The Chicane Podcast

AC EVO Worth It?

• Track Ghost Sim Racing • Episode 38

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What if you could navigate the twists and turns of sim racing with the strategy and precision of a pro? Join us on the Chicane Podcast as we share our exhilarating rides through the vibrant world of sim racing. This episode kicks off with the release of AC Evo, an exciting development sure to rev up any racing enthusiast's heart, and the thrilling news of Mike from Sim Racing joining the GRL. Eric recounts his first nail-biting GRL race experience, where he clinched P18 in a BMW M2 amid a huge field, all while basking in the camaraderie of a lively Discord community. We also explore the intricate dance of fuel and tire decisions in endurance racing and gear up for the chaos that awaits at Lime Rock.

Our discussion races into the complex physics of a new game in its alpha stage, where every skid and swerve feels distinct. We break down how this game's driving feel stacks up against stalwarts like GT7 and ACC, noting both its promising potential and the current bumps in the road, such as frame rate hitches and glitches. With the community's efforts in ironing out these kinks, including ingenious fixes for telemetry hiccups, we're optimistic about what lies ahead. And while graphic debates rage on, there's a shared hope that the game's evolution will eventually match its ambitious vision.

Lastly, we delve into the heart-pounding world of endurance races like the 24 Hours of Daytona on iRacing. Experience the meticulous planning that goes behind the scenes—from driver swaps to pit stop strategies—and the unpredictable twists that test even the best teams. Anecdotes of triumphs and mishaps highlight the critical role of teamwork and communication in these virtual endurance tests. As we wrap up, we promise to revisit the 24-hour Daytona race with fresh insights, all the while appreciating listener feedback that keeps us on track.

Racing GRit: A Keanu Reeves Story | 2024 Toyota GR Cup | Toyota:
https://youtu.be/H5tGAReWTe0?si=XwaW_rdlymN9mFLb

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Jason:

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

Erick:

Doing good man.

Jeff:

Dude, it's a big day slash week in the sim racing world today. We got some bangers of topics today. I'm ready to get into it, Hell yeah man, you know this was coming. I think the world knew this was coming.

Erick:

Been waiting a little bit, been waiting a hot minute.

Jason:

Yeah, yeah, we. We have a lot to go over, so just going to roll right into announcements. Ac Evo is out. Obviously you guys can buy it now. Um, and Mike from the sim racing then joins GRL, which is amazing, mike, if you can hear us out there, it was great racing beside you and this could be your chance man. If you follow a guy like Mike and his reviews, you could race door to door with him just on a Tuesday or Thursday. I think those are the two days if you have time, but that's going to be it for me on announcements. Wise Over to Eric, what you got.

Erick:

Speaking of GRL, I finally got a chance to do my first race, rob Markman.

Jason:

Jr. Oh, that's right, eric.

Erick:

Deggans Jr. I'm proud of myself, man. I was racing in the BMW M2. I came in at P18 out of I think it was a field of 42 or 47 cars, Rob.

Jeff:

Markman Jr Dang.

Erick:

Look at you.

Jason:

Wait a minute now what's up? It's a multi-class race, Jeff. Hey, you didn't have to do that to the man.

Jeff:

You didn't have to do that to the man.

Erick:

Look, all the matters are the numbers, man, that's right. P18. Now I have no idea how many M2s on the track.

Jason:

You know what? I retract my previous statement P18. That previous statement P18. That's it.

Erick:

P18. Yep, and that was, but it was. You know, honestly, it was fun and we talked about this before offline. But you know, I've done a lot of races in GT7, and it's like me and my music. I'm not racing with anybody else, I'm racing against randoms, All my music. I'm not racing with anybody else, I'm racing against randoms. All you have to communicate with are some headlight flashes every now and then or something like that. But being able to be in a discord with other guys and just hear what's going on on the track, it just gives so much more life to the races. And I didn't even know at the time Jason sent me a message. He was like hey, you know, this is an endurance race, right? I was like, I didn't know that. I thought this was His first race it was an endurance.

Jeff:

Yeah, what is the endurance?

Jason:

50 minutes Okay 50 minutes. But it's a two stopper.

Erick:

So I was like dude.

Jason:

You got to know how much gas you need. You got to choose if you want to take tires. But go ahead, Eric, I won't steal your thunder, Go ahead.

Erick:

No man. So that was some of the most fun I've had in GT7 was doing some of the endurance races and coming in there. I wasn't a fan of the track, which they followed iRacing series. They follow the iRacing series. So I'm really looking forward to racing this week because I actually was grinding to get my D license on a track that they're going to be doing this upcoming week.

Jason:

So look forward to that. I think it's Lime Rock right, Lime Rock yeah.

Erick:

Yeah, Lime Rock, which is that's a fun little track. Yeah, it's a fun little track and with all those cars on there it's going to be crazy.

Jason:

That's the problem. This would be crazy as well. It's going to be crazy. You said fun little track.

Jeff:

It's not a huge. It's how many. What is it like three?

Jason:

clicks. 40-something cars, bro, oh yeah but it's not a.

Jeff:

It's not a. It's not a like a super track, you know, or a what's that?

Erick:

Like eight and even in, and also, like I say just for me, I'm just more familiar with it, because I was, I was racing on it more so I don't find, um, but yeah, the did the endurance race and I feel like I got the full kind of experience, like we did. The, you know practice, did the qualities, did the endurance race. I looked at the results and it was 27 laps that we did, or that I did, and ended up doing two pit stops, had to decide fuel, take tires or not, and just really a well-rounded race. They did the review afterward with the stewards, which was dope, just pulled up Discord and got to watch the steward review, some of the incidents and people got to comment on what happened where and stuff like that. I mean, just, if you like racing, it's that, that's where you want to be, man, I I haven't raced in any other I racing leagues, but just the community, everybody. You know there was some shit talking, of course, but it was all in, you know, it was all in fun, you know, so I enjoyed myself.

Erick:

I can't wait to do another race, though, but yeah, first GRL race out the way. Shout out to Vlad because he was helping me. He was like hey, man, if you just do this and I was looking at your, you know your safety rating if you just do this. You and I was looking at your um. You know your safety rating. If you just do your next race like this, you're probably like one race away. And I did it and I, you know, got my d license.

Jason:

So hell, yeah, that's what's up, man, yeah well, that's what's up.

Jason:

Man, the, the, the league is cool, man, it's it's um, in some cases it's better than the officials. I mean, it's something I look forward to every week. So I know we've been pushing this a lot on the show lately and no one paid us to do that or asked us to do that either. They're super humble. But if you want to check out a cool group of people and race with two people from the show so far I'm trying to get trying to see about Jeff, trying to get him over, trying to trying to see how he can get in there, but, um, hey, at least two out of three you'll be able to race with it. Now we got Mike from the sim racing den, daniel Newman I'm talking to Daniel Newman down his throat telling him to get over here and promote some DNnr love into. Definitely see the goal.

Jason:

The goal here is to get everybody together. That's all this is. That's. All I want is everybody together, because we're all sim racers. You know, at the end of the day, we all bought, build these things to race on them. We didn't build them to film them or take pictures of them and show it to people and say, look, how cool, I have this big simulator. No, the simulator was built to have fun on it and to improve your skills on it. Those are the two things.

Jason:

But hell yeah, glad to have you there, eric, and it's no biggie if you miss out one day. You know it's, it's, it's. They're very understanding. So take that in consideration and over to Jeff what's up? Oh my bad, eric, what you got. You got one more thing.

Erick:

No, I was saying that's you know. Yeah, Okay, I feel that it's not just talk.

Jeff:

I feel, it.

Jason:

Yeah, I don't have too much of an announcement. It's just a couple of races this week, nothing super earth-shattering going on, but we got some banger topics, so let's just get into it here. Okay, so, main discussion now ACEVO testing. I'm going to read some of my notes here and they're very how do you say this? They're very short. They're very short, but this is going to be a discussion topic. I want Eric and Jeff to chime in on each of them.

Jason:

Okay, so we're going to go over the pros, right, because everybody wants to know what's up with the game. We don't want to know the bad stuff, yet we know there's some bad things in game. We don't want to know the bad stuff, yet we know there's some bad things in there. Not going to lie to you and disclaimer for all you people that are deciding whether or not, if you're watching us, of course. Thank you so much, but still take this information with a grain of salt. Okay, everybody feels different. Everybody can shift Tomorrow. I can hate AC Evo. That's just how it is. It's just evolution. So, anyway, we're going to go over the pros. The pros driving physics are great, but not just driving physics across different vehicles. And what do I mean when I say that Is, we have a GT2 car, we have some front wheel drive cars which are street cars. You know, they got an S2000, they got a Volkswagen and then they also have a Porsche, right A different Porsche class, almost GT3-ish class.

Erick:

Yeah, I think it's.

Jason:

GT2, right, say again.

Erick:

I think it's GT2.

Jason:

No, the GT2 is the Mercedes, oh yeah.

Erick:

It's a.

Jason:

Mercedes GT2, which is amazing. Actually, that's my favorite car in the game right now. It's a monster, it sounds great and everything. But anyway, going over, staying with the topic here, the physics. What impressed me? First impressions, this is an alpha. Its current version is 0.12. As of today, this recording Is I can tell the difference between classes, is I can tell the difference between classes, and that's something that a simulator or game is hard to distinguish, right, it's hard to have basically three different tire models in a single game, in a single package. So that's kind of what struck me the hardest. I was like I'm jumping in a GT2 car. I can feel different stuff than the previous classes of cars, which is obvious, which is what we want, but the overall feel of the vehicles to me felt amazing. We're just talking physics now, just the physics of the car, how it turns it turns, how it breaks and how it feels. So over to you, gentlemen. What do you guys, with your time, what have you found for physics in the game?

Jeff:

I'll jump in. I'll start here, uh, eric, if you don't mind. Um, yeah, yeah, put a caveat out there. I have 10, 15 laps on mount panorama and that's my uh experience driving so far. I've spent a lot longer than that trying to get the cut game set up, but we'll get into that later. Uh, so I did drive the porsche, uh 992, um, and it's been a minute. I'll be transparent. It's been a minute since I've driven a gt3, especially probably back to acc, uh or uh, you know, not gt3, but like a, a sports car. Uh, but I thought it felt good. I mean, I'm not going to put my page, be stand by it too much because I just don't have as much experience driving sports cars, so I just want to be transparent with everybody. It felt good, um, like it, I handled like I guess I thought it would, um, when it comes to handling wise. So I'll just I'm not going to go too far into that as much. I don't have a whole lot of experience so I want to follow up.

Jason:

Did it feel like acc?

Jeff:

I think it did and I and I think that's what I kind of alluded to is like it felt like an unpolished ACC.

Jason:

Okay. Because, that's, that was my feeling. It's like I feel like I have two games in one package or three games in one package. So yeah. I mean, but you've been sim racing for a long time. I mean, it's not, doesn't take that long for you to know. You know first few corners, you kind of get all right.

Jeff:

so the car's doing this or the car's doing that, yeah, but um, I mean, yeah, it's an early release, like you said, it's for testing.

Jason:

Yeah, we gotta be, we gotta be careful, we gotta be.

Jeff:

Keep your expectations, manage your expectations here, like that's what it is and I thought it was yeah, it's. It's it the game do it did. Is is what we thought it was Okay, but I am hopefully optimistic.

Jason:

All right With with. We're talking just physics right, just physics, yep. A hundred percent Physics. All right, Eric, you're up next brother.

Erick:

Yeah. So for me, the physics, physics, they felt good, um, especially, you know, of course I have to do my ab testing, um, because some people were obviously compared no one to know how to compare to gt7 and stuff like that, and so just physics wise, very much acc. Um, I did notice that one thing that stuck out to me specifically was like losing control of the car and feeling, when you're going if you're going sideways, the tires skipping across the pavement, something that I don't remember feeling in any other sim. So to me, I think the physics are, they feel like they're trying, they're they're trying to be a like kind of take you to the next level of physics. Uh, so very hopeful, um, I feel like they got a great foundation to build on with that um.

Erick:

But yeah, oh yeah I'm, I'm in, I'm impressed, I'm still working, sort of like. I think a lot of people are still trying to, you know, dial things in and figure out what's what, especially between the wheel.

Jason:

That's a big part of it, game settings.

Erick:

So I think, as we kind of as we dial that in and also as they put out updates, because there's some things you know, I've noticed that you adjust and they have no impact really on you know, your driving experience. I don't know if that's intended or if that's could be turned off. It's turned off or something like that. So for this to be the alpha, I feel like between us figuring out more of what works in the game and then them kind of dialing things into, I think is going to be great.

Jason:

OK, right now it's in a good place all right.

Jason:

So next up is graphics and fidelity, and I'm going to tell you now, and this is going to be a little controversial, but right now, a lot of people across the internet are having many different performance numbers, and that's to be expected, especially from a game that's not optimized. And then your video card is also doesn't have drivers for this game yet. So it's really it's. It's an unpolished on top of your video card, not knowing what to do with it. You know what I mean, or your CPU, or whatever For 2025, this don't look like a 2025 game to me at all. So I mean, if you look at and you know how I feel about GT7. Everybody knows how I feel about it, but if GT7 came out maybe five, what is it, eric? Six years ago? No, it wasn't that long ago.

Erick:

It was maybe.

Jason:

Is it pre-COVID GT7? So anyway.

Jason:

It was definitely pre-COVID yeah, so that's about five years ago, bro. We're in 2025. Yeah, so, anyway, just give or take, right? We're not trying to say when the game came out. I'm just telling to say that this is the first sim to come out. That's like next gen. Right Aside from LMU and aside from Rensport, look like a 2025 title when a console game blows you away with graphics and the way it looks. So that might change Again. Like I said, things might change. Maybe some things are not on or off and I have a pretty beefy system. My system can definitely run the game with all the settings on, turned up all the way, and I feel like when you turn those settings up, nothing happens, saying kind of the same thing that eric touched on with you know the, the car feature, the physics, you know the physics options. So that's how I feel about the graphics. Um, I'm not saying it looks bad, I'm just saying that it doesn't look the way it was presented. Oh, that's a fair point.

Jeff:

Yeah, you make a good point there, but you have a 4090. So in a beefy rig you should be seeing the best this thing's got to produce.

Jason:

Right, so I just think that it's not turned on or something.

Erick:

I mean what?

Jason:

did you guys think, how does? It look on your rigs. How does it run?

Jeff:

You know, sometimes to our detriment. We're straight no chaser here, dude, I was super disappointed. I was disappointed. And again, it's early release, I get it. I think that's the place that this is going to have to improve the most if it's going to be a staple in people's rotation for sims. The graphics, yeah, I had to go to like medium, like just the overall, and you know, just messing around real quick to get like 55 to 65 frames per second and it was nothing to write home about graphics wise, you know it. So it just is. And again, like I'm the new guy to this, when it comes like I've, it's just interesting that people release products that are unfinished, um, that they do it for a reason. You guys keep telling me it's just, uh, it's interesting that they do it that that way, where it's. So I I'm curious to see do they release stuff this early? That's this, these are my words unpolished and unfinished, where it like, I'm not really impressed, graphics wise, with this game.

Jason:

So it's a con for you, because I have this listed as a okay. So in in jeff's eyes, everybody, the graphics are a con to him because we're, we're it. For me it's a pro. It's not 2025, but it's not a bad-looking sim. You know what I'm trying to say. But if you weren't impressed, then that's totally up to you, yeah.

Jeff:

I think they have a long way to go, even to get to ACC.

Jason:

Oh, okay, or AC or even AC, yeah.

Jeff:

So if that's the distance or the delta that games to come out, early release and then once they're done, they get to okay, but there's like two miles of shit that they got to get to to get to ACC. In my opinion, two miles.

Jason:

It's a lot of shit. Anyway, Eric, what you got for us on graphics, Is it a con or a pro? I guess I should have titled this a little different, but it doesn't matter. This is a discussion, you know yeah yeah. We're going over everything.

Erick:

So obviously for me, gt7, just on, like, just visuals is one of the better looking racing games and A being I like how he said racing game, yeah, like a being this like getting into. So the only car and track, well, the only car that I could find like a pretty close match to was, um, the corvette, the uh camaro uh, or the Camaro ZR1 1LE package or whatever. So I raced both those cars in both games and AC Evo, in my mind, looked better, but performance-wise it wasn't as good. But just visuals.

Jason:

Okay, but just talking visually, you thought it was better. The interior of the car, you mean um, yeah, just doing just the.

Erick:

Uh, the flat screen obviously vr's. I don't have the adapter for the pc yet, I haven't been able to test that out, but just on flat screen none of us do look better. But one of the one of the things that makes it kind of difficult to compare to GT7 is you don't have the option to get your field of view just right.

Erick:

I was able to adjust all of that in AC Evil, which made it better, but even some of the textures on the inside. I did some races where I transitioned from evening to night and just racing with other cars and the lights and stuff like that. I think it looked as good or better at certain times.

Jason:

Interesting.

Jeff:

Maybe I'm the one that needs to get in and tweak some more.

Jason:

No, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it looks different on a flat screen, on a single screen.

Erick:

Which is kind of cool.

Jason:

We have both, which is kind of cool. We have both. It's just kind of cool. We have console, we have single monitors, we have triple, we have VR, except for this one. This is the only one, so sorry about that.

Erick:

So this is very interesting. Keep going. And just to, I guess, give a comparison. I looked it up, I couldn't believe it, but GT7 came out in 22. So it's a fairly recent game.

Jason:

It is Okay, yeah, I think we were playing GT. Post COVID A lot. Probably.

Erick:

And then seven came out and so, as far as visuals, it being kind of at that mark, especially with GT seven being optimized just for PlayStation and stuff like that, I think for this to be a like alpha build or, you know, pre-release build and knowing that once compatibility comes out there with the different graphics cards right now I know triple screen guys you guys kind of got the bare minimum. I think it only works with Nvidia surround.

Jason:

Right.

Jeff:

Good point Very good point.

Erick:

We're pretty limited on optimizations and things like that. As a starting point, I think the Visual is a plus.

Jason:

That's a great point, Eric, Thank you. He is correct. Nvidia Surround is required and thankfully we use that buggy software.

Jeff:

It's good, it's good Not going to go on the rant that buggy software.

Jason:

It's good. It's good on the rant, it's good when it works. I mean it works 90 percent of the time and then it gives you a hard time whatever, but and every four months you gotta you gotta do what you gotta do drivers and install the complete okay, so so graphics is a pro for eric yeah, pro for me yeah I guess I'm neutral on graphics.

Jason:

I guess I'm neutral. Now. Here is one that I am excited for the sound, yes, amazing, amazing Shifting. Maybe they could dial back the tire screeching. I watched Eric's stream and he made a good point on his stream. You should check his stream out too. The TechJent on Twitch TechJent Gaming on Twitch Check him out. He did some testing and I joined and he was talking about the slightest turn and you can hear the tire screeching, which is not really accurate, which is okay because they can dial that back. That can be fixed. But overall, the sound environment, the car, sound environment, the car everything is amazing. I have nothing else to say about that. For an alpha build for this to be sounding like this, even the uh, the your opponent cars, the way they sound, they sound great. So what do you guys think about the sound pro? For me, definite a plus I.

Jeff:

I don't have much to add with it. I haven't spent enough time in the game to have opinion on it. No overall, no first impression. It's great. I don't say it's great, but it's good, I do.

Jason:

You know, Jeff, sometimes I'll tell you this, and I wasn't really super focused on that. When you don't notice something, it's a good sign, too, right.

Jeff:

That's probably very true. Point taken, sign too.

Jason:

That's probably very true If you got in the car and you're like you're not even thinking about the sound. That means that this thing is exactly how you expect it to sound. Fair point.

Erick:

I guess Very fair point.

Jason:

Okay, so we got two pros and then Eric, which I'm pretty sure Eric is an audiophile.

Erick:

He'll tell you right now. What's up, eric? It's a pro. And if you want a good example of the sound, drive that Camaro, drive that Camaro with the V8 in it and do a downshift and the cops and the verbals I mean it sounds great, man, it sounds great.

Jason:

They even got launch control. Jeff, really the freaking. What is it?

Erick:

The Golf has launch control and you can hear it.

Jason:

Yeah, all right, so we can move around, we can put sound to bed here. Don't worry about the sound, sound is great. Okay, so this one is a bit. This I have listed as a pro and a con, but we're going to go with the pros, promising force feedback. So the force feedback to me is in a great state Because if you look at the overall package of it and what it's trying to do because we haven't, I'm still tinkering I can't get through a full lap dude without stopping tinkering stopping, I know, you know. Stopping changing. Oh, that okay, do a few turns. You're like man, a little here, a little, and that's part of the that's actually part of the fun when you find it, when you find it and you find a sweet spot. But then I jumped into a different car and it completely surprised me. And that's the thing. So front wheel drive cars feel amazing, they feel dialed in.

Jason:

I feel the road, I feel everything, but GT cars need work. So I'm going to call this neutral. It's still a pro because it's a good foundation. We're going to use that word a lot here because this is an early release. It's a great starting point. Let's not even compare LMU's force feedback, which is horrendous when it first came out, or Rensport, that's still in testing and has been like over a year and a half or whatever. So overall, like just plugging the wheel in, and it actually works, because that's another thing. All the wheels, all the major titles, even SimMagic, which is the newest player on the game, everything works and it has presets for your force feedback. They may not be the best, but they get you as a starting point. So what do you guys think? What did you guys think? Uh, first impressions on the, on the ffb.

Jeff:

It was the first thing I noticed. I was like oh, this is this is nice okay yeah, I mean, I pulled the porsche out of the pits and hammer down down. I was like, oh yeah, oh, this is nice, yeah, I'm there, I'm hook line and sinker on the force feedback.

Jason:

You see, and it didn't take long for you to know.

Jeff:

That's what I mean. I mean, yeah, half lap, and I was like oh, this is Half a lap.

Jason:

You're like, oh, OK.

Jeff:

Yeah, something right over here yeah yeah, okay, I'm not gonna hit this. I think you covered damn near all of it with the four speed back, but I was. I was pleasantly surprised how nice it was.

Jeff:

Okay, so we got it was almost like that it was just, you know, anybody can do it when you're running over the rumble strip and the curb and stuff. But like it was the small the, the smaller ones that just kind of felt a little bit finer detail, like when you turn the wheel and the wheel was skipping a little bit, you could kind of feel it ever so slightly in there, just above the noise floor. You can feel it Just a little bit more granularity. I guess that was my take.

Jason:

And I'll tell you this guys, whenever you get a chance, slam on the brakes real quick and see what the wheel does on a front wheel drive car, it's usually a front. Yeah, what does a front wheel drive do when you slam on the brakes? It's going left or right. It doesn't just go straight. They usually kind of twist and bend like this. And I felt that and I was like holy, that's crazy. You know, that's crazy, you know in a sim. But yeah, all right, jeff. So you were impressed with the force feedback.

Erick:

I agree.

Jason:

I think it's a great starting point for an alpha. I concur, I can't, I can't knock it. So what you think, eric? What's up?

Erick:

Yeah, Like I kind of mentioned before, I think that it is, uh, that that's definitely one of the most impressive things. Obviously, you know getting into iRacing and you know playing a little bit of ACC and um original AC with mods, feeling cars do things like I could feel the tires compressing as I, you know, shifted way forward, I could feel the car sinking down tires. I could feel that grip, I could feel that weight transfer. Like I mentioned earlier, you know spinning out, as I do a lot, um, that's the first time I could feel like the front tire skipping across the pavement as I slid.

Erick:

so, just me, I definitely have some more, you know, more tinkering, like we were saying, more dialing in to do, but there are certain things where, like when they come through, I'm like, oh, that's, that's nice, like, oh, I need to.

Jason:

I need to say this Right, it's not always correct, correct, yeah.

Erick:

And so just Just trying to find that right combination where I get everything, because I've gotten, like Jeff was saying, that fine detail and kind of like the road texture, just as you're driving on the road, and then I change the setting and that goes away, but then I can feel more of the weight transfer. So I think all the pieces are there, just trying to figure out how to bring them all to the surface is kind of the key right now.

Jason:

All right, so that's three pros for force feedback.

Jason:

The next one is this very short content.

Jason:

I mean I'm pretty happy the game costs $31.99, which is a great value, because when you think about it, what are you getting for $30, right, you're getting four tracks, 20 cars and they're going to unlock the driving school, which I can't wait to do that, so you can go through the school and stuff like that. It's not out yet because they have like a problem with the what you call. The server has an issue. So they're like any day now that's going to come out and then we'll be able to test more. But I felt like the content that they're like any day now that's going to come out and then we'll be able to test more. But I felt like the content that they're giving you for $30 is kind of fair and it'll give you a preview. And the biggest one you're paying $30 for a final release, because whenever you buy this game, whenever you buy an early release title, you have rights to the end product. So the end product is going to be way more than 30, promise you what do you guys think?

Jeff:

yeah, so I'll be honest with you, I don't see myself. I'll tinker with it for the next couple days, but then I'm gonna probably just let it sit until it's done, and that's 30 bucks is the reason I bought. I'm like I I would definitely buy it when it's done, but I, for the most part, I bought it today or yesterday to save some money, because when the thing comes out, hey, I saved 20 bucks, you know that's 20 bucks and go somewhere else, um, but here's, here's the thing on the content, eric, that I think, uh, eric and jason, I think that they might have missed something here, missed an opportunity. I guess you could say when it comes out in full release, is it going to have any open wheel or formula cars? Yeah, yeah, it will, yeah, so I think that they should have put one open wheel because they lost everybody.

Jeff:

That is really a formula driver, because you're a formula guy, right. So I'm going to get okay. Get okay, it's cool, but had they just dropped one in there, I probably would drive it more and get in it more. Um, just a lost opportunity.

Jason:

I think that they had that they could have put an open wheel car in just one, you know, just give us something from the formula open let us see what a formula is going to be like, because we don't know now, we we know what vehicles you know? Regular cars.

Jeff:

Yeah, so I think they just they lost an opportunity there, but other than that I thought it was pretty good. The content versus you know price wise.

Jason:

I'm pretty sure Open Wheels, that's a great. I need to dig into that more. If anybody knows for sure, I don't they didn't say no, but I don't think they said yes. You know what I mean, so I don't know.

Erick:

Rob Markman. I feel like I saw one in one of the trailers or something where they had an open-. Rob Markman.

Jason:

The old one right, like a 50s or something like that.

Erick:

Yeah, so they can't really believe that there would be more of them in the game. Rob Markman.

Jason:

So this is for Jeff, real quick. So I'd say, you know, keep it installed that way when there's a major revision, if you may, you can go in there and see what's changed and check on its progress. I guess that's how I'm going to treat it. So I mean, you know, major release come out, we'll test it out and put out the information here and see how life is going with the game. But, eric, I need your take on content man. How did you feel about that?

Erick:

The content is cool. Obviously, I'm a little biased. They got my favorite track in there, so I was happy about that.

Jason:

And it's pretty good. They did a good job on it.

Erick:

Really good. Yeah, man, yeah Was happy about that. I got a couple of Porsches in there, rob Markman.

Jason:

They got my Suzuka man. They got my Suzuka, rob Markman I actually spent more time on Suzuka than my Panorama trying to test.

Erick:

I was like Jason, I was going to Rob Markman Just killed me.

Jeff:

I was like, jason, did you spend any time? Not on Suzuka?

Jason:

It was all.

Jeff:

Suzuka. Most of it. All the videos you sent us were Suzuka.

Jason:

I just went in and loaded up each one just to say I went there, but I went right back, yeah, yeah.

Erick:

Suzuka just has some everything, man. I mean Mount Panorama, no, but Mount.

Jason:

Panorama is dope too, man.

Jeff:

Yeah, it's dope, but it'll kill you they both. I was having, I guess, graphics problems with panorama, like when you come to the top of the hill and you come down and look like you're just looking down, right, the floor, the, the textures would like blur out. Yeah, yeah, it was just kind of art of some artifacts in there.

Erick:

Yeah.

Jeff:

Needs work.

Erick:

Yeah, a lot to be polished there. Yeah, content-wise I'm a pro right now, especially knowing that the Driving Academy is coming.

Jason:

Yeah, the Driving Academy. All right, put it this way, I'd say this If they weren't dropping the Driving Academy, you know what I mean. There's not really much to do right now. It's kind of tough. You just erase and practice and that's it. So with the Driving Academy, you actually have something that you could do while they build the new patch or they release multiplayer, which should be coming next month. Maybe that's what they're talking about, multiplayer, really.

Erick:

Yeah, that'll give it a lot more, a lot longer legs.

Jason:

So you guys are happy with 30 bucks for what you got.

Jeff:

In summary, yeah, I paid more for this game, I'm okay.

Jason:

Jeff is like all right, Okay, it could have been more, but all right, I mean, the game works. It's like I told you guys. That's fair. The game could just not work, period, and we'll be fresh out of luck with $30. Even though you know, Steam is a kind friend when it comes to these things. You could just get your money back.

Jeff:

But you know put it this way this is my first time looking at a early release thing. I've never you know, so it's just I'm getting used to like what your expectations should be with something that's coming out for early release and I'll say this I refunded f124 I still got it and I'm not refunding a freaking alpha game.

Jason:

That you know what I'm saying. That should say a lot. So this was kind of a bonus, right, because during the launch literally four hours into the launch they were an hour late, by the way, so everybody was waiting.

Jason:

It was the funniest thing ever People were streaming and they were talking, chatting it up because they're just refreshing the page, waiting for the game to come out. So the game comes out right and three hours after that, um, sim hub drops an update for a workaround and gets telemetry working with this game. It is not perfect, it's you know, but it's something you know. You know you, I have shakers working, I have lights working, I have RPM, I have everything working. Um, so that kind of you know. He kind of saved the day. Nikola, if you, if you watch the show I hope you do. Thank you so much for three hours.

Jeff:

Instead of somebody getting in there and playing the game, the dude took the time and sat there and crushed some code. Like we should have a moment of silence for the effort that he put in.

Erick:

Yeah.

Jeff:

Okay, okay.

Jason:

Nikolai, if you can hear us, man, you are the GOAT, you're the true GOAT. And it's like he drops the update, update, and I take a picture of it and I send it over and it's like dude, like it's so easy for me to install this and everything works now. And it's like this guy didn't get a cut out of the early release or nothing. I don't think any developer sent him anything for that. That's going to dramatically increase the player count because they're like oh okay, all my stuff works now. Okay, so I can go in there and try it. You know what I mean Exactly.

Erick:

Yeah, I mean it'll definitely help their game.

Jeff:

Yeah, it will. I mean I've been working troubleshooting some issues on the game for me, so I didn't even get into the update. As soon as I got in the car I was like, oh, my wheel doesn't work. Oh, my LEDs don't work. I was like my butt kicker doesn't work. I'm like, oh, here we go. Just update SimHub, that's it, that's all you got to do. It'll be updated by the time we hit end recording 30 seconds.

Jason:

So I was in a group. I am in a group chat with Constantinos and Daniel Newman and I sent them a screenshot of it, and Constantinos couldn't get the game to work for whatever reason, on his rig. Dnr was at a football game and they're asking me all kinds of questions. So what works? Where's the light? Can you record telemetry? Can you do this, Can you do this, Can you do that? And they're trying. They're trying to like get the get their stuff working with it. You know they, they want to know, so it was kind of it was kind of cool.

Jason:

I was like dude yeah, he's at a soccer game, texting me on the on his phone and Constantinos is like the game doesn't launch. Man, can you take a video? Show me what? Do the tires work? Do the PSI works? I'm like yo, true dock mode works, rob Markman? Yeah, rob.

Erick:

Markman Pit limiter works. Yeah, it was kind of cool.

Jason:

It was kind of cool. Shout out to them too, because they're again by them patching in stuff. Even if this is a pre-release, you have a little more you know life into the game when your peripherals work.

Erick:

You know what I'm saying.

Jason:

So I had to give it up for them on the show. Like you know, if they need something, I mean they can reach out right. But they asked me to record telemetry and Jason, he doesn't know how to do that.

Jeff:

I said if you could walk me through A little painful saying yeah, I don't know how to do that.

Jason:

I don't know how to do that man. I don't know how to do that. Daniel was like never mind, dude, I'm just going to go in there tomorrow and get the data. I'm pretty sure it's simple, but dude, I'm a sim racer. I ain't trying to record. No telemetry man, I don't know what I'm doing. That's funny. Okay, so that covers the pros section and we're going to hit it with this. What do you think of the value? We're just talking value overall. I mean, I guess we covered value right.

Jeff:

The $30?.

Erick:

Yeah, all right.

Jason:

Yeah, the $30.

Erick:

And now you got SimHub working right. Yeah, it's an investment and the thing is it'll get better every week, every month.

Jason:

And before I say, before I go into the bad shit because there is bad shit you don't have to listen to me, you don't have to listen to YouTube, you don't have to go to Reddit. If you want to try this game, try it for yourself, Because there's so many different variables with this. It's all over the place. People tell you, well, my wheel works. And the other guy says, well, mine doesn't. And it's like, well, I'm lagging. And the other guy's was like, oh, I got 170 frames a second or whatever, like that. Just take a deep pill. You know, not a pill, sorry. Take a deep breath, no pills, take a deep. Yeah, go ahead.

Jeff:

No, no, go ahead. Finish what you're saying.

Jason:

I'll just take a deep breath, buy it, install it, try it. If it's not what you thought it was, get your refund. That's the best advice I can give you guys with this, before we even touch the cons, before we even get there. But go ahead, jeff, what you got.

Jeff:

All I want to say is say it again louder for the people in the back you can watch YouTube, you can listen to us. At the end of the day, go buy it. You don't like it, you're not happy with it, return it. Go figure it out for yourself. Take people's tips with a grain of salt. Take ours with a grain of salt. Go check it out yourself. If you're happy, great. If not, return it, I'll be honest. The reason I bought it was just to save a couple bucks. When it's done, I mean, I'll drive it for a little bit, but I'm not going to probably grind on it like you guys will.

Jason:

Not even. I mean, I don't see myself grinding on it. But for example, Jeff, you bought the game, let's say next month. They're like, you know what? We're going to release two Formula cars so you could try it out, You're probably going to jump in there.

Jeff:

You're like hell yeah, you're damn right, I'm going to jump in there, you could jump in at 30 bucks versus-. That's what an early release that was my intent.

Jason:

Yeah, the early release is not for you to grind or for you to expect any progression, because here's a scary one. Not all of them, but most of them will wipe the progress of the entire progress of the game at launch. So this is a test build. It's meant. You're like you're paying your ticket to be part of a club to test their stuff and to give them feedback because they want it, they need it. That's the only way they're going to get it is to get people to get hands on the stuff and say, hey, man, we want to build the simulator and we want it to be, I guess, the SimRacers voice. We don't like this. And if everybody stands up and says that we don't like something, they're going to get rid of it because they won't sell. The game won't sell. You know what I mean. In a perfect world, Because EA, I'll tell you. But anyways, I know I shot at EA with pride. Anyway, cons we're going to go over the cons. So the cons is very simple. We've touched, we've talked around it, We've actually covered some of it. I'll say it here Inconsistent performance.

Jason:

So on some tracks I'm going to even use Eric Kelly. I watched Eric Kelly right, and he turned the. This is funny as hell. He turned the difficulty of the opponent's level and his game started lagging. What you know what I mean? Stuff like that happened and I was watching and I was like I couldn't believe it. I was like what is going on?

Erick:

And yeah, oh, I set the game.

Jason:

Dude, I set the game to medium graphics and it looks better than ultra graphics to medium graphics, and it looks better than ultra graphics. What I don't know what is changing like. I don't know what it's doing, but it's something ain't right something's not clicking.

Jeff:

So I think it's going to take having to go in the individual graph, individual, you know, subcategories and messing with it, not just that easy slider at the top. That's my hunch, at least until it gets wrung out and fine-tuned.

Jason:

Right. And then again we don't have drivers, so maybe the GPU doesn't know what to do with what the game is telling the GPU to do In a very simple way to explain that we don't know. So you guys agree Inconsistent on all three.

Erick:

Because I have an inconsistent.

Jason:

I have a 4090, 9800X3D. I can't get over 70 FPS and sometimes I hit 90 and then I'll go back down to 70 and maybe even dip to 50. And when I look at my GPU usage, it at 99 99 and my 90, yeah, my 40, 90 pushing that much. And then the my cpu is only being utilized like maybe 30, so that's telling you that it's not something's not working correctly. You know what I mean? It's not something's not working correctly.

Jeff:

You know what I mean. It's not working in tandem, not optimized or whatever Right, I agree.

Jason:

I think you had a similar right, eric, with your CPU and GPU not working together.

Erick:

Yeah, it was weird. Like I said, I got a 7700X, not an X3D AMD processor and my CPU 40% usage.

Jason:

Right, it's not being used.

Erick:

And I got a 4070 with 12 gigabytes of RAM.

Jason:

Which is plenty. That's a powerful card for a single display.

Erick:

Yeah, single display, 4k ultra settings. And it was weird when I manually, manually moved there. I mean, I manually slid everything over at first, I didn't just use the slider at the top that changes the ultra. I manually slid everything over and it was running fine right on and with everything maxed out. Then I was, I think, on the stream. I was doing something like we talked about moving it down to medium or high or whatever and I used a slider to top to do that and the performance didn't really change.

Jason:

Yeah, it's not.

Erick:

After the stream I moved the slider back over to ultra and it went to crap and I'm like that's weird. Yeah, I was getting like it dropped down like 14 frames one time and 30, down to a crawl 60, and then it was. It was just all over the place. So I just I just assumed that some of the stuff like the dlss and other technologies, I don't think that they're fully working.

Jason:

No, so the game has FSR right now, but FSR is an AMD, it's an AMD scaler. We don't have DLSS yet because we don't have drivers again. So yeah, just hang tight guys for the drivers to come out, if they ever do so inconsistent performance. That hang tight guys for the drivers to come out if they ever do so inconsistent performance. That's one of the cons, the bugs, which is kind of in tandem with everything, and the major, the number one pain and I'm going to hold hands with Jeff is when you load up the car. You don't see anything.

Erick:

You see a black screen.

Jason:

And they said that they fixed it and they did not fix it.

Jeff:

That turned out to be a lie.

Jason:

And then Eric kind of corrected us and said that hey, that's an NVIDIA surround thing, because we're on triples and he's on a single screen.

Jeff:

So if you run into that man, just turn it down, apply and then turn it right back up you know another thing, that that drives me nuts is every time, at least for me, every time I load the game, open the game up, I'm stuck with the fiat, yeah oh, by default like just give me the last car I had bro who the hell drives a fiat Fiat.

Jason:

No freaking, no offense.

Erick:

They're proud of their.

Jason:

Fiat I guess.

Erick:

so they're proud of their physics.

Jeff:

Man, I'm telling you how about cars to be stuck on.

Jason:

Well it's. Italian the Fiat. You call it. That's probably what it is. It's Italian.

Erick:

It could be they're representing. I'll say one thing that I've encountered just because I have so many different headsets and stuff connected. If you launch the game and your desired audio output device is not selected, go into the settings and change it and it won't set it. You'll have to close the game, select it at the PC level and then launch the game again to get audio. So if anybody's struggling with that. That's, right now, the only way I've seen to address that.

Jason:

And to close this little section out, with the bugs, whenever they patch the game, that's an invitation for more of them to come out. They squash them. You know what I'm saying. They squash some few roaches and then like 10 of them come out and then they hide. So just keep that with a grain of salt. You know, next week the game might be broken and the week after something else might work and then this other thing is broken. So it's kind of part of it. That's part of bug.

Jeff:

Yeah, I'm having some really hard times mapping some of my stuff. I know Jason was giving me a hard time about my wheel, but I was reading some other people having a hard time. I had my Apex button starter in ignition working and then it pulled it off and now it won't. Let me remap it again. Yeah, it is what it is. I'll figure it out. Like when I finally got the wheel to work. I don't even know what I did differently I was giving him a hard time.

Jason:

I was like, just turn the wheel, bro, just give it a full turn. Are you shitting me? Do I need to go over there?

Jeff:

I just did the like I had always done 300 times before. I was like, did it just work. The one time I finally, after like an hour of trying to figure this out, texted Jason, I was like, hey, dude.

Jason:

Jeff was like oh yeah, of course it works. He's like turned it all the way around and I didn't even get in there to turn it. It was like mapped.

Erick:

And I was like I don't even know what I did to fix it. So I mean, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, eric, what's up? No, I was going to say I had some issues with my Neo showing up as well, because when we got to the stream, you saw I had the buttons mapped to the Neo, but you used the control mapper and control mapper works perfectly with it. I don't know. Yeah, so the thing was initially that was what I did.

Erick:

I mapped um with the control mapper and they they weren't working in my mind, but it wasn't detecting my neo so I had the wheel there and the wheel base was working right so it would turn and stuff like that, but none of the buttons would work and I was like, is it not reading the control mapper? That's why I ended up mapping the buttons physically to the to the wheel once I got to show up oh okay, you were like no, just use control mapper because it works yeah, I didn't know that.

Jason:

I saw the double maps. I was like try to avoid that, because now you have double input. But that makes sense now. Next time, eric, if you have an issue like that, just shut down SimHub and open it again, because it can have a little weird thing, especially with a new game like this too. I don't know how it's reacting, with sim hub working in the background and all this stuff. You just never know. And that's another thing. Crew chief I don't think crew chief is working either.

Jason:

So crew chief is yeah crew chief is a separate from sim hub so and I don't have any feedback. Also, in my pedals I don't get the ABS feedback because I need telemetry Straight from the game, straight, yeah, straight. So those are the bugs. They suck, we're going to get there. And then the next one I have is limited features which we kind of touched on content-wise.

Jeff:

I think we all knew what we were going to get features wise though, right, correct, yeah, I just.

Jason:

Yeah, I wish I could turn the hud off and for some reason I can't. So, yeah, there's a lot of stuff that I'm showing that I don't need to see, because simhub's working now and I don't need all this other extra data there, because I have peripherals and buttons for that. But other than that, it's a con. It's a con because the game is supposed to have more features when it releases. I mean, it's expected, though. This is an expected con, if you may.

Erick:

Something I've got to work on.

Jason:

Anything to add or we'll move on from that one I think we're good limited features. Eric, you didn't find anything, okay, um, force feedback. So force feedback is a pro and a con. It's a pro, like we mentioned earlier, because it's promising, but it still needs fine tuning, it needs work. It needs work because there's a lot of inconsistencies, right, like some cars feel great and some don't, and that's that's where I'm gonna leave it with force feedback. What do you guys think?

Jeff:

like I self-admitted only drove the the 992 so and I thought that was pretty good so, but if that kind of matches with what you're saying is varies car to car yeah, okay, I mean that's, yeah, I mean it's, it's an early, it's an early release you know yeah, and I think force feedback is pretty person to person it's person to person, but but I think to Jason's point it's very inconsistent.

Erick:

Okay, because you shouldn't have to change a lot of settings between cars to feel what that car, whatever that car, is doing right, regardless of the tires, tires, um and for me it was like one car. It might be very, not even just heavy, but you have a sense of what's happening in the car and then another one.

Erick:

It just feels like you're on ice like you. You have no communication from the car and I know in gt7 we experienced that and it's like well, the, the, that model of the car is kind of bunked or whatever.

Jason:

Or it's old or whatever. Yeah.

Erick:

Yeah.

Jason:

So I'm going to half agree with you, jeff, that it's personal preference, but it's kind of like seeing something right. You know how we do track of the week and I tell you, hey, there's a boot. And you're like, oh, I see the boot and now you can't unsee the boot. Yeah, that's fair. So I'm going to hit this with Eric. Eric is the most recent Me and Eric did some fine tuning on iRacing and he discovered a lot more fidelity than he thought that his wheelbase had, and now that's a bench line for him. It should be, that's a bench line. It's not really a preference, but it's like this is the highest level of detail I've ever experienced.

Jeff:

I guess that's fair. You know what I mean, like going from driving with a butt kicker and then taking it off and you're like, oh yeah, something's just missing a little bit.

Jason:

Which Eric hasn't found out yet, but when he does, we're going to get a shit ton of messages on the group chat. I promise you All right, so Go ahead, brother, what you got.

Erick:

No, I was going to say videos and everything, man.

Jason:

Videos and everything. Okay, so final thoughts, my final thoughts here the game in its current state. It needs work. It's not finished and it's not going to be finished for a long time. So, like we all told you earlier, take everything that you see on the internet and take it with a grain of salt, and I'll tell you why. There's a lot of youtubers not that I know of like personally, um but there's a lot of youtubers that will take something right and batch it to hell and create seven different videos on a game just to make content.

Jason:

This show is not in it for that. We're here to talk about what's really going on with this thing and what we feel about it. But again, the ultimate decision on how you feel about the game is up to you. It's on you to try the game and compare it and see if you like it or not. That is that simple. You don't have to go out nowhere. You know what I'm saying? It's $30. If you have $30 to spare, get it on Steam and you're guaranteed. You're guaranteed your money for a few hours. So make sure that you're that you have time when you install that thing. When you hit install, when you hit buy, make sure that you have time to test the game right then and there, because if you find out that this is not worth it, um, in your opinion, then you can get your money back. But in my humble opinion, ac Evo is definitely worth the $31. Full stop. So what I'm going to go through, I guess the same order that we've been going through, so, jeff you're up next.

Jeff:

I have nothing additional or better or worse to say than the way you put it. Go check it out for yourself. You got time to return it. Give it a go and make your own opinion. Don't take anybody else's. You can listen to ours as an input, but go make up your own mind. You might like it.

Erick:

You might not like it yeah, definitely, yeah, I agree, and, um, also remember, uh, something else as well. I think the 30 price is only through the end of January.

Jeff:

So if you're kind, of on the fence.

Erick:

Oh, that's a good catch, because it's normally $39 for the early access, but they say it's like a 20% discount or something like that right now. So just to give you guys that information, if you're kind of waiting.

Jason:

Which is great. I mean, that's $10.

Erick:

Come on, yeah so, which is great, I mean, that's $10. Come on, yeah, so, but but besides that, as far as just just final thoughts on it, I'm excited for it specifically because just in the different games I've been playing, this is it seems like they're very ambitious, trying to tackle both the on track experience and the kind of open world experience. I don't know of another game that's doing that with the physics and the, you know, the tire models and and that kind of stuff that I I'm excited for it, but right now it definitely needs work. But yeah, I think it's worth the 30 bucks easily.

Jason:

Okay, so, Jeff, you're up next brother.

Jeff:

For my thoughts on it, or no, not for me.

Jason:

Actually I got confused here, okay, so I'm going to swallow my words here. Before we started this show, I said that we might have time for track of the week. That doesn't seem like that's going to happen today, so we're going to have to postpone our track of the week. I wanted we spoke for a full hour, gentlemen, just on AC Evil alone, which I find hard to believe, but we did. We actually went through a full hour. So I think it's fair enough to push the track to next week. So stay tuned for track of the week next week. We do have something from Jeff that he wanted to cover and I will give that over to him. I think that's where my brain was.

Jeff:

Yeah, no worries, I didn't know if you wanted to hit there.

Jason:

I'm sorry man. I'm not perfect man. Something happened up here. He saw the hour go by.

Erick:

He's like wait a minute.

Jeff:

Where did that?

Erick:

go.

Jason:

What the hell, cut it short. I'm just kidding.

Jeff:

So by the time everybody's listening to this, it will be Monday morning. Everybody's starting their week. But this weekend, this past weekend, as if you're listening to this is the 24 Hours of Daytona in iRacing Endurance event. I'll share my tab here so you can see the track that they're doing. We'll do maybe like a mini little track of the week. See the screen the the track that they're doing. We'll do like a maybe like a mini little track of the week.

Jeff:

Um, I'm not going to talk about the track as much as the event, but nonetheless, so there, I mean, you can see it. It uses probably the traditional daytona layout, maybe what like 90 of it, but then it just has a little bit of that in the infield and then a quick chicane, um, but in I racing I'm going to cover this, this fairly quick as we're running a little long. Here's uh, they have uh, three or four classes some gt3s, lmps, um gtps and like the hyper class. Excuse me if that, if I'm missing, mispronounced, not pronounced, but you know, not getting that last class done right, uh, so shout out. This is done the week before the real daytona um event, the 24 hours at daytona. Shout out, daniel morad. Uh, you know, I don't know if he's racing or not, but if yes, he is, bro.

Jason:

He's gunning for that third watch good luck.

Jeff:

Yeah, yeah, man, yeah, um so good luck, buddy yeah, absolutely so.

Jeff:

Um, this is kind of cool. Dudes like I think it'd be cool to do a um, um, a endurance event, event 24 hours. That's a. That's a long pole. So some of the rules are is you can have, you have to have two people I'm I'll stop sharing this so we can sit here and talk I just want to kind of people to see that but you have to have two and I think you can have upwards of 12 or 14 members of the team that you could be switching out for. So I did a little bit of research that a lot of teams A will practice. So they'll have, you know, somebody driving and then pull into the pits and they'll practice their pit stops and things like that, which is a little you know. I don't know if you have like a, your phone is up and you're talking to people or Discord or like, imagine going in the real race and the dude's alarm doesn't go off or something.

Jeff:

Oh my god, I guess it depends, pinslip.

Erick:

Yeah.

Jeff:

So I think most people probably are doing four or five people and I don't know how long you think a good stint would be.

Erick:

How do you sleep, bro Knowing?

Jeff:

that your boys are grinding right, bro, and I did do some research and a lot of people will. As they're driving, somebody will spot for them, you know, so they can see above the car, further out and say, hey, there's a wreck, you want to stay on the left side, cause crew chief's not going to give you that right. It's going to say, hey, there's a wreck ahead and they'll tell you the person. It's not going to say where to go, where to stay. So now you're having like two people from your team up at all times so that eats into your your, your rest, really, from once you get out of the seat.

Jeff:

But what do you guys think if you're going to have, we'll say you know, what do you think is an optimal time to be driving for a stint? Jason, what do you think would be an optimal time If you had, we'll say, six people? How, how long do you think you should go to optimize? So you're not obviously pitting and slowing down, but staying optimal in the. You know the car is going to have to pit for tires and gas, fuel and stuff, but also eye fatigue, driver fatigue. You're asking a lot of you know from sitting there because usually in usually in sim racing is about three people, yeah usually the ones that I have seen it's mostly four or four.

Jason:

Yes, I've seen four and I've seen three. I've seen three in a set, of course. A Norse life like 24 hours, like for real 24 hours, like that's rough, I don't know, man, that's a tough question.

Jeff:

You think it's like two hours, eric, what do you think?

Jason:

I mean, but you're not going to see. Here's the thing. If you did two hours, that means you're pitting every two hours.

Erick:

Yeah.

Jeff:

What are you going to have to pit for? Tires and fuel? You know you're pitting already. Yeah.

Jason:

Yeah, but then you have to.

Erick:

Or if there's like a delay, I don't know how the switch works, if it's like just automatic and there's no additional time if you switch drivers, or if there's this is interesting, so I think it um delay.

Jeff:

I think it's 17 seconds if you're gonna just a driver switch and you could probably do tires and fuel as you're doing them. Okay, yeah, because you got to get them out and it might be more than that don't quote me on that.

Jason:

Yeah, as you've seen the memes, when they drag the guy out, he's like half dead. He drags his ass out.

Jeff:

So here's an interesting story. The last year they did this. Like a day went by or two days went by and somebody posted that somebody couldn't find a team and they did it solo. Now they got disqualified at the end. Yeah, but this brother did 24 hours bro. I don't know what type of energy, what kind of legs. Clearly isn't legal and then I did the three-hour race.

Jason:

I did a three-hour race on a simulator and I had arm pains like I didn't. I didn't map a button to mess with my force feedback, so I was like, they were like hold on a second.

Jeff:

You still have bodily functions that have to happen at 24 hours and my back too.

Jason:

I was my lower back. I was like, because you can't get up, you can't get up.

Jeff:

Yeah. So he said he's like I mastered taking leaks in in like less than a minute, you know. And he said he ate like like energy bars, so he like all fibered up and you know he didn't have to worry about going.

Jason:

Oh my god, that would be sick, though, to do an endurance race.

Jeff:

I can't it would be cool, but it'd be cool. What's that? Yeah, team Team, not solo. Yeah, not solo.

Jason:

No, but it's definitely possible with us. Like, say, a day where we had an off day and I know Jeff would probably take the night, I'll take the morning shift with somebody else, and then Eric lives all the way on the East Coast, so by the time he comes out, it's possible. It's possible.

Jeff:

It's totally possible, yeah, unless you're driving and you're like, hey, eric, are you up? Nothing, eric wake up.

Jason:

No, the best thing, bro about-.

Jeff:

I got to go another, you got to keep going.

Jason:

I've watched a stream one time I think it was Jardier's stream and he was mad as hell because when he woke up to take the car they had been disqualified. The car was toast. It was crashed.

Erick:

Mad as hell.

Jason:

It's like what happened to the car bro, oh man, yeah, that was sick.

Jeff:

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine that you're going to drive a lot more conservative right Because you don't want to wreck you're trying to survive, dude, you're trying to survival game to a point, but it is cool.

Jeff:

So I looked at you know you qualify and like they racking stack with different. You know different times that they go in groups. So you know a a class aren't going to be with like 16 d class drivers. You know, shout out, I'm a d class and I'm not giving anybody a hard time. But uh, you know. So I'm sure, uh, a good old boy, max, has given it a go and he'll be in the, the pro class he'll be there yeah, him and his team, yep, so, uh, anyways, it just is.

Jeff:

It's a probably one of the bigger events that sim racing, that, uh, I racing does um, and we're not all I racing podcast we did talk an hour about a different game today but nonetheless the one of the bigger events in iRacing. We'd be remiss if we didn't talk about it at least bring it up.

Jason:

That is a great point.

Jeff:

So just wanted to say, shout out to everybody that's given it a go today, tonight, tomorrow. Okay, and give it a quick wrap up. You know, I'm sure there was. You know teammates that didn't wake up, didn't you know? You know had emergencies or whatever. Or you know kids walking in and unplugs the computer on them or something. Oh my god, I'll try to come up with like a, a compilation of all the stories that get posted to all this, all the reddits and the facebook groups and stuff like that of.

Jeff:

Uh, that would be awesome, bro. So I'll just remember, we'll wrap it up again, uh, with the, you know, maybe next with the 24-hour summary of Daytona. Very good section, man, anyways.

Jason:

This was awesome, by the way, this. Actually I don't feel too bad from skipping the track of the week because, imola, bro, that's another hour here. Yeah, I promise you I need to give that the honor and glory that it deserves. But we also have to pay homage, because we received a few emails this week and we're just going to go over those real quick. Okay, so the first message that we got this week was from Drew Funk, which I believe I think he's emailed us before. He says hey guys, I'm an episode behind, but if you do, merch, I think stickers would be cool. On a personal note, I went against your better judgment and bought the Logitech G Pro wheel.

Jason:

Okay, I want to know what you think about that, because I don't have any. I don't know anybody that has one of those. It's kind of cool and while it was good wheel, I should have finished the message here. And while it was good, I should have finished the message here. And while it was good, it was a good wheel. I was consistently wondering about the SimMagic GT Neo. I sold the Logitech. So just disregard what I just said. I sold the Logitech. That didn't take long. I sold the Logitech and I'm in limbo currently. I have three boys under four. Oh, that's gotta be rough good for you dad, yeah, yeah.

Jason:

So time is my biggest limitation, but game plan is to get a pc rig and sim magic set up down the road. In the meantime, listening to your podcast uh, excuse me, listening to your show keeps me updated on hardware appreciated and software and gets the gears turning on a potential setup someday. Thanks guys, keep it up. Hey man, shout out to you for, uh, keeping up with the kids. Um, you know, building, building your setup. Just take your time, just take your time. Uh, I see that you, you tossed the Logitech pretty quickly. So I mean, it made sense what we were talking about, didn't it?

Jeff:

Hey Drew, rome wasn't built in a year. Buddy, you take your time building your rig.

Jason:

Yeah, exactly yeah, it's never done anyway, no true words it's never going to be done, no matter how far you throw it it. So for the next one I'll give it over to Jeff.

Jeff:

Yeah, we got Paul from Texas. Hey, fellas, just want to say thanks for the podcast. I've been listening to all them, looking forward to each new episode. I'm wondering if you guys would allow me to run a Chicane podcast logo on my cars in iRacing oh, look at that. I wouldn't do it unless you guys are cool with it. In iRacing oh, look at that. I wouldn't do it unless you guys are cool with it. I'm sure we could figure that out.

Jeff:

I got to beta test iRacing a long time ago, raced for a few years and picked it back up a few months ago. Like most, I got a long, strange story with my sim racing. It's cool listening to everybody's story about how they get in. Previously I raced ovals coming from NASCAR racing in 2003. There's a crazy story with the game in iRacing 2. Google Dave Kemmer I might have mispronounced him and John Henry if you don't know or if you want a little story. Since I've dipped my toes into the slower sports and open wheel cars, I would encourage you guys to keep an open mind on oval. That's a fair point. Maybe find a guest who knows a little stuff regarding ovals.

Jason:

Yeah, that's some good advice Very good, very good.

Jeff:

It's a different discipline whose limitations are what makes good experience. Anyhow, keep up the great work and send me a big chicane podcast PNG file. I love to paint cars. I'm not good at them, but they're fun. I agree, buddy, I like making them. I'm not good at it, but it's fun. Uh, kind of like my racing. He says, uh hope you all to see all on the track and thanks for what you do, Paul and 18,517. I'm sure that's something to do with his iRacing number, his, his, his iRacing number, yeah, yeah, uh.

Jeff:

So, paul, I don't know the story, but I will get back, I will do some research this week, I'll get my google on and I will google these people and find said story and I will relay that story with the uh, with our listeners. Um and on that dude, I was actually thinking about doing some type of oval racing, just to try it out. I mean it's got. I mean look at NASCAR, it's like just huge. I'm not saying I do NASCAR. Every time my brother comes over the house all he does is NASCAR. So my rig does get some oval use.

Jason:

So I'll chime in on this, and this is controversial. Don't hate me. But don't hate me for saying this. I cannot stand nascar watching it. However, driving nascar actually driving it is a lot of fun. So I found that you know um, racing ovals is intense, but watching it, I'm not a fan of watching it yeah, that's reasonable.

Erick:

Yeah, so I'll say um, you know a couple of well we mentioned, I race in Idiots of the Week. Oh, the worst ones are in NASCAR, bro, the worst crashes, bro, the craziest crashes happen in those oval races and you think about, like how would I avoid that? Like sometimes, like I can't avoid that, you know. I mean mean it looks just dangerous. We were racing, other cars going you know 200 plus kilometers an hour or whatever, but you see those guys like 4 or 5 wide going around the turn.

Jeff:

it's like and none of them have any business going 3 wide around a corner. You think first car pileups are bad.

Jason:

It just takes one.

Jeff:

It just takes one and you're still close to each other.

Erick:

I definitely see it, being fun it's intense, bro, it's intense.

Jason:

Oh snap, all right, Eric, you got the last one. What's up?

Erick:

We got Julian who sent us an email from Australia. He says hi guys, loving the podcast has quickly become one of my favorites and look forward to it each time. Watch the following YouTube video with Keanu Reeves and thought you might be interested. Love the show, keep up the great work. And so I've seen this on my YouTube feed. I haven't watched it yet, but uh, it's uh the title of the video for all of our audio listeners. It's a keanu reeves story and it's him racing a uh toyota in the toyota gr cup in 2024 and I go through his story.

Erick:

uh, the video is 16 minutes and 30 seconds long and Keanu Reeves just has like you know, he kind of goes all in on stuff. This seems to be something else that he's going all in on. It looks pretty interesting.

Jeff:

Is there anything this guy's not good at Like John Wick's? Good at everything?

Erick:

Yeah, bro, I feel like John.

Jason:

Wick is more of an autobiography of him. Well, this is Neo, bro, he's the one. Remember, yeah, bro. I feel like John Wink is more of an autobiography of him. Well, this is Neo, bro, he's the one, remember?

Jeff:

Yeah, that's the Matrix, right, dude? Have you seen? This guy can shoot guns like nobody's business. Apparently drive cars.

Jason:

He can dodge bullets too, bro.

Erick:

Yeah, don't forget, that's the most important piece.

Jason:

Yeah, I'll include the links to this video in the description below for you guys to check out. I haven't seen it myself. Rob Markman, I'll give it a watch. Rob Markman, I'm a big Keanu Reeves fan, anyway.

Jeff:

Rob Markman. Yeah, absolutely Rob Markman.

Jason:

Solid actor.

Erick:

Rob Markman yeah, on what he does. So yeah, we'll definitely watch it and appreciate it again. Julian, Glad to have you watching and listening and give us a shout out if you got any more questions.

Jason:

All right, gents, thank you so much for the messages. Anything we've covered on the show, this long show today, send us an email at thechicanepodcast at gmailcom. We will address all two of these emails that we need to follow up on on the next episode, and that's going to be it for me. I don't have any roundtables, just do a. Okay, I'm seeing nodding.

Jeff:

Round's complete.

Jason:

The round's complete.

Jeff:

I saw the eye. That was an evil. Look, I'm sorry, Drop cast everybody and break late.

Jason:

There, that was an evil. Look, I'm sorry, podcast everybody. And Brinkley, there you go. Come on, jeff, you got to remind people, bro, they forget.

Jeff:

I hear you. Not bad, I won't let it happen again.

Jason:

All right, gentlemen, and to all you followers and listeners, make sure you leave a like and subscribe and have a great start of your week, thank you.

People on this episode

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Jason Rivera

Host
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Erick Kelly

Co-host
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Jeff Smart

Co-host