Racing sims and Apple Vision Pro
Eddy Cue mentioned sim racing in a throwaway line at the end of a podcast interview yesterday. I thought it stood out among the other stories we've heard so many times before, so I looked into it.
He was referring to iRacing, a simulation racer that's been around for a while, and like X-Plane 12, it's a tool used in the industry but also acts as a kind of video game. It can be installed on a powerful PC, connected to multiple monitors and a steering wheel, and used to simulate driving real cars on real tracks.
As a racing game fan, it took me a little by surprise. I had always thought that Gran Turismo was the end-all be-all of racing sims, but iRacing seems to be rather serious. Instead of being a simple video game that happens to be highly accurate, it is built with the explicit purpose of recreating real-world race conditions.
Apple enabled Nvidia CloudXR with visionOS 26.4, so games like X-Plane 12 and iRacing are among the first to announce utilizing it. Apparently, iRacing will be able to run better than it could on Meta Quest headsets.
I've never played these kinds of games with a full steering and pedal rig, but it is tempting to try out. I do have a PSVR2 and a PS5 Pro to run Gran Turismo in full VR, but it is limited most by the PSVR2 hardware.
While it is a vast improvement over the original PSVR, it still has signs of the screen door effect present in headsets that can't reach "Retina" resolution. Meaning, the pixels are big enough to be visible like you're sitting too close to an HDTV.
However, Gran Turismo is known for its high fidelity. The level of specificity and detail in how light reflects off of each surface is borderline obsessive. Even if iRacing might have the track accuracy and racing physics down, I doubt it'll match Gran Turismo in terms of immersion and graphical fidelity.
iRacing doesn't have a release date for Apple Vision Pro, nor does it mention pricing. I assume I'm going to need one of their memberships to play, which start at $9.99 a month and go up to $140 for 2 years.
Something else interesting I stumbled into in researching iRacing, but the development studio behind it makes several other racing games. They're also behind NASCAR 25, which seems obvious considering the work they've done to scan in vehicles and tracks.
They've also made something called iRacing Arcade, which is a simpler arcade-style racer that launched on Steam. I could easily see it ported to iPad and game consoles in the future.
At the least, I'd like to compare Gran Turismo and iRacing in VR environments. I'm not sure how sucked in I might get with iRacing, but it seems like an interesting addition to the Apple Vision Pro lineup.
At this point, I'm just happy to see any developers enthusiastically embracing the platform.