Shovas's initial thoughts on iRacing rain

Just got in, BMW M4 GT3 at Lime Rock Park with "Ensured" rain setup. Depending on the forecast it generated, it may already be raining or it may take some time.

Wow. It's everything that said it was in the videos.

Just be sure you're in a rain-enabled car:

Rain Enabled Content

The track floods just as promised. And it feels more right than anything I've felt in any other sim so far.

And my fear about the tyre model and ffb seems to have been addressed with rain-enabled cars and/or the wet tyres. I can actually feel something mid-corner. Just before this I tried the MX-5 again in the dry to see if they had fixed anything for other cars / dry tyres and nope it's the same dull mid-corner feeling. Update: I tried the M4 GT3 in the dry and it feels like there's some improvement to rain-enabled cars or their dry tyres even in the dry.

You will spin out. So have the experienced drivers and pros in YouTube videos who got to try it out before us. Just keep at it.

My recommendation for rain driving tips would be to watch this Daniel Morad video (newer concentrated tips video) for how he describes car behaviour in the wet and this Matt Alone video where he and other YouTubers are testing out the weather system and they have as much trouble as you (there's a real life driver in the session who helps them). If you keep your ears open in the Matt Malone video you'll pick up handy hints.

Wet lines really are the preferable lines in the rain. The rubbered in dry lines have a clear lack of grip.

Driving through puddles actually kinda feels like you would expect from a real car. There's this sort of impact, resistance, and gradual release.

I've aquaplaned on the highway many times in my life. This has a very adequate simulation of it.

Default traction control may be counter-intuitive to some and more may not be better. Try lowering TC instead of raising it and see if it feels more intuitive. Too much TC has this weird bogging down thing where it's almost impossible to recover from (something like driving iRacing in the dry and if you get the least bit wiggly on the backend you're gone there's no forgiveness).

For similar reasons, more ABS might not be better, either, as you lose some feel for the proper braking pressures needed.

Try disabling both ABS and TC to just how you are in the rain without technological aids.

One tip from the Matt Malone video that is helping is this idea of cutting across the rubbered in line to get to the wet line with more grip on corner-entry and then crossing the dry line to the wet line on corner exit.

Rain driving is still a total frustration but with enough practice it's manageable which is what we want in the end out of our simulations.