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How Realistic is Sim Racing?

May 31, 2021
The quality of sim

racing

software and hardware is improving at a rapid pace, and aside from not being able to feel all the motion of a real-life car, sim

racing

is one of the closest options to life out there. real, so how close are sim racing? For the real world, what are the differences? If you're faster at something, 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 for the last three or four years I've been delving into sim racing which I love.
how realistic is sim racing
I see it as a complement to real-world driving and think the crossover between the two will become much deeper in the future. a video a few months ago where I compared driving a real world Benetton F1 car, a car I set the outright lap record in at Brands Hatch with the simulation version, overall the lap times were pretty close, but the feeling in the car just wasn't like that. Now the car was a mod on the Corsa asset and I felt it lacked the development time to make it truly

realistic

. However, there are better developed simulation cars that I have driven both in the real world and in the simulator, so it is these cars that I prefer.
how realistic is sim racing

More Interesting Facts About,

how realistic is sim racing...

I will first focus on how similar the two worlds are. Let's take a look at the dive. How do you feel? Can my instinctive brain distinguish between sitting in the simulator and on the real race track? Visually we have some options. I have single screen, triple screen and B R, so I'll take a quick look at all three using a single screen setup. I am very aware that I am driving in a simulator, it is simply not possible to look around corners as you would in the real world and the screen is simply not wide enough, it is also a two dimensional image, so depth perception It's difficult with the triple screen, the experience certainly improves and the immersion is much better, but the image is still two-dimensional, however, things really change once you put on a VR headset, resolution is still an issue and It takes a while for your eyes to adjust to the slightly pixelated world, depth perception, and the ability to move your head naturally looking around corners.
how realistic is sim racing
It is completely immersive. I found that with virtual reality I have moments where I forget I'm in the simulator. I'm totally focused on driving and understanding how to be faster, and the best thing for me is that I approach my driving in exactly the same way as In the real world, I would use the VR headsets of our lives to see in 3D when using the alien simulator for the first time. I instantly found consistency in my lap time. The 3D image means it's much easier to simply accelerate and position yourself when entering the corner, which leads to very few. bugs and a better ability to drive to the limit in terms of VR immersion was the biggest step forward I found in my hardware.
how realistic is sim racing
One of the things we teach in our real-world and simulation courses is how to find the limit quickly and then adapt your driving. I start to extract the highest speed from the car and when I'm learning a car in the simulator I find my process for this and the speed at which I learn is exactly the same as in the real world, that's how I measure how immersive a simulator is. It is and I have to say that with the right hardware software this is a big yes. The first thing I can say about sim racing hardware is that we are incredibly lucky that 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 correct 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, other than maybe flight simulators, if that's an eSport, this is an An important point when thinking about how

realistic

racing movies are, in a little more detail, what about the feel on the steering wheel and the pedals? This is difficult as there is so much variation in the quality of these parts that you can be quick with cheap wheels. and pedals, but it's the feel and realism that I'm interested in exploring here.
I 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 what you would find. In fact, in the real race car, the accelerator pedal and clutch feel almost exactly the same as the brake pedal. I'm still adjusting the settings as again you can change the firmness and sensitivity of the brake pedal is very important because in the real car. In the world, as well as in sim racing, you can make up or lose a lot of time on the brakes, so getting the pedal set up right is very important.
It looks like the brake pedal isn't perfect yet, but the way the brake pedal works and feels is very realistic. Then when you drive a car at the limit in the real world, you receive constant feedback about the car's behavior through the steering wheel, you can feel understeer, oversteer, surface changes and curb changes, and I have to say that. my simulation steering wheel does a great job with this, it's all about communication, we need the steering wheel to explain what is happening with the car and the steering wheel is even more important in the simulator since we don't have any g forces going through our butts to help us.
We understand the behavior and attitude of the car. I would venture to say that the details of how the steering wheel reacts are very similar to the real world. It's all very well having all the hardware, but it means nothing if the simulation racing cars don't replicate the real world correctly and, again, I'm not just talking about lap time. Lap time here is too simplistic a comparison to make the most important thing about the feel of the car and whether it reacts like a real-world car would. The caveat here is that there are so many different platforms to use between iRacing and the fact that Project Cars and Assetto Corsa to name a few, and even within these games there are different levels of development between individual cars and more importantly , tire models.
Important as they are the only connection between the car and the circuit, they are also incredibly difficult to model due to the enormous number of variables including the pressure of the rubber compound on the surface, high temperature and the evolution of the circuit, to name a few. Some, this means that if a software tire model is not as sophisticated as we would like it to be, the cars will always feel a little out of place, however, when I drive a car and a tire that has been well developed, the Similarities with the real world are incredible, a direct comparison between each other.
However, comparison will always be difficult due to the multitude of variables mentioned above. Race tracks and cars are living, breathing things, and while we may get closer to simulating every data point in the future, we're certainly not there yet, so again. I will focus on the feel of the car, how we use all our senses to understand how the car reacts and whether that is close to real driving. In my real world training programs I use a Mazda MX-5, they are the perfect training car. and I actually spent twenty-six thousand miles training in that car year, so I can safely say that I know him well.
The MX-5 is one of my favorite cars in Rank I because it is very realistic, since the tires take a while to rise. to the temperature, but once they do, the car behaves exactly as expected and that is the important thing here, when you are trying to be faster in a racing car, it is essential that you adapt your driving style to the car and each car requires a slightly different style to drive it to its full potential and I take this driving style as a clear indicator of how realistic the simulator is. If I need to have similar steering and pedal input in the simulator compared to real life, then the simulator is realistic and works.
Great work, so both on the circuits and with the cars, the realism of the circuit depends on the level of software development. In this section we will only talk about laser scanning circuits thanks to the use of 3D scanners, these circuits are precise. down to the millimeter, apart from the precise images, what sets laser scanning circuits apart is that the bumps and curbs on the circuit feel the same as in the real world. It's really interesting how the rhythm of the bumps and corners makes you feel in rhythm. In comparison, when I drive on a circuit that hasn't been scanned, it feels a little out of place.
This is a very important thing when we drive as we use these areas and details of the circuit as subconscious references and when it doesn't happen it will happen at the wrong time it just doesn't feel good plus the overall grip level of the circuit and the way it evolved is very important. For how we perceive realism in real world racing circuits can have fast days and slow days and lap times on some circuits can even change by more than a second on the same day again, all of those variables mentioned above come into play. with the evolution of the circuit plus the accumulation of tire rubber on the racing line, marbles and potentially oil. and the fuel of other cars, as with the timing model, the evolution of the circuit has so many variables that it is incredibly difficult to simulate.
However, I must say that some of the simple cars I've driven do a good job of estimating grip levels and circuit evolution, so I don't notice too many differences when I'm racing, so simracing is enough realistic enough that if you were fast in the simulator you would be fast in a real racing car, just like our real world trainers, a driver 61, we also have a team of Sim trainers. and what I found interesting is to compare the driving styles, learning processes and drivers' dedication between the two groups. To be fast in the real world, you need to have a good idea of ​​the limit, understanding when and how much the car will slide. at any particular moment, but beyond that, fast drivers will always have a deep understanding of technique and an intellect that will allow them to repeatedly try new things in the car, get feedback, and then adapt on the next corner or lap;
It is this repeated process of evaluation and adaptations that ultimately makes them faster and more refined. The best sim racers certainly had the same mentality that they had the ability to feel and adapt, so I have no doubt that, given some real-world testing and training time, many Sim drivers could get the job done. in it. world circuits: which would be the definitive confirmation that the racing Sims are really very realistic. If you enjoyed this video, learn more about how to get faster in the simulator by watching these videos on our dedicated sims channel if you want to cut the learning short.
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