How To Make iRacing Look Real

How to get better graphics on iRacing

iRacing has notoriously poor graphics for a racing game in 2022. When you compare iRacing’s graphics with other games such as F1 22, Gran Turismo 7 and Assetto Corsa Competizione. It is easily the worst looking racing sim from this bunch.

Despite being the worst looking, it is also one of the most popular racing sims in 2022. The developers have focused on creating one of the most realistic and widely supported racing sims. And this has led to the graphics being slightly overshadowed.

However, there are plenty of methods of improving your iRacing graphic settings. You can start by adjusting the graphic settings within iRacing directly. This will ensure you are optimising your GPU to get the best graphical performance you can.

Then, you can adjust the way iRacing looks using either the AMD Radeon Software or Nvidia GeForce Experience. Both of these software packages are free to download and come standard with AMD or Nvidia graphics cards.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to use all of these methods to vastly improve your iRacing graphic settings and make iRacing look real.

How do I make my iRacing less yellow?

It’s no secret that iRacing has a tendency to look slightly too yellow thanks to its warm colour temperature. This can make the whole game look ever so slightly dated.

While this setting can’t be fixed using the in-game graphics settings, it can be fixed in a few other ways. I would advise against changing your monitor settings as this will affect every other game as well.

You can use either the AMD Radeon Software or Nvidia GeForce Experience to adjust the iRacing graphic settings individually. These adjustments won’t affect any other game or software, and will only apply to iRacing. This is a fantastic way of tuning individual games to look better.

To achieve a less yellow and more realistic look in iRacing, follow the two GPU software guides below. Depending on your graphics card, you will have to use the specific guide.

Learn how to quickly progress your iRacing license in our ultimate iRacing license progression guide.

Optimise your iRacing graphic settings

The in-game performance settings are where you can adjust iRacing to run as smoothly as possible on your PC. I would recommend setting the game up with high settings to start with, with the performance bar set to max quality.

From here, jump into a race session and start to look at your FPS. You can start to reduce some settings if you aren’t hitting your desired FPS. I would always recommend you aim for a minimum of 60FPS for the smoothest racing.

I would recommend enabling motion blur at one of the highest settings for added realism. Although this will affect your FPS somewhat, so only enable it if your PC can handle it.

There isn’t too much within the in-game settings that can affect the overall look of iRacing. Like most games, the higher you go with settings, the crisper it will look in certain areas. But none of these options will affect the yellow filter in iRacing or the realism.

To improve the realistic look of iRacing, you need to follow our tips below.

Nvidia filters can improve the graphics

If you have an Nvidia graphics card such as a GTX or RTX card, you’ll have access to Nvidia GeForce Experience. This piece of software allows you to do a lot with your overall display settings, as well as giving you access to screen recording and game overlays.

However, today we’ll be looking at the graphics settings that can be adjusted in the GeForce Experience. It’s here where we can apply Nvidia filters to drastically improve the look of iRacing.

First step

If you have an Nvidia GPU, GeForce Experience should automatically have been installed on your computer. But if it isn’t then head over to the Nvidia website and download it. You can use this direct link to the GeForce Experience.

Once installed, launch GeForce Experience and set up an account if you don’t already have one.

Second step

Once you’re logged in, the easiest way to apply filters and graphics adjustments is to open up an iRacing replay. You can adjust the filter settings in-game, however, it isn’t as easy to stop on track or adjust the settings in a live race session.

Once you are either in-game or have a replay open, press the ALT + F3 buttons to open up the Nvidia Game Filters. The filters menu should slide out for you. Here you can create a few presets or disable filters altogether.

Third Step

The next step is to set up our iRacing graphics filter to improve the overall look. Click on any of the style buttons to start creating our filter. Once you click on a number, you will have access to a drop-down bar where you can add filters.

There are three filters that I would recommend adding. These are colour, brightness and contrast and sharpen+.

Colour filter

The first option we should adjust is colour. This will give us a baseline adjustment where we can remove some of the yellows that are present in iRacing.

Start by removing the tint colour and tint intensity. Then you can start to lower the temperature setting. This will remove some of the warm colour temperature giving you a cooler and more neutral look. I have mine set to -9 for a perfect colour temperature.

You can then look to adjust the vibrance. I would recommend increasing this to around 25-35 to give the whole image a colour burst. The vibrance will boost the colours across the whole image giving a much more saturated appearance.

Brightness/Contrast filter

The second filter I would add is the brightness/contrast filter. This will allow us to improve the overall contrast across iRacing. Increasing the contrast specifically will allow the image to pop better, giving more definition to cars and track details.

I’d recommend the following setting adjustments;

• Increase contrast to around 30%
• Increase highlights to around 5%
• Increase Shadows to around 10%

These increases give more definition to the high and low areas of your image as well as improve the whole contrast.

Sharpen+ filter

The sharpen+ filter will give your textures a boost by increasing the sharpness across the whole picture. You will have to be careful not to boost your sharpness too much as this can easily take away from the overall realism.

A natural image will have some softness to certain areas of your image, so balancing the sharpen+ filter is important. When you get it right though, it can give the effect of iRacing looking vastly more impressive than it does out of the box.

I’d recommend keeping your intensity below 20%, and your texture details around 20-30%. Also, invert the Depth Z-Axis setting.

AMD Radeon Software settings

If you are running an AMD graphics card, you will have access to the AMD Radeon Software. Within this software package, you can adjust many graphics settings, and you can even adjust graphics settings for individual games. And that is what I’m going to show you to do here.

First step

The first step is to load up the AMD Radeon Software, and then navigate to the gaming tab at the top. Clicking on this will open up a library of all of your installed games. Simply click on the iRacing logo on this screen to be taken to the iRacing specific settings.

Second step

Next, we will adjust a selection of iRacing graphics settings to improve the overall graphical realism. The first settings you’ll want to enable are both the custom colour and colour temperature control settings, which you can find on the right-hand side.

Once you enable these two settings, you’ll be able to adjust the colour temperature. By increasing this slider you will reduce the warmness of the image. This will remove some of the yellow filter that often plagues iRacing, and give you a more neutral colour balance.

You can also adjust the brightness, hue, contrast and saturation. These settings work in a similar way to your monitor or TV settings. However, by adjusting them in the AMD Radeon Software, these settings will only affect how iRacing looks without affecting other games.

Are there any iRacing promo codes for new members?

There is a selection of iRacing promo codes that new members can use when purchasing their first subscription. Normally these only apply to member’s first purchase, but occasionally iRacing will offer a discount code for existing members too.

Below are the current working iRacing discount codes for 2022. View all iRacing promo codes.

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