How Realistic is Sim Racing?

the quality of simracing software and hardware is improving at a rapid rate and aside from not being able to feel all of the motion of a real-life car simracing is one of the closest options are out there to real life so how close is sim racing to the real world what are the differences and if you're faster in a thing will you be faster in a real-world car I'm Scott Mansell and if you're new to the channel I'm a real-world racer and coach over the last three or four years I've been getting deeper into sim racing which I absolutely love I see it as a supplement to real-world driving and I believe the crossover between the two is going to get much deeper going forward I made a video a few months ago where I compared driving a real world Benetton f1 car a car in which I set the outright lap record at Brands Hatch to the sim version in general the lap times were pretty close but the feeling in the car just wasn't now the car was a mod in assetto corsa and I felt like it lacked the development time to make it truly realistic however there are better developed sim cars that I've driven both in the real world and the sim so it's these cars that I'll focus on when referencing how similar the two worlds are first up let's take a look at immersion what does it feel like can my instinctive brain tell the difference between sitting in the sim and the real racetrack well visually we have a few options we've got single screen triple screen and B R so I'll take a quick look at all three using a single screen setup I'm very aware I'm driving in a sim it's just not possible to look around the corners as I would in the real world and the screen simply isn't wide enough it's also a two-dimensional image so the depth of perception is difficult with the triple screen the experience is certainly improved and the immersion is far better but the image is still two-dimensional however things really change once you put on a VR headset well the resolution is still a bit of an issue and your eyes take a while to adjust the slightly pixelated world the perception of depth and the ability to move your head in a natural way looking around the corners is completely immersive I found that with VR I have moments when I forget I'm in the sim I'm fully focused on driving and understanding how to be faster and the tail for me is that I approach my driving in exactly the same way that I would in the real world the VR headset our lives to see in 3d when I first use foreigner sim I instantly found consistency to my lap time the 3d image means that it's much easier to just speed and position when entering the corner leading to far few mistakes and a better ability to drive on the limit in terms of immersion VR was the biggest step forward I found in my hardware one of the things we teach in our real world and sim courses is how to find the limit quickly and then adapt your driving start to extract the most speed from the car and when I'm learning a car in the simulator I find my process for this and the rate at which I learn is exactly the same as the real world this is how I gauge how immersive a sim is and I have to say with the right hardware software this is a big yes the first thing to say about sim racing hardware is that we're incredibly lucky the design and layout can be exactly the same as the real world by this I mean the steering wheel the pedals the visual cues are all in the right position I may be wrong but I can't think of any other eSport where the input devices are the same as the real world aside from maybe flight simulators if that's an eSport this is an important point when thinking about how realistic racing films are so in a bit more detail what about the feeling in the steering wheel and pedals this is a difficult one as a so much variation in the quality of these parts granted you can be fast on cheap wheels and pedals but it's the feeling and realism that I'm interested in exploring here I've recently upgraded to a direct drive wheel and some hoisin felt pedals when you look at the quality of the pedals it's pretty much the same as you'd find in the real racing car in fact the throttle and clutch pedal feel almost exactly the same with regard to the brake pedal I'm still tweaking the setup as again you can change the throw firmness and sensitivity the brake pedal is so important because in the real world as well as sim racing you can make up or lose a lot of time on the brakes so well set up pedal is really important it seems that the brake pedal still aren't perfect but the way the brake pedal works and feels is very realistic next up the steering wheel when you're driving a car on the limit in the real world you're getting constant feedback about the cars behavior through the steering wheel you can feel understeer oversteer changes in the surface and curbs and I have to say that my sim wheel does an excellent job with this it's all about communication we need the wheel to explain what's happening with the car and the steering wheel is even more important in the sim as we don't have any g-force going through our backsides helping us understand that the car's behavior and attitude I'd go as far to say that the details in how the wheel reacts are very close to the real world it's all well and good having all the hardware but it means nothing if the sim racing cars don't replicate the real world properly and again I'm not just talking about lap time here lap time is too much of a simplistic comparison to make what's more important is the feel of the car and if it reacts like a real-world car would the caveat here is that there are so many different platforms to use between iRacing our fact that project cars and assetto corsa to name a few and even within these games there are different levels of development between the individual cars and more importantly tire models the tires are important as they're the only connection between the car and the circuit they're also incredibly difficult to model due to the massive number of variables including surface rubber compound pressure high temperature and circuit evolution to name a few this means that if a software tire model isn't as sophisticated as we'd like it to be the cars will always feel a little bit off however when I Drive a car and tire that's been well developed the similarities to the real world are incredible a direct back-to-back comparison however is always going to be difficult due to the multitude of variables previously mentioned racing circuits and cars are living breathing things and while we may get close to simulating every data point in the future we're certainly not there yet so again I'm going to focus on the feeling of the car how we use all our senses to understand how the car is reacting and whether that's close to real driving in my real-world training programs I use a Mazda mx-5 they're the perfect training car and I actually spent twenty six thousand miles coaching in that car year so it's safe to say I know it well the mx-5 is one of my favourite cars in I rating because it is so realistic granted the tires are a little slow to come up to temperature but once they do the car behaves exactly how I expect it to and that's what's important here when you're trying to be faster in a race car is essential that you adapt your driving style to suit the car and every car requires a slightly different style to drive it to its full potential and I take this driving style as a clear gauge of how realistic the sim is if I need to have a similar steering and pedal input in the sim compared to real life then the sim is realistic and doing a great job so next onto the circuits as with the cars that the realism of the circuit is dependent on the level of software development for this section will just be talking about the laser scan circuits thanks to the use of 3d scanners these circuits are accurate down to the millimetre aside from the accurate visuals what sets the laser scan circuits apart is that the elevation bumps and curbs of the circuit feel the same as in the real world it's really interesting how the rhythm of the bumps and curves make you feel in groove on track in comparison when I'm driving at a circuit that hasn't been scanned it just feels a little bit off this is such a big thing when driving as we're using these areas and details of the circuit as subconscious references and when they don't happen will happen at the wrong time it just doesn't sit well additionally the overall grip level of the circuit and the way it evolved is very important to how we perceive realism in the real world racing circuits can have fast days and slow days and that some circuits lap times can even change by more than a second on the same day again it's all of those variables previously mentioned coming into play with circuit evolution plus the build up of tire rubber on the racing line marbles off it and potentially oil and fuel from other cars as with the time model circuit evolution has so many variables that it's incredibly difficult to simulate however I must say some of the simple I've driven do a good job of estimating grip levels and circuit evolution so that I don't notice too many differences when I'm racing so is simracing realistic enough that if you were quick in the sim you would be fast in a real racing car as well as our real world coaches a driver 61 we also have a team of Sim coaches and what I found interesting is comparing the driving styles learning processes and dedication of the drivers between the two groups to be fast in the real world you need to have a good feel for the limit understanding when and how much the car is going to slide at any particular time but beyond that fast drivers will always have a deep understanding of technique and an intellect that allows them to repeatedly try new things in the car get feedback and then adapt on the following corner or lap it's this repeated process of assessment and adaptations that ultimately makes them faster and refined the best sim racers certainly had the same mentality they had the ability to feel and adapt so I have no doubt that give us some testing and training time in the real world many Sim drivers could get the job done on the world circuits - which would be the ultimate confirmation that racing Sims are indeed very realistic if you enjoyed this video learn more about how to be faster in the sim by checking out these videos on our sim dedicated channel if you'd like to shortcut the learning process and fulfill your sim racing potential check out a new four-week training program designed to make you build perfect technique and really level up your driving we're seeing some incredible results with our students so far so check out the link in the description below

Channel: Driver61

Views: 1,742,576

Rating: 4.9073315 out of 5

Keywords: driver61, scott mansell, sim racing, racing games, how realistic is sim racing, iracing, assetto corsa, project cars, sim racing wheel, sim racing rig, racing simulator, racing sim, esports, f1 2019

Id: t5nTsgIG4jo

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/btacks]

I like him. His track guides have been very useful for me to get up to speed for league races.