rec.autos.simulators

Well, I remember reading about how someone questioned how relevant
physical feedback is in driving sims. Anyone who has driven a car
at anywhere near the limit (wet pavement is the best due to the lower
speeds and more progressive slides) will know that the human body is
remarkably sensitve to pitch, yaw and roll changes. If you tried to
rely on your eyes and ears to anticipate when a car is going to spin
I would suggest you would end up backwards every time, many people do
not realize what a major part physical sensations play in the driving
experience they just take it for granted. I can guarantee any good driver
could anticiapte and correct brake lock-up while wearing sound-killing
headphones. There are a myriad of physical sensations that tell the
driver what is happening around him (her), a few of them would be;
steering feedback -very important-, yaw variations -oversteer corrections-
, subtle acceleration/deceleration changes- -brake lockup-, wheelspin-,
centripital (sp?) acceleration changes -understeer sensitivity-. One may
not realize it but the 'ol brain can constantly analyze the magnitude and
direction of all the acceleration vectors affecting a car and note any
changes of these vectors and make corrections automatically, this is a
pretty staggering feat when you think about the technology reuired to
simulate this sort of input/output loop. The bottom line here is that
driving simulations are little more than hand-eye coordination excercises
and you simply cannot equate the skills acquired in a simulation to
actually driving a car, and correspondingly regardless how prefectly accurate
the simulation programmers make the software, there is simply not enough
feedback presented to the simulation driver to anticipate what is going
to happen while driving, so the point about sims needing a lot of compromise
stands.

A good example is how pilots use full 3-axis simulation, to prepare them
for the real world, but even full 3-axis simulation os only considered a
minor part of their training, and is followed by dozens of hours of real-
***pit side-by-side training. If the military considers 3-axis simulation
to be inadequate for anything but familiarization training, this points
out how useful a dynamically-correct driving simulation would be on a PC.

Hope this ignites more comments

Brian U.

The only thing that I have come across that can be called a simulator is
Atari's Race Drivin'. The steering wheel provides "extremely" accurate
feedback to the driver in all situations. Let go of the steering wheel when
you're spinning out of control and it does exactly what the steering wheel in
you car would do. (I know what its like to spin a car out from doing donuts in
the mall parking lots in winter, when I was younger and more foolish, of
course). This is totally unlike other driving games which have completely
dead steering wheels, or incorrect, sluggish respones like VirtuaRacing. The
horizion shifts up and down to simulate the change in attitude when
accelerating and braking. The horizon shifts to simulate body roll. These
reactions are realistic enough to fool the brain into feeling the actual
reactions. The effort required to move the gear shift changes depending on
whether you have clutched properly. Leave your hand on the gear shift, snap
the throtte open and shut quickly and you can even feel the shift lever move
slightly from side to side just like in a real car with a little bit of
drivetrain slack.

The different cars in RD are correct in their "feel" too. The mid-engined
TestaRossa looking car handles the best but also bites back the hardest.
Mid-engined cars have really low polar moment of inertias because all the mass
is huddled around the centre of gravity--therefore it spins out abruptly.
Lift off the throttle in the middle of a corner and you'll be sorry. The
engine provides the best performance at higher revs.

The Cobra 427 looking car has gobs of torque off the line, but less top speed.
This car is the best one for beginners, because it breaks away most
progressively. Feels like it has wider/stickier tires too. Fun for driving
around corners with the tail out though.

The third car is lousy and seems to combine the worst attributes of the other
two cars. I hate it.

My biggest pet peeve though has got to be spins in driving games. In games
like VirtuaRacing, the car always happens to spin in multiples of 360 degrees.
Whenever you spin, the car always conveniently points in the right direction.
This does not always happen in life or in RD.

Kids, go out and play the Super Stunt track in RD and come back and tell me
what yoor best lap time is. Then we'll talk simulators.

BTW my training is in Mech. Eng. and I've seen films on the Mercedes Benz
simulator in one of my classes. I know how amazing that little beast is. I
would definetly give up many quarters to play in that little game. If there
are any MB engineers (Demi-Gods in my books) around, could they tell us more
about it?

Ken Wong

Just a dream, because the game would have to be designed for the wheel/pedals.
But you can always dream, right?

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