Question: What is the most realistic sim out right now? As in, what do the current most realistic sims NOT have, that would make PC4 the most realistic sim?.... besides leaves...
The ironic thing is that I guarantee that besides the ******** bluster and grandstanding, Ian probably couldn't tell you what makes a realistic sim, nor what PCARS 4 could realistically do to make it elevate above ACC, rFactor 2, or any other sim on the market other then probably cars, and track list. Something that most people agree PCARS already did better then everyone else. Which should really tell you just how much of a zero sum game the sim racing genre is with this race for 'realism' - by this point there is nothing really revolutionary going on behind the scenes. All it is, is simply grandstanding from fans and development studios on how their game is more realistic, which often times boils down to 'how hard is the game to control?'
The fact that the rest of the racing game genre, through a multitude of different factors, had to die just so that a bunch of blowhards with sim racing wheels could feel good about circlejerking themselves about how realism was the most important aspect in racing games, and not actual gameplay or appealing to anyone else who has neither the time, nor space or money for sim racing equipment, is hilariously sad to me. But then again, that's capitalism baby. Developers go where the money, and it's been proven now that apparently sim racing games sell. But at what point do we reach an evolutionary dead end? Because aside from 'physics' (which 99% of the time aren't going to be able to be fully realized as long as devs have to appeal to a console market, leading to the circular argument that physics are being dumbed down for the masses and as such aren't realistic enough) and 'graphics' (realistic graphics by this point aren't as interesting as good art styles, as many other games outside of the racing space have shown) there isn't really much that can be done to make a sim more sim. Likewise, when most of the top sellers in the genre are sims, what point do sim racing fans realize that they've won, that the racing game genre as a whole has been negatively affected by the chase for realism where anything that is even slightly arcade (and actually interesting from a design and gameplay standpoint) doesn't sell well or is ridiculed for not being realistic or sim enough? It's the same sort of feeling I get when looking at how Marvel and Disney have more or less monopolized film - it's seemingly not enough for fans to realize they won, that the industry at large is now shaped in their favorite image. They also want people to basically treat these works like fine art, when they aren't. Not in the slightest.
Which goes back to PCARS 3 again. So many of the problems with that game could have been avoided if Ian had simply swallowed his pride and made the game the spin off it deserved to be. He didn't. Now we are here, and now people are asking the question of what can a studio even do to make an even more realistic sim racing game like Ian suggested, when in reality, we've reached the point where it's all diminishing returns.
And that's really all it is. Circular arguments that, on a major level, have more or less destroyed the racing game genre for all but a few specific people, and those specific people are not satisfied, even when they rule the roost and have developers at their beck and call, building the only games in the genre that sell in any major quantity.