predominantly in iRacing.
Michael:So here's what I could say is, if you really enjoy iRacing, enjoy the handling. You know, jumping in this sim felt really good to me.
Michael:It's very like familiar you'd say, yeah, I don't. I almost don't want to say familiar, but like I, I enjoyed it. I didn't feel like, because I I'll play other sims and I'm like I don't like how this feels. Um, so for me, I liked it. It was obviously different, but I liked it. I don't know. I think a lot of people are going to like it. I think a lot of people are going to like it. Look, there's going to be people that just aren't. But and it's not over, the game is not even released yet and and, like I said, like I'm trying it.
Michael:I was trying it with the wheelbase settings they gave me it's gonna get better you know like I could probably fine-tune that and get it more to my liking as anyone else could and it I had. I tried it in a very controlled scenario, so I'm really looking forward to actually getting it home and then being able to try it like in the way I have things set up Right.
Jason:Right.
Michael:So, but from a first impression standpoint, super positive. That's the only way I can sum it up. There was a rain demo, which was really cool, like it was one of the best experiences I've had in a sim. Driving in the rain, wow, yeah.
Michael:It was really fun, like it was challenging enough that you're not like this too easy, but like once you kind of mastered it or you could feel like you could like control your slide. Um, I was having a blast and like the hydroplaning effect that you feel like you would see. You come down the demo was at bathurst you come down a hill you could see this puddle right of the water like this isn't gonna feel good and you hit that puddle and you feel like I don't know you, just you could really feel the hydroplaning, the loss of control of the car, like everything was wow, the rain was nice, really cool. I think people are going to be happy with it. Um, I think I said one in my first impressions it's like some people would give up on iRacing in the rain really quickly because it could be really challenging. With this it was like you almost wanted to keep trying to master it. It was forgiving enough but not too hard, like iRacing is yeah, but it felt realistic.
Michael:It felt realistic. The rain looked good, the water is like you can see it beating on the windows and stuff oh snap oh man, I'm excited, man, like, I guess, I know the hype train begins yeah, the hype train begins, like I actually, but we don't have to wait too long.
Jason:We don't have to wait too long. January will be here before you guys know it. Seriously, it will be here soon enough and, yeah, I can't wait to put my hands on it man for real. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that also. Guys, check out um the sim racing dens video as well. On this for more info.
Michael:I might do some more content with it when it comes out.
Jason:I think you should man.
Michael:I have a lot of different hardware here so I can try it in a couple of different scenarios. I might do something like that. I don't normally do that with Sims, but I think it's been a while since we've had a a new new sim like this a new proper sim, right, yeah, one that's just been.
Jeff:You know everybody's been waiting on it and everybody you know yeah just and nothing come close information about it.
Michael:Yeah, yeah, really cool. It was a big that. That was a big takeaway and highlight for for me personally from the show. Like I said, a lot of things I've tried and done there. It's always cool to to try something new um, yeah first time.
Jeff:Yeah, with everyone else all right hey, uh, so you, you told us, you know you didn't go to germany just for the expo. Can you tell us, tell, tell us a little bit about you know, yeah, what your itinerary was and you know, over overall, what your trip entailed yeah, it was cool.
Michael:This was my first time. So this is my first time in Germany and second time in my life in Europe. Believe it or not, I'm not super well-traveled. The first time I went to Europe, I went to Italy because I'm Italian, my dad's Italian. We went to visit family there. That was my first European experience. So this was the second time going to Europe. Italy's dope dope, by the way. Yeah, I love it. I can't wait to go back there. Um, but yeah, I mean the show obviously was the driver in going on this trip, but then when we started to look at it, let's try to make this, let's really make this worthwhile. Um, so the plan was we flew. I flew into Frankfurt a few days before the show to kind of get settled, plus frankfurt's. Like, they have an airport in dortmund but you can't fly direct there, at least from canada, so frankfurt is the only like direct flight.
Michael:The international airport yeah, which is which is cool. So then we just stayed near the airport, because we're only going to be there for like one night in a day. So, yeah, explored Frankfurt a little bit, picked up the Porsche and then just hit the road and drove this two hour drive from Frankfurt to Dortmund, where the conference is. And yeah, dortmund's a really nice little city, like it's. I don't think Dortmund is like a tourist place per se, like it's not like a destination for a lot of like people from North America or anything like that, but I would say there's a lot to see there. Um, it's a really nice, nice city. Um, some great restaurants.
Michael:Like we had some fantastic meals on this trip um there's some amazing Italian restaurants in Germany, which is which is not surprising to me, but it was. You know I had. I had traditional German food. I tried schnitzel for the first time Delicious, so yeah, great experience with that, so yeah. And then Dortmund was like you know, I planned two days for myself in retrospect. Now, if I was to go again, I would do the full three days because I think for me I started to feel when I realized how much was there and how long you could get sidetracked really easily to have a plan, I'd go in there. I want to.
Jason:So you didn't do the three days you did planned it.
Michael:so we planned it that I would. We would be there friday, full day, saturday, and then we would like check out sunday morning and go to our next destination, which was cologne, because we wanted to go um, we had there was a specific place we wanted to stay in and see in cologne, um, so in retrospect I would probably do the three days, just because it would have given me a little more time to um, maybe get some more content and just kind of take some more time with things. I did feel a little bit rushed at times and, you know, looking back I'm like, oh, I miss this, I miss that. No, no, no regrets, just it's a learning experience. Like I said, it was my first time going, so if I was to go again, I would know a little bit more what to expect. Um, but I was really happy with what I was able to accomplish and and see, and and yeah, but you were with your dad man, so I I think you did it right.
Jason:I mean, I think, not everything is sim racing. You know what I mean. I'm with, I'm with my father. We're out here checking out this new country. I don't blame you for doing the two days honestly it worked out well.
Michael:Like I said, it worked out. I think like even by the end of the second day I was kind of going, okay, what else should I do? Like I had kind of seen a lot at that point. And even for me, like being anyone that's been at a like I I've worked trade shows before as an account manager for most of my life Trade shows you know a lot of businesses, you go and that's part of the sales process is being there like it's hard for I mean I felt for the exhibitors because I know I've been an exhibitor. These guys have been there already for days setting up, just getting all their stuff. They're setting up, building the booth and then they're on.
Michael:They're on 24 7 talking to people and probably answering the same questions over, and they were tired, but I, I but what impressed me was the level of enthusiasm and I think what was keeping them awake was they were just so excited and certain booths were just getting in a day with people excited to see their products, like one, like I said, was Bavarian SimTech. They had a really cool looking booth. It was really nicely designed and I think a lot of people really wanted to see their wheels and they were. You know, they were talking to people answering questions and so, yeah, it was cool. So, yeah, that was kind of the itinerary. Then we went to Cologne after we stayed in this place called Motor World, and so people that are familiar Motor World there's kind of multiple locations and what Motor World is is. It's kind of like a I don't know it's when you go there, you can store your cars in this place. They have these like glass, I don't know, glass elevators, glass car storage things, where you go to this touch screen and you, you put in your password and your, your ferrari comes down on this elevator and you just drive it out and you bring it like this is stuff that is like ultra rich kind of people stuff like that scene in fast and furious tokyo drift, when the car is like they have
Jason:those bro everywhere, yeah, in japan, yeah, so they.
Michael:It's a car storage facility for for very rare, expensive cars, but it's also it was at this particular location. So there's the biggest motor world that I know of is in munich, which I still want to go to that location. If you look up motor world munich on youtube I think it was the YouTuber JWW People that watch car stuff have probably seen him. He does a full tour of the Munich facility. It's massive. So this place is also home to car dealerships, so you can go to Motorworld, buy a McLaren and drive out of there. But the reason why this particular location is special in cologne is it's the home of the michael schumacher museum.
Jeff:It's the official oh wow, yeah, that's cool is.
Michael:That's awesome. That's awesome. His wife, uh, karina, is involved with very heavily and you know they've donated a lot of things to this museum from from michael's personal collection, things like I mean, it was so cool to go there and they had michael's cart like one of his early carts, right, just like I can almost touch it, and they had all his racing gloves and they had a bunch of his helmets and they had, you know, a lot of his cars throughout his career, like some of the ferraris.
Michael:They had the um, I love it, it's the green seven up car nice just yeah, so just really cool, like it's a small museum but it's really special to sort of see some of the see some pieces of f1 history that you can only see there. Like you, that's the only place you can see that stuff, that that belongs that's kind of cool man, yeah, so and then that place is also has a hotel. So we decided like let's stay in the hotel in this place and what's cool about the hotel?
Jason:man, how big is this place, it's I don't know how it's.
Michael:It's not as big as I'm making it sound, but it it's a decent size facility and the hotel is so cool because the hotel is all car themed, like you walk into the lobby and they got coffee tables with tires.
Jason:Oh, that's dope man.
Michael:So the best way I can describe it is this hotel looked like what all of us want our man caves to look like. It looks like the sim racing den. It looks like your sim racing rooms right now. Just car stuff everywhere, neon signs. They had a giant porsche 550 um in the restaurant. You know what I mean.
Michael:Like just it's, just it's like one of the hotels so here's the silliest thing you get in the elevator and you click your floor to go to your room and the elevator makes like a car taking off, like it. And then you get your room like and I had a mural of a porsche 917 in my washroom, you know, like just it. You have to really be a car person to appreciate I never heard.
Jason:How did you find out about this, like I?
Michael:never through youtube like I knew about.
Michael:I had seen the tour of the motor world in munich and then also my dad uh, last year had gone on like a European river cruise and one of the stops was Cologne and he had already been to this place. So he unfortunately, my dad had to do a rerun a little bit because he'd been to the museum but he was so excited about wanting me to see it and and go together and cause when he was there by himself, cause he went with his, with his wife, my step-mom and some friends and they all went on like a walking tour of like things, and he decided to go do the Schumacher museum by himself and the whole time he was there he was saying like I wish you were here when I was there, so kind of like we kind of did that we kind
Jason:of did that now I can get behind that. I can understand that. I mean, we live in Hawaii and Jeff could tell you when family comes over. We have to kind of repeat stuff.
Jeff:Oh yeah.
Jason:But it's different when you're with different friends or family. You want to see the look on their face.
Michael:That was the thing, yeah, yeah.
Jason:You want to see the look on their face like, hey, this is cool, right.
Michael:So it was one week and we moved around a lot, but we had a blast. It went by too quick.
Jason:Oh, and you had fun bro.
Michael:I feel really happy with how the trip went. I feel like I accomplished as much as I could for the first two days, from a first timer going there. Obviously, going back again, there's things I would do differently from a as a you going there as a youtuber, just in terms of you know, I would have liked to have got some more content or video on things. But anyways, I'm not going to worry about that because I'm really happy with just that first experience and the time, the trip with my dad. Like I said, we made a lot of memories and uh, yeah, it was a blast, it was uh, the show was incredible. Um, experience yeah.
Jason:So, with that said, can you walk us through? Yeah, just summarize, uh, day one and day two for us, because you know you only been there for two days and I know you have a bunch of content I keep. You know guys check it out when you get a chance to get a video feed on the stuff. But you know there was a lot of booths out there. I mean I looked at the map and it was insane, Like squeezed together.
Michael:There was a lot of companies there, so I'll maybe pull out some highlights. But so the first day Friday you know from the public being there was a quieter day. But what was actually interesting, what I was told is the attendance levels on the Friday were some of the highest attendee levels they've had on the Friday of all the years. So it just shows that how this conference, and they were celebrating their 10-year anniversary, is just growing. Like you know, they may grow out of this facility in Dortmund because of how much sim racing is growing and how much the show itself is growing. But the Friday was a good day.
Michael:My Friday plan was really I had pre-booked meetings with a few different manufacturers. So what a lot of people don't know is like if you register as a press, a lot of these companies will reach out to you by email ahead of the show and go hey, do you want to come by my booth and do some filming? Do you want to interview us? Like they want you to come by and engage with them. And the way they do that to keep it organized is you basically book like a time slot. So I had a full friday. If you looked at my calendar it was like boom, boom, boom.
Jason:So when I showed up on and let me interrupt real quick if you don't mind are they? What kind of time slots? We're talking like 30 minutes.
Michael:We're talking like 15 20 like 15 minutes, 20 minutes max, because, um, it's a lot of people. There was a. So another thing there was a lot of um media people there. I think there was like 50 plus media personalities between youtube, whether it be websites or, you know, other media outlets. There's a lot of German speaking YouTubers and channels that we just don't see because we're not in that algorithm, and there was a ton of people there that were local to the area, local to Europe. So there was a lot of demand on some of these manufacturers. Right, how many people are we talking? Oh, that attended.
Jeff:Yeah, oh geez, I mean because I see pictures, but it's hard to.
Michael:All I can tell you is I was told by multiple people that they broke records this year. They broke records every day with attendance. The Friday was they had already a lineup queued up outside before it opened on the Friday.
Jeff:Okay, which is is?
Michael:like, if you think about it, friday there it's a work day for most people, and so and this is like a warehouse right.
Jason:It looks like it no, it's.
Michael:it's actually like it's actually a conference convention center but it's attached to um a stadium which is a okay, soccer football I should say football stadium um for their local team there and they do concerts at that stadium. Like in that same weekend parking was crazy at this place because they had a soccer match on the Friday and they had some sort of concert a musician on the Saturday.
Michael:And so the stadium is attached to the conference center. It's all one big complex like in the middle of Dortmund, right, so it's a busy place, but it's a yeah, it's a conference center. It's all one big complex like in the middle of Dortmund, right. So it's a. It's a busy place, but it's a. Yeah, it's a, it's a conference center. It's a really nice looking conference center. Uh, it's good, great facilities there, um, but, yeah, anyways, friday was busy because I had, sort of like from the minute the show opened at 10 o'clock, I had my first appointment, which was with, uh, vpg Sim. Um, manny, shout out to manny and mike from vpg sim nice so these guys make.
Michael:You know, I just reviewed the vpgt wheel, which is not an official porsche replica but obviously very, uh, very much resembles the porsche 911 gt3 uh wheel and um. Vpg has recently just partnered with bf systems, so now they are making real race car steering wheels as well as some racing wheels Very talented guys, and these guys are really talented and their wheels are all about ultra realism, full carbon fiber. So, anyways, like just to give you an idea of my flow, for Friday is like I have a 20-minute appointment with Manny. I have a 20-minute appointment with Manny, so it's like he wanted to show me the new Mustang GT3 wheel that they just teased before the conference and try that in a Novus racing simulator. And Novus is a company that's affiliated with Misha, another famous YouTuber, who does like the hot laps on Nurburgring. So it's a really state-of-the-art motion rig.
Michael:So, anyways, you have these little time slots where I would go, film content, talk, ask questions, and then you move on to the next one. You know, and I had another I had time booked at simicube, for example, right, so simicube had a specific rig set up for creators to use so that they could kind of flow through quickly, not have to wait in queues and film their content, which makes a lot of sense, right, um. But yeah, a lot of things I had to kind of just wait in line and and and, uh, try out and uh. So yeah, friday was super busy and for me it was just kind of about getting the lay of the land, um, just seeing where everything was, um and, it being the first day, I, I'm assuming it's probably the most chaotic day it was chaotic, uh, for me, just because, like it's, it was overwhelming, like I like yeah, I was like a kid in a candy shop, right, because you're like all over the place
Michael:you're walking and you want to. You have a specific. I'm like, okay, I have a meeting with simicube. So I got to get to simicube but you're walking, you're like, oh, what's this, what's this? And you want to stop right.
Michael:But I was trying to like, obviously I was respecting their schedules and and trying to make sure that some of the content that that I felt was going to be important when I got back that I got, but it was so hard because you get pulled in different directions or I'd see somebody that I know or or had talked to before and I want to say hi, and then you get into a conversation and you're like, man, I got a meeting, I got to go, you know. So it was a little overwhelming on the Friday, but I left the Saturday kind of more flexible. I had nothing sort of pre-booked on the Saturday and I think a lot of the manufacturers were doing the same. So a lot of the manufacturers were trying to get whatever media stuff they needed to do out of the way on friday, because saturday it was like the herd showed up, like the public showed up on saturday.
Michael:Saturday was insane, like I mean, lineups like crazy, before the doors even opened and then everyone just flooded in. On the saturday it was like it literally went from an empty show floor to packed in a second. The minute those doors opened up it was just just wild. So saturday was a little more trickier to kind of navigate and if you wanted to try a rig or something you were waiting in line for a while. What's?
Michael:a what's a while we're talking, five minutes, we're talking uh, you could be waiting like 15 20 minutes to try something right, wow yeah, there's so much to try it just depend on what you wanted to do, like a lot of people who went there, even as a you know, I'm sure they had specific goals for themselves.
Michael:Right, there was a lot of people there that were like I talked to, that were like I came here because I want to try the active pedals and see if if it's something I actually want to buy. So there was always a steady lineup and semi-cube knew this was going to be a thing.
Jason:So they had multiple rigs set up with, uh, sets of active pedals for people to try those lines were really long yeah, and the lines to try ac, ac evo, were long, um you know hey, I have a question real quick about that simi cube stuff, because you know I'm a big simi cube fan. But let's say I went there and I tried the pedals. Did they have products available like for you to purchase like on the spot?
Michael:uh, no, not simi cube, but so there was one re, there was a couple, I think, that were selling stuff there, but the main one was there was one retailer there. Uh, they're called srs or sim racing shop, they're they're german the ones in germany, yeah yeah, so they had uh like their own sort of little shop in the center of the, the, the hall and you could go like they had. I think they had some active pedals there, I'm not sure, but they had a bunch of gsi wheels they had.
Michael:They even had vpg wheels there for sale so in reality you could go try a wheel somewhere and then go to srs and walk out with that wheel, which is really cool and a lot of people were doing that a lot of people were like I came here because I want to try the gsi whatever wheel, and then they're like, yeah, I like it, I'm gonna go buy it from srs, because if they live in germany, because if I, if you, if I was, right there and you know, yeah, if I was to buy something big like that and try to bring it, bring it back, like I'm still gonna end up having to pay customs, if I'm honest, and so yeah, but you could technically do that it's cool to have the ability to do that if you lived in germany or a local area I think it would be cool to see in the future if they had more retailers there.
Jason:You just tell Customs, it's a toy, bro. I mean, you know.
Michael:Yeah, yeah, like I mean, I came back with some stickers and labels and extra cables that I needed from certain people and you know, I just throw those in the bag.
Jason:I mean yeah. I mean it's not like you're going to make a profit off this thing if you buy one thing you know. Yeah, like you're gonna make a profit off this thing if you buy one thing, you know, yeah. That's just my opinion.
Jeff:Customs don't come after me, you know, don't come after the chicane podcast yeah you know we we're low.
Jason:I don't want to lose my nexus card please.
Michael:So if nexus, if you're listening, don't take my nexus away. I need it. Um, there you go. But yeah, I mean to answer your question. No, like you couldn't necessarily buy it, like you know a lot of these hardware companies.
Jason:I think they should man Like how awesome it is You'd have to store those products somewhere, right. Yeah, you can have a limited amount. I mean, let's say you go and test drive a car. You're like I want the car. You're like, all right, just order from the website, wait a week and you're like man, I want it now. Right now yeah.
Jeff:I mean just a couple wheels, pedals, you know.
Jason:Just a few of them and then they'll have like a sale Like all right, because you're buying it from here, then we'll give you 10% off because you came here, I think.
Michael:SRS was doing something like that. Like I think they clearly had some show specials. Like they, I think they clearly had some show specials. I think they're linked up as like the official retailer of the show somehow, but it would be cool to see um more ability to buy, I think so things at the show make it more interactive for sure.
Michael:But yeah, I mean it was, uh, everybody that was there kind of had their own mission. And then there was a lot of people that I just talked to that were like completely new to sim racing. They're just like you know what we've been thinking about. It would be like I met like a father and oh wow, brand new we were like I go, you know, so what brought you here?
Michael:guys here, right, I got into a conversation with them. They're like well, you know, my son said he really has been interested in sim racing so I figured we'd come here together, try a bunch of things, try to sort of start getting some sense of what we need for our setup. And that's the best place because everything's in one place and so you know you could, you could try rigs, you could try chassis. I think like for me, the big thing was being able to sit in different seats. I learned that, as much as I love the seabelt seats, they're not comfortable for one of them was not comfortable for me, so like they're.
Michael:They're not built for everybody. Yeah, them was not comfortable for me, so like they're they're not built for everybody. Yeah, like that particular one was super tight. But you know that's the thing. You could go there and you could try the rig that you've been thinking about, try the, try the five different wheels, like there's huge value in being able to do that and that's you know.
Jason:And that's something we don't have over here, you know. I mean I mean Not yet, but it's coming, but it's kind of late because we already went and committed and bought a full setup. But you know what I'm saying the value in you trying something out before purchasing something is, hands down, the best way to sell a product. I mean period. If you can try it out, you will buy, trust me, because even if you didn't have technically the desire to buy something it happened to me in Japan many times I just came back and they were telling me hey, try this sake out free. And I try the sake. It's delicious. I'm like, all right, give me a bottle. I wasn't even trying to buy the damn bottle. I came in there for something else. You know what I mean, and I'm. I know that's totally different from sim racing hardware, but it's the same principle concept, you know. So I do have a question on the. On the daily activities though. Yeah, what was the like starting in, like how many hours we're talking friday and saturday.
Michael:So I did a. I did pretty much a full day, so the show opens at 10 am every morning, right, and it's not like I could get in there earlier, like I just, you know, wait outside until the door is open, kind of thing so I did a good breakfast, bro you know, yeah, I had nice breakfast before and then we got there.
Michael:We got there like I wanted to have a full day for me personally. Right to like I mean, this is everything you can why I went to germany. Right, I have to. I'm like I had my dad. I had my dad on a strict schedule. I'm like, dad, we need to be there minute the door is open you know I need you up and at him bro because he was my cameraman, so my dad was my cameraman on friday, you know I had to put him to work a little bit, because that was one of the things I was stressing out about.
Michael:The show was like if I jump in a rig and start driving, like who's filming me right, like if I went on my own, that would have been kind of difficult. I probably would have to bring like a tripod or something to have behind me. So, like having my dad there, I had to give him a quick training and camera skills.
Michael:I'm like don't move the camera too much he was pretty good his video, like a lot of the youtube videos you'll watch. I would have never guessed that. Bro, that's my dad filming, so thanks, dad. He listens to these podcasts when I'm on it, so he's listening. Oh, he does. Oh, okay, yeah, all right, man. Well, shout out to the sim racing's father. Yeah, the cameraman, but anyway, so like to answer your question on the schedule. It was like 10 am to five o'clock. I was there on friday like full day right, that's a full pull yeah, and we and I did the same.
Michael:I think I left a little bit earlier on the saturday. I think I did a 10 am to 4, 30 or whatever30 or whatever because I was pretty zonked at that point.
Jason:Yeah, that's like a full workday almost.
Michael:Yeah, but I mean I could have stayed there longer. Like I said, I could have probably filled the third day too. But yeah, there's lots to see right and I had to move quickly through some things. But my focus was really for me personally because, like I said, I wasn't there to try a whole bunch of things. I've tried a lot of things there. I have a lot of those things at home, so for me I was laser focused on okay, what hardware have I not tried?
Michael:that's here, that I can put my hands on get some first impressions to kind of help shape my experience, and then focusing on the new products and like ac, you know, evo and these things that I know people are going to be interested to hear about when I get back. So that was. I had a very specific focus on that. But I mean, as a sim racer I wanted to try some fun things. Like you know, I wanted to try a bunch of different motion systems because I feel like motion still in my future when I can afford it. So I wanted to try to have a few different experiences to kind of see what other technologies out there, because that is a thing where you're not going to get an opportunity to try like seven different or ten different types of motion systems in one place. So I got a good sense of a few different products while I was there.
Jason:And in short, just in short, do you need motion?
Michael:You don't need a lot of things, you want, ah, come on man.
Jason:That's a very diplomatic answer right there. You don't need an active pedal Look it's fun, like I got to admit. Gotcha.
Michael:So a couple of the setups I got into, so for example, like one of my highlights was the experience at the vpg booth. So vpg had partnered with novice racing simulators and they had this really cool custom built chassis that they had made um with a full motion system. I don't know all the specs on the actuators or anything, I can't remember, but it was so fun, like I mean it's. For me it's that extra layer, just the feeling the car move and the suspension and really feeling the bumps. Like you can get all that with haptics. And I talked about the belt tensioning system, which I think is more useful from a sensing speed feedback. But yeah, it's a blast. Like motion is a blast. Of course I want it, um it's. It really is fun, I mean. What I notice is at these shows, though, that I think the problem is they a lot of the boosts will dial up the settings to make it more like a ride experience yeah I get
Michael:I get that, but it was clear to me which ones were sort of you know, almost too like. I think motion, like a lot of things, less is more. Um, some of the best systems that I tried there were a little more subtle in terms of just giving you this feeling of suspension, moving and the pitching and the rolling, but not super exaggerated, because I found that I got in a couple motion rigs that were really turned up and I was crashing all over the place like I was terrible because, yeah, because your foot becomes a distraction from the driving.
Michael:You want it to be like part of the experience, not like take over the experience if that makes sense.
Jason:I've been always. I've always had this in my head and now that I know that you've been on, you know the different types of motion platforms right, just real quick. You know how, if, if you're moving left and right and up and down in exaggerated right the way it was does, did that affect your foot position, because that's a very important thing, you know, like um, did it affect like you're slipping off the brake or something like I don't know, that's no, not exactly.
Michael:I mean like so there's. I found I tried two different types of sort of motion systems. So one is where, like the whole chassis is moving, but then they had a couple of these things I guess that I would call seat movers. So instead of the whole chassis moving, it's just I tried this one setup where it had three actuators one on the back, moving the seat like front or back, based on like braking and accelerating, and two on the side, right side all moving combination.
Michael:But what was weird about that is because only your like body is moving, so it would almost like squish my body and it would crunch up my legs on the pedals because the whole thing isn't moving.
Michael:That felt a little awkward like because that didn't feel realistic to me, because, like if I was in a real car, my body wouldn't be moving towards my pedals, but but my feet aren't moving, if you know what I mean. So I firmly believe you need a chassis. That's either. You know it's fully. Everything is moving with you A full okay. Yeah, and there were so many different variations of it there. I mean, they had these full F1 cockpits, like it's a full F1 car.
Jason:Oh, don't tell that to Jeff, bro. I know right, I'm like slowly building one over here. This company Racing Unleashed was there and they brought two setups these are probably things that are more commercial, or these are things that are just….
Michael:Dude, it's like a $40,000 freaking… More. I think it's more. You know what a lot of people don't realize, which is funny. When I go there, I kind of ruin it for people. You know, you're looking at this setup that's like super expensive because it's a full f1 cockpit, but then they got like not a really nice pedal set in there and a low-end wheelbase. I'm like you're. You're really just paying for all the the right frills, like you're the creature comforts.
Michael:Like for me, I'd rather have higher end gear than have this like look of you know.
Jason:But you know, I agree with you a thousand percent.
Michael:It's part of the experience, it's part of the experience, um, but yeah, I think, for me emotion the ideal would be for um, well, please, man, reach out.
Jason:Have somebody send you a damn D-Box man. I don't know why this isn't happening, yet it's tough.
Michael:I mean you don't see a lot of reviews on motion systems because I mean that's a really expensive product just to send out. I think what I might try to do in the future and I had some conversations with some people there would be to sort of like go visit where they are and spend an extended time on my own with a system you can dial it in right, yeah, and say, hey, like I'll travel wherever they are, spend a day there, like some of these guys have.
Michael:So what's cool about a lot of these motion companies is that they have their product in commercial sim racing centers. So, for example, I was talking to one company and and they were like oh, we have a motion, we have a sim racing center, like in canada, like in this you know area. If you go there, we'll call them, we can get you set up for an hour, a couple hours, and you can go there and film and do like a review, like a more of a proper review a longer experience that would.
Michael:That probably is the easiest way for me to review something like emotions I think it has more value that way yeah because you would do the review regardless if you got it in, you know, sent to your house or something.
Jason:That way you can knock it out like in a single day, like get the footage you need, yep, and get the data.
Jeff:That'd be a lot of work, putting that onto your rig in your house and yeah, so I'll take it off like, if they yeah, they're not going to want it sent, it's a lot of money shipping back and forth.
Michael:I mean, it's just why you don't see a lot of reviews and good luck picking up your rig.
Jason:By the way, yeah, use a car jack or something you might need to use something like that yeah, I mean like a crane or something if I was deciding on a motion system as a consumer, it would be just as hard right now as deciding on a steering wheel.
Michael:There is a lot of different products out there. Obviously there's the well-known ones, like like d box and stuff like that, but yeah oh yeah that there's a different world, definitely with that.
Jeff:So all right, michael, you're talking all the gear that you've seen the motion, the wheels, the pedals. You got to pick one. What was your favorite piece of hardware that you thought I mean you could go favorite? I'll let you decide your favorite or the most pushing the envelope or moving the sim racing world forward?
Michael:Okay, what was one that you walked away that you were like wow yeah, I think there was a lot of things there that were there was not a lot of things that were like, wow, this is groundbreaking. Like I would think that last year or the whenever the year that was that the active pedals were first announced, that would have probably been a highlight for everybody, right, because that was like a new thing. This show was interesting because I I don't think we saw anything like as like new and groundbreaking as that. I think what we saw was a lot of evolution and refinements of products. We saw sim racing companies, ecosystems grow, where they added products to the ecosystem.
Michael:I think for me, um, yeah, like there's a few companies that I get excited about. One is bavarian sim tech and, like my highlights are going to be very different than others, because I'm excited about smaller things that maybe not everyone are, but they had this like uh control center button box there which is it's very much looks like a the precision engineering pro switch panel yeah, they sort of like put their own spin on it and took it a little bit further with these.
Michael:Like they took the multi selector rotary knobs from their wheels, which allows you to sort of select the function, and then that dictates what that. So you end up getting like 20 inputs out of two you get double the inputs yeah, so, like, these little things for me are kind of cool.
Michael:Um, so I really liked that. Uh, I liked their omega pro version two. It's a formula wheel. Um, that's a really nice wheel, really really nice wheel. I just love the way they do their buttons and their lighting and everything just feels really top-notch. Um, just the design language for me speaks to me personally and I think for a lot of people. So I was definitely a highlight.
Michael:Um, you know, trying the vpg mustang gt3 wheel. So this is a of, uh, almost one-to-one replica of the real wheel that's in the new mustang gt3 racing cars and it's a full carbon fiber wheel. It's not going to be cheap, for sure, but it's uh, it was. It's a very cool wheel and, like I said, the experience trying that with the novice sim novice racing simulator motion rig was a really cool combination. Like I'm driving the mustang gt3 replica wheel full motion and there's a Mustang Dark Horse car behind me. So that was kind of cool. But, yeah, I think that and I don't know, ac Evo was a really big experience for me. I think the other thing that stood out was Fanatec. So Fanatec was there. I think Fanatec had the biggest booth there and obviously we all know they've had a very eventful last few months oh yeah, we, we definitely.
Michael:Yeah, you might have you might have noticed that in the news, um, but I have to say um, they were there in a big, with a big presence and they brought new products. I mean, everything is very corsair. Know, all of a sudden, all the computers running their sims were Corsair computers. The Corsair sim rig that came out a while ago now had Fanatec labels on it. So yeah, they're very much a part of the Corsair family now. But I think it's great. Like I don't think anybody wants to see Fanatec disappear.
Jason:No, nobody wants to see them go down.
Michael:No, and I think it was exciting. They had a couple new products. They finally came out with the Bentley wheel which I feel like they just had to get it out.
Michael:I mean, I saw it for like a brief moment. I didn't get to drive with it. The screen works. I mean I don't know how well the rotation works in comparison to the Moza Vision GS, because I didn't really get to spend a lot of time with it. It was like people crowded around, uh, that wheel, and then they came out with like a porsche vision wheel which is a almost an exact replica of the.
Michael:Well, it's a fake car, but the vision gran turismo concept of okay, and it's officially licensed porsche wheel, so, anyways, it's just good to see that they have new products there. Um, but yeah, I think those were some of the highlights, for for me personally, um, you know, there wasn't a lot of, say, groundbreaking new stuff there, but I think what we saw was a lot of refinements and, uh, you know, companies sort of adding to their portfolio with different products and things like that.
Jason:Cool. So just to add a bonus question to that. While we're on topic here, Mm-hmm See on the Chicane podcast, Jeff and Eric. They run predominantly SimMagic gear. Yeah, and there was a bunch of SimMagic stuff going on over there. What are your thoughts? I saw some. Well, it wasn't video. Well, actually, it was like a short clip because the thing was like locked in a case and it looks like an active pedal, but smaller. What? What do you? What are your thoughts on that?
Michael:yeah, I mean yeah, so I think I was walking. I remember I was walking by the sim magic. Sim magic had sort of like a, a small little area, like you could almost miss it if you walked by. Um, and same with sim lab, which they had a new wheelbase there, which I should mention that as well. We'll talk about that after, uh, because I almost forgot about that. But sim magic had, like there was this little case, little just you know plexiglass case, and they had this you know active pedal looking thing in there and everyone was like oh, what's this? Okay, um, and it was moving, like it was moving and just doing on on repeat, um, like a loop it looks.
Michael:Yeah, it's sort of weird because it it looks really tall like the actual, like uh assembly I guess, or the right, you know I didn't think of that. It does look sort of like I said, I couldn't see it uh close enough. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance or time to talk to somebody from Simagic about it. I wish. I had Like I said, it was one of those things that I just meant to do and then you get sidetracked, but they didn't have it. You couldn't go try it.
Michael:It looked like it was probably some sort of early prototype or it might be close to release, but maybe they just it was. If you can't try it there, that tells me that it's not super close to final release. So they're obviously. They had some cool things, though. They had this thing that I thought was really neat, where it's this little DDU screen and with magnetic magnets you can put it on a wheel. So then you have like a wheel with a dash display and then you can grab it, take it off and put it on the wheel base.
Michael:So if you wanted to like switch to a different wheel and still use the ddu, yeah, I thought that was cool man, yeah, and it would just you would slap it on and it would just automatically turn on again and sync up, so like, yeah, a little like that's the thing. If I could sum up, it was a lot of little things like this here and there, but nothing like as like groundbreaking, like huge. Oh my god, this is the craziest thing in sim racing, like it. This wasn't the year for that, you know, but there was little things like that, and I think some magic had some new wheelbases too, but I don't have a ton of info on those.
Jason:But I'm pretty sure we'll we'll hear more soon, because if they revealed something like that, that means that it's they're showing people that we have something in the market to rival, or because you know it's, it's mid-range, so they're after that target of mid-range like, hey, we can get you an active pedal here's my prediction with pedals.
Michael:So like, let's go back several years, you know, when load cell pedals first came out and then now, like load cell is like that's like the norm, that's like a bare minimum for a mid-range pedal set. I predict that, like we're in this beginning, like active pedals is going to sort of become the standard of sim racing pedals and at some point all sim racing pedals will have some sort of active component to it. Right, because I think, yeah, simiq was just the first to hit the market with it, with a product. There might have been companies that already had a working product in their, you know, in their shop that we never saw, and just simicube was the first one to get it out for sale. But I think, like an active pedal, in some variations we're going to see different price points, we're going to see different ways of implementing it, but I have a feeling that active pedals will sort of become like the new norm.
Jason:It needs to be, bro. I'm telling you.
Michael:And I think that's where it's going.
Jason:You got to try it. People, if you're listening watching, go out and give this a try. They have a 30-day return. I'm telling you, man, it's worth your time to bolt this thing down.
Jeff:I think competition in that realm is like the key, because it's just unrealistic for people to think they're going to spend what's the active pedal right now, the semi-cube 1500 bucks, 12, 1200 that's a lot of money 17. That's a lot of money for people to spend on one item. I mean, you go on the forums on those pages on facebook and people are saying, hey, I want, I got two grand to spend on a rig.
Jeff:Where can I go, you know, so like the competition will lower that prices. You know, like the good, like the TV technology over the past five years. So, um, I think it's a good thing for everybody. Competition. You know, I had a, I had a football coach back in the day. So competition is what makes America great.
Michael:Yeah, no, I mean like not everyone's going to need, like like the max force, even if let's say the active pedal pro. So they brought down, you know, the max force a little bit right I think the sacrifices are not that big of a deal for the better price point. But then we're gonna see other pedals that are gonna say no, no, we're gonna go even lower. You know, for you know, I hear jeff's point too I do.
Jason:Yeah, I agree, I, I hear it because you're not going to start off with a $1,700 pedal. That's ridiculous. Why would you do that? You're making no sense right now and the more we have on the market? Yes, but it depends. What kind of setup are you after? Are you after a top-end setup? Are you after a mid setup? Are you after a mid setup or are you after a a budget friendly? I don't want to say low, because you know every setup is different. Everybody has their budget and I have to respect that. I can't expect people to go out and purchase something like this. I'm just telling you that I love the thing.
Michael:That's all I'm saying I mean everyone that I've talked to that has one. Uh, I haven't talked to anybody. It was worth it for me that that regretted buying it and at my stage right because I already have a full setup.
Jeff:I already have everything what?
Jason:what's the next thing for me, and that's the question you need to ask yourself yeah, I think that's the active pedal right, you got you, you've.
Jeff:You've been in it for a while. Your setup is, you know, almost perfect and it's never perfect.
Michael:That next step, that next step, we're never done, bro, it's cool and I think, yeah, I think, like we see these other options coming out, it will start to become more affordable, more norm, where it won't have to be such a huge decision, it'll just be a sort of logical upgrade, um, so yeah, it's changing the. That that's. That's what I kind of picked up on all right yeah no, go ahead, go ahead, finish.
Michael:I was just gonna say I think next year and the years following we're gonna probably see some more companies there with active pedal iterations to michael, what do you know that you're not telling us?
Jason:what do you know you always?
Michael:think you always think I have top secret information.
Jason:I I don't know that bro, you just revealed to us earlier that you knew I did know about the active pedal pro, because damn it beforehand.
Michael:But I mean, that's nda's on file yeah, I know I've signed a few ndas now. I mean now I can talk about the active pedal pro as much as I want, but no, I mean we can uh, maybe that's a good segue to talk about what's next in terms of the sim expos. Um, there was some news that was dropped after the show finished.
Jason:Okay.
Michael:Um, so I think the exciting thing is. So I knew already about one show that was happening in the us. Um, a gentleman reached out to me a little while ago um, it's the sim sim gaming expo. It's going to be happening in chicago. Um, what are the dates? Again, I think it's.
Michael:Um, I'll have to, I'll have to pull those up yeah we can put it the links we'll put it in the description uh sim gaming expo is going to be in chicago and this is going to be a show that is for all simulations, so it's not just sim racing, it's going to be flight sim, I don't know, farm sim, truck sim, whatever you're into, the idea is is that it's going to be a place for uh companies to showcase all their simulation products and for guests to.
Michael:You know, if you're into flight sim and sim racing, you would be able to try everything in one place. So that's happening in Chicago. But then the news was also dropped that, along with they are doing the ADAC, sim exo is going to happen again in Dortmund, germany, next year Same dates, I believe. Sim exo is going to happen again in dortmund, germany, next year uh, same dates, I believe. But there's also now going to be another sim racing show, uh, in austin, texas, in early march and it's going to be sort of part of this south by southwest music festival in some way as another sort of attraction that's feasible for us too, now yeah it.
Michael:it's very feasible, it's much more feasible for me it's central.
Jason:you know what I mean for a lot of people. Yeah, right I don't know for a lot of Because Dallas, you said Dallas, right, sorry, austin, texas. Well, dallas is a hub and it's not too far from. Austin I don't think but yeah, that's opportunity for us in America. Yeah, it, that's opportunity for us in America.
Michael:Yeah, it's going to be interesting, though, because I don't know, as I was talking to different people about it afterwards. That's a tough trip for the European manufacturers and people to make, so I don't know at what scale that show is going to be like. I already talked to a couple of creators and other people that have already said I can't do it. I'm not going to do it so I don't know I think I have to decide now.
Michael:Next year, with three sim racing exhibitions, like, oh, what do I do? Like I mean, I left this conference going. I want to go every year. Right, because I think this one is still going to be like the one for a while, because it's like literally everybody is there, like every company you could think of. Is there the only company that wasn't there was moza, which was weird, but okay, listen, this is how I feel about it.
Jason:Real quick, I think you need to be at the adac every year because, yeah, realistically, the european market is where it's at for sim racing and for racing period, half this rig is european.
Michael:Yeah, yeah, it is what it is right, yeah yeah, and I think that's going to be always my goal to try to go there every year, but I'm definitely I'm going to be going to this one in chicago, um okay, I think I I want to, I want to support that show at its early stages.
Michael:I think it has a lot of potential. Um, so, we'll see, we'll see. I don't know what to expect yet, but from my conversations with the organizers, you know they've they're pretty far along right now. They've got some commitments of people on board. So, and like I said, chicago, that's an easy trip for me to make from canada, that's not.
Jason:This is good news, though, because it can only get better. I think it's great, honestly, adac should release what do you call this? They should have like a chapter or something. Yeah, to have one show in Europe and then have a show in America, because, let me tell you, it's not as popular as it is in Europe, but Americans we have a big chunk of the sim racers are here in America, and it's not, and I think that's probably the biggest untapped market.
Jason:Yeah, it is untapped, jeff, Because the only American company that I know of is what was their name.
Jeff:They make wheels GSI, gsi is American, they're from and they're from Texas, Yep.
Jason:So I mean they would be all over that. Trust me, they would be all over it, oh yeah.
Michael:I think I talked to him there. That's an easy for them to go there with a couple of wheels, Like you know. He said, getting everything to Germany that's a tough one. It like you know, he said, getting everything to germany, that's that's a tough one. It's hard for these guys to get all their stuff there. They got to ship containers ahead of time with your setup and all your products oh yeah yeah, like think a sim lab bringing six rigs to the states.
Jeff:That would be a tall drink, a tall ask well, they can get all together and like um you know get a crate and just cover the cost together.
Jason:They can also do that.
Michael:That's what a lot of people did so. I noticed a lot of collaboration booths, so you saw like, let's say, a wheel maker and then a chassis maker. So I think what they were also doing is sharing the cost of the space, which is really smart, actually right. Like, cause a chassis maker is like well, I can't just have a bunch of chassis set up without wheels on them, so like, because the chassis maker is like well, I can't just have a bunch of chassis set up without wheels on them, so, and I'm not competing with you in that market.
Michael:Yeah, and it's like so we saw. I saw a lot of. There was a lot of that like trek and bavarian sim tech. You know vpg and novice um, you know that there was a lot of these little collaborations and you make connections that way yeah, because you collaborate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so they could do that with shipping? I don't I mean, they could share a container and ship everything in one container.
Jason:I mean I've done similar. You know, I've been in hawaii for many years and I shipped out motorcycles in a container to go to another island and ride, ride um the big island and we would all get together and just have a container filled with motorcycles and it'll get there in about a week. But I'm pretty sure they can figure this out if f1 can do it yeah, f1's got bottomless money I, I'm optimistic, I think, I think not that house
Michael:team. Bro, I don't know these shows are gonna in the states are gonna have to go through the same growth and the same growing pains that that adac did. Right, like when adac's first year was like not a big show, right, and look at them now, 10 years later. So you know, it's this. The stuff in the in the states has got to start somewhere. But I think it's great to see and I think, yeah, I think a lot of people, just based on conversations with people, I think a lot of people are gonna dude let them go to vegas and watch how you jeff er, Eric and everybody get together, that would be the place to do it right.
Michael:Dude Vegas that would be the place to do it.
Jason:Yeah, vegas, right around the Vegas GP, make sure you get that done.
Michael:Yeah, I was kind of hoping. When they announced Austin, I was like, oh, how cool would it be if it's around the races.
Jason:Oh yeah, remember, we chatted about that, because when I first heard about this US Expo.
Michael:I thought it was replacing the Germany one Like I kind of read the news wrong and I was corrected by actually Daniel Newman.
Jason:I think corrected me. He clarified it for me.
Jeff:Shout out to Daniel.
Michael:It's an addition to it. So you know, I think it would have been cool if it was around the same time as the race, cause I for sure would have tried to have done both. And you know, my wife said I'll come. If there's a race to go to, I'll come with you because she loves F1. Dude, that's awesome man. But yeah, so I don't know, I think in March, you know, we'll just we'll make a. We might, my wife and I might make a trip out of it and go hang out, and I've been to Austin before, I've been to San Antonio and stuff. So I actually been been looking forward to getting back there.
Michael:I had a great time there so yeah, man, it's all good, it's all positive. I think you know everything. The show was just incredible, you know. I mean, if you, if you had the means to get to Germany and go, I would say, do the same thing I did and make a full trip out of it. I don't think it would make sense just to go to Germany just for the show if you're coming from like the States or Canada. But as someone coming from across the pond, the big pond, it was definitely worth it, bro let's not compare.
Jason:We're in Hawaii, that's like a 20-hour yeah.
Michael:Well, I talked to like there was somebody there from australia.
Jason:We're like two pounds away, bro, not one george, you know george from simcor was there.
Michael:He traveled 28 hours from australia to fly there. But as he he's an exhibitor, so for him you know there's a lot of value in having his products there and stuff. But yeah.
Jeff:Dang, that's dedication right there.
Jason:All right, michael, I have one final question for you. Is there anything you missed at this expo? I'm pretty sure you did, but give us a if you can give us a brief explanation. We're kind of close on the time.
Michael:I want to talk about one thing.
Jason:Yes, please Go ahead.
Michael:Sim Lab wheelbases.
Jason:Okay, oh, I'm a big Sim Lab fan, by the way.
Jeff:I'm a Sim Lab dude. Go ahead, sim Lab rig.
Michael:This was a late announcement. I think it was announced like just a couple of weeks before the show that Sim Lab is entering the direct drive wheelbase space and everyone was like what, what's going on? I mean, I knew a little bit about it beforehand because I did do have a little bit access to certain information, but I all I knew was that that they were going to be there with, uh, three wheelbases, three models of their new wheelbase, you know, not a final product, but very close to a final product and concealed. So they had no like. You couldn't actually see what they looked like. It just looked like a black box. But I think what everyone was interested to know was they. They boldly claimed that they are going to have the best direct drive wheelbase on the market. Really, that was their claim and that was. That's a bold statement. Yeah, and my contact at Sim Lab well Grid, they kind of are together now but he told me like I think we have something really different here and I want you to go to the show. When you go to the show, make sure you try it. And so I did.
Michael:I had an extended time with the wheelbase and, yeah, I mean, like, let's say, for a company with their first wheelbase, and I mean Sim Lab is no new kid on the block. They know what they're doing when it comes to sim racing, but still it's a first wheelbase. They claim they have something different in terms of the motor technology. They're using some different components that other people aren't apparently. Um, my first experience with it was it felt really good. Amazing for a new product. It's running a unfiltered with iRacing, with no software, and which is kind of insane, but all the details and everything felt really clean and really good. So, and they're still fine-tuning it. So, yeah, we got another. Like this is the thing the industry, the competition is growing.
Jason:We have another which is great wheelbase maker, so they're gonna.
Michael:It's healthy 15 newton meter 25 newton meter and a 35 newton meter wheelbase. I tested the 25 newton meter and the 35 um. So yeah, it's just gonna get harder and harder to decide. Well, if you're looking to upgrade your wheelbase or buy a high-end wheelbase, you've got. You're gonna have ace attack, you're gonna have semi-cube, we're gonna have sim lab. Now, moza like geez.
Jason:It's crazy I don't know man, I, the semi-cube motor's been around for what is it? Almost eight years now yeah it's tried and true.
Jason:So I mean, it's gonna be really hard for me personally to step away from it. You know, especially when they offer a warranty you know a lot of companies don't do that they don't offer a warranty. I like, I like five-year warranty on this motor and a three-year warranty on the pedal, yeah, and no extra cost is awesome, yeah. So I mean, I'm still interested, I'm very interested to see what what sim line is gonna do yeah, yeah, final product like I said, just my first experience.
Michael:It felt incredible. I mean, it felt just as great as using a semi-cube or Asetek high-end wheelbase, but there was something just different about it. I can't quite put my finger on yet, but yeah, I think it's exciting. I think that's one that I'll be hopefully reviewing in the future, when it's finally released next year. So I'll need to spend some more time with it. But, um, yeah, like I said, nothing there's. You know, we've got new things coming out.
Jason:Um, all over the place right now.
Michael:That's what's up, man, next year is gonna be very exciting for sim racing, I think 2025.
Jason:Yeah, man here he at the very start of 2025. We got ac evo just dropping two weeks into the new year, so can't wait. That is, I know that is a hell of a way to start the new year. Um, with that said, I mean that wraps up the discussion portion. Um, I don't have any further questions that, jeff, do you have anything else for michael?
Jeff:no, no, I'm not anything for michael. I think the sim world is uh, we're in good hands markets getting uh some competition, with some really cool products coming out and we keep saying this.
Jason:We keep saying we do. You're right, there's there's no better time to get into the hobby. But we actually mean this, man. We didn't have any of this stuff going on three years ago, no way.
Michael:We have great stuff right now. I mean like I said it was just overwhelming.
Jeff:We need somebody to make a better NVIDIA surround software. Other than that, we're good.
Michael:Call me for some tech support after Jeff. This is what I have to. Okay, we'll do it.
Jeff:Good luck with that, bro.
Michael:Yeah, good luck with that, bro. Yeah, and like I'll, I'll leave with, if anyone um, you know, check out the first couple of videos that I posted. Yes, if anyone has any questions for me directly about the show or something I talked about? You know, I don't know, hit me up through my socials or whatever, um, comment on any of those videos, or or, uh, email the guys here and maybe they can.
Jason:Yes, you can also email the show at the chicane podcast at gmailcom and let us know if the question is specifically uh to the michael the sim racing den and we'll get that information over to him. Uh, pronto, and all the links of all his videos mentioned here will be in the description. I just want to thank Michael again. I don't, yeah, I need to send him, I don't know man, a Christmas card or something, man, because the man Hawaiian pineapples or something.
Jeff:I don't know Some.
Jason:Hawaiian pineapples.
Michael:No, you don't need to send me anything like that, Listen bro Michael's been a hell of a friend. He's been a hell of a friend he's been a hell of a.
Jason:He's a good dude, he's a great dude, he's a smart man and he's honest and I love that's. The best thing about you is honesty. So by you coming on the show and speaking on your thoughts on everything, it kind of gives me a better warm and fuzzy about AC. Evo, evo, evo, evo, evo, evo.
Michael:Evo, evo, evo, evo, evo Evo.
Jason:And now we're learning about new hardware hitting the market and I'm telling you it's amazing. I want new stuff. I don't want to be stagnant. You know, I want to have options and people coming in they're going to have way better options than we did, because they already do. So I mean, yeah, I just wanted to say yeah, go ahead.
Michael:Yeah, I just want to thank you as well, like I mean, uh, thanks for having me back on. Um, I think it was a, it's been a blast. I love talking to you guys and, yeah, I'm just so happy that we've we've kind of developed this friendship over the first, first interaction and uh, yeah, I think it's awesome. I mean, that's what this brings us together.
Michael:I mean, that was the thing that I yeah the experiences from the show was, you know, making some new friendships there and meeting people in person and yeah, dude, I've made a ton of friends my uh, a goal for me would be for me to hang out with you guys, have a drink and maybe in austin, and look at some sim racing stuff together. That that would be cool.
Jason:That would be awesome, bro, or Vegas. I'm praying You're all about the Vegas, Bro, I think Jason you need to.
Michael:maybe you need to be the one that organizes the show in Vegas, Like you keep talking about Vegas. I think you should take that on.
Jason:I need to. I need to, I need to talk to my accountant or something. Yeah, I just wanted to thank Yo, dude. Seriously you have been. I mean, eric missed it. Eric's out doing his own thing, so shout out to Eric Kelly.
Michael:Yeah, he's a. Sorry, I missed you, eric. Maybe I'll see you next time.
Jason:Dude Eric's such a big fan and you mentioned meeting people and I'm telling you you guys need to check out um the sim racing, then set up Facebook page. I've met so many friends when he, when you speak about, met so many cool people and so welcoming. Uh, you know I post things there more than my own Instagram.
Michael:I noticed that, yeah, and people don't know this. I was like wait a minute, I need to Jason's helping me with some moderation there. I kind of voluntold him um to he's helping me out a little bit, you know, whenever he has time, so um it's the least I can do, man, and you know what I actually enjoy doing it.
Jason:Yeah, you know, I love finding those posts and shutting up down and like, look, this is what I found and it's yeah, we're trying, we're trying to keep it, trying to keep it really friendly.
Michael:It's difficult.
Jeff:Keep it clean.
Michael:There's going to be some bad apples there and we just try to use our best judgment. I mean, we're not trying to shun anyone away from it.
Jason:No no of course not.
Michael:We have to use our judgment. Try to keep the conversations healthy and positive. And yeah, so it's cool. This community is growing, the industry is growing. I dude, you're better time to be a sim racer right now that group is awesome.
Jason:I had a guy I posted a trucking video. I might have been a little um, under the influence a little bit when I was posting the truck video, because if you know, if you know me, if you know, if you know me, if you know Jason TGSR, if he's trucking it means something. It means I can't go too fast. And this guy was like dude, your game is so sick, my game doesn't run like that. So I took a few screenshots of my config file, sent it to him, fixed it right away. That made my day right there.
Jeff:I was like yeah, amazing. Yeah, that guy was super happy.
Jason:He was like oh man, I looked high, I'm low and I I was like dude. I understand, because you know I've had this issue and I have to search reddit and the forums and do a control f and that doesn't always yeah no it doesn't always work.
Michael:No, I love, I love chatting with you guys. Thanks for letting me crash the podcast again.
Jason:Bro, you can do some more crashing. Bro, we might have some prizes being cooked up in the near future, but again, thanks for being here with us. Thanks for sharing us your experience with your dad, which is awesome. Shout out to your dad if he's listening or watching.
Michael:He will be yeah.
Jason:Thank you so much for making the trip and the way you made it and getting the data.
Michael:Sharing your experience? Yeah, thanks for letting me share. It's been buzzing about it still, and so it's cool to talk about it again. Hell, yeah man, yeah man.
Jason:And if you guys want to know more, check out the SimRacingDence channel. We'll leave the links again and if you have questions, email us at thechicanepodcast at gmail. If it's a question for Michael, I will get that to him, promise. And with that said, have a great start of your week. Thank you.
