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I didn't even want a Blackwing. Its now been six months to the day that I picked up my 4BW.

I grew up with a lazy eye (specifically, strabismus amblyopia) and therefore have no stereoscopic vision, a very weak vestibular system and a proneness to motion sickness. As a kid, things like swings and roller coasters were a no go for me. For most of my driving-age life, I could do typical normal tasks (drive to work, go shopping, etc.) without issue. Several years ago, though, I started having problems that initially manifested as headaches while driving and, over the next couple years, devolved to getting motion sickness while doing household chores. In between these two extremes, I got prescribed meclizine so that I could drive symptom free.

During the devolvement of my vestibular system, I bought a C7 Z06 which includes a trip to Spring Mountain. After I got confidence I could drive symptom-free with meclizine, I enrolled in Corvette Owners School/Spring Mountain. The on-track activity triggered my motion sickness symptoms (which wasn't unexpected, but I wanted to really test it in a safe environment) but in a new way that allowed a true diagnosis of the issues I was having. It was likely that I'd had an infection that damaged hearing on my left-side and inner-ear function on my right side. I'd subtlety lost eye control. The best way to describe it is by imagining living life constantly seeing things through the camera-shake effect you see in action movies.

Treatment is physical therapy, doing exercises that trigger the symptoms so that the brain relearns, then modifying the exercise to continue pushing symptoms as the brain adapts. Doing the exercises got me back to a good baseline in most activities, the one exception was driving my Altima. My max driving time in it was about 60 minutes on a good day, whereas I could drive my Z06 syptom-free for hours. Eventually, I decided there was something specific about the Altima that I wasn't going to be able to overcome. Based on my experience with the Z06, I bet getting a sport sedan was the best option.

When the Blackwings got announced, I was already looking at the V's. I wasn't going to spend the money to get a 5BW (especially since I had the Z06) and 4BW was smaller than the Altima, which was our long-distance travel car. Also, I didn't want a Blackwing parked in my driveway. So, I'd settled on getting a 5V (runner up was a Acura TLX) based on already being in the GM family. While waiting for a local dealer to get a 5V allocation, some of the criteria that pointed me to the 5V changed, which opened up the potential of getting a 4BW instead. When I found a 4BW matching my desired color and transmission choices within driving distance, I bought it.

Fortunately, the 4BW doesn't give me any issues with normal daily driving. I still don't have the vestibular system for tracking, but I can at least enjoy the cars with some spirited driving here and there.

My track alternative is a sim-racing rig. If you look closely, you might notice the Wilwood master and slave cylinders, the brake pedal on these works by fluid pressure sensing, they have DOT5 fluid in them. My main time-spend is iRacing...
View attachment 17002


I also play American Truck Simulator, which I can do while streaming TV or listening to music...
View attachment 17003


Does this AI car look familiar?
View attachment 17004
Better than my setup!
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Now that is one hell of a setup!
Thanks! I've built it up over the years, and it also helps that I don't have to buy new tires for the Z06 every year (since I don't track it 🤣)! The next upgrade is a new rig to mount the monitors and hardware to, this one is a PITA to get the side monitors perfectly aligned.
 
I didn't even want a Blackwing. Its now been six months to the day that I picked up my 4BW.

I grew up with a lazy eye (specifically, strabismus amblyopia)

The best way to describe it is by imagining living life constantly seeing things through the camera-shake effect you see in action movies.
I can sympathize as I too have an amblyopic eye. I don't have the inner ear issues. Being a gearhead and getting motion sickness, as a driver no less 🥺
Patches over my good eye to force my lazy eye. Drops to dilate my lazy eye and undergo intense strobe lighting to stimulate the optic nerve. This all while I was in grade school. Only to find out in my adult years that they deemed that ineffective, no shit. 3 operations as an infant to correct missing muscle and get my eyes relatively straight.
I have minimal depth perception. Could not play any sport with fast moving ball. Was individual sports for me, wrestling and track.
Remember View Master? never got it, didn't understand that you were supposed to see 3D images.
My description of what I see is like trying to watch a program from bad old TV with poor reception, can see colors and large images but no details and fuzzy.
I'm glad to read that your BW is not causing you any issues. Best of luck to you and killer SIM setup.
 
I didn't even want a Blackwing. Its now been six months to the day that I picked up my 4BW.

I grew up with a lazy eye (specifically, strabismus amblyopia) and therefore have no stereoscopic vision, a very weak vestibular system and a proneness to motion sickness. As a kid, things like swings and roller coasters were a no go for me. For most of my driving-age life, I could do typical normal tasks (drive to work, go shopping, etc.) without issue. Several years ago, though, I started having problems that initially manifested as headaches while driving and, over the next couple years, devolved to getting motion sickness while doing household chores. In between these two extremes, I got prescribed meclizine so that I could drive symptom free.

During the devolvement of my vestibular system, I bought a C7 Z06 which includes a trip to Spring Mountain. After I got confidence I could drive symptom-free with meclizine, I enrolled in Corvette Owners School/Spring Mountain. The on-track activity triggered my motion sickness symptoms (which wasn't unexpected, but I wanted to really test it in a safe environment) but in a new way that allowed a true diagnosis of the issues I was having. It was likely that I'd had an infection that damaged hearing on my left-side and inner-ear function on my right side. I'd subtlety lost eye control. The best way to describe it is by imagining living life constantly seeing things through the camera-shake effect you see in action movies.

Treatment is physical therapy, doing exercises that trigger the symptoms so that the brain relearns, then modifying the exercise to continue pushing symptoms as the brain adapts. Doing the exercises got me back to a good baseline in most activities, the one exception was driving my Altima. My max driving time in it was about 60 minutes on a good day, whereas I could drive my Z06 symptom-free for hours. Eventually, I decided there was something specific about the Altima that I wasn't going to be able to overcome. Based on my experience with the Z06, I bet getting a sport sedan was the best option.

When the Blackwings got announced, I was already looking at the V's. I wasn't going to spend the money to get a 5BW (especially since I had the Z06) and 4BW was smaller than the Altima, which was our long-distance travel car. Also, I didn't want a Blackwing parked outside in my driveway. So, I'd settled on getting a 5V (runner up was a Acura TLX) based on already being in the GM family. While waiting for a local dealer to get a 5V allocation, some of the criteria that pointed me to the 5V changed, which opened up the potential of getting a 4BW instead. When I found a 4BW matching my desired color and transmission choices within driving distance, I bought it.

Fortunately, the 4BW doesn't give me any issues with normal daily driving. I still don't have the vestibular system for tracking, but I can at least enjoy the cars with some spirited driving here and there.

My track alternative is a sim-racing rig. If you look closely, you might notice the Wilwood master and slave cylinders, the brake pedal on these works by fluid pressure sensing, they have DOT5 fluid in them. My main time-spend is iRacing...



I also play American Truck Simulator, which I can do while streaming TV or listening to music...



Does this AI car look familiar?

NOW IT MAKES SENSE....WHY the instructors told us NOT to puke in the cars. I remember - "If you get motion sickness - pull over safely and open the door".

I figured it might have happened once or twice...
.
 
I can sympathize as I too have an amblyopic eye. I don't have the inner ear issues. Being a gearhead and getting motion sickness, as a driver no less 🥺
Patches over my good eye to force my lazy eye. Drops to dilate my lazy eye and undergo intense strobe lighting to stimulate the optic nerve. This all while I was in grade school. Only to find out in my adult years that they deemed that ineffective, no shit. 3 operations as an infant to correct missing muscle and get my eyes relatively straight.
I have minimal depth perception. Could not play any sport with fast moving ball. Was individual sports for me, wrestling and track.
Remember View Master? never got it, didn't understand that you were supposed to see 3D images.
My description of what I see is like trying to watch a program from bad old TV with poor reception, can see colors and large images but no details and fuzzy.
I'm glad to read that your BW is not causing you any issues. Best of luck to you and killer SIM setup.
Ah, yes, I remember the eye patch phase. That lasted maybe a few days before my protests about not being able to see won. Fortunately, with the left eye, I tend to be 20/20 to 20/15 corrected, so I can at least see. From my right side, I can usually see large objects moving (say, a car coming towards me).
 
Got to start somewhere! I've been simracing since the mid 90's. Here was my initial setup when I joined iRacing in 2012..

View attachment 17009
What's the real data and benchmark, then improvements, or loss of performance with this^^^setup? TRACK RESULTS? I threw something like this together in 8th grade? You have to start somewhere.

An edit: Thinking about driving a car before actually, driving a car. For enthusiast's and most other's....a beginning.
 
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NOW IT MAKES SENSE....WHY the instructors told us NOT to puke in the cars. I remember - "If you get motion sickness - pull over safely and open the door".

I figured it might have happened once or twice...
.
The instructer in the lead Camaro legit told me over the radio that I didn't need to park center through the East Course esses. Little did he know that my eyes went out of control 😵‍💫 by turn 3 and my inner ears were trying to make breakfast have a return appearance :sick:. I was going soooo slow, but the way my eyes work, I might as well been going Mach 1 for as fast as it felt at the time. :ROFLMAO: I had a much easier time with the NASCAR Racing Experience trips I've done, I guess since its all lefts with a nice break in between.

 
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What's the real data and benchmark, then improvements, or loss of performance with this^^^setup? TRACK RESULTS? I threw something like this together in 8th grade? You have to start somewhere.

An edit: Thinking about driving a car before actually, driving a car. For enthusiast's and most other's....a beginning.
I can't compare to what you were doing in 8th grade since I don't know what that was. But using a session I did over the weekend as a comparison point ... this is me running the NASCAR Xfinity car @ Sonoma. This was one of my better laps at a 1:19.596. Real-world ran there last weekend; fast race pace was around 1:20.1. If only my eyes and ears worked as well in real-world as they do the sim. BTW, all the shifts are using my H-shifter, no paddle shifting :ROFLMAO:.


Related point to how "real-world" the simulation can be: one of the NASCAR race teams hired an iRacing eNASCAR Pro driver which helped them win a real-world race (supposedly they found half-a-second gain from knowledge transfer). 23XI hires Esports ace as performance consultant
After Tyler Reddick won the NASCAR Cup Series race from Circuit of the Americas, he credited Leahy for helping him improve his speed on the road course.
 
Good stuff - I’ll introduce myself.

Married 38yrs old (for one more day atleast) with 3 kids ages 1-11. Originally from Texas but living in Tennessee now. Work as a Consultant for Health Care Systems nationally and do most of my work remotely. Been into cars since I was a kid and had all the posters, but my passion was really ignited by the 98 WS6 Trans Am. First car I bought was at 15yrs old and was a 1990 300zx TT for $8,000 that I had saved up. Since then I’ve owned probably no less than 30 cars of all types except legit supercars/hypercars. Always preferred domestic muscle over imports, but enjoyed both. Last year or so have included a lifted diesel, a street/strip V2, a C8, and now a Blackwing. Trying to enjoy it stock while I work through long term build plan as nothing I’ve ever owned stayed stock long other than the C8.

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Good stuff - I’ll introduce myself.

Married 38yrs old (for one more day atleast) with 3 kids ages 1-11. Originally from Texas but living in Tennessee now. Work as a Consultant for Health Care Systems nationally and do most of my work remotely. Been into cars since I was a kid and had all the posters, but my passion was really ignited by the 98 WS6 Trans Am. First car I bought was at 15yrs old and was a 1990 300zx TT for $8,000 that I had saved up. Since then I’ve owned probably no less than 30 cars of all types except legit supercars/hypercars. Always preferred domestic muscle over imports, but enjoyed both. Last year or so have included a lifted diesel, a street/strip V2, a C8, and now a Blackwing. Trying to enjoy it stock while I work through long term build plan as nothing I’ve ever owned stayed stock long other than the C8.

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Thanks for telling the forum a little about yourself.....
 
35 years old, my wife and I live in North NJ. I'm been self employed as a consultant in the food industry. In 2012 I bought a manual GLI without knowing how to drive stick. Stalled it a few times leaving the parking lot to the amusement of everyone watching. Pulled around the corner and called my dad to come drive me home. I had to learn quick since I had a client in Brooklyn I needed to drive to the next week. My car journey since then was a 2015 manual S4, a 2020 C63S, and now a manual 5BW that was built a few weeks ago and I'm hoping gets delivered some time before the heat death of the universe.

This will be my first American car, so I'm interested to see how it compares to what I'm used to. After almost three years with the C63 I realized that my weekend car just needs to be a manual for me to really enjoy it. Figured there's really no better combo than a powerful V8 with a stick. I've never been so excited for a new car and I've probably watched things like the Savagegeese and Throttle House reviews of the 5BW a hundred times each since I placed my order.

Also looking forward to Spring Mountain if I can get something scheduled there. My C63 came with the intro course at the AMG Driving Academy and it was the most fun I've had in a car.
 
Hello Everyone, I am 32 years old, Married, our first baby on the way. From Michigan as well. Grew up watching Top gear and playing Need for Speed. Have always loved cars and my uncle actually got me into off-roading as well. Silver Lake Sand Dunes is a great place I've had a blast at growing up and now. I grew up in the produce business selling fresh fruits and vegetables wholesale to local independent markets and food service companies.

I currently have a 2019 Ford Raptor which I daily and offroad with quite a bit. Check out Midwest Offroad Expeditions to see what events can be done! (Not my company but figured id share). A couple years ago i picked up a 2021 GT500, and have had a couple track days with it and love doing that as well. But i dont drive it as much as id like to. Just don't want to drive it to work as its quite dirty there, and the tires on it are only good for warm weather.

Have always loved the V-Series and would love to get one one day if they make them a couple years longer! The truck has 97K miles on it and would hope to keep it for a winter/offroad vehicle eventually so i can Daily a 5BW.
My dad had a 2015 V Coupe and a 2019 CTS V and I loved them both. He currently has an M5 comp because cadillac didn't come out with their VBW quick enough! Im trying to bring him back from the dark side !
 
I'll do a quick intro. I'm an owner of a 23 CT4VBW as of Monday! I'm 48 with 2 teenage boys and a mid 20s stepdaughter. I have owned over 30 cars and currently have a Rivian R1T as well that I'll probably move on from to daily the CT4. I've had a whole bunch of different cars, but prefer fast sedans. I have had a few chipped 3 series but never an M car. After driving predominantly SUVs and pickups the last few years, happy to be back in a sedan. Now I have to work on keeping the black paint looking good!! :)
 

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