rec.autos.simulators

Now there are numerous professional drivers who openly talk about the
various benefits of practicing with racing sims.  iRacing has come
along with the sole objective of providing a race training tool.  With
high-fidelity sim software, triple monitor displays, and good FF
steering wheels (not to mention the GS-1), the sim racing experience is
getting closer and closer to reality.

When I started racing karts after years of online racing, part of the
reason was to see for myself if my sim-racing experience was helpful.
For me personally, sim-racing has helped substantially in many ways.

1) I've never gotten nervous when getting into a kart or car.  This is
apparently a big deal.  I've heard of people becoming physically ill
prior to their first race.  I was more nervous in my first Nascar 1
Hawaii online race than I've ever been in real life.  It was the same
when GPL came out - I felt some nervousness before those first online
races.  I must have gotten it out of my system while online, because
I've never felt that in real life.  Racing in real lift has always felt
comfortable natural after 1000's of online races.

2) I had a lot more than a vague idea about how to set up a kart
chassis, and had a good idea of how to make adjustments to fix handling
problems.  Now, in some ways karts work a lot different than a car.  It
took a while to figure that out, but I had a good basic understanding
of racing physics when starting out in karts.

3) Racing lines; I was able to try different lines, set up passes, and
feel comfortable in traffic right from the beginning.  All of that was
learned in sim-racing before ever turning a lap on a real race track.

4) Avoiding trouble on the track;  I dont' think the benefit of this
can be overstated!  After hundreds upon hundreds of pick-up races,
dodging spinning cars has become second nature.  I can't tell you how
many times I've seen experienced real-life racers who are unable to
avoid on-track incidents.  I've been in the middle of packs of karts
where someone gets out of control and takes out half the field.  I'm
somehow able to get out of those situations.  In five years of kart
racing, the number of times that I've hit someone hard enough to damage
equipment can be counted on one hand.  Others seem incapable of
avoiding anything, and seem to always find contact with other karts.

Those are just a few thoughts that come to mind.  I'm sure there are
more.

Pat Dotson

Assuming the sim physics are correct. I also raced R/C cars before that,
so gained a lot of my knowledge from them. However, ironically, there
were many fewer setup options on the kart than there was on the R/C car.

Racing lines is possibly a good one, although just how similar it is to
sight a line in real life versus on the screen is an interesting
question. In particular, you have different cues on the race track.

This is possibly the best example. Another factor simracing might
improve is just simply your sensitivity to slight differences in wheel
position or throttle position.

At the same time, I was also struck when I did karts just how different
kart racing was to sim racing. The one thing you don't get in sim racing
is the g-forces, but feeling the g-forces is so central to racing a real
kart.

I think the benefits are mostly in learning the track and
learning/playing with different lines. Until G forces and "feel" are
somehow wired in there is no comparison to driving a car at speed and
a computer sim. I guess if you crank the volume up so loud that the
other cars drown out your engine and you have to drive by feel and
guages/idiot lights that would be another helpful tool.

My $.02, and I do race cars, but not carts.
GP

Compare tennis and golf. Not a precise comparison, but numerous
ex-tennis take up golf and become *very* low handicap players. For
example, Sampras and Connors. Ivan Lendl nearly earned a PGA card,
IIRC. Althea Gibson turned pro after retiring from tennis. The hand/eye
skills transfer. But not, apparently, from golf to tennis. Therefore
tennis is more demanding (?). Actual autoracing is harder than
simracing, but the best have abundant childhood opportunities and
financial support.

duh, the answer isyes. I went to a school with a big aviation prog and
students had to spend something like 60 hours in the sim before they
ever got in the plane. physics are physics, sight is sight.

 I have driven 2400 laps in gtr2 in 3 months. how many real racers can
get this much practice in, and at what cost.

who was the nascar driver that won his first ever race at a track by
playing a sim? its like watching hours and hours oftrack video with the
added involvement of actually doing it.

also,in speed secrets 2, championship real world driver ross bentley
mentions many benefits of sim driving.

sim driving accurately simulates things like engine-input shaft-output
shaft-differential relationship, so the same downshift blip you use in
real life is the same blip you use in gtr2.

it teaches you the balance and smoothness you need to maximize grip.

it teaches you pit strategy and preserving tires in a long race.

sim driving can teach quite a bit and will become more important in the
nrxt few years

I agree with your summary of the basics - learning tracks and lines,
dealing with traffic and accidents, overcoming the nerves of sitting on
a packed grid or being chased down by a competitor.

However, I do believe that there are people be they race drivers or not
who just don't get the feel of translating the feel of a real car on the
edge that is fedback through the seat of the pants (or rather the inner
ear) with the visuals and limited FFB of a sim race.

To have a sim validated by a race driver doesn't necessarily mean it is
right just that the drivers personal translation of visuals to forces
works for him, whilst it may not so well for another driver. There is a
degree of brain training that if it doesn't click it never feels quite
right.

How many of us find that sims feel right, yet when they introduce an
experienced driver (who would at least manage to get a race car around
the track if not at competitive speed) they just can't judge speed and
are too abrupt with the controls.

There needs to be a translation which is variable for a given driver.

Hence a sim racer may be able to race a real car on visuals but now has
new inputs form his inner ear to use. It may enhance the feeling or it
may require some unlearning to be able to pick up earlier that the car
is about to change attitude before it visually does so.

In summary I think the answer is bound to be yes in general, but it
isn't a given for every driver going from sim to race car and vice versa.

Not without some fancy sim racing seat giving the physical cues to even
things up between them of course ...

Cheers
Tony

    The real benefit of sims are -

1/ Basic track knowledge - you are at an obvious advantage to at least know
that a left hander is coming up and will be taken in about 3rd or 4th gear
compared to someone who has no idea that a corner is even coming up,
especially in blind spots for example. In this case one driver is at the
point of learning how to drive with great precision whereas the other is
simply trying to remember what corner he is approaching let alone how
"exactly" to approach it.

2/ Psychological effects/mental discipline and preparedness - this is where
the simulator, if used correctly, can be a huge benefit to a real life
racer. If the approach is simply fun then the benefits would be minimal and
possibly even catastrophic - there is no reset in real life. Bad habbits in
a simulator could be carried over into the real life situation. If an
individual drives a simulator with the same care/intensity he does/would in
a real life race car then the mental discipline and psycholocical toughness
to be gained are clearly of huge value. All the little procedures - pitting,
attention to guages, other cars/drivers, etc, etc, etc, whilst in the heat
of battle versus other drivers and the track itself - can be learnt and
perfected in a sim.

Whilst it may help to hone the reactions and anticipate better the
behaviour of a vehicle on the edge of adhesion I am sure the emergency
services would find race drivers and sim racers harder to train to their
defined standards.

The reason for the difference is that emergency services drivers have
more to concentrate on in terms of hazard perception than a race track
driver. Whilst speed is needed to reduce the time to the call, safety is
of paramount importance and the current thinking is that braking and
gear changing require too much concentration along with the hazard
perception to be done together, and outweighs the slight speed
advantage. Of course on a race track speed advantage is everything and a
car or pedestrian really shouldn't be popping out from a side junction...

Personally I am of the view that an experienced driver (particularly one
used to any form of performance driving) can change gear subconsiously
without distracting their concentration, but that is just my view, which
goes against the authorities views based on their research.

Cheers
Tony

in his second ever race, he took pole position and set fastest lap in
the race before engine problems retired him from the race.

enough said.

Seat time in a sim is cheap - I probably logged 50,000 laps in Nascar2
in one year.
Last year, I logged 600 laps in my real race car and spent more time
fixing it than I did driving it.

Can driving GPL teach you to drive a 24 Hours of Daytona Prototype?  No.
  Can it reduce the learning curve?  Definitely, if you're playing
racing games as a sim and not just as a game.

And in 2000, I went on holidays to NC.  Drove the Richard Petty Driving
Experience and went 143 around Lowe's (C***te.)  The 5000+ laps I've
logged at C***te in various Nascar games actually helped - after two
or three laps I felt like I was in a full 3d version of Nascar2.

That said, sim racing does NOT compare to real racing in many ways - the
sound, the smell, the heat, the physical abuse - my shoulders have had
bruises on them from my seat belts after a rough day, and crashing in
real life is always worse than a sim crash.

Did I mention I got a Logitech G25 for xmas and really should be ***? :)

Ray

Since GTL represents my era, I would make the comment that with the cars I
drove, or got a chance to take a few laps in, were not nearly as tough to
handle as GTL makes them. I find that there is just a lot of induced
oversteer with most of the cars. In reality, most had a bit of understeer
which was not hard to control with the throttle. From center out was where
you had to just use some common sense with the throttle because that is
where you could lose the rear with the more powerful cars. I did get to take
an AC Cobra 289ci/270-280hp if I remember correctly for a couple laps at
Road America and it handled very well. The later 427 might have been a LOT
different.......:-). The 4cyl cars, for the most part, were very tough to
get to spin in or out of even the tightest corners. The major problem with
them was just getting them to turn.....:-). I regularly drove my TR-3 which
I needed to trail brake just to get the rear to step out a bit on entry to
get it to turn at all.....:-). (yea, I am that old). I think racing as a
young 16-18yr old made me a much better and attentive driver forever. I
can't even count how many accidents I have avoided because of the insticts
that are drilled into you from road racing. I tried again in the 70s in a
Mazda RX4, but true amateur racing had disappeared with the big teams and
the cost became prohibitive for myself and many others to get even track
time.

Ed