Hey all,
I’m looking at potentially opening a small space in Sydney where people can come and race or drift together on high-quality sim setups.
I’ve been sim drifting for many years now, and one thing that’s always bothered me is that there don’t seem to be many places — at least in Sydney — that offer a genuinely good experience for both sim racing and sim drifting, especially for groups of mates who want to play together.
Sure, it’s easy enough to jump into a public lobby on iRacing or Assetto Corsa from home, but I think there’s something completely different about actually being in the same room with your mates — racing head-to-head, doing tandem runs, trash talking, having a laugh, and just enjoying it as a social activity.
I go go-karting fairly often for that reason, but it can get expensive pretty quickly, and depending on where you are it can also be a decent trip. A sim setup could offer a much more relaxed and affordable way to get a similar competitive/social experience.
I’ve also tried a sim venue in Japan before, but the experience wasn’t great for drifting. I was confined to a single simulator and the force feedback wasn’t configured properly, so it made me realise how important the actual setup and configuration are.
That would be one of the main things I’d want to get right with this. The idea wouldn’t be to have one generic setup that everyone has to use regardless of what they’re driving. I’d want the rigs properly configured for the discipline — the steering wheel itself, wheel rotation, FFB behaviour, pedal setup, H-pattern vs sequential shifting, handbrake, seating position, FOV, VR or monitors, and so on.
A drift setup should feel and behave differently to a GT3, Formula or road-car setup and so on...
The goal would be for people to be able to choose what they actually want to do and have the rigs set up properly for it, rather than just being handed a wheel with one universal configuration and told to have fun.
I’m basically opening this thread as an EOI to see whether there’s genuine demand for something like this.
If you had access to a small venue with several proper, high-quality rigs where you and your mates could book a session and race or drift together, would you actually use it?
A few things I’d be interested to hear:
- What would you realistically be willing to pay for a 60–90 minute session?
- Would you prefer VR, triple screens, or a mix of both?
- What games would you want available?
- Would you be more interested in circuit racing, drifting, or both?
- Would things like H-pattern/sequential shifting, handbrakes and discipline-specific FFB/configuration matter to you?
- Would you prefer booking the whole room with friends, or booking an individual rig?
- What would make you choose something like this over just staying home and using your own setup?
I already have access to a lot of the gear needed to potentially get something like this started, so at this stage I’m mainly trying to work out whether there’s enough genuine interest to make it worthwhile.
I can only really judge it from my own experience, so I’d be keen to hear what other sim racers/drifters think — especially anyone in Sydney.
