> 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:
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".
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/gaming/geek-rebooted