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Rather depressed with the apparently never ending wait for Gran Turismo 5, I realized I technically have a PC compatible wheel and an old Windows XP capable machine in the closet, and got to wondering just what was out there in the realm of PC racing sims. I tried a few out but the one that really got my attention was iRacing.

I've been on iRacing for about 6 weeks now, and having a great time but honestly it can be hard to describe why if you're not someone who enjoys motorsports.Gran Turismo has decent mass market appeal, it has excellent physics, but also a lot of driver aids that can make the game fun for a wider audience. iRacing on the other hand is all about the race experience, and there's virtually *nothing* to dumb it down or make it easier. It's founders have pedigree, and they're quite serious about building it as a training tool for motorsports, not something for casual gamers.

First thing's first though, a crucial and massive difference is that iRacing is a subscription service, the monthly fee ranges from $15 to $8 depending on how long you're willing to sign up for. That wouldn't be so bad, but then you discover that this is only 3 cars and abut 7 tracks, split between both road and oval racing. Tracks and cars require a one time license fee, $15 per track and $12 per car. Indeed this is brutally expensive if you want to compare it to a traditional video game, and there's no sugar coating that. This pricing structure bothers me quite a bit, it requires a nasty combination of both a monthly subscription fee, and upfront costs. I'm still not sure if I'll ever invest more than the base subscription but more on that later. By my estimates to progress to the C or B licenses and do purely road racing, you'd need to drop close to $200 for all the cars and tracks. This is rough for content you can't resell if you get bored.

One of the first things one would notice coming from Gran Turismo is there's a drastically smaller selection of cars, and all for racing. (no production cars) Track selection is fairly decent, but this leads me to another thing you'll notice early. iRacing has a bit of an "American" feel, in that a certain form of racing involving driving around in circles which shall remain nameless (but lets just say it starts with an N and ends with an ASCAR) features prominently in both the site and it's content. This is quite misleading as from what I can tell, iRacing treats road racers very well also with a completely separate system and a wide variety of tracks. In any case, most of the tracks (note that there are a few European classics as well) and cars are American, but there's still plenty fun to be had.

Strangely enough, the interface for iRacing is completely dependent on their website, this is where you launch all your games and thus, if the site is down, you're not going anywhere. On the plus side all the statistics and forums are nicely integrated.

The graphics on my crappy machine don't look great, they're passable, but not great. It doesn't bother me day to day but it's quite clearly not in the same league as GT. I'm actually pretty pleased iRacing just worked on a system as old as mine.

Physics on the other hand are right up there, honestly I find the two quite comparable and easy to switch back and forth between. iRacing has a bit of a "rougher" feel and much tighter turning radius', whereas with GT I find the wheel much smoother. (note I use a Logitech G25 for both) This can easily be attributed to the cars involved. When playing you feel very connected, when you get it right you can really tell, and likewise when it starts to go wrong.

In my opinion, the only online play we've seen out of the Gran Turismo series in GT5P is just laughable. I can live with the 6 tracks and 70 odd cars, what I can't stay interested in is laughably buggy online matching where 25-50% of every grid fails to connect, or the complete omission of any way to group up with friends, the lack of consequences for those who cause accidents, or the lack of any replay when a race finishes. I know the last one sounds small but I really think it's brutally important and a really nasty thing for GT to omit given their efforts to make those replays look amazing.

iRacing is all about the online play, it's mostly all there is and it's absolutely fantastic. They model every part of a race weekend in a way that's great for not interfering with your daily schedule. Seasons run for 3 months, each season there's a series for each car, where the more difficult cars are organized by licence classes. The only way to progress through the licence classes is to improve your safety rating, and that's a magical little formula that combines the number of corners you take with the number of incidents you have, weighted by severity. There's no assignment of blame so *everyone* has to (and does) be careful. It works like a charm.

So within a series you move to a new track every week. That week you can attend practice sessions any time, run time trials by yourself to compete for fastest lap, run a qualifying session (as often as you like) to get your qualification time (determines your order on a start grid), and finally attend hourly or bi-hourly races.

In addition to the safety rating there is also a damage system as well, it doesn't always look quite right but the simple fact is it's there, hit something and you *will* knock your car out of alignment, more often than not that'll make it very difficult if not impossible to continue. You can tow to pits but I haven't actually figured out how repairs happen, it's just happened some times and not on others. Regardless how accurate the damage is, it's there, and you'll want to avoid it, which is the whole point. (are you reading Polyphony Digital? The key word here is CONSEQUENCES.)

Once you get your first non-rookie license you're also given a separate "iRating". I have no idea what the formula is, but it's meant to be a measure of skill and determines which racers you get matched against. This is a great idea, particularly when you're a good 5 seconds off pace every week. :) The experience is a lot more fun when you're facing people of similar skill.

Once behind the wheel I realized just how much GT has sugar coated the experience. There's no track map showing you what corners are coming and where everyone else is. There's no flashing red light shift indicator warning you when to slow down. There's no out of car view. You see roughly what you should be seeing, and you're expected to get out there, drive clean, and abide by the rules, or pay the price.

Funny thing about that high price of entry, there are no children here looking to wreck you for laughs. The price is too high and the consequences too great. To be honest it's one of the most polite communities I've ever seen online. People fly off the handle occasionally but in general I've seen a lot of good sportsmanship and courtesy. Very refreshing.

The community I think is around 15,000 strong. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue sold over a million pre-order copies, just in Europe. Full GT5 will no doubt destroy that number.

I think iRacing is pretty great, if you're a frustrated GT fan waiting for that release and the kind of person who actually enjoys motorsports, I think you'll find it a great passtime. It's hard to describe just how fun the intensity of it is.

However I'm pretty sure that when GT5 drops, unless they completely failboat the online functionality, I'll be able to cancel my subscription. One has to hope PD will provide proper league racing support. If so, then we know GT will drop a better car and track selection, drastically better graphics, a much bigger user base, and all for a fraction of the cost and no monthly subscription. I doubt they'll match the online scheduling features of iRacing, at least not right away, but I really suspect it'll be enough for someone like me.

For these reasons I'm still considering iRacing just a temporary thing, but that decision isn't set in stone.

Enjoy one of my favourite moments from my first week. I'll be the guy in the middle of this clip, all three of us fighting for position and the guy behind me is *way* faster.