That’s a huge difference when it comes to controlling a light, fast, and skittish car. That steering wheel is not only bigger than the thumb stick on the Xbox controller, it also has a wider range of motion. If you’re right-handed, you hold it in your left hand, use your left index finger on the “trigger” (which acts as the throttle) and your right hand on the steering wheel mounted on the side of the transmitter. A real transmitter is shaped like a pistol. There’s a pretty big difference between the two, primarily when it comes to steering. There was another issue as well: I would be playing with an Xbox controller, not an actual car racing R/C transmitter. In other words, my memories of just how hard it is to control a 1/10th scale car doing a scale 200 mph clashed with the promise of more of the same from the sim. This was, however, an example of the proverbial double-edged sword - an ultra-realistic brain surgery simulator, for example, would lead to dozens of dead patients before I ever managed to finish an operation successfully. While this was gratifying in the sense that if the realism was as described, it would be the perfect way to get a feel for what I would be getting myself into. Real existing mini race tracks have been modeled in precise detail. This sim is supported by over 40 industry leading RC brands and organizations.
#Vrc pro xbox simulator#
VRC PRO is by far the most realistic RC racing simulator available today, with over 14 years of non-stop physics and vehicle dynamics development. The product description on Steam was music to my…. Would it be as helpful as the R/C flying sim had been back when I had the same concerns about flying? We shall see. I was offered the opportunity to try VRC PRO.
I thought maybe racing R/C cars would be a good thing to try, but the fairly steep monetary investment combined with my memories of just how fast, twitchy, and hard to drive those speedy little cars are had me worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the pack.
I credit the simulator with easing my way back into safely flying a real model.Īs we are on the cusp of yet another brutal (defined as temps routinely below freezing and the constant threat of ice/snow storms) Midwest winter, I have been looking for a new indoor pastime that doesn’t involve riding a horse and robbing trains outside of St. It must have worked, because there remains an unbroken P-47 Thunderbolt in my basement just waiting for the good weather to return. Having not flown R/C for years, and recognizing that the ability to fly a full-size plane most certainly does not imbue the skills used in flying models, I invested in a PC-based R/C airplane simulator. Note that “more affordable” does not necessarily equate to “cheap.” While you can get a lot for your money in the Styrofoam airplane era, it is still costly enough that you want to avoid breaking things. Eventually I got into real airplanes, even going so far as to build one of my own, so R/C flying became something of a nostalgic memory.Ībout two years ago, I tried to get back into R/C flying, mostly because it has become very easy and much more affordable to get an airplane and a radio. I had an interest in them, of course, but there were only so many things I could buy as a teenager with a part time job. It took the advent of electric power and cheaper radios for those to become common.
In the beginning it was all about airplanes for me - everything was powered by nitro-fueled engines and the radio equipment was pretty expensive, so it wasn’t until a few years later that R/C cars started to appear. I have been involved with radio control (R/C) airplanes off an on for almost four decades.