what's up everybody my name is Justin welcome to my pit lane basement that's
right we're not hanging out in the garage today working on the real cars I
thought it'd be a good idea to give you guys an insight into one of my other
offseason hobbies and that is my sim racing rig that I have here behind me
now I do have a number of real car projects coming up here we're still kind
of waiting on parts and some other things you guys saw in the previous week
my MCS suspension unboxing so I got a few miscellaneous parts springs and a
few other pieces that we need to get before I can get started on that
suspension swap and I'm also cooking up some ideas for my e36 BMW I got a big
surprise for that one if I decide to keep the car in the first place but I
got some things going through my head for the e36 bmw that I think you guys
will enjoy but for this video we're gonna go ahead and talk about my sim
racing rig what I did to get everything set up I did kind of a budget build will
go over the PC my wheel and pedal kits my seat that I'm sitting in actually
this is one of my BRZ seats from the BRZ itself so we'll show you how that's all
set up and bring a little racing action for you as well hope you enjoy
alright guys so we're gonna go ahead and start off talking about the PC build
itself it's nothing too crazy actually and for the games that I play I play
primarily iRacing and Project Cars and now Project Cars 2 which just came out
not too long ago I was looking at the new Forza, Forza 7 i played the demo and
it looks really sweet the graphics were awesome but I love the feel and the
physics of Project Cars and Project Cars 2 actually better so I like that as a
simulator better so I ended up getting Project Cars 2 and skipped on the Forza
7 at least for now so I've been building PC's for many many years I've been gaming
on PC since the early 90's and building them since then as well so this is a
custom built PC that we have here for the simulator rig and I'm not gonna show
you pictures or video of the PC box itself a standard mid-tower ATX box but
give you an overview of what hardware we've got in the thing and kind of give
you an idea what it takes to run these games on you know medium to high levels
of detail this is not a build that will allow you to run the games on max
settings or ultra settings but they're pretty inexpensive to build out this way
this was actually a PC that I had a second PC for just general gaming and
fun stuff down here and converted it into the sim rig so what we've got is
a of course like I mentioned the ATX case we got a Gigabyte mainboard just a
generic motherboard nothing too fancy 8Gb of DDR3 memory we have an
Intel i5-2500K CPU which is one of my personal favorite CPU's you can overclock
them like crazy if you need the extra speed this one in
this box is not overclocked my main gaming computer and editing computer
which is over here next to me that one is overclocked like crazy because of
some of the other games that I play but this one being in the stock clock works
just fine for Project Cars 2 and iRacing and any other games that I throw at this
one as for the video card it's a mid-range Radeon it's an R9 200 video card
2Gb of memory on that thing and again not super high-end but plenty
enough to run the games that we play at perfectly fine
resolution and I have a Samsung 840 SSD drive solid-state hard drive for all of
the storage space in the back I've got three BenQ monitors there are 24"
monitors set up in the triple screen or three screen display mode so your
desktop in the games is well display across all three displays as if it was
one giant screen which is really cool once we get into the racing games itself
hopefully I'll be able to show you that in a little bit here and the camera will
pick it up alright and then we have a few peripherals of course the keyboard
the mouse just a standard Bluetooth keyboard with a wired mouse and kind of
a cheap Logitech set of speakers and subwoofer I kind of need to upgrade the
speaker's because the sound in the games is awesome and these speakers just
don't really do the job but that's what I've got
as for the steering wheel and pedals setup itself it's the very common
Logitech G27 wheel with the shifter as well and the pedal setup which I've
modified quite a bit actually from its stock configuration we'll get into
closer detail on that and again like I mentioned the BRZ seats I've got here in
the winter time when I swap these seats back into the BRZ I'll throw one my race
seats on here I have the mounting base is actually drilled for both seats so I
can swap them out quickly as needed and once we go over the details on the rest
of the kits Shelby's gonna pick out a track she's been reading this new book
what do you got there Shelby oh we have driving on the edge the art and
science of race driving - the art and science of race driving one of these
books I picked up recently and Shelby is gonna actually figure out a car and a
track for us to run here once we get further along in the video
so let's take a closer look at how things are built you're gonna notice a common theme here
with this sim rig and that is excessive amounts of wood and lumber this is
almost entirely crafted out of spare wood that I had laying around in my shed
and in the garage 2x4's pieces of plywood 2x10's you'll notice I used
to craft the seat base and the seat just bolts up to the 2x4's as for the
peripherals we have a simple little shelf stand for the keyboard and
the mouse a used computer desk that I modified pretty heavily to mount the
steering wheel and the shifter - and as we pan underneath the desk here you'll
see how I mounted what used to be the keyboard tray where the steering wheel
and the shifter are mounted and kind of bolted them up with the rails to the
rest of the desk and you can see where I've had the bolts come out through the
top not the cleanest design but it works and it got the job done and I didn't
have to spend any extra money except for on the bolts and the rails I did
purchase this three monitor stand that is used to mount the BenQ monitors to
the desk itself and moving on to the pedal kits another 2x4 and plywood or
OSB type base that I crafted up to fit in between the desk and you'll notice
there's a lot of customization done with the pedals these pedals are normally
mounted in a plastic base inverted from the way they are right now so this is an
inverted pedal setup mounted to a couple plywood boards using some metal brackets
to provide the supports and the pedal angle and spacing was measured straight
out of my BRZ for a realistic feel not the prettiest thing in the world and
I'll eventually add some carpet to the foot base there but it does get the job done
so that covers pretty much everything for the rig and the PC setup itself when
it's all set up and ready to drive it looks like this where we have our seat
in place we can actually move it forward and backward just like any other normal
adjustable seat our pedals down here in the back there's actually a brace up
against the wall so when you're moving the pedals back and forth it actually
stays solidly in place those little two by fours on the side are also there to
keep it in place because when you're getting crazy and they're racing the
pedals tend to move around when you're given lots of brake and gas so that
stuff keeps it solidly in place and then you've also got your peripherals your
mouse and your keyboard nice and close and of course the stick is right next to
the steering wheel
alright so enough talk we're gonna jump into a race real quick and I think
Shelby's got some ideas of what we're gonna drive I have no idea she's been
looking in the book but I'm gonna crank up Project Cars here so hopefully you
can see things on the screen probably not I'm looking at my viewfinder you can
see it a little bit this is Project Cars 2 the Project Cars intro is freakin
awesome just to watch it but um we're gonna skip it here and we'll see if
Shelby's got something lined up for us to drive so what are we driving today
Shelby we are driving a formula car formula car alright so open-wheel race
car so we got the formula a selected here from 2011 alright what about what
track are we doing Laguna Seca ah Laguna Seca let's do it we'll do a
circuit of Americas I'm not very good at that what do you think, let's do Long Beach
alright so we're gonna do Long Beach is that what you decided, yes, or Laguna Seca
No Laguna Seca? No, alright so we'll do Long Beach I think
I've driven this one a little bit not in this car though
alright let's start it's a really good track I've watched him done it it's really cool so enjoy
so with Project Cars 2 you can do like a private testing you can do
career modes and online racing I haven't actually done an online race I was
thinking about recording my first online race and sharing it with you guys
because I think it would be a giant mess like a lot of online racing is but uhm
let's go and we'll start this up I'm not even gonna touch the tuning or the pit
strategy or anything let's just go for it
so at the start it's um it automatic drive it just drives for you
Oohhh!
alright I already missed the breaking point for the first turn so we're gonna try again and we'll
see how it works I just ran this track like 20 times the
other day and I already forgot where to turn it's really hard to see Long Beach is super hard
Long Beach is kinda like in California or just a place with a beach
and has really tough turns because it's such a big track and you never know
where to turn it's a wide-open place and up here there
a straight but you were supposed to turn that got him the first time that we
tried Long Beach
lots of building lots of places
there's not really areas to watch but you know you can stand around and see if you can watch if you're actually there
and I think these are real tracks
yes they are all real tracks...aahhh no!
they are all real tracks but I've never heard of the name
so Long Beach is actually a real track so if you want to you can go visit it or something like that
or just get a simulator and try it on here
k so now we should have some warm tires
little more traction hopefully
starting again
there's also like a map on the corner and it shows where they're going so I
like that too
and it shows like the speed and
how fast you're going and the miles-per-hour
and that's pretty much what I see
there's lots of like stuff that you can see
and then, on Project Cars we may show you that website
website on the red buttons over there it will make it like you see both sides, so...crashed
alright so I've...
I've got aero damage I messed up so we're gonna quit this session just give
you a quick idea do you want to jump in for a drive Shelby?
we might let Shelby jump in here on iRacing and do a a couple laps in the Miata
all right we got Shelby loaded up here and when I built this rig you can't really see it
but the pedal system down here is actually designed to slide in and out
and then I have extra blocks behind it to brace it so the kids can actually
jump in here and drive as well and have a little fun so we loaded up Shelby and
iRacing with a Mazda MX-5 and got her at Lime Rock Park which is a pretty
straightforward and easy track to learn on so go ahead and hit test Shelby you
can get started
Ok, here we go!
good job
finally got far and getting to the end a little
it's kind of up in the mountains
turn sooner whoops turn a little bit sooner
turn turn turn in turn in okay good gas gas gas go go go
all right everybody there you go a quick lap around the Long Beach racetrack in a
formula car and Project Cars 2 a formula car which I actually never driven before
that was pretty bad but I've got show you a little bit of the game and Shelby
doing a lap around Lime Rock Park in the Mazda MX-5 in iRacing we're gonna
wrap this one up I hope you all enjoy the video if you have any thoughts
comments or questions about the iRacing and Project Cars 2 race rig or anything
about this kit in general I'd be happy to answer any questions help you guys
out it's a whole lot of fun and I have a good time racing on these simulators so
stay tuned for more stuff coming up here in the near future don't forget to stay
fast out there we're training hard on the simulator to get faster
we are checkin' out we'll talk to you all next time