rec.autos.simulators

Lastly, I wonder if anyone has any 'training exercises' that they use to
improve their driving of Nascar 4, and would like to share them with me? It
is such a good sim that I would love to really conquer it. And before anyone
thinks I am a sad 38 year old individual who has nothing better to do than
play N4 all day, I should explain that I have an illness that means I am
home by myself quite a bit (and if I have to watch any more TV or read
another book, I will turn homicidal).

I should add that I only play off-line and have a MS FF Wheel (for which I
have tried all linear settings from 50% to 100%) and pedals, and I play from
the***pit view.

Thanks

PJ

  Also, the key is stable setups.  You want one that you can literally throw
around without upsetting it.  If you have to rely on precise, gentle
movements, you'll always run into trouble at some point(car in front brakes
hard, etc.).

  Here's a link to some very stable setups IMO.  Also, watch the actual
races/happy hours if possible; you'll learn a great deal there.

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

  Hope this helps.

-John

Believe me you are not alone here. I too drive from the***pit view and
love it with the exception of what traffic does in the turns. It's almost as
if you are to forced to a different view (outside the car) in order to
conquer the turns and to go three wide. Before you say it I agree, I really
like driving from the inside of the car, It is a sim and I don't remember
the last time I saw Dale Earnhardt Jr driving his car from the rear decklid.
I do a lot of online racing in the same manner (inside) and believe me if
you touch or even get close to another driver they will tell you. I guess
it's just a matter of focus, hold your line and try to focus where it is all
around the track. I know this is easier said then done but that's what I try
to do. I still smoke the wall because I am too busy watching my mirror to
see where the other guy's are, but I guess that's all you can do for now.
Maybe in the future they will bring out Nascar VR racing so we can truly
concentrate on depth but until then I guess we will keep the sheet metal
guy's working? Let me know if you find the answers.

Thanks
Stu

Very stable and easy to navigate traffic with.

Focus at the road, not the car in front of you! In the beginning I tended to
chase the movements of the other cars, and that invariably made me sway like
a drunk. Now I can consistently stay near the lead of a 100% AI lineup.

Best regards,
Henrik Dissing

The AI are generally good about following the preferred line, and very
consistent about doing so.  Someone else made the comment about
looking at the track instead of the car ahead.  This is key.  Try to
drive where they are driving, not where they are at the moment.
Anticipate instead of react.

The main thing is to keep practicing.  It is tricky at first, but it
does come together with practice and experience.  Lowes is a bit
harder than Daytona, and I suggest sticking with the larger track for
a bit.  Texas is probably the easiest 1.5 mile track to drive, so try
it instead of Lowes if your feet start  getting bored.  Concentrating
on one track at a time helps a lot.  I followed the WCS for a while,
one track a week.

Above all, pick a setup (default FAST setups are usually fine, if a
little slow) and stick with it.  Resist the urge to tinker with it
until you can run many laps in a row without wrecking.

Just practice, but practice smart.

HTH, and good luck

Gerald Moore

It is really geared toward on-line drivers, so not sure how much help it
will be, but you may want to check out
http://www.racesimcentral.net/;Don't have much on there right
now that will be of immediate assistance to you, but I've got stuff in the
cooker.

In the meantime, one drill that I have tried during practice is
concentrating on where you want to go more.  The best explanation of this
has to do with a pothole in the road.  If you are driving along and you see
a pothole, the best way to avoid it is to pick the part of the road where it
is "clear" and concentrate on that.  Unfortunately, our natural tendency is
to focus on the pothole and not hitting it.  Same thing with sim-racing.
Our natural tendency is to concentrate on the things we are not supposed to
do, e.g. don't touch the white line, don't get into the light grey area,
etc.  Invariably, this will cause you to do those very things 'cause that is
what you are concentrating on.  So instead, make a very consciuos effort to
focus yourself on driving the car where you want it to go and try to ignore
all the things you are not supposed to do.

Another thing is to learn to concentrate further up the track.  As someone
else noted in this thread, watch the road and not the other cars.  The best
place I've found for experiencing this is Daytona and Talladega (though it
works everywhere).  At either of the superspeedways, if I find myself
watching what the car in front of me is doing, I end up making all kinds of
small corrections that mess me up.  Instead, I have to force myself to
concentrate on "following" the car that is about 4 or 5 ahead in the line.
By doing this, I drive much smoother and reduce the chance of messing up.
Again, this is easier said than done.

One of the hardest things about these two suggestions for me was learning to
trust my "peripheral" vision.  It is so easy to start focusing on the car in
front b/c you think you need to watch for them braking, etc.  It was very
hard for me to teach myself to trust that I will sense a change in their
speed even if I'm watching up the track a bit.

I am also considering a training exercise - still haven't actually done it
myself - whereby I tape some paper in front of my screen, forcing me to
watch the road up ahead.  Maybe something to consider.

Mostly, as others have said, practice, practice practice.

HTH,

Jeff Causey
FrogDog Racing

Now THAT just sounds ***ic...<g>

Eldred
--
Dale Earnhardt, Sr. R.I.P. 1951-2001
Homepage - http://www.racesimcentral.net/~epickett
GPLRank - under construction...

Never argue with an idiot.  He brings you down to his level, then beats you
with experience...
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To some extent, yes I agree.  Personally, I'm always amazed when I read
about drivers wondering how to tell where the other drivers are on the
track, complaining about blind spots in the mirrors, etc.  I suppose the
younger drivers don't have the benefit of having driven a real car.  But I
wonder about the older drivers who surely have real world driving
experience.  I know when I'm driving, I always know where every car is
around me, how fast they are closing/falling behind, etc.  Just do the same
thing in N4.

For various reasons I think things become a little more difficult in N4.
First is the lack of physical feedback (shoot, forgot the proper term for
that).  When I'm driving down the road, I can feel what my car is doing and
that vastly improves the ability to properly guage things like closing
rates.  Also, most of the time on the street I'm not worrying about hitting
apexes, braking points, etc., so slightly less to distract my focus.  I also
don't pull up a few feet from the car in front of me when I'm doing 80+ mph
(eek, well not usually).  And on the street, other cars have brake lights to
help me pickup their change in speed (I hope).  I think the combination of
all these things cause most people in N4 (and other sims?) to get some
tunnel vision and they place their focus on the car in front hoping their
peripheral vision will pickup a wreck further up the track, when it should
be the other way around.

Jeff

Tactile feedback?

Eldred
--
Dale Earnhardt, Sr. R.I.P. 1951-2001
Homepage - http://www.umich.edu/~epickett
GPLRank - under construction...

Never argue with an idiot.  He brings you down to his level, then beats you
with experience...
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I'll give you my take on this and then you can take it or leave it.  You
mentioned not being down on the white line.  One thing I've found most
rookies do is they focus on the white line about twenty feet in front of
the car.  Or they focus on the rear panel of the car directly in front of
them.  Then they wonder why their lines are inconsistent or they are all
over the track.  To solve both of these problems involves one fix.  Shift
your focus further down the track.  I focus about 2-3 seconds down the
track and when I started doing this I noticed my lines got a lot smoother
and consistent.  When you focus on the white line right in front of you,
you end up making corrections all the way around the turn when you're not
as close to the line as you think you should be.  When you focus on the car
in front of you, you find yourself moving all over the track because you
are reacting to that car instead of your line around the track.  If you
happen to be following a car that is warping somewhat your lines are going
to be a mess.  One little side benefit to this tactic is that you'll see
trouble forming up in front of you long before your spotter warns you about
it.  

By the way, this translates to real life too.  Don't focus on the tail
lights of the car directly ahead of you.  Move your focus 5 or 6 cars
ahead.  If the guy in front of you hits the brakes, you're going to see the
lights.  Most rear enders aren't caused simply because the guy was
following too close.  It's also because he wasn't paying attention to what
was happening up ahead and didn't notice that traffic was slowing or
stopped altogether.

Shift your focus further ahead and see what happens.

--
Dave Casey
Casey#9 (NASCAR Racing 4)
www.teamcasey.net
www.lvkc.com
www.buycoolcrap.com

Eldred
--
Dale Earnhardt, Sr. R.I.P. 1951-2001
Homepage - http://www.umich.edu/~epickett
GPLRank - under construction...

Never argue with an idiot.  He brings you down to his level, then beats you
with experience...
Remove SPAM-OFF to reply.

This brings up an interesting point about vision.  Someone else
mentioned it here before, and from a purist stand-point, it sounds
like a bad idea.  BUT, I think sims should "make up" for the limited
information they provide to the user in different ways.  Perhaps the
other cars should have what might equate to brake lights.  Perhaps
standard instrumentation should include the traction circle so a
driver can have better feedback about the acceleration forces the car
is creating.

The lack of stereo vision is a serious limitation.  Can you imagine
driving a real car with one eye closed?  It can be done, but you miss
lots of information that way.

That being said, has anyone ever played N4 or GPL with stereoscopic
glasses?  Does it help?  How much?

Gerald