iRacing for Australians?

[R1Joel]

I am wondering what iRacing is like for people living in Australia? Are their enough players in this region to find online races regularly? Or would I have to stay up to 3am in the morning? For example, if I was to start off doing the MX5 races as a rookie, would I be able to play at normal hours?

I would love to play, and I am coming to terms with the cost, but I don't want to have an expensive hotlap sim.

I am pretty unwell at the moment, so I apologize if the post doesn't make sense.

 

[elloLeo Kinnunen]

Rookies has plenty of participation every time I've looked in but I think you'll end up treating it as an entry point and nothing more in the long term (poor driving standards make it not as much fun). Participation gets a bit thinner when you graduate to other cars, so yes it will probably take some planning if you have a particular car you want to race. That said you can always find a race in something on oz weeknights. If weeknights isn't your best time, you can check what cars had what participation at what times at https://iracer.info/statistics (well, at least normally you can, it doesn't seem to work for me just now).

I think pricing is high but value is subjective. Different people get very different levels of value. For me I think it's great to have the laser scanned tracks and the huge participation endurance events which they host on their own servers. Usually on 'black friday' sale they have a $100 of credit for $75 paid and significantly discounted 1 or 2 year subscriptions. If you build up your content slowly this way, and pay for the long term subscription then I think it becomes heaps more affordable. You also get participation credits if you do 8 races per 12 week season (at least I think it's 8). For many people this covers the subscription fee and effectively you only end up paying for content.

One final point worth mentioning is that AI is in development and this could mean very different participation patterns. If you can have good enough racing with a field or part-field of AI racers, then people might not concentrate on a particular time slot as much as they currently do. Or it could be a huge boost for low participation series because finally you can actually have a race at more than 1 time per week... so you might get to race with the 3 people who were just hotlapping on the practice servers and the rest of the field AI.

 

[R1Joel]

Thanks for the reply. Sounds good enough. I did read about the AI and I thought of it in two ways: 1. I can race anytime
2. People won't be worried about making a timeslot as much, so with already less numbers in Aus, I might have no one to race.
I will check out that site tomorrow. It isn't working for me either at the moment.
I may wait and see how ACC turns out first, as it is a lot cheaper.

 

[Brook Racing]

There is plenty of us Aussies out there racing in official leagues, I normally do the GT3 races but there is a strong community of V8 drivers and private leagues that are run professionally.
Brook Racing Aussie Racing Team
iRacing FOV Calculator Guide
iRacing Beginners Guide