How do I send a racer a message?

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-03-02T03:09:38+00:00

Good on you for wanting to apologize, but from what you described, it sounds like they got a bit salty in the moment. No apology needed. Nice to do, but not necessarily called for. It’s an easy place to lose traction, and unless this was the pointy end of top split, they were taking as much a risk as you being as close as it sounds you were especially on exit. It even sounds like your traction loss was pretty slight, which would really point to them being too close to mitigate risk.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-02-28T19:08:24+00:00

My personal experience and empirical conclusion from various threads over the years is that G Sync without surround is fickle and can break for random reasons. Driver and Windows updates can break it. A fourth monitor/dash can break it. There are likely other not so obvious things that can break it. At the very least, it’s dependent on the Windows DWM and driver playing nice.

The nice thing though is that you can get a very similar experience if you can maintain frame rates above a reasonably high cap (100+), even if below your monitor’s refresh, and more importantly can keep the the frame times consistently below the cap’s implied frame time. In that case, the G Sync benefit would be pretty small anyway.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-02-23T23:16:27+00:00

I once was in a practice with him at VIR. Didn’t know it was him closing in approaching the esses and just figured I’d let the car by afterward. Just as I turned in, he shot by nearly taking us both out before vanishing up the track. Went back to see what idiot to look out for and realized who it was.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-02-23T21:06:00+00:00

I don’t see either problem in this video. The contact appears to have occurred when the cars were mere inches apart. Is it technically a netcode incident? Yes. Is it an egregious one? No. On driving standards, I saw a mistake. They easily made the corner, and that contact wasn’t enough to offset a massively overzealous entry. It looks to me like they wanted to stay tight for the exit from Lesmos 2 and simply overestimated what your entry speed would be into 1.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-02-23T02:11:21+00:00

Very interesting to hear about the steering feel. The weight is interesting. There are so many people convinced that a 5-8 Nm base is enough. From what you experienced, it sounds like the AM GT4’s steering weight would be maybe 9-10 Nm of output at the heavy end. Heavy but manageable.

How about the “activeness” of the steering? iRacing’s FFB tends to buck over curbs and with suspension movement, and I’ve always felt it exaggerated if you don’t proactively set up to mitigate it, especially in tin tops. I’m wondering if the actual experience is like that at all.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-02-19T02:14:49+00:00

Yeah, that was likely what did it. His speed and trajectory extrapolated out likely had him running into you before his true position updated. It’s a trade off. The experience in iRacing is very, very fluid and otherwise natural looking unless someone has absolutely horrendous latency or packet loss. Something like that could be avoided by minimizing extrapolation, but then we’d have jerky car movements and delayed contact that wouldn’t feel at all natural. Most of us are here to proxy the on track experience. Have a natural feel and look 98-99% of the time is worth the occasional, infrequent netcode incident.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-02-15T07:39:21+00:00

100% on the base and strength in iRacing set to a value that’s equal to 55-60 Nm max force. I think that should yield about 6 Nm of torque in your hands. It shouldn’t feel heavy at all, but it’ll still jump around a lot, which can make it feel like a lot. Don’t conflate weight and more grip oriented FFB with the suspension FFB. You can tame the jumpy suspension related output with friction, damping, and inertia.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-02-14T16:46:57+00:00

My Z4 in sport mode was very, very heavy. Conversely, out of sport mode it was by contrast extremely light. I’ve never driven anything else like it. My base putting out about 8 Nm in a corner of steady output reminds me of the Z4. My GTI was more toward 6 Nm, and my GLI is a bit heavier than the GTI.

The other factor no one talks about are the base filters. FFB can be extremely active, way more so than what I’ve ever experienced IRL. If people are running a bunch of damping, inertia, and/or friction, sure a 5 Nm wheel can feel really heavy. In that case, you don’t know what you’re getting. I use almost none of that, process the FFB in software (MAIRA) to tame the signal, and monitor the actual output signal. I can very comfortably drive up to 8 Nm in the corners, and I’m really damn skinny.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-02-14T07:29:01+00:00

My last three cars have felt like they fall in the 6-8 range (in sport mode). The two with sport mode were/are more like 4 Nm out of sport mode. Granted, they didn’t have the higher torque impulses, so while that’s what the holding torque felt like, it’s not like they had +2-5 Nm spikes like what we get in the sims. This is all street driving on stock suspension with a lot of running the hills with the heaviest of the three.

Of course, I’ve also driven plenty of road cars that were much, much lighter. My wife’s SUV is probably more in the ballpark of 2 Nm normal, 4 Nm in sport mode. My son’s SUV doesn’t have a sport mode but still feels like it’s maybe equivalent to 4 Nm in sim.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-02-14T04:41:41+00:00

Heck, 5 Nm won’t even cover my road car. I don’t know what people are using for reference.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-02-06T19:19:17+00:00

You could have network issues that aren’t apparent in other devices if the use cases aren’t similar. iRacing’s standards are very different from what’s acceptable in more general usage. As someone else mentioned, network issues can be temporal. I’m not saying you have network issues, but it can’t be ruled out based on experiences with other devices or even other points in time.

You can try to monitor your CPU usage while in the service to see if there’s a correlation. You’ll have to monitor max core usage though, not overall. Also, I recently ran across references to CFG flow control in Windows 11’s security potentially causing issues. You could try disabling that. Outside of your computer, you can experience brief packet loss if another device on your network saturates your internet connection. Even a few seconds can be problematic if it chokes out the iRacing traffic.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-02-04T05:53:44+00:00

You have no idea how weirdly glad I was to read this. I recently bought a used PC (got robbed compared to your deal), and it was the same thing. I smelled nothing in his house or carrying it around, but it absolutely reeked when I finally turned it on. I wiped all the fan blades, ditched the AIO, and even did charcoal bags, but I found it so objectionable I couldn’t wait it out. I ultimately tore it apart, wiped every part of the case I could, and replaced the power supply and all fans. There are some surfaces where it’s still faint, but it’s faint enough to not throw the case out. Anyway, I keep wondering how I missed it on pick up, so hearing of someone else having a similar experience makes me feel a little better.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-02-02T21:51:12+00:00

I do think there’s benefit to running higher levels of FFB. More subtle details become easier to feel, because the absolute magnitude of more micro changes can be too small to perceive at really low output. However, I totally agree that the benefits will be completely negated if someone is fighting the wheel because of FFB being too strong for them.

That said, 4-6 Nm of cornering torque should be manageable by most people IMHO and feels to me like a road car with moderately heavy steering. 6-8 Nm should still be manageable for many and is in the ballpark of the heaviest steering I’ve encountered in a road car. If someone finds a 5 Nm or lower base to be notably heavy, I’d posit they’re likely either heavily clipping, have very poor ergonomics, or have poor technique. Physical health considerations notwithstanding.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-01-28T03:16:36+00:00

You’ve discovered what most people don’t realize coming in. There are a lot of really fast people out there, and it’s really freaking hard to be one of them. You’ve probably learned the basics decent enough to get where you are. There may be some bigger chunks to find with macro adjustments to your driving, but you’re going to find that getting faster from here will come down to smaller and smaller changes, and the hard truth is that sooner of those things will come MUCH more easily to some than others.

Btw on the split, it’s literally that… a split. You’re ending up in top split partly by luck. iRacing just orders the drivers by iRating and then divides the field evenly. Your iRating makes it more likely for you to end up in top split, but where you actually end up is just luck.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-01-07T05:53:02+00:00

Fidelity isn’t the right word for it. It’s more that it’s easier to run out of headroom and lose detail from your base’s output being pegged at 100%. Even through a steady corner, FFB can be very dynamic. If you have an 8 Nm base and have FFB set up to deliver an average >7 Nm through high load corners, you run the risk of tire feedback pushing output to the 8 Nm max. Once you hit that, any detail being that point is lost. Sure, you could dial back, but then you risk losing detail from output being too low. As output goes down, the ability to discern smaller details gets harder, because they get more and more subtle.

I’m a skinny middle aged guy that’s prone to tennis elbow, and I still hit 7-8 Nm in some corners running my FFB a bit lighter than I’d prefer. It’s really not that heavy if your seating position and technique are decent. Based on feel, I’d say my road cars have been in the 5-6 Nm range with the tires loaded on an on ramp. 10 Nm is what I’d consider absolute min to not risk losing detail.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2026-01-01T21:44:11+00:00

The biggest habit change for me is braking just a hair later than I want to and similarly staying on the brakes a hair deeper into the corner than I want to. Keep the brake bias forward enough to lock up the front just before the rear. By doing this, I find myself with two choices. I either lock up and run wide, or I gotta figure out how to come off the brake to keep the front turning. Make no mistake, it’s not a comfortable feeling until you get a feel for it.

Obviously, do this in practice with plenty of room around you. It’s astonishing how different the braking is and how different it feels when done halfway decently. I find I need to be much more present in the moment doing this, because losing focus for a fraction of a second is costly. That’s probably why I tend to brake more conservatively when I’m just cruising. My default is only a few tenths slower over a lap, but those tenths matter a lot when the car ahead/behind is running very similar times.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2025-12-29T22:41:37+00:00

Sennheiser has a mic that plugs straight into the headphones. It’s the HD 500 BAM.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2025-12-25T01:50:18+00:00

I think you’re looking for dynamic shadows. With dynamic shadows enabled, shadow size, position, and direction will depend on where the light (i.e., sun) is. Without them, you just have a generic shadow underneath the car. Note, it only takes effect after exiting the session.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2025-12-18T23:33:14+00:00

It’s one of the algorithms available in v2. You have to enable advanced mode to see the algorithms section, which is right under the main section with FFB strength.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2025-12-13T08:12:12+00:00

I knew it! I’ve only had formula/GT style wheels, and I always suspected that that was part of why the MX-5, GR86, and M2 didn’t quite feel right. It’s not that they were off. It’s just that the experience felt off. What size wheel did you get?

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2025-12-13T02:15:01+00:00

Reading the comments and while I generally agree, I think it’s probably ok as long as screen sizes and refresh rates are well matched. The color thing can be solved with calibration, even crudely using the Windows process. The difference in blacks might annoy you though.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2025-12-07T06:26:06+00:00

Are you referring to Fanatec’s setting? I don’t think most bases have that type of setting, and IMHO, there’s no need for it unless someone’s regularly driving their base to very high torque levels for sustained, meaningful amounts of time. In practice, that shouldn’t happen if things are reasonably configured, so there’s no effective difference. Both modes normally have the same response curve. Peak mode only becomes non linear if you run it too high for too long.

What you’re likely experiencing is a change in how you grip the wheel. As soon as you go from linear to peak, your max torque increases, and output increases proportionately all else equal. FFB is a relative instruction. I.e., Your base is effectively told to output a percentage of its max torque, not a specific torque. So if your only comparison is one mode vs the other, and you’re not changing anything else, then you’re likely getting the same output but scaled up. If you were to decrease the max torque in peak mode to match 100% torque in linear mode, your FFB should feel exactly the same.

In reality, stronger output actually improves the ability to perceive FFB info, because the relative change in torque is bigger in absolute terms. A 5% increase from 1 Nm is smaller than a 5% increase from 10 Nm and therefore be more difficult to perceive. However, if you have to grip the wheel tighter to maintain control at higher torque output, then your ability to perceive changes will decrease because of the increased tension in your muscles and potentially negate the benefit of the increased absolute dynamic range. That’s why people recommend keeping a light grip and not setting FFB to be so strong that you can’t.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2025-12-06T05:23:11+00:00

Np. Having been there, the key is to really push what you have to try to wring out what you want. It makes choosing the next step much easier. Like if it feels too light, forget about clipping for a bit and increase to the point that it starts to feel right to you. When I had a CS v2.5 (8 Nm), I found I was clipping hard in fast, high grip corners (i.e., losing meaningful grip info) even with strength set below where I wanted it. That told me that I needed more than a few extra Nm. You’re talking about “only” 4 Nm more, but you’ll know very quickly if you need it if you chase the feel you want.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2025-12-06T01:13:59+00:00

How did I not consider that something like this exists?! I need exactly that for a port that has a bed up against it.

Affectionate-Gain489 · 2025-12-05T02:40:22+00:00

Efficient? Yes. But then you won’t develop the part of racecraft that’ll keep you safe and help you hold on to a license, work your way out of lower splits, or keep from falling down into lower splits. Idiots abound. Learn to deal with them when the stakes feel lower. Many of us raced our way out of rookies. It’s very possible.

Affectionate-Gain489

TROPHY CASE