How to get started in Sim Racing - The most important things to know!

so I'm guessing that a lot of you guys watching this video are gonna be brand-new to the channel so hi my name is Will and I've been simracing seriously for about 18 months now but pretty much my entire life in a more casual sense so I'm lucky enough that over the past year or so I've been able to transition across to making a living from my simracing and review videos and therefore I've had a pretty broad experience with lots of different types of hardware and equipment in that time so just a little bit more information about me before we get started prior to that I was an occasional track-day guy has had a couple of different track cars over the years and this channel actually started out as a project car building channel but put some links in the description below for you guys if you want to check out some of that content but long story short I made the decision about a year and a half ago now to transition from real life track cars across to sim racing now that decision was primarily due to you know cost involved time away from family had young kids now as things like that so actually good another video talking about that as well which I'll link in the description but I wanted something basically that would still give me the thrill of driving driving fast and still competing but something that I could do from home and just pick up and put down whenever I felt like it basically around my adult responsibilities so with the current situation facing the world right now sim racing has unexpectedly been thrust onto the world stage and I know there's a lot of people out there that are finding themselves in a very similar scenario to where I was 18 months ago so in this video series I'm going to be taking you through my top tips for people who are just getting into sim racing maybe sort of just wanting to wet their feet and check it out for the first time so we'll be covering the hardware the different types of sim titles available my tips for setting things up regardless of whether you intend to spend a lot of money or a little bit of money now I mentioned before that I have quite a bit of experience with a range of different hardware but the purpose of these videos isn't going to be to sort of try to push you towards particular products and we'll have some lists which I've created in the description below for you guys for products that I've personally tested and can recommend based off my own personal experience but rather than offering specific product suggestions I'd rather try and sort of make sure that you guys are well equipped to do your own research and be armed with the right knowledge that you can be asking the right sorts of questions based on your own personal budgets so I don't claim to be the world's one expert in all things simracing so i'd suggest that you guys do share your own experience in the comments below there's gonna be a lot of people watching this video that are a lot more experienced than me as well as a lot of people that are less experienced as well so some points people will agree with pretty much unanimously other points are going to be more contentious based on individuals experiences so let's keep the conversation going in the comments below the video the more experiences that we can share the more helpful the content becomes so let's make it a community effort so we also have a 1,200 members strong discord community which I'll link above my head for you right now we're happy to answer all sorts of questions that you might have an offer our own advice based off our experiences so be sure to check that out as well but let's get started on the meat of this video so onto my number one top tip and that is that you don't need to spend a fortune to be a competitive racer and have a lot of fun now everybody's budget is going to be different and unfortunately as with any hobby there is an element of elitism within the simracing community and at times that can trick people into thinking that they need to spend obscene amounts of money to be able to be competitive and have fun so the first thing that I want you guys to understand is that is absolutely not the case to give you an example I spent most of my childhood driving with an analog wheel that had absolutely no force feedback and up until about 18 months ago with a ten-year-old logitech g27 that cost me about 300 bucks back in about 2010 and that was just fixed to my computer desk and you know what I had an absolute blast driving with that wheel and I really wasn't all that much slower than I am now with a rig that's probably worth pushing about forty thousand dollars Australian so the point here is that there's thousands of people out there that are winning races and championships every single day with very basic hardware and in fact the guy that I gave my g27 wheel away to once I upgraded to my fanatic gear we've actually actually ended up winning our league championship with it which made me feel pretty inadequate so you're probably wondering now why is this the case well this is a pretty complex question but in my opinion despite the incredible setups that can be built these days with all kinds of complex feedback not only from the wheel itself but even in the entire cockpit there's still one major component that is missing and that is g-force so in a real car your body uses the g-forces that you experience to communicate what's going on with the car you can subconsciously make real-time adjustment and corrections based on this information that your body is receiving and it all happens pretty much completely subconsciously so despite the incredibly complex simulators that are available today things like you know traction loss surge all those sorts of things that you kind of would expect to feel in a real car because no simulator is able to accurately reproduce exactly the same forces that you experience in a real car related to g-force your body is forced to use other cues where your brain's forced to use other cues such as you know what you're seeing on the screen wanting feelings through the wheel etc and that's why you know to give you probably the best example I can even one of the world's most famous sim race is Jimmy Broadbent you know he's one of the fastest guys in the world of sim racing around the Nurburgring he's done thousands of thousands of laps around there but when he jumped into a real car and tried to do exactly the same thing he was really surprised at just how different the the experience was despite his obvious familiarity with the circuit from his thousands of simulated laps so I encourage you guys to check out that video I've linked it in the description below for you guys it's definitely an eye-opener into you know just how different things can be on a real-life racetrack in a real car compared to us and that's not to say that Sims aren't realistic they definitely I realistic and they're getting more realistic all the time but there are always going to be a few things are going to be a little bit different between you know sim racing and racing in the real world so you guys need to be aware of that as well now to just elaborate on that a little bit further as well most professional racing drivers would tell you that the most value that they get from a sim is you know in familiarizing themselves with tracks you know bumps and things like that that are around the track rather than you know sort of refining their driving skills so to speak and this the reason for that is exactly the same as what we've just discussed so this is where muscle memory starts to come into play once you've established muscle memory and your body can react to what the car is doing in the sim instinctively it makes little difference what hardware you're actually using now there are some important exceptions to that most notably when it comes to pedals so this brings us to point number two which is the most so well the single most important piece of hardware is your pedals so the more realistic a set of pedals feel the more range of control available the more you'll be able to modulate your inputs and make small Corrections and this will ultimately lead to faster and more cancer at lap times I demonstrated this in a comparison video where I looked at the telemetry data from driving with my fanatic v3 pedals compared to my HT Altima pedals now we'll talk about pedals and the different types of pedals available in more detail in the next video but it's important to make the distinction that when I say range of control I don't necessarily mean how far you can push the pedal down but suffice to say that for now you'll find the most experience in races will all agree that a good set of pedals and a solid platform to mount them to is the single most important factor when it comes to going fast and being consistent so if petals are the single most important piece of hardware then very closely in second place would be a solid mounting solution or a copy now you don't necessarily need to go all out and buy a full frame cockpit like you see in my videos in fact a lot of beginners that don't even realize when they're shopping for equipment that your computer desk can actually be a more solid mounting solution than some of the cheaper all-in-one cockpits that are available on the market so what's important here is that your pedals aren't sliding around on the floor and that your chair isn't going to be rolling back every single time you push your pedals down now most entry-level pedals like the ones you get with logitech wheels for example do have their own solutions to stop them sliding around on the floor so things like carpet spikes and stuff like that but as you start to move up in the market it starts to become assumed that you're going to have some sort of a cockpit solution or some sort of mounting solution and obviously as you start to have to put more force into the pedal so it's more realistic in terms of the actual force that you're putting on the pedal inevitably you're gonna start having problems with the pedals sliding around on the ground so there are some solutions that are available that are quite cheap for fixing your chair to your pedals and I'll link some of those in the description below for you guys as well but one of the cheapest and easiest ways is to simply put some caster wheels on your chair so that the wheels can't move around I've even seen people steal their kids shoes and use them to sort of stop the wheels from rolling around as well with great results so the point here is that you can use some creative license you don't necessarily need to go all out and spend an absolute fortune on a cockpit as long as the fundamental elements are taken care of it could be as simple as you know attaching your pedals to the chair with a piece of rope to stop them sliding forward so spend some time and think about what sort of creative solutions you can come up with before assuming that you need to go all out and spend all of your hard-earned dollars on an expensive cockpit now that is of course not to say that an all-in-one Kopp it isn't an advantage in other ways most noticeably in creating a lifelike and comfortable seating position now any racing driver or any driving instructor will tell you that the correct seating position is the most fundamental element to driving consistently and fast but my advice is don't just jump in and spend a fortune until you're sure that you want to commit I actually published a video just about a week ago now explaining exactly how to set up a correct seating position in a simulator so I'm certainly not sort of trying to say that that's not important here but just consider how close you can actually get to a correct seating position now based around the computer desk and the you know the stuff that you have available to you before you start looking at spending a fortune on a simulator cockpit now space of course is another very important consideration where do you intend to set up your simulator and will you be needing to move it frequently there are some really great portable cockpit solutions available we reviewed one of those just a couple of weeks ago and I will put a list of those together for you in the description below as well but pretty much all of those are a compromise in terms of rigidity so you really need to weigh up whether the portability is worth the sacrificing rigidity and as I said before in a lot of cases provided you are able to set up an ergonomic seating position at the computer desk we do screen your pedals in your chair or in the right places and nothing moving around you're actually better off that way now screen position and correct field of view is of course also very important but we'll talk about that a little later on in the video series as well as details around sitting up triple screens we are choosing TVs and things like that as well so we've mentioned rigidity quite a few times now but why is it so important when it comes to steering well it's pretty straightforward a force feedback wheel generates not only the forces that you experience through the wheel when cornering you know driving over bumps rubbing wheels or fenders with other cars and all the things that are obviously extremely important in developing muscle memory as you now understand but also the textures such as road surface puddle reversal strips and feeling these effects more accurate or they won't necessarily make you faster but it certainly adds a great deal to the overall experience in terms of immersion and that's what makes some racing you know more fun and that's where you know spending a lot of extra money can you know obviously make things more enjoyable for you so when you introduce a lack of rigidity or flexing to the equation a couple of different things happen firstly it adds a dampening effect to everything that the wheel is doing so effects feel less detailed but more importantly it also causes problems with consistency in how the effects are produced which makes it really difficult to establish proper muscle memory in the first place as an example you might be hammering down a long straight breaking into a corner and as you turn in wheel platform lightly flexing and reducing the fidelity of the feedback in the wheel now you may well be thinking that as long as it's consistent it doesn't really cause an issue because you know it's come as long as the cars behaving in the same way it's not a problem well that's not exactly the case either imagine that you're going through a fast s Bend with really quite curbs and as you manhandle the steering through the change in direction as you bump over the curbs the wheel platform will flex a lot more than it did through the corner that you just drove through a moment ago now the reason for that is because you're actually physically putting a lot more force into the wheel through a change of direction than you would be just through a you know an easy right hand or left hander and because of the dampening effect as well as affect that the wheel is physically moving around on the wrong axis this is going to introduce a significant variation in how the cars behavior is interpreted by your senses so it's going to feel quite different at the limit of grip through that S Pen from what it did in the corner that you just went through a moment ago so even though it might be the same every time in the same corner the difference from corner to corner makes it very difficult to learn the cars limits instinctively and this is the main reason why you want to eliminate flex in your wheel platform as much as possible now the same principle applies to braking too when it comes to consistency if things are moving around and the braking feel isn't consistent as you drive you're never going to be out establish proper muscle memory think about shooting basketball hoops for example if you stand into one place and just shoot basket after basket eventually you're gonna get pretty consistent even though you might be consistently missing but even doing something as simple as slightly adjusting your stance can send you right back to square one it's exactly the same as simracing any sort of variation whatsoever and it really throws out your muscle memory which really affects your consistency and your speed so my recommendation regardless of budget is to always get the best pedals that you possibly can make sure that you're mounting them to something as solid as you possibly can as well and that's not going to move to your chair wherever possible if you are gonna go ahead and buy a copy made sure that you have the space for it and make sure that you're getting something that is suitable for the wheel and pedals that you intend to me out for example my first cockpit was a next-level racing and it was absolutely fine for my fanatic v3 pedals and my clubsport wheel base of 2.5 but I wouldn't recommend it for a direct driver base because the more powerful wheel bases with the heavier pedals you know that you start to get a little bit of flex and that starts to become an issue and you'll effectively be wasting all that extra fidelity that you just paid for with your expensive wheel and pedal so you want to make sure that you're matching the cockpit to the you know to the hardware that you're going to be mounting on it now your best bet here is simply just to look at reviews of course we have an abundance of those right here on this channel but also just talking to people about their own experiences now admittedly with all sorts of hobbies people do have a tendency to tell you that what they have is the best and that's simply just due to the fact that it's the only experience so obviously take this into account when you are talking to people but generally speaking most respected manufacturers are pretty clear about what wheels and pedals and their products are intended to be usually so definitely make sure you are paying attention to that so in the next video where we digging deeper into the world of simracing pedals we'll discuss the differences between different types of pedals such as load cell and potentially your meter pedals we'll talk about things like hydraulic dampeners vibration motors abs and a whole bunch more then we'll move on from there into steering wheels and wheel bases will talk about belt driven cog driven and direct drive wheels and then on to monitors TVs VR we'll also be taking a look at PCs and console hardware you know what's required to actually get a good experience and how to put all the pieces together so if you're not already subscribed now is a great time to hit that subscribe button and while you're down there make sure you also hit in the notification girl that way you'll be notified when the next video is released so I really hope that you guys have found part one of this video series helpful please do leave a thumbs up if you found it helpful and enjoyed it and please also let me know in the comments if you have any other questions while so ever of course feel free to reach out on our disk or community as well if you did have any other questions but thank you very much for watching guys and I'll see you again soon bye [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Boosted Media

Views: 79,932

Rating: 4.9399848 out of 5

Keywords: Fanatec, Simucube, Next Level Racing, Thrustmaster, Sim Racing, Buyers Guide, What sim racing gear to buy, How to get started in Sim Racing, Best way to start sim racing, driving simulator, cockpit, chassis, fanatec vs simucube, best wheel for sim racing, best value sim racing brand, cheapest way to start sim racing, sim racing cockpit, sim racing rig, racing sim cockpit, sim racing wheels, sim racing pedals, sim racing wheel, racing sim rig

Id: XjcW3qzWTyE

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/a_y_thomas]

Thanks Will, I always enjoy watching your videos. Your top 10 things I wish I knew before I started sim racing was a great help as I followed you down the rabbit hole that is sim racing.

[u/jaytde]

First off great video. For whatever reason unfortunately, I've seen this guy get hate from the community when he posts content. I started watching his videos because of that. Turns out he's actually a decent reviewer, has easily digestible content and puts together clean editing. People are just rude, and probably projecting. Keep it up man, your work is appreciated.

[u/FireBulletX]

Love your videos, Will. And the latest one didn't disappoint either 😉 keep up the great work!

[u/docjonel]

Also love your vids Will! Recently got a Fanatec Formula V2 wheel and base and your video on force feedback settings for it was extremely helpful as Fanatec's documentation is sadly lacking.