I just signed up for iRacing to drive MX5 Miatas at Mid Ohio. I also race in the real world in an MX5 Miata... guess where... at Mid Ohio. No video game or sim can accurately simulate the real world. You just can't properly simulate the g forces. You feel the handling of a real world car through your butt and hips then your eyes and ears. In all sims and video games you only have your eyes first, then maybe some force feedback in a wheel. Still not realistic.
That pretty much sums it up. Anybody who's ever done a track day or taken a high-performance driving school will tell you the same thing. There's only so much games can do to simulate the real world experience. And the lack of centrifugal forces on your body. among other stimuli, plays a huge roll in being able to drive a car at the limit in the real world. That kind of stimuli allows you to develop a feel for when you're approaching the limit of grip and adhesion that you just can't get sitting in front of a TV. Better racing games try to simulate this through the FFB effects, but of course by the time you feel the steering go limp, the front tires are already sliding. That's why, for example, the Skip Barber or the SCCA Spec Racer are so tricky to drive in iRacing. Because little extra sensory clues in the real car, that you'd get from the seat of your pants, that would naturally allow you to compensate and make small corrections in the throttle or steering angle or brake pressure, before they become a problem, are simply missing in the game. And as a result, those cars, and others, often seem impossibly difficult at the limit, because you're simply 'chasing' the car and reacting to it when it's too late.
I have to question the adoration for iRacing over any other PC sim too. And I have to question whether it's worth the cost of all that content and a year's "rental" over a good PC sim like the GTRs or LFS. Or even GT5. I've played Prologue, which isn't as good as GT5 in most areas, and felt remarkably like I was racing in one of my sims. Some people say the same thing about Forza 4.
Games like in iRacing, have a clear advantage in that they laser scan the tracks, so you know at least the track overlays are reasonably accurate compared to their real world counter parts. And iRacing itself, is constantly tweaking and updating the software in an attempt to provide it's customers with a physics model and tire model which is as close as possible, to the real thing, in a commercial product. I think Netkar Pro is the only other commercial sim that can truly make such a claim. iRacing is hardly perfect. There are clear and known bugs and things they could and should improve. But I guess the big difference between iRacing and other PC sims, or even GT5 is that they have different priorities and goals they have to meet.
There's some great content for Rfactor or Race 07. And those games 'feel' pretty good and are a lot of fun. But there's also some pretty shoddy content out there too. And you never know if that data is being extrapolated from real world figures or from some kid in a basement who's never even driven a real car before. Likewise, a console game, like GT5, has to appeal to a very broad audience. By far, the bulk of the millions who purchased GT5 are not real life racers or even weekend track day warriors, who have a better idea than most how a car performs at the limit, lap after lap, under closed conditions. The 'average' GT5 player is simply a casual gamer who like cars. And throughout the design process, PD has to keep this in mind. And if they forget, Sony will remind them very quickly. That said, they seem to have created a very fine simulation. At least on the surface.
Getting a car in a game to 'look and feel' like a real car and having a car in a racing sim 'perform' like it's real world counter part, based on dozens and dozens of data points, that take into account the friction generated by the tires, the track temperature, slip angle, aerodynamic drag, etc, is a difference of intent.
Few people are really privy to kind of details PD takes into consideration in it's physics model. So these kind of comparisons are always tough to make. The PS3 is a closed system and we can't just examine the code to see what it's doing. GT5 'feels' pretty good but is it really accurate? The lack of roll-overs, the differences in physics between online and offline, the lack of a comprehensive tire model, all suggest that GT looks and 'feels' pretty good but that in essence, PD's goal was to make a game that was enjoyable to play, above all else. In that, at least, I think they succeeded.
There's little time in both of those laps but not much more than 0,5-1,0sec. So the times with this car & with these conditions are really similar, even though the laps felt completely different. Pre spec 2.0 was hard work, now I just enjoyed every second of the driving. I could command the car in a completely different way - there's just so much more control now. 👍
