The Chicane Podcast

Sim Racing VR Guide 2025

• Track Ghost Sim Racing • Episode 52

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Diving headfirst into the virtual reality revolution transforming sim racing, we explore the landscape of VR headsets available in 2025. From budget-friendly options to premium experiences, we break down what matters most when choosing your perfect racing companion.

The Meta Quest 3 emerges as our top recommendation at $499, offering a compelling mix of features including 120Hz refresh rate, automatic IPD adjustment, and versatility beyond racing. We compare it against premium options like the Pimax Crystal ($1599) with its superior QLED display, discussing whether the significant price difference justifies the enhanced visual experience.

Beyond specifications, we tackle the real-world challenges of racing in VR—managing heat during extended sessions, finding comfort with a device strapped to your face, and the inevitable cable management dance. These practical considerations often get overlooked in technical reviews but can make or break your VR racing experience.

We also highlight which racing titles deliver the best VR implementation, with iRacing, Assetto Corsa (especially with Content Manager), and Automobilista 2 standing out for their immersive qualities. Content Manager deserves special praise for transforming AC into perhaps the most complete VR racing experience, allowing you to walk around your car and examine details in ways other titles can't match.

Throughout our discussion, we emphasize that VR represents just one approach to sim racing, not inherently superior to traditional monitor setups. The best configuration is ultimately the one that brings you enjoyment within your budget constraints—whether that's VR, triples, or a single ultrawide.

Have questions about VR or other sim racing topics? We'd love to hear from you at thechicanepodcast@gmail.com. Don't forget to check out our new merch store to support the show!

Marvin's Awesome iRacing App (MAIRA) - https://herboldracing.com/marvins-awesome-iracing-app-maira/

Ericks Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thetechgentleman

Jeff's Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@SmartLivin-808

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

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

All my links: https://linktr.ee/tgssimracing

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Intro/Outro Rights below:
Song: Low Mileage - Hold You [NCS Release]
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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's everyone doing today?

Jeff:

Doing good man. Happy to be here. Dude, best part of the week. Great seeing you. Gentlemen, as always Ready to get into it.

Jason:

Hell yeah, man, I'm excited. I'm excited to be here. It was a great week. Last week we had George Anzaldo from the Sim Gaming Expo, which we're a week less away. It's still forever away.

Jeff:

Clicking them off. We'll get there, we'll get there, man yeah calm down, man. I think George is like hey, don't wish this time away, man, he's working his ass off for this thing.

Erick:

He really is man. Yeah, he's grinding for real.

Jason:

That man is on overtime plus.

Jeff:

We don't even know what that means Exactly needs. Yeah, so exactly, he's uh bouncing off the rev limiter.

Jason:

Yeah, he is man. So I mean, last week it was great we announced the opening of the uh, the tgsr store. She came podcast both. Both brands are in there and I got lucky, very lucky, to receive two pieces of merch today. And here is the official mug dang that looks nice. It's already being used and abused.

Jeff:

You can see some of the condensation.

Jason:

I know you can see the. I was going to say there's coffee in here, but you know what happens when you score that low.

Jeff:

You know what's in there? It's that same bottle that we were drinking on that night, Jeff.

Erick:

That's in the freezer. You missed the opportunity, Jason. You could have said there's some iced coffee in there.

Jason:

There's some iced coffee in there. I can't confirm or deny.

Jeff:

It's literally straight, no chaser today.

Jason:

It is man, it is. We got to stay hydrated. On the Chicane Podcast. I also got this cool coaster Chicane Podcast. It's already being banged up and thrown around. I am not treating this with any care. I'm putting it to the absolute test. So I'm very happy with the quality. I was a little, I was a little worried about that because the store was so new, but then I made sure and I basically ordered the entire store. So just to make sure that quality checks and make sure that if you want to support the show, that you get something that's going to last you. You know what I mean. That's something that's good and worth it. So that's one announcement. For my second one, I'm really excited to announce the streaming I stream every Tuesday and Wednesday. Now it's on schedule for Twitch, but I am adding a YouTube stream which is the same exact stream. And just a fair warning, you know it's very raw and uncut and unfiltered in there. So straight, no chaser. Same thing we say here on the show. So if you want to join us, y'all been warned.

Jason:

I think Eric might join the train on this with the GRL racing. We're still missing, jeff, but we'll get there, we're. We're summer's approaching, so maybe we'll have a little more time to do things, who knows? Um, but uh, yeah, that's, that's about it.

Jeff:

I want to see me out there in a sports car.

Jason:

Oh, oh, I know, trust me, I know you have something to say very soon about this. So the next one up is Eric Kelly for announcements. So what you got for us today, man, how was your week?

Erick:

Man, my week was good. Didn't do much racing Didn't get to race Tuesday but outside of that doing mostly family stuff. And my youngest daughter had her first soccer game this past Thursday and I know the little kids. They beat the brakes off of them 5-0. I'll take it.

Erick:

The cheetahs Go cheetahs everybody Go cheetahs, go cheetahs. Yep, it's funny because of course we're like you had a good time, you won your race. I mean, you won your game. How do you feel about soccer? You know you went to practice and hit the game. She's like it was fine, but I don't think this is going to work long term. This is a five-year-old. She said it like that yeah, like I don't think this is going to work long.

Jason:

I wonder where she gets that from. Interesting Kids say the funniest things Look.

Erick:

So the thing that she really wasn't there for was, you know, at that age it's basically like herding cats, so whenever the ball's in the field, all the kids just kind of hurtle around it and she kind of like bounces around the outside. And when the ball kind of squirts out, then she goes for it, but all the kids being all together bunched up, she's not really feeling that. So I got to talk to her and be like hey, that's kind of how it is right now. But no, move up, once kids learn their positions, things will work out a little bit better. But yeah, we're working on it. We're working on it. That sounds like a fun week, man, that's what's up.

Jason:

You got your win. She's probably super happy. That's what's up.

Erick:

that's what's up, wear outfit, you know oh yeah, oh yeah, 100%.

Jason:

I saw you in the suit too, eric. Any excuse, eric has to wear a suit. Bro, you'll see him and he'll be on social media front and center. Yo, check me out my suit oh man look clean yeah, he be looking clean out there sharp yeah, that was last weekend.

Erick:

We had the father-daughter dance.

Jason:

Yeah, I'm telling you, it's all over, yeah check me out.

Jason:

That's what's up man, that's what's up. Not everything is rig racing and brakes and hard chicane chasing corners and all this crap. We got lives too. So that's good that you made the time for for for the fam, so, but I hope to see you in the next bnw race though. So hey, that's, that's my goal, man. All right, man, that's what's up. And what about you, jeff? What's going on with you? Man, I heard, uh, you know, I heard a little bit of things, you know.

Jeff:

But yeah, let's start with good stuff. We had a great easter, okay had some family.

Jason:

Oh, happy eas, happy Easter, everybody Happy Easter.

Jeff:

Oh my God, yeah, so started off the day at the beach and then we had a nice little dinner after, but it was good. But now we got the pleasantries out of the way. Dudes, the F4 in the D class open official races Killing me, killing me, come on. D-class open official races killing me, killing me, man bro, you know like, you know what you know. When there's like a hurricane and on social media they like boom, marked safe from whatever, I think I feel like I needed one that said like hey, marked safe from d-class f4 racing for that oh no rather like two races.

Jeff:

I had smashed my safety and it's not for like lack of trying, Like hey, I'm going to give them like a car lane.

Jason:

They were laying it on thick, that's what they were doing.

Jeff:

It was just brutal. It's brutal, like, even when you're like going like and staying away from the stuff, like oh, it's a big crash over there as they come swerving right into you know, like, ah, like you know, know, it was just so. Yeah, the problem is they're convenient right they're like every 15 minutes. There's a bunch of different tracks every week. You can jump in you can jump in and go. It's super convenient. Yeah, iracing, if you're listening. Make the c class more convenient.

Jeff:

Yeah, and you'll probably get more people in them well we don't have that many c's that's the problem, jeff is that I don't know, man, but dude, you jump into a b class with this like a super formula and that is as good as racing gets in the open world. Open wheel world. It like those dudes can drive the snot out of the car. They're respectable. Like you can go wheel to wheel open car for as long as you need to and you know the person's a gonna give you space and isn't, you know, is gonna race you hard but not take you out.

Jeff:

Um, right but damn, those f4 classes are.

Jason:

Are are convenient, but we got an f4 in the grRL, but it's on odd hours.

Jeff:

I get it, I understand so yeah, it's like I don't know when it is, I forget it was like 3 am or something, if I did the math on it. Just, I love racing. I don't love racing that much to get up at 3 am. Well, I get up at four every day anyways.

Jason:

That's going to be my number one driver, and that's because of the time zone.

Jeff:

Yeah, that works out.

Jason:

I said, mike, you're going to have to grab the wheel. I'm going to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning, start the stream and then take my happy ass back to bed, and then we're going to do a 1.5 each, so an hour and a half each, and I don't know I might just stay up for it. So.

Erick:

but yeah, yeah, and that's the end, that's the endurance, right, jason a three-hour seabring multi-class.

Jason:

It's gonna be three different types of vehicles there. We're gonna have the bmw, the mx5 and the porsche. We'll be in the porsche, but yeah, go ahead, jeff you got one more thing.

Jeff:

What's up? Yeah, I am like on the fence with a wind simulator too I just buy the just. I know I want the hurricane, but I don't want to pay the hurricane price. All right, listen, there's like the hurricane, there's everything else we're gonna set up a gofundme? Yeah, we'll have links in the description I, I'm kidding, it's just, I've been doing a lot of VR driving, so it gets hot.

Jason:

Dude their fans. They help. However, there's another option for you. So I think it's called. I forget the name of this. I'll put it in the link. Okay, but it's called Bobo VR and it has a built-in fan.

Jeff:

I want the immersion too. I'm not going to sit there and lie.

Jason:

You see how difficult Jeff is to deal with guys. You see you give him the alternative. He's like but I want this and I'm like all right, buy it. He's like no, I can't do that.

Jeff:

I'm like Jeff, come on, man, I'll eventually pull the trigger, but I'm going to bitch and moan about it.

Jason:

It for a little bit. Yeah, that's okay. There you go, that's okay, as expected. As expected, all right. Onward and upward Okay, all right, guys. So today, you know, we've been speaking about VR and I think that it's about that time to dedicate an episode here straight on VR. We'll have some variations in between, but you know, I want to discuss the different options out there because there's many and it can be scary to shop around and it's a very open thing, right. So, because VR is like, can my hardware run it? Can my system take it?

Jeff:

right, it's another expensive hurdle to jump to get into it without.

Jason:

It's really hard for me to try all the different ones as well. Yeah, definitely yeah, what do you care about? Do you care about comfort? Do you care about performance? Do you care?

Jeff:

about visuals. And then price is always.

Jason:

Everybody cares about a price, to a extent exactly yeah, and it's not something that you can plug into the pc and it just works. It's's nothing like that. You have to do tinkering. You're going to do some tinkering, especially if you're jumping from Synth to Synth. It's a very different experience on each of them.

Jason:

So, with that out, the way, I am going to present, I think, a list of what's on the market right now and then at the end we'll go through and we'll all express our recommendations on what you guys think. So just bear with me for one second and I will get my some notes on the screen and some visuals for you guys. But we'll start from the top here, and the list that I've came up with is the pymax crystal. There's two, there's two versions, right, but pymax, we'll stick with pymax crystal light and the actual pymax crystal. The meta quest 3 I would I would suggest the meta quest, but that's no longer in production and I really don't recommend buying a used VR headset because you don't know what it's been through. It could have been dropped, or you know you're buying something. If you do want to take the plunge, then make sure you test it out for a good hour, I would say, before purchasing something, or if it's from someone you trust and that purchased it and takes care of their equipment the MetaQuest 2, the Samsung HMD Odyssey Plus, the HTC Vive Pro 2, and the Oculus Rift. So I'm going to go through a quick rundown of the specs on each.

Jason:

But before we do that, I want to tell you guys what are the cons right when considering a VR headset, and I want you guys to all also chime in if you have anything that you think I've missed. But I think a big issue is having to set a button to recenter the camera. I know a lot of Sims have fixed this. I know iRacing has fixed it. So that way, when you, if you had to take off your headset to look at the monitor, when you put your headset back on, it likes to auto recenter.

Jason:

But that doesn't always work because you know what, if you're not fully straight, you know you would have to map a button that you can't see and press that button and make sure that it's that the camera's like straightened Right. So this, yeah, this comfort is a, is a is a con. It doesn't matter how comfortable the headset is telling you that it is. It's something that's on your head and it's something that's weighing your face down and 15 minutes is fine, 20 minutes is okay. But when you start wearing this for an hour it can get pretty uncomfortable and poor ventilation, as Jeff was saying earlier why he wants to have a wind sim to cool him down.

Jason:

That's a proof, that's a proven point, right there, and needing to take the headset off whenever you want to do something Right, unless you have a headset that has pass through which we will go over. And even so, a headset with pass through is not perfect, because you're looking at another screen and it may be fuzzy. If your room is dark, then the cameras might not work. They may or may not work.

Jeff:

If you're in a dark room and the screen's bright, yeah, you're going to lose.

Jason:

Right, and I know Quest is one of my favorite headsets because of the balance of it, which I'll go over you can use hand track, so you don't need a controller, but for the hand track and the work you need light and mixed reality, which we'll touch on later is dependent on the room being 100% dark, so forget about using your hands to control things. So you're going to need to have a set of controllers nearby, at least one to point and click and do. It's just. There's a big um uh order of operation, if you may, with having a vr headset and and engaging with the pc and, and it's not just like having a mouse. That's right there and you just do whatever you want to do, except for the F1 games that don't support a mouse. Yeah, I don't know how they're doing it in VR. So imagine you have to take the headset off and then grab the keyboard because we don't support a mouse.

Erick:

So that's that is crazy.

Jason:

Yeah.

Jeff:

So those are some of the-.

Jason:

Yeah man, do you what? Yeah, so those are some of the yeah man, do you what? Do you guys feel about cons? Right, I mentioned the ones I found, but do you guys have any? I know jeff and eric are heavy into the vr stuff, um, on both platforms, pc and playstation. So let's hear from you guys if you have anything. If not, I'll move on yeah, it's just not quick.

Jeff:

If I'm going to jump in and just want to spend some laps, I'm not going to do it in VR, but between the time you're putting it on your head, linking it and then displaying it. But I don't see a big deal so much with I have to map a button. I mean, there's so many other buttons that you're pressing and I'm not really looking down to look for my tear off or break bias, so it's just another button that I have. After about two races though, it's like I'm about sweated out and just wanting to get up. It's getting hot.

Jason:

And your house is air conditioned too.

Jeff:

Yeah, I have central air, um, but it just, it still just gets warm. I think for me that's the biggest con, is just the heat. My neck didn't, the head's not tired, it's just hot just hot, you know okay and I turn when I'm racing. I have the two side monitors are off, just the center. One gets turned on right. So it's not a heat from the monitors thing per se, that's a smart thing you can.

Jason:

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty smart you can.

Jeff:

You can even turn down the brightness too, and does it automatically.

Erick:

So, yeah, okay yeah, and I forgot about that. Y'all got a different setup than me. I don't have the triple, so I don't have three heaters in my face, I just have one bro so when you run these at 100% brightness, at full refresh, the monitors get heated.

Jeff:

That's why you want that Winsome I know, that's why we should get one.

Jason:

I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But what about you, eric? Any cons with, I guess, psvr? Right, right, because that's you've yeah that's days in that headset, not hours, days bro yeah, I've got this.

Erick:

Got considerable time in the psvr2 headset, um, I'll say, just kind of speaking on the things, comfort wise, uh, for me I'm able to get it like 90 percent, um, but I use the SteelSeries headset over it and so it kind of forces the headset to kind of sit on my face a little bit unnaturally. When I don't have that on, I can wear it with no discomfort for hours. I'm one of the I know that's rare, right, because I know a lot of people. They have motion sickness, they complain about the straps and things moving. And then from a heat perspective I'm also kind of in a special situation. I have a whole separate AC unit specifically for my man cave, so I can just tell.

Jason:

Okay. My man's over there doing his. Thing. I hear you.

Erick:

Yeah, I can tell Google. You know, set it to 70 degrees. If I'm getting hot, I don't have to take the headset off, I don't have to do anything, it just drops the temp. My rig is right beneath the vent, so I know I'm in a special situation, but that's just my experience. My only complaint obviously kind of mentioned it before limited availability of buttons with the headset on psvr2 does have pass-through. It's not the best, but black and white pass-through too yeah, black and white.

Erick:

Um, I can, you know, read a message on my phone? Um, you know, I can see enough if I don't need to interface with a physical button, but you do have to, kind of, you know, disconnect from vr for a second to do that.

Jason:

So that is a downside to me, but that's okay so I think one more con and this may be subjective, as to all cons, right is the having to plug something in and a wire and having to manage a wire that's coming off the side of or the back of a headset. And sometimes it's really cool to look around in VR and when you're beside another car you're going to want to look and turn your head, and sometimes that wire can get in the way of something. I was texting Jeff the other day. I was like where are you running the wire? Because I was messing around, tinkering before making this video or this episode, I wanted to really use what I have and do a fair comparison here, based off the hardware that we have. And he was telling me yeah, I just run it underneath the rig and then it comes up through the seatbelt hole, which is kind of genius, but it's still a wire that you have to manage and it's still a wire that you have to put away.

Jason:

I'm being really nitpicky and it's the reason is because I want to give you the real story with this right. I don't want to sugarcoat nothing and tell you that it's all gravy. You know, because a lot of people, a lot of people, buy VR headsets and they use them as a cost, you know, to save on the cost of a monitor. With the stands, I understand that, I get that. Or some people don't have the space to have a triple monitor set up. I mean, that's true, it depends. You know, some people are on a PlayStation and they only play PS5 and VR and and they don't need monitors, so they'll just have a rig with no monitors attached and just straight on from the playstation. But it is dope. Yep, yeah, it's cool, it's it's it's, it's an experience.

Jeff:

I would say that I'm gonna add one more thing is is it's not, it's not impossible to set up. You're just not gonna, if you're not familiar with like stuff, like this technology, you're not going to stumble into it working to having iRacing push it through your cable into your headset. You're going to have to watch a YouTube, you know whatever video, to get it figured out. It's just not very intuitive.

Jason:

Right. It's not easy to set up and even after you watch that YouTube or guide online, that doesn't mean that you have the matching hardware that that person's using. So you're going to still have to go and fine tune things a little further to get that frame rate. Because VR is very frame rate dependent, you want the highest frames you can get because anytime that that frame dips it's going to mess you up big time. It's going to hurt your eyes when you see it. Chops of visuals happen in front of your eyes. You know what I mean and I'll tell you even with a 40-90.

Jason:

Yeah, go ahead, Eric.

Erick:

I was going to say it can even make you sick too. I know they say that's a big cause of people to have the motion sickness and the nausea and stuff. It's the lag. Yeah, the lag. It's not one-to-one. Yeah, it's a big deal.

Jason:

It needs to have high frames. But I was going to say iRacing is an old game 2008. It's been updated. It looks great. It's been looking way better lately. Now better than ever.

Jason:

But it's not ACC and it's not Gran Turismo and it's not AMS2, graphically, fidelity-wise. You know what I mean. So when I turned up the graphics on that, I was getting a stutter and I have a very top end machine. So just to give you an example of the demand of VR, to get that you know, that crystal clear image with us, with a mix of frames, I had to tinker and it still did not look as good as the game on the monitors, which is obvious, right? So, anywho, let's go back to the headset comparison to give you the rundown on what's going on in 2025, to kind of help you decide if you think VR is worth a shot.

Jason:

This guide will kind of help you out a little bit. So I mentioned the Pimax Crystal, the light and that resolution is a 2880 by 2880. It supports 60, 72, 90, and 120 hertz. The FOV, which is your field of view and how wide you can see, which is a very important number, is about 103 degrees. To give you, to give you context with triple screens, you're, you're, you're looking at 180 degrees, which is the widest view you can have right for for screens, I guess screens screen-wise. The benefits of that headset is lightweight, you know, it's got manual IPD adjustment and it's a QLED display. The problem with this one is $899 is what that thing costs US. Okay, not cheap.

Erick:

It's not cheap.

Jason:

So the MetaQuest 3, which I'm going to spoil it here is my winner, my pick for anyone that wants to get into VR. And I'll explain why. Once I go over the specs, so it's got a lot less resolution here. Why, once I go over the specs, so it's got a lot less resolution here. 2064 by 2200, you know ish, you know. 2208 says here up to 120 Hertz um of refresh rate. Uh, it has the pancake lenses. So those pancake lenses are supposed to be higher quality and they have the automatic adjustment.

Jason:

So you know how people say that there's a sweet spot to VR. So if you move your headset down, you see blurry. If you move it up in the middle, you see perfect, this headset has an automatic adjustment. It happens automatic. You put the headset on, you'll never see a blurred line anywhere. I'm pretty sure Jeff can tell you and I was teasing him earlier. I was like Jeff, you're so spoiled man. Your first headset is like the top of the line and it's light, it's very compact and the price is right guys $499 for 512 internal space. It does way more than sim racing. It has it's own OS built into it. It has pass through, it has color pass through, it has hand tracking. It's awesome. You know you can.

Jason:

if you got kids, you can let them use, yeah so, and it has mixed reality games built into the headset, so you you'll be looking around the house. You can walk around the house with the headset on, no problem. No problem, you see everything. Just be careful with the boxing games. It's the only thing.

Erick:

Boxing games, you probably knock somebody out. Tear something up, shoot you probably knocked somebody out, tear something up, shoot.

Jason:

Yeah, and one thing I remember when Jeff came over the house and he was trying to quest three out here at my house, I was like dude, look, you can bring this on travel. If you travel somewhere like a hotel and you basically had a 150 inch screen of YouTube in 4K, you could lay in your bed and watch YouTube and not worry about the 32 inch inch screen that's in most hotels out there, which are pretty trash, to be honest.

Jeff:

Yeah, I watched f1 on them with them you watch.

Jason:

Oh, how was that? Man, that's great yeah, it's immersive, yeah, yeah. So if you're, like you know, think of it like that, it's a multi-tool, multiple, you know, use, and it's compact enough for you to stick in a bag and take it with you.

Erick:

Yeah, that's dope.

Jason:

Yeah. So the Pimax Crystal, the regular version. It has the same resolution as the light, it goes up to 120, but the thing you get out of that one is a QLED plus mini LED display. Uh, q led plus mini led display, which I can tell you now that must look amazing. The blacks, the inks on a on a q led is. It's gonna blow you away. But the thing is, yeah, it better, right, because uh 1599 is what we're looking at for this headset.

Jason:

It's got the auto ipd adjustment, the same as the quest, um and eye tracking, same as the quest. So the quest 2 is honorable mention. It goes up to 90 from the from the stock, but when you plug it into pcvr you can actually boost it higher. Um, it has 115. You know fo, fov, the resolution is 1832 by 1920. It's you know.

Jason:

Both quests are wireless capable so you can run it through Air Link. It doesn't need a Facebook account. That's irrelevant to me. It was $299 for the 128 gig and $399 for the 256. But since I think since last year or late last year, they're no longer in production so you can get one secondhand.

Jason:

But I don't recommend this one and it's because of that, having to adjust and find a sweet spot. When you're racing, your head is moving, quick reaction If quick, quick reaction If, if a millimeter moves on that headset over your eyes, you lost a sweet spot. Now you got to take the hand off the wheel and you're messing with your headset. It's not worth it. I would save up and get the the latest quest just because of that feature alone. So here are the other two, or the other three I'm going to mention here that I'm not too familiar with and I think they're older. I think Eric can back me up on this. But the Samsung HMD Odyssey Plus is a 1440 by 1600, 90 Hertz, 110 FOB AMOLED displays which AMOLED displays are awesome, but they're also also.

Jason:

It's also a discontinued headset and it was going for 499 yeah the htc vibe pro, which a lot of sim racers use yeah, it's a popular one that's a very popular one and it's because of the resolution you know 2448 by 2448 uh 90 to 120 hertz, 120 fov, which is awesome. I think that's the highest that I've mentioned here.

Jason:

It has one of the highest uh fovs out there almost by far yeah, definitely high resolution, wireless capable, but it requires a base station, so, and it's 700 for the headset by itself. So if you want the full kit, you're looking at $1,200 again. And then the Oculus Rift. Oculus Rift, excuse me, s is a 1280 by 1440, 80 Hertz, 115 FOB. It doesn't need separate, it doesn't need sensors but, like the majority of sensors, don't like the save your money and get the quest 3 yeah, four hundred dollars so the rundown here go ahead, I think I missed somebody.

Jason:

Nope good to go. So the rundown most of these headsets are more than capable to deliver the frames, meaning the hers, right. So I would say you're looking at a minimum of 90. 90 should be your minimum and that means that you need to match that 90 to 90 FPS and above. Right, it makes sense. You want to max out the frames of your game to make it match and sync up with the headset. That way there's no lag. There's nothing weird going on. Fov subjective, but I would say anything between 110 and above is considered a great FOV. There's things you can do to headsets that you can change the cover, the plate as as you may and get the the lenses closer to your face and increase the fov, whatever, um, but anyways, that's the kind of the rundown I mean.

Jason:

The winner here is a quest three you. It costs 4.99. You can probably get it used cheaper if you want to go that route. It has a built-in os. It has it's the headset itself, is the sensor, is it's got cameras? Um, it has its own ecosystem. It has an app. You can cast things from your phone straight into the headset. Um, it's just. It's just a tool to me. The whole family can use it too. Yeah, the whole family. There it is, the whole family can use it. Um, oh, I did forget to mention one, which was the big screen. Beyond that, we went over uh on the chicane podcast previously, uh, yeah, and that one is kind of up there too with the pricing. Let me just look that up real quick, I think it was 1200 with eye tracking yeah, 1200, with eye tracking to uh 2560 by 2560.

Jason:

So you know we've mentioned headsets with a higher resolution. However, it has um per eye, a dual one inch micro oled screen and 116 degrees of field of view, but it's only at a 75 refresh rate. So I don't like this 75. I just don't think that it's fast enough for the movements that you're going to be making, especially racing, where everything is flying.

Jeff:

I've made the argument with people many times no pass-through on that one either.

Jason:

No pass-through. It is comfortable, they say, and it's small, compact I mean it's like a fifth of the weight.

Jeff:

Yeah, super light weight, like 127 grams, if I remember correctly, compared to like on average 1,000 or 500 something.

Jason:

Right.

Erick:

Yeah, easily the lightest out of all of them, yeah.

Jason:

So I would like to test one, because they're saying that it's connected with SteamVR and it's supposed to have some special features with it. I know, big screen is big on the, on the theater, which I love, by the way. Sometimes I I I put my headset on and I join a random theater and you know they'll have, like Jurassic park. Be careful with your kids going on there, cause there's a lot of channels out there.

Jason:

So um a lot of NSFW stuff that's out there. So make sure you put a parental block for your kids if they're curious and they go and check that app out. But as long as you do that it'll be safe for them. And that's my rundown on headsets. I guess for 2025, we're kind of sticking with the trend of, you know, going over iRacing and going over VR and, just to cap this off real quick, I would say the best titles on PC that are the most compatible with any hardware not, I can't say any, but any any hardware that's decent from 2023 onwards, any hardware that's decent from 2023 onwards and when I mean decent I mean like a 3080 or equivalent of a graphics card, because that's mainly what's going to be beat down is your GPU the most you can easily run iRacing in VR you can run.

Jeff:

Yeah, I have a 4070 and run it 90 hertz and 90, no problem, 90 frames a second, no drop. At almost high, yeah, almost high, everything.

Jason:

And he's running a Quest 3, which is a higher resolution, meaning more demand.

Jason:

That's another thing you got to consider. The higher the resolution that you set on the headset that you choose you choose that 2560, you're going to need a powerful machine to run that at that resolution. You know what I'm trying to say. So, honestly, the Quest 3 is the winner here. I want to hear you guys' thoughts on this. Oh, I mentioned iRacing being a good game for VR. You guys' thoughts on this? Oh, I mentioned iRacing being a good game for VR, compatible, very realistic, very immersive and AMS2 and AC with Content Manager, which I got to make a video on Content Manager at some point.

Jeff:

But that thing is a beast, and you guys already know how big that thing is dude. I was. I got in uh, content manager ac and got one of the formula cars, bro, you can. It's the game where you can get up from your seat and walk around the car.

Jason:

It's the only it's the only one that it was crazy.

Jeff:

you can no look underneath the car and see the undercarriage, the floor, it's wild.

Jason:

That's crazy man, that is kind of cool man, I mean.

Jeff:

I know there's a, it is cool because I was racing the other day and the mirrors are actually like mirrors, like if you don't see the whole thing, you want to see more, you actually have to move your head and the mirror image changes, like that's one thing. You don't see the whole thing, you want to see more, you actually have to move your head and the mirror image changes. That's one thing. You don't get on. Triples right, the mirror is the mirror. You move your head, that picture stays there. But in VR, as you move your head, that picture moves.

Erick:

Yeah, that's dope man. That content manager is a work of passion, for sure man. That's dope yeah.

Jason:

I content manager is a work of passion, for sure man, that's dope.

Jeff:

Yeah, gt3 was ridiculous.

Jason:

The guy, I'm telling you, the guy that created Content Manager has a patron.

Jeff:

The minimum if you want to pay him is a dollar, and I looked the other day and I could tell you now he has 250,000 patrons. Good for him, though. He's put a shit ton of work into that, Jeff.

Jason:

if each and every one of those patrons is paying a dollar, that's $250,000 a month.

Erick:

Oh yeah.

Jason:

He's got motion and you think I am doing something terribly wrong. You better make sure them taxes are right. Oh yeah, but $250,000 a month? Yeah, I think he's got motion.

Erick:

Yeah, yeah, patreon taking that off the top, like take it, Take all the taxes.

Jason:

Patreon loves this guy, they must love him, oh yeah yeah, man, but that's no.

Erick:

But, like you say, he deserves it, though, man, because that is, he literally has created one of the best racing experiences he is the sim hub, nicola equivalent fair, great analogy but of ac.

Jason:

Without this guy we would not have any of those reels that you see on on instagram about we won't have any of the realistic drifting. We won't have any of the open. We wouldn't have anything, anything. It stakes to that one single guy, which I'll put links in the description if you guys want to support him.

Jeff:

I am a supporter I think it's also a supporter too I think it also is besides f1, 23, 24, 25 is I think you could. You can jump in there and race formula cars on the circuit. I think I have downloaded the. You know every track on the circuit so you can race singapore, you can race spa, you can race. You know other ones. Ms2 has a bunch, but I don't think they have them all he also added a career mode to the original game.

Jason:

That didn't exist. That's free and it also is a is a gateway server. You can. You can race anybody, but it's not. It's awesome, bro. It's not like other sims. Like ACC, you need to pay to have a server. You can't just race and host your own. You can do that on ACC.

Jeff:

That's wild that there are people that make money off of Content Manager, like those dudes that have VIP services for the open world, racing or driving. Yeah, oh yeah, that rubs me wrong a little bit.

Jason:

Why? Yeah, the guy is from Russia and everything. It's kind of crazy. I believe he's from Russia, but God bless him wherever he's at Appreciate your work. Keep those updates coming, because without that content manager I don't know what I would do, and I have backups of backups, just in case things go south. It'll work.

Jeff:

There's content on content on content Right.

Erick:

Make sure you have plenty of storage space Plenty.

Jason:

So when they cut the internet, AC.

Erick:

Hey, you right, you are totally right, Jr. So when they cut the internet, AC? Rob Markman Jr. You right, you are totally right, man. Rob Markman Jr.

Jason:

So, who knows? You never know.

Jeff:

Yeah, I think. Just to summarize, one more add on I think the F1 games support VR as well.

Jason:

Rob Markman Jr. Right, they support VR and they run great in VR. The problem is there's no mouse in VR and we have to take off the headset and use a keyboard. And I already told you one time you're not buying F125. You're coming to the expo there you go, baby?

Erick:

Yes, go, come on Right, get your ticket and you can't see DNR LEDs in the headset anyway.

Jason:

So you're kind of you're limiting. You're kind of you're limiting. There's immersion, but then there's also information that you're limiting yourself to. That's another thing you have to think about, you know. So, anywho, death of field is another one. I know a guy on the GRL he's a pro driver very fast and something happened to his cable. Shout out to Landon. Something happened to Landon. Son happened to land his cable and Landon's forced to race on a single screen and he's having a hard time because he's used to that, that view, and I had a hard time getting used to the car in VR and vice versa. So it's a very different type of racing. Eric can probably talk about this too, about the differences. Um, but it is cool, yeah, to jump in the car and see nothing but some fake ass legs. His dad has skinny ass legs. Man, I'm like those are not my legs, bro, but it's cool. When you see him. You put your foot on the gas and his actually foot goes on the gas. It's kind of cool, I don't know.

Jason:

Yeah, but as far as competitiveness my preference is triple screens, but you can also be fast, because look at landon. Landon's a great example. He's a pro driver, he's a vr headset and he's smoking us every week. So don't let that confuse you. I'm not saying that triples is the way, and the only way you can I think the best way is it's our answer, not the answer?

Jeff:

yes, yeah, the best way is. It's our answer, not the answer.

Jason:

Yes, yeah, the best way is your way there you go.

Jeff:

That's the best way.

Jason:

The best way is how you feel comfortable and the most important thing and Jeff mentioned this on the last episode are you having fun? Why are you doing this? Because if you're not having fun, there's no point to this. There really isn't. I don't know a single driver out there that doesn't have fun on track. Even the professionals have fun on track. If it stops being fun, morale goes down, energy goes down, motivation goes down. You get slower, that's it. It goes out the window.

Jeff:

I would say there's a lot of people faster than me, but there's nobody that has more fun than me.

Jason:

There it is, see, we need to print it on a t-shirt.

Erick:

Exactly man.

Jason:

Or something I don't know.

Erick:

I'm kidding.

Jason:

I don't know, I'm just kidding. Anyways, that's it for VR the guides to 25's VR headsets that are available as of April 2025. If next week they drop the Quest 4, don't crucify me for this video. Okay, so, Eric, you're up next, man. What you got for us, man.

Erick:

Yeah, man, kind of piggybacking off of just the idea of racing how you want, whether it's VR, whether it's triples, kind of wanted to get y'all's take on just how difficult should sim racing be right? Because there's this line between video game and simulator and and that certain aspect of the simulator is you have to learn the machine, right, you have to learn your rig, you have to learn your pedals, you have to learn your uh, your base it's. It's really I don't know, especially going between GT seven and the, you know, the iRacing and the LMUs of the world. There's definitely a more video game like aspect of GT seven. Jason, we talked about it before at one point where you know you could ride the rails in gt7 and you don't have the same car damage. So it's, it's less of a sim and less care you have to take when you're driving your car and caring for your race car versus our racing where you know you can hit a, hit a sausage curb and wreck your car.

Jason:

Um, so why you gotta be a sausage curb, bro. What's wrong, hey?

Erick:

man, that's just the thing that was kind of sitting in my mind where you know it's. You know you hear certain people saying, like well, if you don't have, you know low cell pedals, if you don't have, you know, um, uh, a certain type of wheelbase, you know. You kind of get into the nitty-gritty of what hardware constitutes simulation Because at a certain point you aren't feeling certain things, you aren't having to fight with certain forces. I wanted to get y'all's take on how difficult should sim racing be? For it to be sim racing before, it's kind of just out of hand.

Jeff:

Hmm, I think, yeah, go ahead, brother. Sure, I think it comes down to, let's be honest, money plays probably the biggest factor in the things we buy. I'll paraphrase probably for most people, and obviously it's a direct correlation to probably money spent versus realism. And if you, you know, if, if money isn't as big an issue, then yeah, active, three active pedals down there. Probably, you know I'm not going to say that they're the best, cause I pedals down there. Probably, you know I'm not going to say that they're the best because I don't know, you know, limited but like a semi-cube base, you know, motion the whole nine yards. That's what you would probably get with.

Jeff:

The most realism thing is you spend the most money on the things, uh, minus, you know, um, uh, joe rogan set up that.

Jeff:

He got taken to the woodshed on. But I think it's kind of like there's probably a point of diminishing returns somewhere in there and it's kind of finding where that is for you, because not everybody is going to have three active pedals. It just is what it is right and you have to find your point of diminishing return versus you having fun Right, and it's it's subjective to each person. Um, you know, if it was, hey, I'm not going to race until I can have everything that I won't wouldn't have been racing, you know. I still won't be racing, you know, until you have three active pedals and all that other stuff. So get what you can get to get in the game and then slowly build on that realism and immersion. So that's probably not the answer that you were kind of looking for, but that's kind of my view on realism between and also how many people out there have ever been in an actual race car on a track to know what realism actually is?

Jeff:

That's true, you know, like I think Daniel Moran actually had a video that came out where he kind of addressed some of this stuff just the last couple of weeks. I don't know, there's probably a handful of people that jumped in a formula car that knows what a formula one brake feels like. They say it's really heavy and stiff, but who knows what the force feedback is for the wheel, like we're just kind of going off what people say. You know, so it's. It's kind of preference over realism and um, and that point of diminishing return with price to performance.

Jason:

All right, that's a good answer, very interesting. I like it. I have a very simple concept with this. You know you should take sim racing by steps. If you're going to, if you're going to start sim racing or you're thinking about building something, you know you should obviously look at your budget and see where how much can you put towards something. Right, but don't go over that budget is what I'm saying. I want you to keep that steady and stick to that budget, but then I also want you to prioritize on what you think is future-proof or not.

Jason:

So, in my opinion, something that's future-proofing is a wheelbase. Something that's future-proofing is a rig and pedals, the monitors, the PC the PC can be future-proof, but it's very expensive to do that. The monitors, peripherals, dashboards, all the nonsense that's out there, right? All the stuff that they say you need but you really don't need it. A Winsim is one of those, because it's a very how do you say this? Unique situation. I have a VR headset. I'm hot and I want to feel immersion. That's a valid reason to go ahead and start searching for that equipment, but not before you have the foundation.

Jason:

With that said, how realistic should it be? I think the real answer is what kind of sim racer are you? Are you a casual? Are you a competitive sim racer? If you're a casual racer, then immersion's for you. You're here for fun, you're here to have a good time. You're not worried about the lap times, you're not worried about your peers passing you by. Your concern is I want to have some fun and I want it to be as realistic as possible. I want to have some fun and I want it to be as realistic as possible.

Jason:

Does that mean go buy an active pedal? No, the answer is no. An active pedal is one of the most immersive pieces of gear that I have on the rig and it's also a tool for me. It's a tool that's helping me improve because I have consistent lap times with it more than any other pedal. But that's a personal thing, you know. It's not. That doesn't apply to every time. You know everybody, you know what I'm saying and I've had to explain this many times, um, to many people, and I'm like I can never, I will never tell you to buy a piece of equipment on this show. All I will tell you is I want you to join this hobby and it doesn't have to be iRacing, it doesn't have to be ACC. It doesn't have to be AC, it doesn't have to be. If F1 is your thing, then ignore what I'm saying and go and enjoy yourself on F1. If you're having a blast, on F1.

Jeff:

Amen, no truer words.

Jason:

Yeah, if you're having a great time and you happen to be a follower which thank you so much, by the way and you hear a shit talk on F1, man, just don't hate us for it, you know we're we're halfway kidding on it, you know, and the halfway is just frustration, because we want F1 to be realistic, because that's the type of sim racer that we are. Right, we're that type, and even between all three of us there is a difference. There is a difference on what Jeff's priorities are and what Eric's priorities are and what my priorities are. Yeah, so that's kind of the grown up answer that I can give you. Stick to your budget, have fun, make sure it's fun, stick to your budget. Stick to your budget and also make the right decision by sticking to your budget doesn't mean go and buy the cheapest thing. I want you to weigh the pros and cons and ask yourself the question will I be using this rig from five years from now? That's the question I would ask myself. I have a different budget. I have a different economical situation than everyone. Right, everybody has their own economics.

Jason:

I read a post one day not one day today that I saw a smiley face from Eric, and it was one of the guys that said it was on the SimRacing setups group. Shout out, mike SimRacing. Thank you for building that awesome community, and I'm always paying attention to the post because I help moderate it and I want to keep that group clean and safe for everyone to enjoy, and it's an honor to do it. And I saw Eric post this, or share or whatever he liked it, and it said that you know sim racers spending all this money and being a what do you call this? It means that you're irresponsible, and I found it funny for like a second, and then I I kind of got defensive about it. I was like well, it's irresponsible for those who can't afford it. That's like Jeff knows a guy that bought a Ferrari, has the what is it, your friend? He has a Ferrari and a Porsche, or something like that.

Jeff:

Yeah, he's got a Ferrari, he's got a couple of cars.

Jason:

I can't afford a Ferrari, you know. But do I have the? Do I do I have the? What do you call this? The means of getting a loan and buying a Ferrari? Yeah, I can, I can buy a Ferrari today. Is that responsible? No, because I can't afford that. I truly can't afford that. I can't afford to maintain the car. I basically you could do it for one month, I could do it, check to check, you know. So that's a, that's a. There's priorities in life and do not let the hobby suck you in so hard because of all the, you know, reels and stuff.

Jeff:

I want to jump into one thing you said there about that. Whoever knucklehead made that post about being irresponsible and we talked about it, I think with uh, when we had all all um, a bunch of guests on, was like hey, like when I jump in the rig and I blow off steam and I go back to you know, wake up the next day because I drive with that, like I'm refreshed and I'm a better husband, a better dad and better at work, right, because I just am mentally refreshed, kind of recharged. So do I buy it to do that? No, it's just a side effect of it. It's not being irresponsible, that's ridiculous.

Erick:

Yeah, I think it was kind of one of those lighthearted posts where it's like you know they gave it to me, you know kind of things where they're just kind of poking fun at the fact that if you're a sim racer, you're sinking money into sim racing oh, we do spend a decent amount of cheddar on a you know uh, sitting in front of a computer screen at the end of the day.

Jeff:

Yeah, correct, we do, but it's a passion like. I know plenty of people that spend the same the same on golf or, oh you know, enter, whatever hobby you have, right, I mean, I, yeah, so the funniest golf can get out of control now.

Erick:

Yeah, I've been there so the funniest thing is if you really want to spend money, race real cars. Oh yeah, if you race real cars, you talk about blowing some money, like literally destroying money and leaving it on the track. Fresh set of tires at every track meet, that's real money.

Jason:

Back in California, I was part of a club. There was a track down in Cali, san Diego, and a track meet there for half a day it was about $500. And then the tires are toast and I was running Pirelli tires. A track meet there for half a day was about 500 bucks. And then the tires are toast and I was running Pirelli tires that's about 250 a tire. And you got to get home because how are you going to get home? Yep.

Jason:

So again, this hobby is not about how big your rig is or what's on it. It's about your personal relationship with it. That is the realest answer I can give you. If you come home and you sit in this thing and you love what you're looking at and you're having fun with it, don't worry about what everybody's buying. Let me tell you something. I have some top-end stuff back here and I don't want this to look like a flex, but in the long term, right, there's always something that's coming out that will be better.

Jason:

It's not like I can buy this and I'm good for the rest of the time that I'm sim racing. You know it's just like a car. Right, you save up for a vehicle. You don't really. The irresponsible thing is buying a vehicle without being able to afford it. And then when you finally, if you grab the vehicle, blah, blah, blah, four years later they come out with a new model that's like a hundred times better than your model and it looks dope, and you're stuck here paying that car, still paying all these high interest payments, because that's how credit cards get their money, that's how they get their, that's how they make their money. So my advice is save up. Save up when you can have a goal, have a target and make sure that it's not the. Don't go for the cheapest gear out there. You know what I mean. If you're just coming into the hobby, then you choose that route. But if you are already seasoned, right, I consider someone seasoned when they have a rig and at least a monitor, they have a setup. Any setup is somebody that's already okay in the hobby. In the hobby Now, if your budget allows 30,000, 40,000, you know, I think somebody left a comment.

Jason:

Know about something? About a podium one. I'm like god damn, you know, like that's a, that's um, those are big, big boys right there. But again, it's not, it's not meant as a flex, it's like, hey, you know, I'm sharing my passion with you. Jeff is sharing his passion. He's building a fuselage, he's making his rig more immersive. Now he's jumping into the VR. But that's been gradual. How long have you been doing this, jeff?

Jeff:

It's been a long time, For almost a year and a half maybe now.

Jason:

It's been a year and a half, which is hard to believe. Wild right, yeah, but every month you look at something and you make the decision. By you waiting on the fans the wind simulator is. The responsible thing to do Is watch out. Watch out for a sail. We do Black Friday episodes here on the show. If you can hang on, we had a very successful episode last one.

Erick:

Hashtag Beltensioner yeah.

Jason:

Beltensioner is another one. See, the biggest problem is going to be at the expo.

Jeff:

Bro, leave the credit card at home.

Jason:

Yeah, we have to have a credit card, jeff. We're on travel.

Erick:

Got to get those points, man.

Jason:

I'm telling you that's going to be the biggest challenge. But again, don't let nobody pressure you into buying something that you don't need. Okay, and make sure that when you buy something, that you can afford that. And when I mean afford, I mean that if you need to outright pay it, you could do so, and if you cannot do that, then I highly recommend to be the bigger man and take responsibility, and you will find that maybe something new comes out. I'll give you one example before we drop this and move on with our lives.

Jason:

I was on travel in Japan. As you know, I love Japan. I was on travel in Japan. I was looking at active pedals, right before I was looking at the ultimate, and something told. Something just came over me and said no, dude, just wait, wait, maybe maybe there's a sale, maybe there's something. So I'll go on travel and um, you know, I spoke to Mike from the sim racing then and you know me and him, we, we, we, we talk from from from time to time and Mike is under NDA at this point for the active federal pro.

Jason:

He could not tell me that there's a pro version coming out that's cheaper and does the same thing as the ultimate, or almost the same thing 80% right. So he couldn't tell me. He couldn't tell me. He just told me hey, man, just look around, keep an eye on out, maybe a sale comes out. But he could not tell me that something was coming out. And I understand that that's, that's, that's. You know that's a legal thing. So I didn't necessarily take the advice. I was literally had the shit in my cart. And you know how I am. I'm always happy when I buy something. I always try to share and the reason I do that is to get you guys to come over to the house and be like hey, man, try it out. Because we don't have the option to try out gear, which is why the expo is such a big thing for us. Anyway, I waited, and because I waited, I see the ad while I'm in the hotel room and, thank God, the wife was in the shower.

Erick:

I just went and added that shit to the cart bro, and I called up Jeff.

Jason:

I was like Jeff, there's something heavy coming over to the house. Man, go get it. Open the door. Listen, here's the code to my house Open the door and put it inside. Don't say nothing. Don't say nothing and I swear.

Jeff:

I was praying. That's exactly how it went down.

Jason:

I was praying that they didn't put Semi-Cube on the box. It's oh my God, bro, oh my God. But anyways, I guess the take from this story is not a flex. I'm very lucky and humble to be able to afford something like that, but if I couldn't, I wouldn't Okay. So with that, we'll move on to this one.

Jason:

This one's going to be rather short. I wanted this episode to be mainly about VR and talking about the different options, so we will be skipping track of the week. It is not going anywhere, but that is our backfall, so we want to make sure that you're getting the content right. First, track of the week will continue, though it will continue, and it will continue next week, but we have to give it up to one of our supporters that sent us an email, and thank you all for those who ordered on the website. I've already received orders, uh notifications, which is great. Thank you for supporting the show and the chicane podcast. Really appreciate everyone. But we do have an email and I guess eric kelly wants to tackle it, so I will give that to Mr Kelly or Jeff. Whichever one wants to wants to take a stab at it.

Erick:

Uh, I mean I got to pull it up. So, all right, go ahead, yeah, okay.

Jason:

Yeah, take turns.

Erick:

Yeah, we're just excited yeah, we're just excited to to read emails from you guys because it's you know, we know it takes time and effort.

Jason:

It takes effort to start the email.

Erick:

I get mad when.

Jason:

I start writing an email, but please keep those coming. Yeah, yeah.

Erick:

So this one is from Mr Brad Cox. Subject line so many apps. He says I'm new to sim racing and a bit confused with all the apps associated with our racing. Hopefully you can help. I'm using SimMagic gear let's go SimMagic on an aluminum extruded rig with triple monitors. I have SimPro, manager, crew Chief Race Lab, simhub and Marvin's AIRA apps installed, but I'm not sure which ones I should be running when I launch iRacing. Also, what's the best way to start iRacing Through one of these apps or the standalone iRacing app and join the podcast? Keep up the great work.

Erick:

So, of course, first off, just thank you, brad, for reaching out to us, for taking the time to write an email and, you know, asking questions. Thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. I think I kind of probably the most recent to feel his pain, being the most recent person to switch over to PC. It is a lot. Right now I can say that for me, I'm running probably everything that you have listed, even the. I meant the. I haven't told the guys about it, but I've started using the marvin's ara uh here recently for force feedback. Yes, but I'm not running the race lab, but I think that's the only thing I'm not running. Um, it's simple, I don't run it. I use it to update my Sim Magic gear, but I always close that out.

Jeff:

It just runs minimized. Sim Hub is In the background. Yeah, you don't really need it honestly it's an extra resource.

Jason:

If you're not changing wheel settings, you don't really need it. Honestly, unless your LEDs are coming from SimPro, I would recommend SimHub. They're both heavy, both applications, so just be ready for that. So having both of them is kind of your machines can take it though. Jeff, you got a decent machine, so it's like nothing for your machine.

Erick:

Yeah, if I had to make a recommendation. Some people have to count their, their apps.

Jason:

You know what I mean. You remember the iPhone where you had to close the app to make it run smooth. It's kind of like that concept.

Erick:

Yeah, and the Androids too.

Jason:

And the Androids.

Erick:

So go ahead yeah. I'll go ahead and get mine out the way For me. I run Crew Chief, simhub, marvin's and then, of course, iracing and also Trading Paints. I'm not sure if you've. I know you're trying to figure out which apps to run. There's another one Trading Paints for your custom liveries and iRacing, but for me that's. I think that's pretty much it right now for me.

Jason:

What about you, jeff, what you got?

Jeff:

I'm curious. So to the trading paint portion. I think if you download it into the appropriate folder you don't need to have it open. But no, I just run, obviously, simhub iRacing. I open iRacing straight from the application. I don't open it through anything, it's just the standalone program. Crew Chief, I have SimMagic. Whatever their hardware is or software is it? Just haven't minimized, it just opens up Simpro, simpro. Yeah, excuse me, I just have that minimized. I don't ever look at it, it's just there. Um, I think that's it.

Jason:

So I will say this Jeff, if you're you're, you're right on the trading paints, but if you want to see other people's paints, you have to have it open.

Jeff:

That's a them problem.

Jason:

Yeah, exactly, If you're worried about them, then your stuff is loaded up. It's pretty light dude.

Jeff:

Mine looks like a badass. I don't care what everybody else sees.

Jason:

There you go.

Erick:

As long as they can see you huh.

Jason:

So I don't think you guys, I will be here forever. I will try to make this quick, but I'm running all kinds of shit in the background. Here we go.

Erick:

I know dude.

Jason:

I got SimHub, I got the SimiCube software, I have the trading paints, I have Crew Chief Depends. If I'm practicing, Trophy AI is one of the tools that we've been using lately. Um, you know, but that's you know it. During a race I usually shut her down because I use that for practice. Um, discord is always running the discord overlay.

Jeff:

See, you have Spotify always going spotify pc panels always up.

Jason:

Um, all my streamer stuff is always in the background. The the I'll be here forever. That's a lot of.

Jason:

It's a ton I do have nvidia overlay on some specs on performance but for iRacing, yeah, going back to the topic, right, for iRacing, you mentioned Marvin, right? So, marvin, I would recommend that application to any SimMagic owner, simmagic. Now, if you have a SimiCube, there's no need to use this application at all. We have more settings than the Marvin. And I keep warning people when you add filters on top of filters on top of filters, it makes it really hard to get that wheel dialed in right, because you have all these different types of filters that change different things, and then you have another application on top of that. That's filtering it even further. That's filtering it even further. However, for SimMagic bases that don't have as many options, they have the force. Feedback is there, the strength, but the actual fine tuning is not really there compared to other bases. Marvin is a great option and it's free. It's free. You can download it for free. We'll leave links in the description for that.

Jason:

Um, maybe eric can do a deep dive. I tried using it. Um, I had a follower, I was streaming and a follower was begging me to try it, and it just isn't. It wasn't worth using. You know my settings are dialed in. You know what I mean. They're good to go, so. So for iRacing, I recommend um.

Erick:

Yeah crew chief is a must. It was it.

Jason:

Yeah, definitely yeah and I can do some of marvin's as well crew chief and sim hub.

Jason:

But sim hub there's a lot of stuff in sim hub, like lovely dashboard is a highly recommended tool. Highly recommended tool. I can't recommend it enough. Danny Newman Racing is another one. If you have the lights and your LEDs those lights and LEDs are flash cues you don't have to think no more. I know somebody that uses screens and they're always looking up. You know he mentioned Race Lab and that's. You know, race Lab is an overlay, it's different overlays. So you have all these overlays on the screen and it's cluttering, it's taken away from the experience, in my opinion, and you have all these overlays. It's good for streamers, but for my own personal view, it's completely empty and I just rely on Daniel Newman. It never fails me. I'm in the pit lane when it turns green pit lane's open. I cross the line. I don't have to look at the. I look at the line and the green light is literally blinking on my body.

Jeff:

And by having SibHub you get rid of having to have the Hughes app open.

Jason:

Right, and those apps are not geared towards gamers. You know they might be using a ton of resource that you may not even notice, you know. So that's a good point, Jeff, is having the one consolidated right, Like if you bought that SRS Hurricane WinSim kit, you don't need the SRS Hurricane software.

Jeff:

I got way more stuff. I can do with it in SimHub anyways.

Jason:

In SimHub, because guess what's running anyway in the background? Simhub it's running. So I will say this before we close this one If you're running any sim and you're running SimHub, make sure you give enough bandwidth to SimHub. Don't max out your systems to get the highest frames and your GPU is clocked all the way up. Your CPU is like redlining, clocked all the way up. That's when you're going to find issues with SimHub crashing and things acting weird. It's because you're not letting enough cushion for SimHub. You want to at least give it 10% of your GPU and CPU, and this is coming from the creator, nikola. So I've had issues like that in the past before I upgraded my hardware, and you want to give it that little bit of cushion for everything to work properly. So that's about it, man. Thank you so much for the question. I really appreciate it. We will resume track of the week on the next iteration of the show and with that, guys, is round table time. Anybody have anything before we close this one out?

Jeff:

Yeah, quick one. If you got a second, go check out Smart Living 808. We got a new video that just put up online there. Nice little family boat day out here we had the other day.

Jason:

Yes, sir, I watched that and Mr Eric Kelly has some cool videos that have been dropping lately. I'm watching you, eric. So I think he did a follow-up review on a Samsung S24, I believe.

Erick:

Or is it S24 Ultra, yeah, s24 Ultra, yeah.

Jason:

Wrapped up my time with that, the Tech Gentleman is how you find him the Tech Gentleman and Smart Living. We're all content sharing creators and they deserve the love too. So if you guys want to show them some love, links in the description below, and if you have any questions of any kind or comments, leave those below, Like the episode and send us an email at thechicanepodcasts at gmailcom, and with that guys, 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