Importance of sim racing on its own vs. accuracy to IRL

No fights, please. Just curious.

 

IRL is the whole backbone for simracing, so i dont quite understand...

 

what is IRL

 

In Real Life

I have no preference. To me, it'a all about the competition and as long as we are on the same track, what that track is ultimately does not matter. Sometimes I want a real and accurate track (esp. if I want to do a sim race of a real race that is coming up so I can learn the layout for when I watch the real race) but I also think Sim Racing should break out of imitating real life and start to be its own thing. I'd love to see a Formula Sim series where different mod groups team up with drivers and make mods that compete on track- the mod rules would be laid out beforehand, but not based on a real life car. The tracks could be fantasy too. After all, safety is a real world concern, not a virtual one. Same with fuel consumption. Take sim racing where Formula 1 could have gone had going green and being safe not been a concern.

 

I wish IRL would be properly simulated so I could like it.

 

Most of us would be kill.....


I'm in the same boat as Guy, just put me in any car on any track and i'll have fun. I would have fun if the old toilet-mod from rf1 would be converted. heck, i'm gonna request it in the wishlist forum.

That being said, in rf1 we created a few era-championships (historic cars and tracks) and went all out trying to replicate the feel of it all....it was pretty special

Fully agree. i'm an artist, or used to be anyways and I never could understand why car modders would not just (also) create their own cars.
And not as a gimmick either, It could well be an elite design-project. who would not want to design his own car? and how many are doing that already anyways around the globe? I bet there's millions of them sketching, 3D'ing, drawing, modelling....but we don't see that in simracing. or I missed it.

If I would ever go into modelling, which is never, that's prolly the first thing I would do

 

Yes I agree too. Then again I am artist as well but I never modeled any fantasy cars, mainly because I get to do my artistic fix in other areas. Maybe some day I have to design my own MODERN car which I like as I feel all the modern cars are horrible or boring. Then I make a mod out of it.

 

As a community we always try to reproduce our events based on real life (tracks, cars, aids, rules, weather, time, damage, etc). Obvious is not equal, its far from being equal, but at least "the feeling" is there.
Simulation and IRL are bounded. Otherwise it wouldnt be simulation and would be a simple game.

Rarely we used fantasy tracks. Used like 2 or 3 in past 3 years and most of them point-to-point.

 

It is fathoms easier to replicate someone else's designs vs engineering from scratch. I doubt there are but a couple of modders that have the education to engineer a car from start to finish.

 

I don't think knowledge of that degree is required when making something for game...

 

Well the name of our game is sim racing which means to simulate real life racing. For me the bedrock of sim racing is realistic physics. Fantasy tracks however could offer better racing experiences than some real tracks which have been sanitized for safety. Similarly faster than real life sim cars could be fun as long as they obey the laws of physics. However I tend to download only stuff that models the real things.
SW

 

Fantasy cars: interesting point. I guess we all know adran neweys prototype for gran turismo. I guess that if someone could put some nice physics to it, it would be worth to drive it in rF2...

enviado mediante tapatalk

 

Only interested in real-life cars and tracks myself. Fantasy content is of little interest to me.

I'm just a big fan of motorsport (as I'm sure all of us are) and want to enjoy the real-life series I follow in virtual form.

 

Indy Racing League

 

Like some have hinted at, this is a simulator, and as such simulates real life. If we wanted fantasy we would play NFS or some other arcade game where the laws of physics don't apply. I personally don't see the point of creating a system where you want to be wrecking without the worry of dying to be honest. I would much prefer that people learn how to control the cars properly and learn that wrecking is not only discouraged, but down right frowned upon in most sim communities. Taken to the ultimate end, the sim if turned into allowing fantasy situation where "F1 would have gone if there were no green or safety issues" would just be another arcade and thus of no interest to many of us.

 

I drive whatever "seems" realistic. As long as it is possible and conceivable for a track or vehicle then to me it's no different than running a car or track that is based on reality, as even most "fantasy" cars/tracks are based on reality, plus they are all using the same core physics engine which tries to simulate the data of that fantasy car/track as realistically as possible.

Now if, for example, the track has "loop-d-loops", big boulders in the middle of the track to avoid, the cars have 35,000 pounds of downforce, 38 gears, weigh 75 pounds, then that's a different story, but most fantasy mods, for the most part, follow general real-life data very well.

There are so many fantasy cars and tracks that get dismissed, regardless of how well they drive, just because we happen to know that they don't exist in real-life, EVEN THOUGH there is nothing unrealistic about their physics modelling preventing them from ever existing (or having existed lol) in real-life. If you are specifically training for a specific real life car/track then I can understand why it's so important to have that exact specific car and exact specific track modelled as accurately as possible though.

There is also a psychological immersivness that some people get from a "real-life" car compared to a "fantasy car". For example, get a good fantasy car, stick a Ferrari emblem on the virtual in-game steering wheel, put some Ferrari sound files into it's engine sounds folder, tell everyone it's a Ferrari, and now everyone all of a sudden loves the car and starts downloading it, and it's popularity rises, even though the pure driving dynamics weren't touched one bit. Or, make an AMAZING track, tell everyone it's some real life ex-F1 track from some relatively unknown part in the world. The track has excellent modelling of physics; the kerbs, surface friction, elevations, bumps, weather characteristics, everything is done extremely well and EXTREMELY realistically. Now, a month later announce to the world that it was all a lie and that as unbelievably realistically as it was modelled, and as unbelievably realistic as the in-game car reacts on that track, that it just doesn't actually happen to exist in real life (well at least on planet Earth lol). Watch then, how it's popularity starts to go down, even though the track is AMAZING and it's modelling obeys real life track design/physics/characteristics as well as any in-game "real-life" track. Sad but true.

 

There is no reason for saying that fantasy equal breaking the laws of physics. Because taking a simulated car, and increasing the power of his engine or the wing load or the tire performance does not mean that what I have could not exist in the real world. Especially for league racing, there could be a purpose for it.
Coming from military aircraft simulators, I know really well that a simulator is like a short sheet on your bed, you can pull and push, but something will always be uncovered.
For example, now I'm partecipating in a championship that try to simulate the feeling of driving a high performance car, something that is hard to translate on a chair in front of a PC wheel. How they tried to do so? Making the car more powerful, the wings more effective and the tire really grippy. Yes, the numerical performances of the car are exagerated, but the feelings and the techniques needed to go fast, are there, and you really feel how going fasto on a strip of asphalt is scary and exciting. So, in the end, the sheet is the same dimension, it just depend where you place it and what you want from your simulation.

 

Simulators are very often used in industry to test things, that haven't been built yet

 

No one is saying to change physics or make goofy tracks. But if you got rid of the safety stuff (long tarmac run off areas, sanitized tracks that can't be too fast etc) and made cars WITHIN THE LAWS OF PHYSICS and brought back dangerous past inventions like ground effect skirts, active suspension etc and uncapped the power output of the engine you'd go where F1 would have gone if safety was no concern. Imola would still have Tamburello, Silverstone would be fast once again and Monza would revert to the old layout and be very fast. Imagine no more Abu Dhabi! LOL

 

I agree 100% (but I also think you may have misunderstood what Gearjammer was saying, I think he was comparing more to arcade stuff).

Remember everyone, it's supposed to be a simulation of real-life vehicle dynamics (physics), the physics themselves, not specific cars. This means that you can create an in-game real-life model to behave as realistically as possible to it's real-life counterpart, BUT you can also create a fantasy vehicle to behave as realistically to it's real-life counterpart as well if it was ever created, or ever did exist. The physics engine doesn't know if an in-game design happens to exist on planet Earth or not, and frankly it shouldnt care as long as you are using decently realistic values that the sim was designed for (our physics engines aren't perfect, not even close, and these racing sim ones are designed and optimized for specific figure ranges, so don't try cars with 20,000 pounds of downforce, or that weigh 3 pounds, or have 27 feet wide tyres lol).

The physics engine's job is to take the values/design inputted into it and make it behave as realistically as possible to how that same design WOULD behave in real-life, wether it actually happens to exist on our planet or not is irrelevant. Phsyics are physics, they are mathematical laws. Just because you arent aware that a car/track exists in real-life, or just because a car/track doesn't at the moment happen to exist in real-life doesn't mean that it couldn't exist. An in-game Ferrari modelled as realistically as possible to it's real-life counterpart is no more realistic than that same in-game Ferrari with a "fantasy" rear wing that adds 5% more downforce, as long as the physics engine processes that "fantasy" rear wing as realistically as possible to how that exact same rear wing WOULD behave in real-life. That fantasy rear wing Ferrari is no less real than the Ferrari based on the real-life rear wing other than the psychological fact of knowing one happens to exist on planet Earth and the other with the different rear wing doesn't, even though it could very well exist if someone were to construct a real-life rear-wing to the exact same in-game specs as the fantasy one (drag, weight, downforce, cog, etc.).

If an in-game Ferrari with a "fantasy" extra 10cm of wheelbase behaves as realistically as that same real-life Ferrari would if it ever had 10cm of wheelbase added to it, then that Ferrari is just as "real" as the one with the stock true-to-life wheelbase because the physics engine is making that extra 10cm of wheelbase act on that specific car just as that same car would act in real-life if it ever were to have 10cm of wheelbase added to it.

Most mod makers know general numbers of car weight, inertia, and other general physics values, as long as the physics engine is handling those values as realistically as possible than that is where you get the best physics. It's about the core physics engine, not about having as much specific real-life manufacturer data, although it obviously helps with pure accuracy of a specific model.