[strogonoff]

Soon-to-be (hopefully) iRacing user here.

Are there (or could there be) extensions that improve on the simulation aspects of iRacing? Or is it considered already good enough?

Are there tools/extensions you would consider essential?

[Fuzzwah]

There is an external app that swaps out the built in force feedback with a system that generates forces based on the telemetry, I find it very helpful as you're able to exaggerate the feedback for oversteer and understeer (which in a real car you tend to feel through the seat of your pants, rather than through the wheel).

https://github.com/nlp80/irFFB

[herbstein]

As far as the raw simulation goes, you get what you get with iRacing. Because of the online-only nature of the service tampering with it is impossible as an end-user. However, there are a few external things can help with immersion and getting an overview.

The one I find the most crucial is "Crew Chief". iRacing tells you when someone is beside you, a slower car is ahead, and stuff like that. Crew Chief does all of this, but also gives you a bunch of more information without making it an overload. With the voice-interface and spoken information you could completely turn off every HUD element in the simulator without losing the ability to e.g. set pitstop parameters or knowing how far ahead of the person behind is.

Another option to super-sede the default iRacing interface is "Kapps" (short for "Kutu Apps"). It's what practically every streamer uses for their overlays, but it's also very usable for your own racing. Gives more details about you competition and your potential fuel strategy.

When doing the big endurance events with a team you might want to be able to get a more strategic overview of the race as it evolves. Joel Real Timing is a server and frontend that gives you information on deltas, pit stop timing, laptimes, consistenty, etc. for every car on track. I wouldn't say it's very useful as a solo driver, but as a team it's invaluable.

All of this said, however, don't mistake being kitted out for being fast. These three apps are essentially usability improvements and niceties compared to the normal interface. You can easily plan out your endurance race, or do any sprint race, without any of this. Most important is to get a lot of seat hours and practice. You don't need to worry about all of these fancy information-gathering apps before they'll actually make a real difference to your driving. And that might take a good while, depending on your skill level.

Similarly, for a lot of people there is a lot of focus on setups. When some peoplewant to try a new car, or a new track, they always start asking around for a setup that fits well. 1) iRacing just recently added standard setups for popular track/car combinations - there already was a "baseline" setup available for each car 2) a setup can maybe give you a second at the most egregious. When you're two seconds off-pace no amount of setup is gonna make you magically faster. I've won endurance races in the higher end of the rankings with the baseline setup, after a bunch of practice, against people that have sweated over their setups for weeks before the race. Don't fall into that pitfall when starting out.

[0]: http://thecrewchief.org/ [1]: https://kapps.kutu.ru/ [2]: https://joel-real-timing.com/index_en.html