VRS started as a comprehensive online learning platform specifically build for simracers Today VRS stands for simracing hardware products, software to improve your driving skills and the training by VRS coaches. Our goal is to make simracing and all the training enjoyable for the drivers.

To reach that goal, we offer state-of-the-art simracing hardware, digital contents (videos, articles, driving data, setups, etc.), software tools (telemetry – stats and driving analysis) and access to some the world’s best simracers in the form of 1:1s and group coaching.

Currently VRS is for any iRacing member who wants to improve their driving skills and performance. We are working around the clock to be able to offer our tools for users of other simracing platforms, too.

We have a lot to offer:

• VRS records and stores your driving data in the cloud and keeps track of your racing statistics and your performance trends.

• VRS partners with some of the top simracers to give you access to their car setups and driving data. You can compare and analyze your performance against these top drivers and learn from them.

• As well, VRS serves as a platform of 1:1 live coaching and group classes. You can schedule a coaching session or join a class with one of our coaches and discuss various aspects of your driving style, racing practice, etc.

• With VRS Teams you can seamlessly share telemetry with your teammates and compare each other’s laps.

• Ultimately, VRS can help you analyze your performance and show you how to produce faster lap times.

Detailed pricing information is available here. You can manage your VRS subscription here.

If you are already racing on iRacing, you only need to sign up with VRS and download the VRS TelemetryLogger. If you are new to racing simulators, you would first have to sign up with iRacing and acquire the necessary equipment (e.g. steering wheel & pedals). Find the VRS Systems, our hardware, here.

To start, VRS is available for iRacing users only. It is designed to be compatible with other simulators, though. We will prioritize adding support for other simulators based on demand. Contact us to request support for your simulator of choice.

Telemetry analysis charting is only one aspect of VRS. VRS is a comprehensive online learning platform specifically built for simracers. VRS includes a modern cloud-based app/service which automatically uploads your telemetry in the cloud and does additional processing of your telemetry to make analysis easier and more powerful. VRS keeps track of useful stats and trends and has a number of collaboration features (e.g. Teams, Data Packs, 1:1 Coaching). VRS partners with some of the worlds best simracers to give you weekly driving/setup tutorials, setups, ghost files, driving comparisons.

On the telemetry charting side of things, we have a user-friendly UI which we optimize for drivers rather than for engineers. We continuously tune the UI in an effort to simplify things and make the analysis more accessible to non-technical people. For example, our Driving Analyzer automatically highlights the part of the track in which you have the biggest opportunity to improve and allows you to compare not just individual laps but also your driving habits and patterns. Check out our Video Tutorials to learn more about the features and functionality that VRS has to offer.

Yes, you can. There are multiple ways to do this:

• You can compare yourself with your teammates using the Teams feature.

• You can take advantage of one of our Data Packs. We are partnering with some of the best virtual racers to make their car setups and driving data available to VRS members. You can load up their telemetry in the Driving Analyzer and compare yourself against them.

• If you want to learn directly from the pros, VRS allows you to request private 1:1 coaching from the top drivers partnering with us for Data Packs. Group classes are also available.

• Car setup (.sto) used by the coach.

• iRacing replay file (.rpy), which you can use to study the coach’s hotlap.

• Comparison telemetry for the coach’s practice session & hotlap. You can load this telemetry in the Driving Analyzer and compare yourself against the coach.

• Some data packs include a video tutorial where the coach goes into detail of how to tackle each individual turn.

Overall, we think that Data Packs make for a great self-learning tool. And if at any point you are wondering how the heck the fast driver does “X”, with VRS, you can ask them directly in a Q&A Session, which you can request and book from the site.

Please do not share VRS setups (be it on iRacing servers, emails, forums, 3rd party file/setup sharing, etc.) – they are made available for personal use only. Instead, link people directly to the official data pack page. We invest significant time and effort into making fresh content (setups, driving data, tutorials, etc.) for our data packs available before the start of each race week. Don’t deny us the opportunity to have everyone interested in our setups visit our website to explore the full range of services we offer, and possibly choose to subscribe to VRS.

All data packs and data pack files are made available for personal use only. They are intended to give you a baseline for your driving practice (meaningful driving analysis) and/or a baseline for further setup development. If your teammates want to use a VRS setup, please point them to the corresponding VRS data pack page, where they could chose the most appropriate subscription for themselves before downloading the setups.

When it comes to team endurance racing, it is ok to load up a VRS setup in the car when you start the race. When you hand over the car to your teammate, they’d get your car with the VRS setup pre-loaded. However, that may not be such a good idea if your teammates never drove the VRS setup before the race, so they’d likely be VRS subscribers anyway and would have access to the setups.

This is really a matter of how much you modified the setup. If you only made trivial changes (e.g. one click of ARB or tire pressure, or only driver preferences like brake bias), then link people to the original VRS data pack and just say what you changed. If you make several changes that change the characteristics of the car enough that it’s effectively a different car/setup, that’s OK to share. Ideally give attribution to VRS, so that whoever is interested may go back to the source. Please be reasonable and courteous.

The permission model in place allows users read and write access to their own data. It allows teammates read access to their teammates’ racing data (but not private account info). It gives coaches read access only to race data of users who have requested a 1:1 coaching session or a group class with them. This read access is granted only for the duration of time after the session is confirmed by the coach and until the session is marked as completed by the coach. The coaches don’t otherwise have access to anyone else’s data. Here is a short video that shows the view of a VRS coach and when/how they can access a client’s data.

We put great effort in making sure that your data is safe and can only be accessed in accordance with our permission model (described above). For anyone who is extremely secretive about their setups, the TelemetryLogger has a setting to NOT upload setups. Setup information is recorded in the iRacing live telemetry and .sto files. If setup uploads are disabled, we don’t upload the .sto files and we strip away the session info CarSetup yaml subtree. You lose some utility related to setup sharing and setup change log but that would be the price to pay for extra piece of mind.

The only folks who legitimately need to worry about this are WCS drivers/teams. We offer a number of data packs that come with pretty decent car setups. For example the GT3 data pack setups are only 0.1-0.2s slower than the WCS setups. So, chances are that the vast majority of iRacers are much better off using the setups from our data packs.

That being said, even WCS drivers/teams should not worry. The permission model ensures that only users’ teammates or an active coaching session will have access to their data (as designed). VRS software engineers have internal access to the system and stored data and may occasionally access user data to reproduce and fix bugs (not unlike nearly any cloud service). We handle such cases very carefully to be in compliance with our privacy policy. Currently, none of the VRS coaches or WCS competitors are also our software engineers, so none of them will have any sort of access to any user’s data without being part of their telemetry Team or having an active 1:1 coaching session with them. We choose to avoid such conflicts of interest. You can be assured that we would never bypass our permissions model to provide anyone access to data of their competitors. This would be both unethical and a privacy violation. We are here for the long term, looking to build a brand and a series of products/services that can be enjoyed and trusted by the entire community.

Yes, eventually. Currently, VRS is only available for simulator-based training, however, the software is designed to be compatible with data acquisition systems used on the track and it will eventually be available for drivers who want to use it in their real-life racing. If you are only racing on track, you should consider augmenting your real-life practice with simulator practice—even the professionals use simulators on a regular basis.

We are very passionate about ultimately creating a path for VRS students into real-life racing (e.g. by establishing partnerships with real-life series and teams). However, this will come at a later stage. We are currently focused on developing an amazing software and educational platform for virtual racing and iRacing specifically.

VRS is available to iRacing users. You can explore the VRS member site as a guest or on a free subscription here.

VRS can interpret telemetry data and tell you clearly and precisely what you are doing well and where you can improve. By showing you what you are already doing well, VRS will help you do those things more consistently. By telling you where you can improve, VRS will help you improve your overall lap times.

Once you have signed up for the service, you will be able to download and install VRS TelemetryLogger. Just follow the on-screen prompts.

The VRS TelemetryLogger is the only thing that will be installed on your computer. It is safe, just like any other program you would download from a trusted source.

We use existing identity provides to establish your VRS account. You can login using Gmail/Google+ or Facebook here.

The VRS brand, formerly known as Virtual Racing School, includes words, phrases, symbols and designs associated with the products and services provided by Smarty Co. on this and associated websites.

Do

• Follow this link to download the brand guidelines and our logo package to make sure that branded assets appear clean.

• Be in compliance with our terms of use.

Don’t

• Use VRS brand in a way that implies partnership, sponsorship, or endorsement.

• Combine any part of the VRS brand with your name, marks, or generic terms.

• Use VRS brand assets in a way that imitates or could be confused with official VRS properties.

• Present VRS in a way that makes it the most distinctive or prominent feature of what you are creating.

• Assert right over the VRS brand.

• Use VRS brand, logos, etc. on merchandise or other products such as t-shirts, hats, etc.

If you’d like to help promote us, you can place the VRS logo on your car as long as you are in compliance with our branding guidelines which you can download here. You have a couple of different options:

• You can find the VRS logos in the iRacing Paintshop. From the paintshop you can select one of the VRS logos to place on your car. In fact, starting with 2016 Season 2, if you enter 10 official races with the VRS logo on primary position, you could win free coaching on VRS. Find out more here.

• If you have an entirely custom paint scheme, take a look at our brand assets for vector logo images.

Generally speaking, no, as it would most likely be in violation of our branding guidelines. For example, you may not use VRS in a way that implies partnership or endorsement. This is only possible in the presence of a formal agreement, as is the case with e.g. VRS Coanda Esports race team.

It depends on your use. Make sure you are in compliance with our branding guidelines. For example, using VRS logo in an article that describes VRS, or your experience with the products/services is allowed. In that case we encourage you to make a reference (include a link) to our official website. An example of disallowed use is making a representation on your website which may mislead visitors to think that your website is either official VRS property or a VRS partner website.

As mentioned above, VRS will be rolled out for other simulators based on demand. The more demand we have for a particular simulator, the sooner VRS will be available for it.

At the moment we only accept PayPal for VRS Gift Card purchases and for physical goods purchases but not for recurring subscriptions. If you are based within Europe/EU, you’d have several European payment methods available as well. Full integration and support for automated monthly billing for these alternative payment methods may come at a later point in time. You can buy a VRS Gift Card from here, then apply your gift card code on your account here, and then upgrade to a paid subscription plan.

We accept credit/debit/prepaid/gift/virtual card payments from the following card companies: VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, JCB, Diners Club, 3DS. Our card processor is Stripe which specializes in payment APIs and is one of the top card processors (big internet companies use them, see here). They store your card information securely and the sensitive card details never touch our servers. PayPal is available only when buying VRS Gift Cards.

We are happy to hear from you with any comments, suggestions or questions you may have. Contact us.

A: It depends on the data pack you are interested in. Some data packs (notably the rookie series) allow Casual users (free subscription) to download data pack files (.sto, .rpy, .blap, .olap) and to watch the data pack tutorial videos. Other (“premium”) data packs require a paid subscription to access data pack files and tutorials. Navigate to the data pack you are interested in and try accessing the files/tutorial. You’ll get an upgrade prompt for the “premium” data packs.

A: The free Casual plan only gives you an afternoon (or evening) of driving comparison per week. If you use the Driving Analyzer on a daily basis to compare yourself against a data pack or a teammate, you need to upgrade. If you only compare against a single data pack or a single team, the Dedicated plan is all you need. If you want the advanced features, or want more flexibility and unlimited access to all non-addon data packs and teams, go with the Competitive plan.

A: If you only share setups, the free Casual plan is all you need. If you compare yourself against a teammate several days per week, you need to upgrade. If you only compare against a single data pack or a single team, the Dedicated plan may be all you need. If you want the advanced features, or want more flexibility and unlimited access to all non-addon data packs and teams, go with the Competitive plan.

Yes, you can pay the full subscription or subsidize a portion of the subscription. Make sure you have a credit or debit card on file on your VRS account and contact info@virtualracingschool.com describing your request. For example, if you would like to pay for 10 annual Dedicated subscriptions, we’ll charge your card the full amount for the 10 subscriptions and will issue coupon codes each worth the cost of one subscription. You can then distribute the coupon codes to your team. If you want to cover half the subscription cost, we’ll charge you for half the total cost and issue coupons each worth half the subscription fee.