hpr_transcripts/hpr4684.txt

Episode: 4684
Title: Sim Racing on the cheap!
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4684/hpr4684.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:16:44 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4684, for 2026-07-16
Today's show is entitled, "Sim Racing on the cheap!"
The host is operat0r and the duration is 00:21:11
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "Insights on sim racing costs, setup, and game choices, emphasizing time and investment."
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Queue.
This show was submitted in January 2026 to cover occasions like this
where there are gaps in the schedule.
Hello everyone, I'm Lekotoo and another episode of HackerPokeGradior, the host operator.
Today I'm going to talk about my DIY cheapest sim rig I've got possible.
It's got force feedback, it's got pedal feedback, and it's a plastic kind of entry level
set up with pedals, the whole thing, probably calls, maybe $400, so I can win.
So anyways, I'll kind of go over the parts of the approach, whatever, I'd co-worker to
it played a truck racing sim, and us today looking to get rid of your stuff, because
I thought, hey man, if he hasn't been pounded on it, what do you do as a truck driver,
you're not driving crazy, so he probably took care of it, and it probably hasn't been
up used to that, we'll talk about that later, but anyways, he offered it to me, you know,
got like $100 off, basically got, you know, kind of some of it for free sort of.
So, brought a home, got to set up, and I went in hard with I racing, which is monthly service,
he paid like $15 a month, the tracks are extra, the cars are extra, sometimes the tracks
and cars are available, but then they go out of season or whatever, so like when I was driving
it was like the Mazda, and I guess maybe they do it with other cars, I don't know, anyways,
I went pretty hot heavy into that, and realized, hey, I don't know how to drive, I'm not good at it,
and I do not have enough time to dedicate to whatever, if you're a gamer, then you can probably
be a sim racer. If you're not a gamer and you'll have time to game, then you probably can't be a
sim racer, unless you're a prodigy and you're like that dude that went from you sim racing to like
racing real races, and one like, you know, first place or something. So anyways, it's a
time to think just like video games are, if you want to actually race, if you just want to have fun,
play arcades, it's also fun to my son, love just playing a forza, which is like a more arcade-based
different cars, and you can swap out the parts, and it's not super realistic. So there's an
extra cap that's borrowing for the, hello, this is Mojo, anyways, Mojo, so the idea there is,
I just have a sifter here, it's seven, and it has a reverse. It's mounted to my standing desk.
Problem with it is if you really want to get serious about it, you need to have a different space.
The problem with that is, you know, I've got a 42 inch, 49 inch curve, full for a wide
monitor or ridiculous, like I can't put that anywhere else, I can't, you know, use it for work,
I've used it for work, and whatever, so like I have to drag out the steering wheel and mount it,
and then when I'm done, I have to put it behind the monitor. Ideally what I would like to do is
get an actual setup with a seat and a proper seat and proper adjustments, but then what if I want
to play a nice game on my ultra wide monitor? Well, you can't, so I'd have to use my old monitor
and like remote into my gaming machine, you know, that's kind of one way to get around it,
is use sunshine and moonlight and nightlight, or late night, or night night, or whatever,
it's called the ultra platform, multiple launcher, which I think I've done a series on, or a episode
on. Play night is the multi-watcher, whatever, that will do steam and bunch of other ones. So
anyways, my idea would be if I did get into it, I would get a seat and if I got a new steering wheel
and direct drive, I would get that and put it in its corner, and then if I wanted to play games,
I would remote into that gaming system from another computer, like a laptop or some not gaming
machine. And you can get all your FPS, I do it downstairs, I play games downstairs, with the sunshine
and moonlight. So anyways, moving on to the start out with eye racing, I realize if you really want
to get into it, you're going to spend like $200 a year, just on tracks and cars.
You know, anywhere for $200 or $300 a year, if you're trying to chase every single weekend,
or week, you're going to spend like $20, $15 plus another $20, $40 every month, or every
other week, they get two weeks, their rotation, anyways, it's expensive. If you want to get into
it, it's expensive. Now you can buy a couple cars you like and then buy a couple of tracks you
like and wait till those tracks come around. So I ended up doing the alternative, the next step,
which is the other racing team people like to use a set of course. So ACC is a set of course,
a competition on the is like the online version, it's more arcadey, it's not quite as serious,
I got my license, it took probably 60 hours to 80 hours of racing to get my license and I racing.
And I think it was combined with that, it was probably another 80 or 60 to get my
set of course, the license. So I didn't even think I was going to get it to get that,
to get the whatever to be able to play in official races or whatever. So I think,
I don't even think I have a license for a set of course. I just, I just had the I racing license
and that's what took like a month or something ridiculous. But set of course has a system built into
where you can, you know, essentially if you drive dangerously or if you're in a ball of
an wreck, it's not perfect. None of these systems are perfect. But in general, if you play defensively
and you drive defensively, you're usually not going to get in trouble. But also if you just
play defensively, then people are going to run over you and you'll still get, you know,
half the time it's going to be your fault. So I would say don't play aggressively, but also don't
just like not take any risk at all because you don't want your, you know, your score to be
tainted. It's kind of getting messed up. It's going to get, it's going to take when somebody
like does a barrel roll in front of you and then you hit them or something like it's not perfect.
So keep that in mind. Same thing with I racing, it's, you know, people get all upset or whatever
you're bummed. But that's, I wasn't that into it. So then there's a force of, so that's I racing,
expensive, and there's a set of course, which is, you know, one-time payment, not as serious.
You still, I think you still have to get a license. I'm not sure. I can't remember. But I think
I have an ACC license for a set of course of, so that I can play. And then once you do that,
you can, like, actually go join real races and not just random ad hoc ones where you get
ranked races or whatever. Anyways, I did that in my son likes to play
forza, which is more arcade-based. And you can buy, like, lost or, lost accounts,
whatever, or hacked accounts. They have, like, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, uh,
about two of those. They got neutral Microsoft. So that's really the only time of the
overhead problems buying, resold, or hacked accounts. So I finally bought it. I ended up buying
it twice, and then three times illegitimately. So I bought it, like, a total of four times.
So anyways, a set of course, or forza, I play just for funsies. If I want to find an arcade,
I want to earn money to play, you know, buy a game. So we're all on the same account. This
is my real account Microsoft account. And we play, we'll play that one. If I just want to just
play and have fun, and where somebody comes over, I'll have them play a set of course, uh,
and, like, wreck like 15 times. And then I'll let them play forza because that's a lot easier to
play around with. Um, I do have a switch set up, but I've got about a USB switch,
because when you plug it in, it's the fans always on. That's kind of the crappy set. There's
no way to turn this thing off. Um, so I have a little switch here. So if I, I'm not going to click it
now, but if I turn it now, the steering will start calibrating and rotating and tearing everything apart.
That's the set up. I have, uh, it basically, I have the steering, the pedals, drill two, two pieces,
two boards, and those boards have a little, a knockout thing where they go, they push it forward towards
me. So I push it up against the wall, and then, um, it kind of mostly stays in place.
Uh, and I got comfortable with that. I do like, a little bit of force feedback, but not the realistic.
Uh, because it's too realistic. It's, it's not realistic, and then you're trying to fight force feedback.
Really the only reason you want the force feedback is to understand when the car is losing grip,
or you're turning too tight, or you're hitting a certain terrain type. Um, it's not made to be like
realistic, unless you want to do direct drive stuff. Um, and even then you don't want to like
pounding on you, and really have it to work for it. I mean, it's a sin. Uh, it's, you know, if you want
to drive, eventually, maybe you want that, that, whatever. But, uh, I've seen stories and people
go from sin racing to, you know, uh, real racing, and like, be really good at it. That might be just
a random, uh, random occurrence. But the general, uh, general ideas once you get in the car,
after doing sin racing, it becomes a lot easier. Because, say you have developed some bad
patterns or habits, but you have so much more input in a real car than when you do in a sin.
So, um, it's a lot easier to drive a car in real life than it is to drive a car in a sin,
because you don't have all the pushed feedback. Now, um, I looked at mods. I looked at, you know,
people buying whatever, you know, what other stuff can I buy? I waste my money on, um,
and I wanted the best bang for my book. And you can order, uh, base takers, small base takers to put
on the, uh, pedals. So, I have one on the break and one on the gas that will tell me, you know,
the ideas that will tell me when you're pushing, you have to withdraw or you're slamming on the
breaks too much. Um, it's, it's quite complicated. Uh, you can get, it's all, open free, not open source,
but, uh, uh, sin hub is how you manage all that. You can set up vibrations for different types of
games, as long as they support that data input. Now, I've had them all key around a little bit,
but it, sometimes it'll disappear and I have to read it and it's pretty clunky and a lot of these
people, you know, if you got your sim rig set up, you don't want to use it for anything else. Um,
if you're really serious about it, you want to have the sim rig set up, um, and you want to have it
on and working and configured and not messed with, um, because the last thing you want to do is, like,
get ready to take the sim rig, and then you've got to spend, like, 15, 40 minutes and an hour
setting up the, whatever, because the cable came disconnected or it's not connecting or it's not
vibrating or this isn't working or, you know, something, whatever. Um, so I look at this steering wheel
apart to upgrade it, um, because the, the, the belt drive had, like, these plastic things on it,
and you could turn when you turn the wheel it was, like, squeak, um, and it was not smooth. Um, so
I found a model online where you could buy these old bearings and you pull the plastic bearing off
and you replace it with a, uh, with bearings. You replace the, replace the plastic little
knob thing on the other side or whatever. Uh, you slide off this piece of plastic cylinder and you put
on an actual bearing and it makes it a lot smoother. Um, when I did that, uh, I took the main
drive shaft that's connected with all plastic and the whole thing had shattered at some point
time. It probably was me. Um, I had been frustrated at it before and maybe beaten on a little bit.
Um, so it's probably not, you know, uh, from a preexisting issue, probably from me getting angry
and beating at it or something. Um, so with that said, um, it was completely cracked and shattered.
So I had a hand mill, uh, by hand with a gentle tool. Um, I took a saw. I'll see how
I could put some pictures in the, uh, the show notes of that. Um, I took a saw and a saw blade
and replaced, uh, bits of pieces of it until, uh, until it actually worked. Um, so anyways,
all of this, uh, show picks of mine for four wheel and then wheel, uh, a link and also a base
shaker. Also, um, some hub, um, a set of course, uh, and I racing and maybe see a, um, the link for
forza keys. Uh, so that's some of the, for my notes, I'll go back and do. Um, it is fun. Um,
but it's a lot of work. I, I tried to get into the, the, to where I could actually race and just
come in last, uh, but it's hard. It's, it's very difficult. And some people, I've, I've talked to
people online where they're like, hey, out of the way, whatever, and they're like, they don't even
have a steering wheel. They just have like an Xbox controller and they're like destroying me, like,
like five seconds ahead of me on time. Like I, I don't even know how that's even possible.
Like it, I don't understand. So I'm, I'm not good at it. And or I haven't practiced enough, I guess.
Um, so for me, it was a lot of work to even get to the point where I could even be in a race.
So the whole like getting some racing thing is not for me, because I just do not have enough time,
uh, to dedicate to doing it. And I also don't want to play, simressing that much. It's fun,
to have the force to be back and race the cars and tune them and whatever, but
if you have to, you know, if every time a track comes out, you've got to spend 80 hours driving
it to get anywhere good, then it's, it's not really for me. Um, the idea there is, again,
like anything to get practice. And eventually you'll see a new track and you'll, you know,
watch a video and you don't even need to do anything. And you'll get good enough times to be at a race.
I just, I just never made it there. And after not playing for like four months,
I tried to play and it was awful. Like I was just completely, it was not like riding a bike.
Like it, it completely had to start all over almost. Um, I probably would have had to drive for
another 10 hours just to get back to where I was, you know, two, three months ago. Um, so it's a lot
of, it's a lot of work if you're not good at it, apparently. Um, so your mileage may vary, uh,
upon intended, but it's fun, but, you know, don't go out buying a bunch of, you know,
don't spend $3,000 worth of gear when you're not sure if you want to do this or not.
Because it does require a lot of time. Um, I will, I'll tell you that much. Um, but it, it's fun.
And, uh, I used, uh, the other one I'll play is dirt. Uh, dirt, 2.0, whatever. The, uh, the, uh, dirt,
dirt, uh, cold edition or something. It comes with a bunch of tracks or whatever. And then you can get that pretty
cheap. Um, that one's good for like drifting, uh, to learn how to do the rally stuff. I pretty much
had a pretty good amount of fun with that too. And, uh, other than that, uh, you know, the,
see, it's a, the way the base shakers work is you buy the two base shakers. And then you buy this
little USB powered amp thing. Um, I had a label everything, course label, break, gas, B and G. And it's
like a little speaker amp, like a mini Bluetooth powered. Or, or, uh, it does have a AC power,
like 12 volt. I don't know what, the 24 volt input. Um, it's a little tiny little, tiny brick.
And this little tiny brick powers the base shakers. And kind of will give you that feedback. And you
can dial them up or down. Um, and I've had to configure manually for the dirt. Thanks. And there's
not a lot of like pre-built configurations out there as far as I could tell for SimHub.
Um, I did the donate for everything. They also have another one called, uh, another kind of helper
script called, um, so there's SimHub. And also, I don't even know the name of it. It's called, uh,
like copilot or, uh, copilot or car guy. Basically, it's, uh, the, the guy that talks in your
ear when you're on the track or whatever. Um, it's like a track mod thing. So it'll tell you,
oh, you know, there's somebody 10 seconds behind you. You can turn off the native one and use this one
because it's to get a little bit more control when you can change a lot of voice models and add stuff and
remove stuff. Um, there's also mods for the visuals of the game, um, for a set of courses and also
erasing. And a lot of them were kind of paid a play. Um, let me see if I can bring one of them up.
Second. Yeah, and you can buy different setups for cars. I mean, honestly, I spent like,
not like 15 bucks on car setups. Um, if you're not really going to get into it, there's not
really a whole lot of point in paying for setups because you're only going to get like a second,
maybe off your time. Um, it's not going to make that big of a difference if you still suck
and driving a crew chief is the name of the thing that I'll send a link to, uh, for like, basically
an, uh, an automated crew chief deal. Kind of fun. There's other overlays out there. I used to
have one and I don't use it anymore. You see, I think, no, um, you see ours are doing something else.
Um, but there's, uh, you know, countless places to get the settings and who, what, who thinks
what settings or what, once you get it configured the way you want, take pictures, you know,
screenshots, do whatever you have to do to get the right, uh, to keep that information because it
will get reset at some point. Um, I do like one of the other overlays that I used to have for
um, I said of course, uh, that would change, uh, change stuff for you. But I, I've since just used
some hub, some hub has some overlay stuff in it and that's good enough for me. So I pretty much
roll with, I said of course, uh, and some hub and I've gotten rid of the crew chief thing. I don't
use that much. Um, because generally, like I said, I'm just playing it for funsies, um, but that
ideally, I want to get a drift car and that's not going to happen. So I'd like to get a direct
drive with a fancy steering wheel and learn how to drift and the sim racer so that maybe one day
I can have a middle-eyed crisis and get a drift car and then jump straight in and start doing
drifting. That's, that's the, uh, the fantasy that I've built for myself. Um, but it's fun and, um,
you know, you can get out from what you can get, you can get into it for, uh, offused, um, I buy all
my hardware used. I bought my, um, 3090. I've been using it for a year and a half, two, three years now.
I bought it used. Um, I put, uh, pad set on it. Uh, my, this monitor is a, uh, 49, it's ultra wide.
I got half price. It has one burn pixel, uh, green pixel and the, uh, per left that I can't see right now.
It only shows up on black on dark. Uh, yeah, it only shows up on dark, dark pictures, dark, uh,
images. Um, so you can get deals and I, I've been buying a lot of stuff used. I buy the games
essentially used, um, so that kind of helps. Uh, if you're not really serious about a game, I can
buy that, you know, the used version or the Hector version or uh, serial version of it or whatever.
And if I like it, then I'll buy it. I mean, that's why I set up a lot. I bought four stuff like
three, four times, uh, the total. Um, so anyways, uh, that, that covers most of like the set up and
kind of where I'm at. Um, Jesse Flawler is where I've got the set of course set ups. Um,
I drive that horse, 92 to 99 to GTR. Our GT, GT3R is what I like to drive. I'm not one of those
people that drives different cars. I just stick to one and I get really good at that one character
or device or whatever. Um, and uh, stick to the same track until you get good at whatever. Um,
I'll say that to you. Other than that, uh, that's pretty much it.
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