I've tracked my car for 5 years, then started racing for the past 5 years, and moved up to pro racing two years ago competing in Pirelli World Challenge and MX-5 Cup.
The simulators today are fantastic. The skills you learn in the simulator are 100% transferable to real life, and they happen without you having to think.
I went 9 years without using a sim and then two years ago started using it.
What gets transferred immediately are how you turn the steering wheel, catching the car in slides, and your gas pedal application while this is happening.
People often forget that our bodies are complex operating systems and they are operating distinctly. There is plenty of documentation that shows mirroring for knowledge transfer works, and when you use a sim the habits that you develop are available subconciously to you.
I'll give you two examples, the first is at my last race in Global MX-5 Cup at Laguna Seca. At the start of the race on the opening lap I was going through the corkscrew and got hit at the apex of the right hand corner. The car immediately went into a large slide because of how much steering input I had. I immediately started to correct with both steering input and gas pedal application. I had to correct the two slides to save the car. Immediately upon impact my body was doing what I needed to do, it was completely subconscious, so much so that the only conscious thought I had was, wowee fun, just like the simulator. There was no fear, despite the fact that the slide was massive and I was likely to hit the wall if I didn't catch it.
The second happened a couple of months earlier. I was testing at Sonoma in my BMW m235ir for a Pirelli race. I was going out on old tires, that we were going to swap for fresh ones at the next session. Going through the double right hair pin, I applied a bit too much throttle, car started to slide, I was correcting, but under corrected and went back to full throttle too soon. The car spun, hit the wall, caused $10,000 in damage. The reason that happened was whenever I played the sim I always kept my foot in the gas. Just trying to save the car and have fun. Then I realized, that when I use the simulator I can't approach it from a "fun" mentality, because my brain is remembering what I'm doing. I have to treat it like real life, or I will do something stupid in the car.
There are certainly differences between how a real car handles and a simulator handles, but the skills are the same and what you are really honing is the ability to control the car which is completely transferable. The brake points are very transferrable so it is a great way to push yourself in a simulated practice to get ready for a real race. Learning the track is obviously a benefit.
iRacing has done a fantastic job at all of the above. Coming from a tech background I'm actually blown away by the realism and how much it teaches you transferrable skills.
If you take one of the top 5 people in iRacing that's never been in a car before and put them into a race car they will be quick. This is because everything that will be happening they have already trained for. They won't have fear because everything will feel the same. As long as you don't have fear, and have the underlying skill, subconsciously you will do what you need to.
The reverse isn't as true. Being quick in real life doesn't mean that you will be fast in the simulator. This is simply because it can't replicate the physics 100%. In iRacing it is very sensitive to understeer as you enter a corner, where in real life you can get the car to slide a bit more with some hard inputs into the steering wheel.
But overall I would say it is a 90%+ effective tool, so much so, that anyone who isn't using one in pro racing today, is really at a disadvantage.
The other thing that is critical to racing is practice. Any sport you take seriously the more time you spend doing it the better you will be. Unfortunately racing is extremely expensive, and so no one but the absolute pros can spend as much time as they would like in a race car. Being able to hop on the simulator, at any time, is amazing to help you continue your training and stay sharp during the offseason, or at times like this when all racing is pretty much cancelled.
Anyone who is saying that this isn't transferrable is simply incorrect. They've already taken pure sim racers and put them behind the wheel of real race cars and those people did phenomenally well.
There is more strain physically in a real car, g-forces, breathing, pulse will be higher, but these things are much easier to train for.
There is a reduced amount of feedback certainly, one of the biggest issues for me is not getting a great feel for the brake pedal, but this is where muscle memory comes in, you keep doing laps and refining and your muscles will recognize what inputs you need even though the g-forces aren't there.
Furthermore I tried VR iRacing for the first time and it was insane how amazing the VR is. It is completely life like, just missing the rush of air around me.
I was at Road Atlanta doing laps and went through the last corner on my first lap. You come down a massive hill, hit the compression, and turn right into the fastest corner of the track where you also have walls on both sides that are very close. This is not the corner to fuck up. There is tremendous g-forces in this corner in real life. On the way down the hill I feel fine in VR. The second I hit the compression I get dizzy. This is because my eyes and everything around me is recognizing this part of the track and my body is tensing because it remembers real life. But my body isn't feeling the compression. So the difference between what my eyes see, my brain interrupts, and the lack of sensation in my body is making my brain go haywire and makes me dizzy.
The first time I just thought it was odd. The second lap same exact thing happens. The third lap again. It happened every time I had to take the VR off because I started getting a headache.
Anyway those are my real life stories. If there is anyone on here racing or tracking their car I highly recommend they get a great sim and install it in their house. It will be a lot cheaper than tracking and infinitely less expensive than racing and it will tremendously improve your skills.
This is probably less relevant for top of the sport racers, but if you watch today's youngest F1 athletes all of them do sim racing and all of them are extremely quick. Specifically Lando Norris and Max Verstappen.
I am no where near your level, or that of a pro racer, however I have spent a lot of time on tracks in various cars (Audi S4, BMW M3, BMW M6, etc..) and held a race license for motorcycles for a while.
However, when using the pretty amazing racing sim setup at Turner Motorsports (NH based BMW shop who runs some successful race cars) I couldn't make it a single lap without spinning out. There's a lack of physical feedback that kept me from feeling the approaching edge of traction or the frame balance shifting, etc...
One my friends who would always beat me in any racing games, has backed into his own mailbox at least 3 times.
You typically aren't reversing at any point in the race track, so that particular skill will obviously not transfer from a simulator (as it's not practiced).
I did this recently and am extremely satisfied. For years now now I kept on buying games that I never played because I just couldn't get into it them like I did when I was young.
I recently put together a rig with fanatec csw 2.5 wheel, formula v2 wheel, csl elite pedals, the simlab tr1 frame, and an NRG innovations seat I bought off amazon for 200$. All in all probably set me back around 1600$.
I'm having a grand old time getting into iracing.
Best investment I've made in ages. Also a great coronavirus shut-in hobby.
Though it should be noted that you really don't need to spend that much. You could start off with something like a Logitech G29 for $250, which would clamp to your desk.
Weird, because afaik commercial and especially combat pilots train a lot in specialized simulators. Plenty of companies around make those simulators since the 80s if not earlier, and they seemed to me to be more widely used than professional racing sims—if just for the price factor. I even know one company that makes ship bridge sims, employing fluid dynamics programmers.
Not OP, but I do (a fair amount of) HPDE/TT with an m240i, converted to the cup car spec.
Running costs for me are ~$500 / 2-hour day on 100-TW tires. These cars aren't exactly light, so they eat through consumables. Tires are the largest part, then repairs, then brakes. This doesn't count fuel.
If I had to guess for OP in PWC, 50-100% more, mostly driven by slick costs.
It's definitely not circuit racing, but I had some experience in Rally driving for about 10 years. Did mostly gravel stuff, and did the UK WRC round 4 times in a self built car. Definitely low budget (and low talent!) stuff, but I think I have some experience and know how a car should handle on a loose surface.
I've never found a rally driving game that handles like a real car. The physics always seems off - in Dirt Rally (the last one I tried seriously, and the one that everyone raved about), the car still seems to have the old physics of pivoting around the centre of the car, but whatever, it's miles off. The mini cooper in there is about the same power and weight as the Skoda Felicia that I drove, but it behaves nothing like it. I wish it did, as I no longer have the money or time to do anything like this, and if it felt anything like the real thing I'd have a fun hobby to take part it. But I always get hugely frustrated when I can't get anywhere near what I used to be able to do - place the car with precision on the road, get a good rhythm up and start to flow, and don't seem to be able to adjust to the way the cars handle in these games. I'm sure some of it is that you can't feel what's going on - through the seat, steering wheel and pedals - in the way that you can in the real thing, but I think there's more to it than that.
Forza was pretty different - even playing it using just controllers showed that it was handling much like a car would on track (I've done some tarmac rallying as well, so I'm used to the limit on tarmac as well as gravel), but I'm not really interested in circuit racing, alas!
The biggest missing factor in sim drifting versus real drifting, which I suspect is part of the issue in rally too, is not being able to detect that moment just before countersteer is required, as you can't feel when the rear of the car starts coming around. It means you have to preempt from experience when it happens rather than actually feeling it. With practice people get good at it, but sim drifters will often end up over rotating in a real car at first. They tend to hold onto the wheel too long while letting the rear of the car come around.
For what it's worth, my real car pivots pretty much where my seat is positioned, it feels surreal sometimes, ironically like I am in a video game.
I think it comes down to equipment. A good racing wheel can already give you a feeling of understeering. I just got started with entry-level stuff, but supposedly a Fanatec wheel + good seat + buttkicker (vibration generator) can get you a long way. Then you have motion platforms at €3k+ to get to the next level :)
Richard Burns Rally is often touted as the closest to reality. I know Nikolai Gryazin (WRC2) plays fairly often - he actually used it to practice the Czech stage Semetin before going on to win it in real life: https://m.rally-base.com/2019/barum-czech-rally-zlin-2019/?s...
Seconded. I enjoyed rally games at one point and found this one the most realistic (not that I actually did any rally). Also very hard. I had to use low-power cars only to be able to control them. There's something relaxing about driving a long track alone, even in a game.
Before I'd actually done any real driving, I thought Gran Turismo 4 with a Logitech wheel and pedals was the real deal.
Then I started driving and realized it's not quite there. It certainly taught me about proper corner entry, but not the visceral parts of it.
Even good simulators are like those "virtual rollercoasters". Not quite the same.
And like you said, it's very much the "I can't feel it in the seat, I can't feel the vibration difference in the pedals, frame and wheels".
If you're paying attention when driving on snow and ice, you can "feel" when the back of the car is "light" without actually kicking it out. You don't get that in these sims.
I understand what you mean. There's an incredible amount of tactile information in the real world, and I can't help feeling that there's probably almost as much information flowing in as audio or visual (that we as humans can process at any one instant), but I have been unable to find anything to back up my wild hypothesis.
People have used stimulus arrays attached to the back to "replace" eyesight. It would be interesting to compare the number of nerves coming from the different senses, and how much neuronal area the senses get as the signals are aggregated.
Have a look at DRAG https://store.steampowered.com/app/773840/DRAG/ because not having the traditional "centre of the car" physics is there entral proposition. It's developed by someone who frequents our hacker space and his team. I talked with him about his game and his plans, though I did not play it, because I don't care at all for racing games.
I always found rally games to be a bit off too. The only one I found to be acurate was a Peugeot 205 rear wheel drive car in whatever the playstation rally game du jour was 15 years ago (I want to say Colin McRae?)
As someone who has raced formula race cars and who has been an enthusiastic participant in racing simulations since way back in the old days of Grand Prix Legends let me assure you - a simulated race car has almost nothing in common with the real experience other than your hands are turning a wheel and your feet push pedals. The sensations in a real race car are simply overwhelming - the noise, g forces, heat, and the lack of being able to see much other than straight ahead. Grand Prix Legends and iRacing were/are both tremendous fun and a real achievement - but they are nothing like the real thing.
> As someone who has raced formula race cars and who has been an enthusiastic participant in racing simulations since way back in the old days of Grand Prix Legends let me assure you - a simulated race car has almost nothing in common with the real experience other than your hands are turning a wheel and your feet push pedals. The sensations in a real race car are simply overwhelming - the noise, g forces, heat, and the lack of being able to see much other than straight ahead. Grand Prix Legends and iRacing were/are both tremendous fun and a real achievement - but they are nothing like the real thing.
Counterpoint:
In 2013, TopGear took a top rated iRacing competitor (Greger Huttu) and put him in a proper race car. Yes, he had to bow out due to the physical stress eventually. However, He did really well while he lasted. I think it's a stretch to say "they are nothing like the real thing".
The experience doesn't translate, but the skills certainly do.
It's not just those hardcore simulations that translate well. Even standard console games like Forza and GT are good at predicting real world talent. Yeah, the first time these people get behind the wheel of a real race car, they will be sore af and probably puke all over the place. But a workout routine will build physical endurance and most people overcome the nausea eventually.
A dozen or so people have graduated from Sony's GT Academy (online racing competition) and gone on to racing professionally.
This reminds me of the studies done on how experience in video games and virtual training translates to practice in surgery.
The basic finding was that just having played a lot of video games helped immensely because it means practice in careful hand-eye coordination. Also, real surgery is obviously different from virtual surgery, but there is strong skill transfer.[1]
full disclosure: I used to work for Surgical Science, primarily on the development of LapSim, their simulator for laparoscopic surgery.
That's honestly not much of a counterexample, since you're talking about a 260hp car. Good on him for doing as well as he did, but it seems unlikely he'd be physically able to handle a Formula 1 car at all.
The thing you have to remember is that it takes a demanding and specialized workout routine to get an experienced race car driver to the point where they can hold their head up through a turn in an F1 car. Some of the other demands put on a driver's body during a race are pretty crazy as well, particularly on a hot day.
> That's honestly not much of a counterexample, since you're talking about a 260hp car. Good on him for doing as well as he did, but it seems unlikely he'd be physically able to handle a Formula 1 car at all.
That was 260 hp car that weighed 607 kg. Power to weight ratio is key here, and trust me, this is nothing like your usual full size car that also sports ~250 hp, but weighs 4 times as much. It might not be F1, but it is a real deal.
I remember reading once they generate more a G of force just letting off the accelerator. Back in the day, Nigel Mansell had to leave for a few months for an injury. His next race back he retired because his neck muscles had lost conditioning despite working out every day.
My car has g-force sensors. I know from experience, it can only handle 1 lateral G before it starts to slide (in a 4-door sedan wrighing around 3500 lbs). Thats with Z-rated tires. What F1 and Indy cars can pull off is absolutely amazing. Most of what they can do is purely because of the aerodynamics and the insane downforce they produce. I remember hearing somewhere that an Indy car produces enough downforce at speed, it'd be able to drive upside down and stick to the inverted road.
It would make an already dangerous sport even more dangerous. Also, just because it may be theoretically possible it doesn't mean it is practically achievable. Think about what would happen if the driver can't approach the loop that turns the car upside down with enough speed, or within the angle range that's needed for the car to stay on it because of another car, or some problem... Basically any small mistake would be fatal.
Imagine the leader car having any kind of issue at all, thus bringing the pack to a stop. The lift would disappear and everyone would fall to the ground. With nets it might be quite a spectacle but still safe!
I hope 0G F1 racing becomes a thing in the space age (basically in space but in an arena filled with air where the only force that keeps the cars from floating is the downforce). Imagine roads at any angle!
You see it on the necks of the Formula 1 drivers, they're quite massive. Doesn't come for free of course, some hard work-outs behind that: https://youtu.be/t0SoPeY8zE8?t=67
Sure. But he went into that 260hp car effectively (physically) untrained. Give him a couple years of actual appropriate physical training and then what kind of car and for how long, is an interesting question. Ultimately, if you've got the brain/reaction times/feel for driving at a high level, what percent of the population has a genetic ability to do the physical parts of it, assuming they are trained? I dunno.
The problem, of course, is that the testing for this is expensive, so it's all theoretical.
This is such a ridiculous discussion, the skills + physical training go hand in hand. You can't tack one on just like that. Many people don't have the drive or fortitude to survive the training let alone the race.
Oh please. The physical component does not require elite genetics, just proper training. Sure, hard work, but nothing out of the ordinary. The reaction time and the general talent for driving however, that's another story.
Watching the formula one show on prime was pretty enlightening as far as physical training goes. He spent a lot of time in the gym maintaining his body.
I'm not sure if it is the same thing that this commenter was thinking of, but the show "Formula 1: Drive to Survive" was a breakaway hit on Netflix (not Amazon Prime) when season one was released last year (which followed the teams across the 2018 season) and brought a ton of new fans to the sport. It is really well done and very engaging. Season 2 just released in February and follows the teams across the 2019 season.
I spent quite a bit of time with NASCAR last year (I attended the Daytona 500 and previously visited their HQ and archives). Most of the up and coming drivers are previously accomplished eRacers, but the transition to experiences in a real car are enormously different. Not many make the cut, the tracks rote memory is very useful but real life is exceedingly different
The issue isn’t so much that skills aren’t transferable — they are. F1 drivers even practice with sims.
The question is whether you can keep that level of focus and consistency for 2 hours of a real race under all that physical strain. And most people just can’t. That’s what’s impressive about real racers, doing all this stuff at 6 lateral G.
It's a risk thing too, i don't think it's just physical exertion. F1 drivers could literally die if they make a mistake. Not so much a problem in a sim
"The danger? Well, of course. But you are missing a very important point. I think if any of us imagined - really imagined - what it would be like to go into a tree at 150 miles per hour we would probably never get into the cars at all, none of us. So it has always seemed to me that to do something very dangerous requires a certain absence of imagination."
Or someone else making a mistake like in F2 recently where a crash lead to a death and severe injuries. Car that slammed (survived) into car that stopped (dead) at 300kph had zero seconds to react. Full speed over a blind crest into a stopped car.
But if you don’t go full speed over a blind crest, you won’t be in even the top 10.
I wonder if technology could fix that, some sort of HUD display that signals a crash on a part of the track. Could update faster than it takes for the safety crew to get out there.
At 300kph you cover 83m per second. Almost a full football pitch.
In this instance the cars were less than a second apart. A HUD won’t help, human reaction times just aren’t fast enough. Doubt even automatic braking would stop in time.
This is a good thing, as it allows you to learn where the limits are without dying, and discover that there is more that you can do without having to risk significant pain to find out. Breaking the mental barrier to discover the true limits is important.
A personal anecdote, my bouldering skills (no rope technical rock climbing) improved tremendously once I started top-roping (climbing much higher walls with a safety rope), as the rope gave me the confidence to try moves I never would have without the safety rope.
There's no real control variable, though, so it's hard to tell how well he really did. But, of course, the simulation is something like the real thing and is better than no preparation at all.
Exactly. It could be that this guy was just born to be a real racing driver but never realised until too late, or just didn't want that career. And that a good racing driver is likely to be a good simulation player.
Hahaha racing on an empty track in a car that’s built to handle like a go cart is nothing like the stress of a circuit race with other cars.
I used to race my modified turbo 500hp and I can tell you that game racing is nada to real life racing. Even knowing that taking a risk can cost you $$$ or your life is stressful enough.
With other cars on the track it’s many more variables to calculate and consider.
So let’s not kid ourselves. The delta is larger than one can anticipate without even factoring the physical stresses.
I’m not a race car driver but I do track my car pretty often
There are people out there who use simulators and very detailed data logging in their track cars to try and experiment with things like braking habits.
Saying it’s “nothing alike” honestly feels like gate keeping.
Obviously a video game played from your couch is not going to feel like hurtling thousands of pounds of metal around a track, but if you can’t drive in a sim, you’re probably not going to make it around the track.
And before you scoff at such a low bar, there are plenty of people who enter a realistic sim, try and go full throttle with 0 counter steering, and immediately lose control
Likewise, if you’re one of the best players in the world on a sim, you can probably hack it at commonly accessible levels of racing
After all, why is everyone in this thread acting like F1 is the only kind of racing? There’s stuff like SCCA Road Racing series that won’t require you to withstand 5gs of braking force...
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This is kind of like saying “nothing from a flight sim translates to flying” because the risk of dropping out of the sky to a horrible death isn’t there
I'm sorry I should have been more clear that my car was built for the race track. Came on 2 bar of boost really hard and with a twin plate clutch meant only few people managed to drive it without stalling. A car built for the race track is not the same as your normal car. This is the difference I was trying to allude to.
But yes if you have a stock car and you take it on a race track you'll most likely be ok as long as you follow the rules.
Bone stock vs track prepped literally makes no difference (for the record my car is as track prepped as it really needs to be for the events I run and my goals on consumables, coilovers, roll bar, upgraded intercooler, fuel injectors for E85, ultralight brake kit)
I mean subie bros are out there running race clutches in street cars for no reason other than to say they do (even if they’ll never admit that).
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None of this has anything at all to do with the fact simulators let you practice _a lot_ of very important lessons.
Saying “nothing transfers” is 100% an ego play, because you’re really saying “oh yeah racing lines and all that textbook stuff is meaningless it’s all about if you can push it with the nerves of steel when you’ve got tens of thousands on the line in damages and possible injury”
... I mean there are people who unironically think that, but having those fundamentals that a sim can and will leapfrog you over someone starting from scratch.
Even just learning the track layout and markers is an incredible advantage that you can find in a realistic sim (and the friend I mentioned who treats racing much more like a science project than I have the time or funds to does this)
I mean, otherwise in what universe would someone be able to be compete in Spec Miata as their first door-to-door racing experience ever and not make a mess of literally everything:
The article is about F1 so that’s the benchmark people are using. Other types of races have their own specific issues. NASCAR for example has lower absolute peak physical demands, but longer races turn into a much larger test of both physical and mental endurance.
Given say 3 years to prepare I suspect many could make the jump, but it’s likely well below half.
Again, SCCA is a 50,000 member organization. NASA is another large racing org.
You should imagine that most NASCAR racers are not racing for the first time when they first enter a stock car, things like Spec Miata and even competitive go-karting are not any less “real” racing, to say otherwise is gatekeeping.
It’s not about how real the sports are, or even the level of competition. It’s about what abilities transfer. A world class marathon runner needs serious endurance like a world class biathlon athlete, but they don’t need very good vision.
Physical abilities can be improved within a range, but once the competition gets good enough you need a baseline genetic competence to be competitive. As in you don’t need to be 6’10” to play in the NBA but you can’t be 3’2”. Further, being extremely tall reduces the difficulty in competing in the NBA.
On example not mentioned, is professional F1/Indycar/NASCAR drivers benefit from being able to rapidly change visual focus in ways that video game players looking at flat screens don’t need to. On it’s own not a big deal, but that’s just one difference among many.
Instead of having a circular argument where you continuously make the obvious point “simulators are simulations”, I’ll leave it at how is this any different from a flight sim, which are widely accepted as letting you get transferable skills.
Realistic racing sims will give you skills that transfer to racing. Period.
They will not give you _all_ the skills you need, they will not train your neck muscles to withstand 6gs, but they will let you understand the concept of a racing line, they will help you understand how shifting mid turn can unsettle a car even if they can’t replicate realistic shifting and a host of other useful lessons.
What this thread seems hellbent on doing is pointing out the sim won’t give you all the skills needed to race.
Well duh?
Especially if you set the bar at skills needed to race at a level .000001% of people who even race will ever be exposed to.
The average driver in any sort of competitive driving event (read: race) is probably doing something closer to a HPDE than an Indycar race...
Ahh, ok I don’t think the skill portion is that relevant. I am saying that something like 20% of people are capable of competing at that level based on the genetic lottery and general health after training. That’s mostly true of both racing sims and F1/etc but while there is overlap it’s still a significantly different 20%.
Aka 30% of the population could do either, but only 10% could do both. (Percentages picked from thin air.)
Flying is extremely skilled focused, but you also need to pass an eye exam. The bar for airline pilots is low enough most people could do either, but with fighter pilots it’s less useful. With them people fail out of high g training before setting foot in a fighter, or have hay fever, or are to short or to tall, or etc etc.
To put into perspective how insane that is, at High Performance Driving events (non competitive events where you get to drive around a track), you might expect someone to move to the advanced group where you’re still not allowed to pass in turns, and have to be pointed by after multiple years!
Some places would actually require you to take a year's worth of events just to get into a group where passing is allowed at all without an instructor in the car
This guy went straight into full on Spec Miata with purpose built cars and full on passing for his first event!
That would be like someone playing baseball for the first time in Minor League Baseball, it takes some extremely real and difficult to develop skill to do so even if it isn’t MLB...
My vary first post had, given 3 years to prepare as a benchmark for people to make the jump. Anyone can get training. I don’t question how long it takes to reach the top, but if people can get there at all. The games are selecting for reflexes and spatial awareness so I don’t even question if their more likely to make it than the general population.
My only question is what percentage could make the jump if given time and training. And if we’re already giving people time and training as a basic assumption then the skills they already had are irrelevant for that question.
But would a real racing car driver be able to compete in the game? It's kinda obvious that the other way around wouldn't work very well, but what about this?
Counterpoint: as someone who's also raced both to a sufficient degree to know (from well before GPL to rFactor and iRacing in terms of simulators, and in KT100, Super Comp and other real-world categories), the skills are far more transferable than you're indicating.
There's still a big difference between the two, but "almost nothing in common" is not an accurate description. And there's a reason the top guys on either discipline can switch over and still be quite competent–if not world-beating–on the other side.
All of the top teams use simulators based on commercially-available simulation engines to develop the car and solicit feedback.
The skills are largely transferable for many drivers. There are a few odd cases–Michael Schumacher famously became too motion sick in the simulator to use it–but those are exceptions. Maybe you're one of them (and if so, you're in very good company!)
Not raced cars but raced motorcycles and the very real difference is the vast sensory overload when you’re approaching corners, while in traffic, late braking trying to overtake, trying to stay in the power, being in the right gear, while protecting. By the way all of this is on the edge of your ability, you walk a line crossing back and forth between triumph and catastrophe. The heat is a very real thing and really wears you down physically and mentally. While physically able there were times I approached corners in traffic at very high speeds when my brain felt overloaded like I couldn’t process quickly enough everything that’s happening. My speed was more limited by my brain getting used to the speed than it was to ability to lean, apex, etc... In the real world there is physical danger and real significant consequences to making a mistake. A mistake can end your life. In a game you just lose.
Interesting, as I'm on the opposite end of that one. I've never found sensory overload to be a significant issue in anything I've flown/driven/ridden/raced (including motorcycles). The fastest stuff has required a session or three for my brain to come to grips with the rate of sensory input and get fully on top of it, but after that it's never been an issue and it normalizes to no longer being stimulating just for the sake of the thrill of speed. (Which isn't to say there isn't something fast enough to saturate my brain's ability to process my sensory inputs.) Rather, it's the competition and pursuit of excellence that keeps it interesting.
What I will say is that maintaining full situational awareness and keeping my racecraft sharp is more difficult in a sim, because the quantity and quality of the inputs just aren't as good as the real world.
Sims obviously aren't nearly as physically demanding (though a full-length grand prix will still leave me in a sweat by the end from concentration), but I find I have significantly more mental overhead in the real world as it's far more intuitive. And if the physical risk is a persistent stressor that takes attentional overhead while racing, then congrats, you're wired like a functioning human, not a racing driver!
> In the real world there is physical danger and real significant consequences to making a mistake. A mistake can end your life. In a game you just lose.
Games can also get immersive and your adrenaline pumping. Now I'm not a racing pilot, and have very little track experience, but I know a few people who have, and have a nice setup for iracing at home, which according to them allows them to hone their reaction speed and try out moves and train moves. Yes you remove the physical part, but you do get immersed in the situation.
Point in case, Max Verstappen trained a specific overtake move on the Spa circuit at the Blanchimont corner on iracing with his teammates there [1]. And then he pulled off exactly that same move in a real race [2], which was one ballsy move to pull off irl.
But it's a very good example of the sims allowing them to fail without much risk gives them the possibility to experiment at will, and at least partially train their brains to handle such a situation.
On the contrary: there is probably no sport where the sim is so close to the real thing. Being good at FIFA 19 in no way will make you good at real football. But if you put a decent sim racer in a real race car, they are often able to put together a decent lap pretty quickly. See for instance some of Jimmy Broadbent's recent adventures in real-life racing. Conversely, real-life drivers tend to be good at simracing (e.g. Max Verstappen or Lando Norris in iRacing) because so many of the skills carry over. By contrast I wouldn't expect Lionel Messi to be any good at FIFA 19.
FIFA is a football simulator as much as Mortal Kombat is fighting simulator.
FIFA is a game.
The difference is simulator's main focus is reality, games' main focus is fun.
If FIFA was for reality it would be closer to first person QWOP than isometric view of half of field where you have perfect information and you press a key and your player does whatever trick the key was designated to perform.
The substance of the game is lost and only visuals are left.
Cars have artificial controls that are relatively easy to simulate. Any sport where the primary impact is full human body mechanics is not likely to have a sim with transferable skills.
Car racing. In car racing as a driver you typically get your input through your seat and steering wheel. Due to lack of g-forces in typical simulator this is all compressed to force feedback in steering wheel. There are really powerful steering wheels that have very high definition of vibration and forces they can transfer and this gives a lot of information about how the car is doing on the track, whether you are loosing or already lost the grip.
I’m not saying a sim is like real racing. I’m saying that human-car interface allows for play-control that maps to the real activity in a way a soccer or snowboarding game never can.
I wonder if you could achieve something vaguely approaching reality with vr and limb tracking, and some weird "soccer ball on a string" gizmo tied into the simulation.
Soccer seems like it's on the other corner of the "implementation difficulty" matrix from racing.
It's pretty easy to hook up a ffb steering wheel and pedals to a computer, actually simulating the cars and track is the hard bit.
In soccer the actual simulation would be pretty simple - it's an elastic sphere bouncing around a fairly uniform surface and being hit by mostly solid body parts/boots without too many interacting parts. But putting the user into the world in a way that they get the necessary physical feedback is much harder.
Having purchased X-Plane 11 while waiting for the new MSFS, and previously coming from an unmodded copy of FSX, I have never been more disappointed in a simulator product. I don't know how a system made with more than 10 years of extra effort can fall so far behind the competition. The terrain looks like garbage and doesn't make sense (Why did you generate a high voltage power line IN the road, you know exactly where both are!?) and the roads look amateur at best, the built in planes are mediocre and uninteresting, with half of them feeling nearly unimplemented at best, ATC that is completely unusable, and somehow worse performance, with a VR mode that feels not even quarter-assed. The minimum I can say for it is the interface seems okay and usable.
Another sports sim that is incredibly close to real life is Virtual Pool 4. It looks quite dated, but no other game has more realistic billiard physics that I know of.
Platforms like Zwift give professional cyclists a platform to practice their skills. It's widely used and fans ride with professionals on a daily basis. You definitely can't feel the wind, but you can get the benefits from the simulation.
Beside it not being a real sim, the viewpoint is completely different and the football most people play for fun is not played by the rules of the pro game.
To me, the interesting question is not whether the experience is the same for the driver, because obviously it cannot be. What's interesting is whether the skills transfer. I would assume they do to some degree, but there are probably bits you can't learn except by doing.
The reason why the question is interesting is because I love the notion that you can train in a less expensive context and then perform in a higher stakes one. I'm interested why some domains allow that and others do not. Flight simulators are another interesting case where mechanical skills transfer, but that's only a small part of what real world flying really is. On the other hand, by all accounts, drone racing sims are quite good for learning how to fly the real thing, since it's almost all mechanics.
> Flight simulators are another interesting case where mechanical skills transfer, but that's only a small part of what real world flying really is.
Do you mean for combat flight simulation? Because flight simulation for commercial flight can pretty accurately replicate the whole experience, not just the mechanical skills, when you include people playing the role of ATC etc.
I've driven on tracks on touring days, so not exactly a race driver, but still. the lack of proper feedback from g forces make harder on sims to understand what the car is doing. a good wheel can help since you get back part of the wheel loading/unloading and at least you know how to navigate the last 20 meters of corner entry properly, giving enough warning of when the front is letting to, but for what the rear is going to do you're just left guessing.
that feeling of the center of rotation shifting is extremely helpful when loading the car, and sure you can just go by track memory on sims, but it's not the same thing.
I would disagree that it's impossible to tell what the rear's doing in a sim. I've never driven a real vehicle outside of a few times in a low-powered kart, so I don't know what it's like in that scenario. I assume there's some physical feedback through the seat about what the car's doing.
But when I'm driving in VR in iRacing or Assetto Corsa I can tell when the rear is about to step out. It can't be track-based memory because I can tell on tracks I've never driven on before. I don't think it's through the wheel, but rather some sort of visual cue about how the car is moving.
I would assume that visual cue is there in a real car as well, but isn't needed because you have the physical feeling.
It's been several years since I last drove with a monitor (my sim rig doesn't have one nearby), but from what I remember not as much. One of the biggest things I remember noticing when I switched to VR was I very quickly got better at car control. I had a much better sense of where my car was, what it was doing, where the edge of the track was, and where other cars were.
This actually had a fair effect on my race performance, too. I was typically around the middle of ACRL's second split in performance for GT3. You can see the effect VR had on my results (split 2 unless noted otherwise):
* Imola: 18th
* Red Bull Ring: 19th
* Monza: 6th (split 3)
* Spa: 16th
* Paul Ricard: 10th
* Bathurst: 4th (got VR the week of this race)
* Silverstone: 2nd (my first podium)
And then from the season 3 months later:
* Mugello: 8th
* Donington: 3rd
* Zandvoort: 8th
* Nurburgring GP: 5th
* Interlagos: 21st (got into split 1 for the first time)
Felix Rosenquest (IndyCar driver) was talking about sim racing and he said that it depends on the driver. Some drivers feel the car by their body/ass and they will struggle for a while in a sim because there is no feedback from G-forces and the sort.
Other drivers which mostly take their information visually, they tend to do much better and have less issue adapting.
Obviously the feel is not the same, but many drivers use it for training and find it quite enjoyable and useful. To dismiss it because you don't smell fuel and tyres or get g-loads in the corners is too simplistic.
A flight simulator with a good instructor is a great way to build familiarity with systems and processes without the Hobbs meter running.
A flight simulator without a good instructor is a great way to learn dangerous fundamental habits you'll spend many dollars in an airplane to correct. (Ask me how I know.) Some people can never fully correct those habits.
You'll also be significantly out of pocket. Still, it's being done.
(I'm an iRacer, not a very good one, but I've also been on racetracks in a modded road car on V8 ute supercar training days doing ok to mingle / being traffic with the fast guys and can say 100% that the skills transfer).
The safety rating system in iRacing makes the stakes feel very different to just loading up Mario Kart. You play with your real name, and safe driving is rewarded - to get A rated you have to treat other drivers with respect.
I've driven fairly high end rigs (higher than the linked one) and found them very difficult to drive compared to the actual car and actual track. If you want to play around or aren't trying to learn a competitive edge, I'm sure these are great though.
Yes the feeling and even smell of the race track, that's beyond emulation. Had a GSXR600 a long time ago, after a CBR250RR. went to the track a number of times.. Scraping my knee on Philip Island doing 180km/h, starting to have the rear slide out and catching it by only gently rolling off (#1) the throttle ... the sheer thrill of the realisation that I mastered my fear of death... Impossible to put into words, and definitely impossible simulate.
Yet, this is all we have for the time being. A number of high profile drivers were already using the laser scanned tracks and iRacing to practice their race craft prior to races. They've spent a lot of time customising their rigs and settings to their exact preferences, I'm sure this also becomes a factor.
VR is also getting better, although FOV is a limiting factor we're only just starting to improve on. (I've only tried Lenovo Explorer, immersion is amazing but struggle to see the other guys.)
With the increased attention, this is a huge opportunity for growth in the sector. One thing is for sure:
ESports will never be the same.
#1) the more natural untrained instinct to chop it would have caused a high side which at that speed would very likely have killed me
Another counterpoint (although I totally understand where this sentiment comes from):
Pro Gran Turismo players have been banned from competing as gentlemen drivers because they're too good.
For folks not familiar with the concept of a "gentleman driver", there are plenty of racing series that pair amateur drivers with pro drivers to compete in teams. Historically, the gentleman driver provided the funding for the team. These were wealthy enthusiasts who were often quite good, but not good enough to be professional.
However, it's not actually required that the gentlemen driver fund the team. This encouraged teams to seek out the best non-pro drivers possible, which in this case, happened to be some pro Gran Turismo players.
Considering that pro race drivers were able to transition to sim racing and win, and that pro race drivers already extensively use sims for practice and testing claiming that "a simulated race car has almost nothing in common with the real experience other than your hands are turning a wheel and your feet push pedals" seems like a bit of an exaggeration, no?
I will acknowledge that Formula One (and similar like IndyCar) are on a whole other level compared to most other 4 wheeled motorsport though.
I always sucked at driving games. Obviously,I could do the racing, however, I always struggled to understand how on earth it's so difficult to do it really well. I haven't played any racing games for at least 10 years.Darn it,I only drove a real car a few times.Then, a few months ago all my team from work went to do electric Go-Kart. Some of them do drive cars,some did a fair share of Go-Kart driving and etc.I think I was the only one who never did it before. They run the training session on rules and safety.I put my helmet on and I can't even strap it properly.Then I get into the Kart. I'm also the only one who's got this particular colour racing suite,because I'm the biggest one(6.1', 277lbs)...So now the whole thing starts sinking in.All my bravado is gone..How bad will I crash?Will they put my picture of the wall with a title " lamest driver ever"? Oh, and I'm also the first one in the line to start..Darn in..And then it starts.I'm a bit hesitant to push tje pedal completely to the ground because I'm not sure how it'd react. But I feel it.I feel the track,my whole body reacts to every turn and twist.It feels like I'm part of the track itself.I enter high risk high reward mode and push the little thing on four wheels to the limits. I finished 3rd, after my colleague and some lady who was sharing the track with our group. It felt extatic. I told my colleague,who came 2nd,that I think I found my new hobby. Driving in a computer game doesn't give even 2% of what it feels like in a race.
There's also a chance that you've got lucky with a car. Sometimes the cars at Go-Carts vary a lot with a power. On my last team meeting everyone on a car #6 was winning. It was just much faster than everybody else.
I used two different cars, as there were two sessions.The point I was trying to make wasn't about the fact I came third but rather that you have so much more info and senses when driving in real compared to a simulator.
>As someone who has raced formula race cars and who has been an enthusiastic participant in racing simulations since way back in the old days of Grand Prix Legends let me assure you - a simulated race car has almost nothing in common with the real experience
This brings to mind, when Jeremy Clarkson did this segment on Top Gear, where he "practiced" going around a certain turn in a certain car on a Sony Playstation (forget which model, maybe a 3?) and then tried to do it in real life.
Totally different! IIRC, the biggest thing was, that he knew he didn't have his life on the line on the game, and he totally knew that in real life.
I've had the experience of having a rifle pointed at me during a street robbery. (I was the victim.) There's something very visceral, something operating at a level way below verbal consciousness, where you KNOW your life is on the line.
Seems like most of that should be fixable. You’ll not get more than 1G sustained (and usually a lot less since they won’t tilt more than a bit) in the simulator of course, but any sound volume and heat level should at least be doable. Steering feedback in the most expensive controllers systems should be realistic enough to be able to mimic the real thing (if the simulation is up to it).
A good simulation obviously only lets you see from the eye position of the driver, so the complaint is usually that you see less than in a race car because you only have a small screen and a poor sense of depth. Today I hope anyone serious about “pro” level simulation just uses VR. It gives stereo depth, you can look out side windows etc.
Obviously if you run a racing sim in an office chair with a cheap pair of pedals and a cheap steering wheel then it’s not going to be close to the real thing.
> a simulated race car has almost nothing in common with the real experience other than your hands are turning a wheel and your feet push pedals.
Real life engineer made a data analysis between a virtual F3 car vs real F3 car, keep in mind rfactor is an old sim from 2005, sure you can't (Yet) replicate the g-forces of the real thing but everything else is pretty close.
As someone who has run around spastically and sweated a lot and forgotten to breath and lost my balance then fallen over flat on my face because I got a boner, I found Severe Running extremely realistic and pretty much exactly like the real thing.
The first "Running Simulator" I remember playing was "Microsoft Olympic Decathlon" on my Apple ][, where you run with your two fingers repeatedly pressing two keys on the keyboard as fast as you can. But I remember seeing more elaborate, challenging Flash "running simulator" games with physics simulation like "Severe Running". Muscular twitch micro-management sims.
>Reception: Decathlon received the Creative Computing Game of the Year Award at the 1980 West Coast Computer Faire.[4] BYTE in 1981 called Decathlon "a great party game"[5] and "a remarkable simulation ... challenging and entertaining", praising the adherence to the real decathlon's rules and the TRS-80 and Apple II versions' graphics.[4] Computer Gaming World stated in 1982 that Decathlon "has all the characteristics that are required of a long-lasting, quality game". It described the game as having "superb graphics and sound", and concluded that "it is an important contribution to the computer gaming hobby".
>Former decathlete Douglas Cobb wrote in PC Magazine in 1983 that "this impressive, realistic game brings back vivid memories and provides exciting entertainment through all ten events. The jumping and throwing events are particularly authentic, applying theories used in actual competition. Strategies combining speed, timing, and direction are authentic enough to help an Olympic hopeful train on the basic principles behind the individual events". In 1984 InfoWorld stated that "no one's topped it yet. If I were Microsoft, I'd market the heck out of [Decathlon] this summer."
[end marketing bullshit]
>Legacy: Olympic Decathlon preceded Konami's Track & Field and The Activision Decathlon, both of which were released in 1983 and have similar gameplay.
>Twitch vs trick: Some forms of micromanagement involve continuous input of a large number of commands over a short period of time. This is known as twitch micromanagement. For example, a micromanagement technique known as kiting requires continuous input from the player in order to keep their character at an optimum distance from a target. Another example of twitch micromanagement can be found in racing games whereby a player is required to keep making split second adjustments to the position of their vehicle.
>In contrast to twitch micromanagement, some game elements need only occasional input from the player in order to exploit tricks in their behavior. In these situations, quick thinking is rewarded over continuous, quick reaction. This is known as trick micromanagement.
>Other types of games are based entirely on micromanagement, such as pet-raising simulations and games like Cake Mania, where the player's ability to micromanage is often the only skill being tested by the game.
Game Helpin' Squad does spot-on parodies of actual games (and entire genres)! The chat messages and menu trees and popup texts that fly by are hilarious and worth pausing and reading!
Your comment speaks to whether someone who enjoys racing an actual car would enjoy the simulation.
But in the context of sports-as-trillion-dollar-entertainment-businesses, what is interesting here is not whether simulated racing is the same as racing IRL for competitors, but the degree to which it is the same for spectators.
That said if the simulations are good enough for real F1 drivers to train with them, and for the skills of sim racers to pretty quickly translate into the real world once they get some seat time, they must be more than superficially similar.
These guys are not down at the local track on the weekend, lapping grandpa; they are racing competitively at a high level. Obviously sitting in your living isn't the same as the track, but stating "almost nothing in common" is certainly not the case.
It's basically true of anything using physics. There are very good pinball simulations, and being reliable digital games they are actually a better, more fair competitive venue, but people who really play pinball still crave the real game because of all the analog parts of it, the nuance of pressing your weight down on the table and how that changes across different games, and how you adjust your play to the specific conditions as things wear down.
So I was invited to speak at Goodwood FoS in 2018 and I ended up using a simulator that I could actually sorta almost drive by feel - it had a specific rail to let it rotate around the nose (to simulate the tail getting out) and bladders in the straps (to simulate braking.) But normally, when I try tracks I am used to, I go off in places that I normally have zero trouble with.
What separates some of the new generation racers from the old is that the new generation F1 racers are better at translating between sim and on-track. This was very clear with the Vettel/Hamilton generation, but even more so now.
It isn’t so much a question of realism, but usefulness as preparation and working out a plan and a rythm.
Verstappen is probably the best example of this in F1. He is both a world class real world racer and a frequent online player as well. His reason for not joining the new virtual Grand Prix is that he apparently hasn't had a chance to get into the F1 2019 they're using for it.
He thinks the game is shit and he is not wrong. F1 2019 is mostly a single player career mode game with multiplayer bolted on. It's not really a sim, it might even be pushing to call it a simcade.
Max is competing all the time in more serious sims like IRacing, rFactor2 or the like.
Lando is taking it a bit more casually so he is racing in F1 2019 as well, but he participates in iRacing races as well.
This goes back a long way. Obviously, Chess is a kind of wargame, but the Germans invented Kriegspiel specifically to simulate war well enough to train officers in strategy.
Of course, playing Kriegspiel is nothing like actually standing on the battlefield in the era of Bismark, but nevertheless, the generation of officers who were trained in the simulation were better prepared for their first battle than those who weren’t.
While I'm sure there is skills transfer, to highlight the above:
The Discovery channel had an episode of "On The Inside" where they profiled the Benetton F1 team. There was a lot of talk about how going into a turn and pressing the brake was like doing a one legged weight press while going side ways at multiple Gs. They showed all the conditioning that went into preparing for this etc etc
Then, they interviewed the team doctor who described how he got a chance to sit in the cockpit during a wind tunnel test. His recollection: "Everyone talks about the side to side Gs but honestly, after just a few minutes sitting in the cockpit with race condition wind speed, I could barely hold up my head. These guys really are super men."
I have beaten a seasoned champion in a Rally competition a couple of times (means I arrived before him), but he won the championship that year, I was in the lower 20% of the rankings at the end of the season
Being a champion is not about the single performance, is about consistency over the years
he won the championship that year, I was in the lower 20% of the rankings at the end of the season
What was the cause of that? You mention "no motivation whatsoever" but I know nothing about the racing world or what kind of preparation-mental or otherwise-goes into being a competitive driver; what does that mean here in terms of how it affected the results so disparately for the two of you at the end of your season (not sure if "season" is the proper word for your sport, apologies if there's a more correct term), and how would you compare it to Enzo Bonito's two victories?
I know very little about the racing world other than having an appreciation for the mechanics and engineers who create such marvelous machines, but otherwise I know absolutely nothing about what it means to be a racer, if that makes sense.
Well in my case it's quite easy to explain: I'm not a professional driver, but I've been competing in the same races over and over, there are tracks were I have good runs, because I know the place since when I was a kid and I remember every curve and know every trick, others I just try to get to the end safe and am generally terrible with regards to timing.
The other thing is experience in difficult conditions: if my gearbox get stuck in fourth gear I just retire, I don't have the skills to drive in those conditions and still enjoy it, professional drivers know how to handle it to get to the end of the special stage without losing too much time, get the car fixed and keep going.
Every single point counts when you're racing for the lead.
Another aspect is the kind of risks you're willing to take.
In rally competitions in Italy, especially the smaller ones, local drivers usually get out on top after the nightly stages, but when the sun comes up the real pro start climbing the rankings and fight for the victory.
They don't wanna risk anything when it's dark and are simply so much above the average that their "night strolls" allow them to be in the first ten positions, without too much hassles.
Having dealt with pro drivers as a technician on the field and as an hobbyist pilot, the real difference is the attitude.
A professional driver can make mistakes, like everybody else, but won't get easily distracted or get down by them and consistently race at the best of their abilities even when it's not the best day.
That's why they win championships while I simply try to look good when I race in my hometown in front of my friends :)
Do you feel that this also applies to the high end racing rigs that people build? My understanding was that these were basically the race car equivalent of flight simulators used to train pilots.
The fundamental limitation is that you can't properly simulate g-forces with a rig that isn't moving around a large track. So it will never be fully immersive. But it's good enough that there is plenty of skills transfer between disciplines.
Haha, right. That comment had literally zero information value. Obviously playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is nothing like ollying your skateboard let alone any of the other tricks.
Thinly veiled attempt to use online comment forum as a personal blog.
>Obviously playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is nothing like ollying your skateboard let alone any of the other tricks.
Simulator racing is pretty different from Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. There's so much shit that you can buy to get you closer to the real deal. Not really so much the case with Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2.
An online tournament of FIFA 20 (soccer game by EA Sports) just finished between the 20 teams from "la liga", spanish league.. Each team sent their best player and it was streamed at twitch.tv
At some point I think it had over 50k viewers
Heres the link of the channel of the one behind the idea:
Only to an extent. Rock Band 3 added a "Pro Mode" which, on the highest difficulty, required playing the song note-for-note. The pro mode keyboard and guitar peripherals double as actual MIDI controllers.
Correction, it's not the only e-sport that translates well. Much smaller scale but FPV Drone racing is heavily practiced on simulators as well and skillsets translate to one another pretty well.
Any sport involving any sort of physical contact is really difficult. The sports without are pretty easy to do while following CDC recommendations: poker, chess, golf, bowling, racing, biking.
Sports like track & field are somewhat in the middle but they're just timed. It would be feasible to just have people do these alone in standardized conditions with a single moderator.
Don't you think to be considered a "sport" there needs to be an element of physical aptitude? Poker and chess are both games of skill, but I wouldn't call them sports.
In a this ESPN article on Fabiano Caruana, they noted "In October 2018, Polar, a U.S.-based company that tracks heart rates, monitored chess players during a tournament and found that 21-year-old Russian grandmaster Mikhail Antipov had burned 560 calories in two hours of sitting and playing chess -- or roughly what Roger Federer would burn in an hour of singles tennis."
It's about being virtually confined to a box that has simplish interactions with the environment. Simulations that fit into this category are race car, tank, air plane, ship (least popular category probably), submarine.
Or even if they were, the "real" drivers are trained to respond to a completely different set of sensations. The simulation can be perfect, but when you're sitting still, you don't feel things such as whether the simulated car is slipping at all (just an example, there are of course a thousand other things).
I was watching a part and yes. You're making a joke but this (plus that it wasn't for competition points; there was no point to winning) was clearly affecting the race and reduced my enjoyment because they just weren't always giving it their all.
A few of the real drivers are also highly ranked simmers as well. Max Verstappen (one of the best drivers in F1) is commonly seen in public iRacing races
Sim accuracy could affect times either way (also some sims are pretty darn accurate). I suspect the biggest difference is the risk taking aspect. Sim drivers don't have to think about safety at all.
Professional drivers that also spend a lot of time sim racing, that is...
The same is true in this series. Drivers like Max Verstappen and Lando Norris (among the best drivers in the world) so very well, but they also spend a lot of their free time playing these games.
Other world class drivers (Hamilton, Vettel, etc), likely wouldn't do anywhere near as well.
Obviously there is some overlap in the skills required, but at the end of the day, experience gaming is going to help more than more experience in a real car.
Hamilton’s done a few exhibition sim races, and generally does very well in them. The skills translate much better from track to sim than they do the other way around. If you watch the break and throttle pressure on these streams, it’s obvious that the professional racers are much better. They do things like trail breaking, and managing engine power a lot more competently and consistently than the sim enthusiasts. I’d imagine the main obstacle would be getting used to the different feedback sources. It’s also worth noting that most F1 drivers (I don’t really know about other motorsports) do at least some sim training. Kimi is the only current driver I know of who’s said he doesn’t use the sim.
I follow Kimi on Instagram and he's posted a story where he's at home sitting in a simulator, with his son on his lap. (Kimi was doing throttle and brake, and gear changes, while his son was turning the wheel.) So he does own one for playing.
I just checked this on google, and it turns out he did at least some sim training/testing with Ferrari. I just remember a lot of the interviews/press conferences where he talks about how much he hates them. Not sure if they can still manage to get him in one at work though.
Not sure what the teams use these days, as they seem to have become more secretive about it as the technology has gotten better. But I’ve seen some of the commercial products that have the enormous surround screen, moving chassis, and thing attached to the helmet to simulate force on the neck. I’d imagine the better off teams have facilities like that. The software would certainly be better than the CodeMaster game, but I can’t imagine it being that much better than iRacing (apart from being more customised to the current tracks/cars).
GT Sport has a DLC-mode where you can do time trials vs. Lewis Hamilton's lap times. On a track where he clocked 1 minute 37 seconds, I was pretty shocked to find that the top 10 GT Sport players _all_ clocked lap times around 2 seconds faster than that.
earlier this week, there was an article about F1 drivers playing the codemasters F1 game, and the best pro driver came in 8th and seemed pretty happy to have done that well.
the rationale is that driving is not just a challenge of operating the controls, but a physical challenge too. when you take away the physical aspect, the drivers lose not only the advantage of their physical training, but also an important input that they use for reactions.
You underestimate the pro drivers. The reason why they came in 8th or so is that they did not train for it. They were competing as rookies in a game that some of the sim races spent hundreds of hours in. They are bound to be much slower that "pro" simracers.
The other sensory inputs are a factor, but most drivers adapt very fast to it. Give them enough seat time and you see them top of the charts, they are not pro real life drivers because they lack reflexes or understanding of racing dynamics.
As a viewer I dont really feel (and defiantly do not see) the difference between how physically prepared e-sports or real life drivers are. I see track, cars, racing lines, overtakes. So I really enjoy watching e-racing. Only complain is that e-racing spectating camera work needs improvements. There is huge untapped potential in how e-racing is presented. I hope games will experiment more in this (spectating) direction.
Camera work is a really underappreciated feature. Most sims do not have realistic looking cameras and this makes them look worse on TV. Usually camera is centered on a single car while in real life camera operator usually focuses on a group of cars (for example if there are two cars fighting, he is aiming between the cars, not at one of the cars).
This is a feature I'd love for sims to better develop. It shouldn't be massively difficult to do so hopefully we get it sooner than later.
Depends if we want an automatic solution, that is filming and directing automatically, or if we want to have the facilities for people to come in and control the cameras individually (and direct the resulting feed). The labour intensive approach is probably simple enough in terms of tech.
After reading the article I'm not entirely sure all these drivers did participate in the race using their own setups while staying home. Especially after this part: "[Pike] and Majors tried to fill up a field that reflected this big tent, letting in fellow NASCAR crew members, as well as some public relations and social media specialists."
Can someone please tell me they did not turn a strong recommendation to avoid public events (which lead to the competition being cancelled) into an opportunity to gather tens of people at one place?
Metaphorically, "field" means the group of people competing, and "big tent" means an inclusive group. So there's a natural interpretation that doesn't mean they all gathered in one place.
Wow, this is nice. I hope there are more events and platforms like this.
Let's face it, most of the Olympic games are boring. If we can model things in the virtual world good enough, the Roman-style arena games would be more popular than the Olympic games.
I've been thinking about getting my sports-starved friends and family into watching CS:GO tournament play. It would have never crossed my mind before, but we live in a different world now and that is among the best esports has to offer.
I love the initiative, but I disagree with the paragraph saying: "That’s obviously not the case with other sports." Esports cyclist racing is growing and it translates almost 1:1 real-life skills.
Well, NASCAR driver have been using computer games to practice for tracks for a while. https://expmag.com/2020/03/these-hyper-realistic-video-games... There is a video of Dale Jr and Martin Truex Jr talking about using a networked video game to test a strategy at one track.
Dale Jr was well known (at least in the community) for playing/practicing heavily with the Sierra/Papyrus NASCAR Racing series even in the late 90s. AFAIK, he was one of the first big time names who attributed some of his success to the game.
This was an invitational. I suspect without any supporting evidence that they tried to keep this to to Nascar participants # 1 for the familiarity it brings the fans (Go Jr!) but also because I doubt a ‘real’ racer would have won the race had the best of the online only competition been allowed to complete. And after watching the race it was sadly just as good as a real race. They have become quite boring the last few years.
At a recent sim competition in Miami ("Miami's Fastest Gamer") in which various real-world drivers competed with sim racers, the top three spots were real-world drivers -- Juan Pablo Montoya, Ed Jones, and Eduardo Barrichello. However, the best sim racers can definitely hold their own (eg James Baldwin came in fourth) and perhaps some of this boiled down to experience more than anything else. Although there's definitely a lot of differences, the skills between e-racing and real-world racing seem somewhat more compatible with each other than other e-sports.
Its worth noting that real world drivers do put incredible amounts of hours into these consumer simulators. It's not like they're winning on their real-world experience alone.
I'm suprised that they don't explore VR telepresence, where they could drive a real F1 car, or a miniature version while sitting in a simulator. What's hard to simulate in virtual simulators besides gforces are the tyre models, it's basically the main interface between car and environment.
Something along those lines might open up venues for new sports that aren't constrained by danger to crew. FPV drones are a version of that, though I was imagining something more grandiose.
Teams are doing "engine in the loop" simulators where the sim sends throttle information to the the engine and feeds back the information about power response to the sim. I'm sure they could do more but it is expensive and of limited benefit.
Soccer clubs are arranging matchups between pro players who now have no real matches to play. Could be a big thing for eSports.
It's well known that a lot of pro soccer players spend a lot of time on consoles, to the point where they complain if they feel their virtual stats are too low.
Watching an e-sports race is as boring as watching a real F1 race. The interesting part of e-sports is actually playing it and not watching another bunch of dudes having fun. I think F1 is completely missing the point here.
Presumably people who enjoy watching real F1 will enjoy it too then? Pro racing is already a lot more interesting on TV than in person (besides the experience aspect).
I went in a big expensive F1 simulator that one of the big oil companies was showing off with at the tennis tournament in Qatar about 9 years ago. The guy to go in it before me was Rafael Nadal, so it wasn't a toy. Three screens, the entire machine moves to simulate acceleration and braking, the lot.
Pretty curious how the "real drivers" are going to do for gaming driving. My family had a stock car growing up, and afaik the simulated races have almost nothing in common with the real experience. Yeah there might be a wheel to turn and even in fancy driving games feet pedals, but the other sensations in a real race car are simply overwhelming - the noise, g forces, heat, and the lack of being able to see much other than straight ahead.
Will be pretty fun to watch how these drivers play out in the simulated races! imo they are probably going to get pwnd.
The simulators today are fantastic. The skills you learn in the simulator are 100% transferable to real life, and they happen without you having to think.
I went 9 years without using a sim and then two years ago started using it.
What gets transferred immediately are how you turn the steering wheel, catching the car in slides, and your gas pedal application while this is happening.
People often forget that our bodies are complex operating systems and they are operating distinctly. There is plenty of documentation that shows mirroring for knowledge transfer works, and when you use a sim the habits that you develop are available subconciously to you.
I'll give you two examples, the first is at my last race in Global MX-5 Cup at Laguna Seca. At the start of the race on the opening lap I was going through the corkscrew and got hit at the apex of the right hand corner. The car immediately went into a large slide because of how much steering input I had. I immediately started to correct with both steering input and gas pedal application. I had to correct the two slides to save the car. Immediately upon impact my body was doing what I needed to do, it was completely subconscious, so much so that the only conscious thought I had was, wowee fun, just like the simulator. There was no fear, despite the fact that the slide was massive and I was likely to hit the wall if I didn't catch it.
The second happened a couple of months earlier. I was testing at Sonoma in my BMW m235ir for a Pirelli race. I was going out on old tires, that we were going to swap for fresh ones at the next session. Going through the double right hair pin, I applied a bit too much throttle, car started to slide, I was correcting, but under corrected and went back to full throttle too soon. The car spun, hit the wall, caused $10,000 in damage. The reason that happened was whenever I played the sim I always kept my foot in the gas. Just trying to save the car and have fun. Then I realized, that when I use the simulator I can't approach it from a "fun" mentality, because my brain is remembering what I'm doing. I have to treat it like real life, or I will do something stupid in the car.
There are certainly differences between how a real car handles and a simulator handles, but the skills are the same and what you are really honing is the ability to control the car which is completely transferable. The brake points are very transferrable so it is a great way to push yourself in a simulated practice to get ready for a real race. Learning the track is obviously a benefit.
iRacing has done a fantastic job at all of the above. Coming from a tech background I'm actually blown away by the realism and how much it teaches you transferrable skills.
If you take one of the top 5 people in iRacing that's never been in a car before and put them into a race car they will be quick. This is because everything that will be happening they have already trained for. They won't have fear because everything will feel the same. As long as you don't have fear, and have the underlying skill, subconsciously you will do what you need to.
The reverse isn't as true. Being quick in real life doesn't mean that you will be fast in the simulator. This is simply because it can't replicate the physics 100%. In iRacing it is very sensitive to understeer as you enter a corner, where in real life you can get the car to slide a bit more with some hard inputs into the steering wheel.
But overall I would say it is a 90%+ effective tool, so much so, that anyone who isn't using one in pro racing today, is really at a disadvantage.
The other thing that is critical to racing is practice. Any sport you take seriously the more time you spend doing it the better you will be. Unfortunately racing is extremely expensive, and so no one but the absolute pros can spend as much time as they would like in a race car. Being able to hop on the simulator, at any time, is amazing to help you continue your training and stay sharp during the offseason, or at times like this when all racing is pretty much cancelled.
Anyone who is saying that this isn't transferrable is simply incorrect. They've already taken pure sim racers and put them behind the wheel of real race cars and those people did phenomenally well.
There is more strain physically in a real car, g-forces, breathing, pulse will be higher, but these things are much easier to train for.
There is a reduced amount of feedback certainly, one of the biggest issues for me is not getting a great feel for the brake pedal, but this is where muscle memory comes in, you keep doing laps and refining and your muscles will recognize what inputs you need even though the g-forces aren't there.
Furthermore I tried VR iRacing for the first time and it was insane how amazing the VR is. It is completely life like, just missing the rush of air around me.
I was at Road Atlanta doing laps and went through the last corner on my first lap. You come down a massive hill, hit the compression, and turn right into the fastest corner of the track where you also have walls on both sides that are very close. This is not the corner to fuck up. There is tremendous g-forces in this corner in real life. On the way down the hill I feel fine in VR. The second I hit the compression I get dizzy. This is because my eyes and everything around me is recognizing this part of the track and my body is tensing because it remembers real life. But my body isn't feeling the compression. So the difference between what my eyes see, my brain interrupts, and the lack of sensation in my body is making my brain go haywire and makes me dizzy.
The first time I just thought it was odd. The second lap same exact thing happens. The third lap again. It happened every time I had to take the VR off because I started getting a headache.
Anyway those are my real life stories. If there is anyone on here racing or tracking their car I highly recommend they get a great sim and install it in their house. It will be a lot cheaper than tracking and infinitely less expensive than racing and it will tremendously improve your skills.
This is probably less relevant for top of the sport racers, but if you watch today's youngest F1 athletes all of them do sim racing and all of them are extremely quick. Specifically Lando Norris and Max Verstappen.