Help with a Driving Sim Choices - learn left foot braking

Not at all telling you you’re wrong, but left foot braking won’t help the weight balance any more than right foot braking will! Learning to trail brake definitely will, but the only reason you might left foot brake in a manual is if a corner is perhaps not quite flat, but a brush of the brakes means it is. In a turbo car this may help slightly on lap time given the fact it’s remaining fully on boost, although if it’s a modern car it probably won’t since their boost control is so much better than it used to be, so a small lift won’t dump all the pressure.

All the things you’ve listed (particularly the offset pedal box) make it very much not the kind of car to be trying to left foot brake in. You’ll just end up pressing the wrong pedal or pressing two at once!

Either way, lovely car and it’ll be a hoot to drive. Sim racing may help improve your driving techniques, but I guess all I’m saying is, definitely don’t focus on the left foot braking thing as virtually nobody does it unless they absolutely have to in reality! Unless you’re a Russian YouTuber who likes to pretend his the king of a long German race track of course…

The car is completely original aside from the engine build. I have some genuine 70 profile classic Michelin 13" tyres to go on, and I've reset the suspension a little lower since the pics were taken

I play Assetto Corsa a lot, the advantage of the PC version is the sheer number of mods you can apply.

I admit I only have a Logitech G920 but I left foot brake in all the games I play, hundreds and hundreds of hours of experience of left foot breaking.

Would I do this in a road car? No way, even now when I try it it just feels weird, unnatural and I have little feel of the brake pedal and apply way too much pressure.

I am sure I saw a video of Raikkonen once who said that although he left foot brakes in an F1 car he never does this on the road.

How much does he want for the PC? I have tried running my PC through my 3 year old Samsung 43 inch TV and it is unplayable as it seemed to default to 30 frames per second for some reason. Also it looked absolutely rubbish compared to the 165HZ screen on my gaming laptop.

Not on the road or track though which was my point. Rallying it can make plenty of sense.

Thanks for the heads up on the TV. He wants £480. Seems a bit steep to me.

Little bit of an update. Maybe helpful for some other newbies?

When my Fanatec CSL Elite + (PS4) showed up it turned out it was a 1.1 version which looks very similar but isn't Playstation compatible

So I sent it back to CeX where I had ordered it from. The process took much longer than it needed to and they put the price up £20 before I was able to reorder. The frustration caused me to look elsewhere, and I managed to save £60 by buying at Cash Converters, and was also able to speak with a real person and confirm they were sending a PS4 version.

After much thought I decided that a PS5 would be a better introduction to sim racing for me. So I found a used one locally on FB marketplace, and followed up with purchases of GT7 and EA Sports WRC. I haven't tried WRC yet as I wanted to try to build some consistency and there was already so much to get used to. The PS5 decision was made because Sony announced they are trying to make the PSVR2 functional with PCs, and so the upgrade path to a PC would then just be the hardware rather than a headset as well.

The inventory so far:
Fanatec CSL Elite+ (PS4)
Fanatec CSL Elite V2 Pedals
Fanatec CSL P1 V2 wheel
Playseat Challenge
PS5 (+CoD MW2 included)
Gran Turismo 7 (disc, new)
EA Sports WRC (disc, new)
TOTAL: £844

I'm keeping my eyes open for a good deal on a PSVR2 set, but scammers are thick on the ground in this marketplace.

My very old Dell laptop refuses to download the Fanatec driver software, and there is no Mac option as yet. But the set up all works in GT7, and works better now that I found a Fanatec forum thread describing a good base setting for my wheelbase on GT7 and adjusted to that using the wheel's own settings display in the rim.

Before the replacement wheelbase arrived I had about 4 hours driving on the PS5 controller: Actually surprisingly good - I had never tried a hand control that recognised motion before. That said, as soon as I got everything set up right I was immediately quicker.

I've had to work quite hard to limit the brake flex on the Playseat Challenge and I'm not there yet. Have had to drop the brake strength down to 10% to try to get some consistency, and that with supporting wood blocks and spectra strops trying to limit the flex... It does pack down quickly though.

Finally left foot braking: I'm trying to get through the Clubman + 350pp Mini race at Goodwood, and getting thoroughly terrorised by the red mini

I've had to work quite hard at tuning to get a car that isn't left for dust by the others, and find myself essentially driving a SWB 911! I have 194kg of ballast at the back of the car and it wants to pirouette into Woodcote and the chicane. Brake bias adjustment is next for consideration. However I found this brake training video which teaches left foot braking at the end (14:50+) and it definitely seems to stabilise a tail happy car. I could completely see why it wouldn't be a thing in a Caterham though.

Am really enjoying getting up to speed. Thank you everyone who offered advice. The wheelbase seems plenty powerful, and the brake pedal is good, but would be improved with a better mount and possibly some softer elastomers.

Came here to say this. I tried VR on PS and loved it, but....it can and does induce motion sickness in some, especially if you are susceptible already to things like feeling sick in the back of a car, on the ocean etc. I was OK for about 30-40 mins then had to take a bit of a rest......so as above, I'd definitely recommend a "try before you buy" on the VR front.
Star Wars Tie Fighter VR was the worst for me in inducing a sickness feeling but of course that was 3D rotation...I could only stomach about 10 or 15 mins of that :-).

I had my first VR drive; Goodwood at sunset in a Ferrari 512BB: Chasing Miura, Mangusta, GT40, Shelby Cobra, 288GTO, F40, 959. It was a jaw dropping experience first time out. Sat in 'your' vintage Ferrari looking around at the switch gear and cockpit it really feels like you are there (I advise parking up to do this on your first go!).

In those first races there was a moment where I was four wheel drifting 'my' 12cyl 70s supercar around Lavant; the windscreen filled with a view of the 288 GTO's gearbox and the NSX Type R's rear wing as they went around door handle to door handle. A glance in my mirrors showed the Cobra chasing down the Miura. Magic.

Then I got competitive and tried to push hard with the classic Alpine A110 with no aids around Brands Hatch Indy! Guaranteed to turn your stomach as you will spin! I averaged 3 spins per lap until I took the steering turns down to 300º. I got into the habit of shutting my eyes if a spin was unavoidable.

I'm finding I can do two or three 2/3 lap races back to back, and then as soon as I'm back into the menus I take the headset off and lay it in my lap. That way the headset doesn't want to keep resetting the play area. After buying or tuning cars for a bit I'm happy to put it back on again.

The circuits with elevation changes are the ones that seem to affect me a bit. Maybe that is the reason why the VR only WWII dogfighting PS5 game 'Aces of Thunder' launch has been delayed. Maybe they are rebranding everything 'Aces of Chunder'!

I got a Quest 3 yesterday. I didn't think I'd notice much difference over the Quest 2, but my god it's brilliant!

With the Quest 3 I seem to be able to get it to put out a higher resolution than the Quest 2 with the same impact on GPU/CPU resources, and the new lenses in the 3 are amazing! Everything is crisp and sharp

It's brought back that bit of excitement that makes we want to keep jumping onto iRacing/AMS2.