I don't know how many of you have been following
iRacing recently, but it seems finally about to hit the public. For those that do't know, it is a subscription based sim racer from many of those responsible for GPL and NASCAR 2003. It is trying to model itself after real world racing, in that you start small, prove yourself in the slower cars before gaining access to faster machines.
At the moment they cater for oval and road racing, but they plan on introducing go-karting, motorbike racing, and off-road. While no official announcements have been made, they seem to have hinted that they may be aiming for the likes of GT and Formula 1 styles series in the future as more content is added.
You'll find great information in the FAQ on RSC:
http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=314586
The initial roll-out will be invitation only, they have about 1000 beta testers, and each of them were giving 10 invitations. Those 10,000 will probably get invitations of their own at a later stage, until the developers feel it the sim is ready for open applications. I managed to secure my own invitation, and if you keep an eye on
this thread on RSC, you might get lucky yourselves.
It remains to be seen if the subscription model will work, but initial reports are that this blows all current sims out of the water.
You can find a decent preview done by Inside Sim Racing here:
http://www.insidesimracing.tv/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=148&Itemid=206
You can also see some videos the beta testers have put on You Tube here:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=iRacing&search_type=
And Redline Racing are starting to put some up on their forum here:
http://www.teamredline.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=118