Nick (Bo) Comstock wrote:
I will also say that the art of racecraft is very real in sim racing.
I concur with this 100%. Why do race car drivers at the highest levels spend hours on simulators? Because it is a simulator. It is not the real thing for sure but good enough where there is alot to be learned driving in the virtual world that carries over to the real world.
Another thing that is extremely important is who you race with /against.
For the most part AI is horrible. It is not able to simulate the decision making process of the human brain and as such is fails miserably.
Since I am on my phone I will stop here but I have much more to add to this thread.
I think in the end Sim racing is what you want to make of it. There are those that shun it because it is not "real racing" in there minds. It is an all or nothing mind set. There are others that embrace it completely accepting is shortcomings and enjoying somthing that has many elements of the real thing.
HapDL wrote:
Bryan Heitkotter - PWC Nissan springs instantly to mind as a sim racer who has done well in the real world.
But really, the way most people "race" on sims makes them really useless for learning racecraft. Bashing your way to the front is going to get you nowhere quickly in the real world. As others have said though, a great tool for learning tracks and to some extent individual car handling as well, though the latter has too many variables to be totally useful.
Bryan had already won a few SCCA National Autocross titles before he won the Playstation/Nissan contest.
I find it interesting to discuss the differences between the two and what skills can carry over from one to the other but debating about whether or not sim racing is real racing feels somewhat pointless to me. I can easily come up with definitions for real racing that would both include and exclude it and, I guess I just don't car that much.
I find sim racing good for building concentration and learning tracks but even with a good quality feedback wheel and high end sound I'm missing too many sensory inputs that I apparently rely on to be any good at it. I particularly suck in the breaking zone and when trail braking in sim racing and that's one of the places that I'm often better than my competitors on tracks in the physical world.
APEowner wrote: even with a good quality feedback wheel and high end sound I'm missing too many sensory inputs that I apparently rely on to be any good at it.
This is why I actually prefer to play semi-arcade games with a controller, the computer fills in the blanks for all the stuff that I can't feel. Since I'm using a pair of thumbsticks, it is more about manging the traction circle in my head rather than trying to emulate the controls of an actual car.
In reply to red_stapler:
That's one of the most frustrating things about Gran Turismo for me. It seems like all the really fast online times are set by people with controllers. My problem is that I suck at video games, but I suck less at driving.
That's because console racing games must be created to be ideal for controllers and acceptable for wheel users. By far the larger player base is on controller and if a reviewer showed that you had to spend $200 on a wheel to be competitive the user base would rebel. Stick with what is happening in the PC world to go beyond this but most of what you get out of sim racing can be done on controller anyway. I was in a 6 month long Forza season amongst a group of friends where the winners of the races would have to lower the performance index of the car kind of like adding weight would in the touring classes. It was amazing fun one of my best online racing experiences. Now I stick mostly to iracing when the sim bug hits me although I don't really have time to practice like I need to. Iracing fixes many of the ills of other public racing games by placing at least some sort of consequence to racing recklessly while still allowing you to find races most times of the day. The only real way to get the same experience on other games is to find a league of some sort and generally only race once a week or so.
I started iRacing last month because it was recommended to me to get more seat time compared to 6 minutes once a month in autocross. I'm getting rid of a bad habit of sawing at the wheel, not committing to corners.
While I haven't done any wheel-to-wheel racing, only the occasional HPDE for tracks, sim racing is nothing to snub at. Yes, the personal and property damages are virtual but with the Safety Rating implemented in iRacing as well as the damage-physics it gives you a true incentive not to dive bomb into corners or shove people out of the way. Heart rate and concentration are definitely elevated in a race compared to open practice.
Is it the same as physically driving the car? Of course not, but it does a damn good job replicating handling-physics. You have to protect yourself and others at a physical track event. You have all of the sensory feedback from the car; the most you can get back in sim racing is if you have transducers on your racing rig to simulate curbing, wheel spin, etc. Sim racing is different from physically racing a car but it's nothing to snub your nose at.
Spoiler alert - Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
I am looking to get into iRacing now that I've been to a couple of track days, and I look forward to it greatly. Before my first track day at VIR I got Forza and spent several hours driving the course before getting there.
Was I magically some amazing driver because of this experience? Absolutely not. However, I think the tool was absolutely priceless in giving me some frames of reference for the track, to subdue some nerves, and gave me confidence allowing me to relax and focus on driving.
And racing sims are just that - tools. Very few people have the time or means to get serious seat time. Tracking and racing real cars gets real expensive real quick. And the only way to improve is through countless hours of practice. As mentioned, that's the reason professional drivers and pilots and the like spend time with sims in the first place.
It's not a replacement for the real thing, but it's the best substitute we have and the most cost effective method of getting "reps" in.
It is real racing.. in the sense that there is a start, a finish, a time/position, and the competitors are all bound by the same set of rules and physics. It is not real automobile racing, they are simulated cars and tracks (obviously).
To me, it becomes more "real" when you consider the growth of eSports and look at the amount of time that top tier (F1, LeMans, etc) teams spend in their simulators. If you don't think it has real application, look at the GTAcademy program that has taken gamers to racers.
So, yeah... real racing.
Hemmingway’s quote says it all: “There are only three sports: bullfighting, sim racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games”
I never understand when people claim something is not racing because it isn't X. The definition is pretty cut and dry.
Dictionary said:
race: compete with another or others to see who is fastest at covering a set course or achieving an objective.
ProDarwin wrote:
I never understand when people claim something is not racing because it isn't X. The definition is pretty cut and dry.
Dictionary said:
race: compete with another or others to see who is fastest at covering a set course or achieving an objective.
It's because it says "Simulated" right in the name.
Since we are posting definitions... here is one that could be handy!
sim·u·la·tionˌsimyəˈlāSH(ə)n/
noun
noun: simulation; plural noun: simulations
- imitation of a situation or process.
- the action of pretending; deception.
- the production of a computer model of something, especially for the purpose of study.
I tried to take a flight simulator to Hawaii once but when I landed I was still in the same building in NJ.
Can we make this more pedantic? It is real racing in simulated cars. 
