Feedback from real-life drivers - discussion

I like the Ferrari 488 and circuit Zolder. I am by far not the fastest driver on the block, but i do my best .
I tested the car and track in three different sims. and my times are totally different.

In ACC my fastest was a 1:31.3
In PCars2 a 1:34.4
In IRacing a 1.30.1

And the best feeling is in ACC.
I cant put my finger on where the difference is.
What i'am trying to say its personal preference if you like the sim or not. I personally like the way ACC is going. ACC gives you the feeling you can jump in and drive.

 

This might also be a setup problem.
I never played AC, but from what i gathered here, it has more pronounced understeer cues than ACC.
In ACC, depending on FFB settings and equipment it can be hard to notice overturning the wheel. Combined with a good amount of understeer build into the preconfigured setups and usually riding the front bumpstops under braking its easy to turn the wheel way too much. Unfortunately this leads to snap oversteer as soon as the front bites again (brake release, weightshift) and as a result drivers try to "fix" their setups by creating even more understeer, making matters worse. It's hard to notice the real problem is the understeer (barely noticable while driving) and not the oversteer it leads to (the part that kills you).
The lambo is probably the worst offender for this problem, it also comes with the lowest default steering ratio (11), which makes it even easier to overturn and create terminal understeer.

Edit: I can also see real-life drivers trying the sim fall for this trap. Without the "car feeling" its very easy to go way closer or even over the limit, than they would do in the real car, which can lead to unexpected car behaviour.

 

No offense, but that doesn't make any sense You say "I think being a professional driver has little to do of how accurate you can review a SIM." and then you continue by explaining how a professional driver reviews different sims lol.
I haven't played iRacing, but isn't ABS on by default in iRacing?
From what I remember of that review, it was the suspension in AC1 that was not as good as in iRacing, that's why ultimately he chose iRacing as number #1 sim. Didn't have much to do with him playing iRacing the most.

 

My point was that this is an early access title from a known developer of some of the best sim software on the market and this review can be taken with a pinch of salt, especially when other "Pro" drivers seem to enjoy the software...

It seems common sense went straight out the window just because one man who drove a real lambo said the game was ****, go figure.

 

He is a professional driver so I'm not going to say he doesn't know what he's talking about. But he's description isn't my experience. Now I'm not going to be as knowledgeable about real world cars as he is, I tend to just drive the car and get used to how it is because I don't know setups. I don't really start judging the physics, if it feels right to me and behaves predictably I can get better at it. I was able to put in laps with the huracan without crashing out all the time, I probably wasn't as close to the limit as he would be so maybe that's me problem. I did find it a very hard car to drive and I can't drive it a fast as I would drive say the BMW.

At the end of the day it's one contradicting opinion. Most of he's peers aren't in agreement from what I've seen so far. He's comment seems so removed from my experience I'd wonder if there wasn't some issue, like not being aware of track conditions, or a FFB setting being wrong.

 

I don't understand people doubting real drivers competence in judging a racing sims fidelity in 1 hour. Especially if that driver has rich previous pc sim experience.
1 hour is maybe too short to test all situations and setup effects but is more than enough for valuating fundamental physics traits.
But that's not the problem. It is the lack of any valuable feedback in this case.
ONLY thing he said is that cars slide too much. But he didn't explain in what situations, what setup changes he did, what was the result and how it differs from expected behaviour in real life etc. etc.
So that feedback is worthless.

 

The problem is that's not really what he said, that might be a more helpful way of putting it, but he says " as even a real racing driver is having issues completing 1-2 laps without crashing due to characteristics that aren't there in real life."

That's sort of implying the game is undrivable. I don't find the game undrivable, I'm more consistent than I was in AC, I feel like I'm getting more information, and everything makes sense. It's not like the car is doing something that I don't expect it to do.

I don't really know much about he's driving record. But people are saying he drove the car once on one track, maybe a different track than in the game and a different version of the car, and he's expectation seems to be that the car should behave more or less the same way in most conditions on most tracks.

Again, I'm the lay person here, I'm not saying he hasn't got a point, I don't really know, he says he's the real racing driver, so I can't just dismiss he's more informed opinion. His post just seems to be in stark contrast to my experience and what I've read from other people.

Professionals can be wrong, I'm also not going to just assume he's correct because he's spent some time in a GT3 car, a rich person can spend a season racing and still be **** at the end of it, but under the impression they're fantastic. Einstein spent a long time trying to disprove his own theories because his results didn't match up with his assumptions, so if he can be wrong anyone can be wrong.

 

Cheers
Robin

 

I'm not sure what your trying to point out there? They're 3 different points.

Sorry maybe your the guy and that's what I'm missing here . Again, I'm not saying I know better, just that I don't really understand how I can play the sim consistently but others find it extremely difficult to keep the car on track.

 

A real race driver we used to race with in rFactor long time ago was complaining that the car was responding very slow to his inputs compared to real life. Even with some recommended car setup changes he was describing something that was not making sense to the rest of us simracers. It was until one experienced simracer went to visit him and realized that he had a HUGE input lag on his system. After fine-tuning his computer it was day-night difference for him. I have seen videos of simrigs on some race events where you can clearly see horrible input lags on the screens. You need to consider if the software is properly setup for an appropiate driving experience. The user will not know if its the software itself or the improper setup configuration he has on his computer.

 

FYI: This pointless discussion is also up @ RD.
Maybe someone wants to switch back and forth

 

Lol the guy spent maybe 1hr 12minutes setting up the game, testing it and writing a review. The discussion about this tiny review will go forever.

Maybe someone into reading steam reviews can post up some more here for discussion as this horse has been well beaten.

 

How doesn't that make sense? I gave Nicki's review as an example why I think pro drivers reviews ARE NOT holy grail.

At least for me, the most important part in sim is tyre physics, for Nicki it might be suspension modelling, but when you say tyre physics is best, suspension is second best, but still give top spot to sim which has best suspension but the worst tyre model, it makes me question.

 

This is something why I never give too much value for professional racing drivers reviews unless I can see he's very comfortable with computers and knows a thing called input lag. Because visual lag alone is a thing that can make any game "undriveable".

Another thing is that if you give me (with more than 15 years sim racing experience) new game and 1 hour and 12 minutes time to do some "review", I'd barely seen a car on track. You just cannot make very valuable "review" in that time. At least you should be questioning your thoughts and hardware setup if you still try to do it.

 

Unless he has fundamental error in his setup such as input lag, controller calibrated wrong etc. to experienced real driver few minutes will be enough to judge core physics.
For subtleties like track conditions, tire compounds, setup change effects its probably not enough time.

 

when it comes to receiving real drivers feedback, it's most definitely "caveat emptor"

in a real car, you don't have to question the accuracy of the tire model, or the car model, or the input apparatus; in a pretend car, you do.

to add to the confusion, all three affects how the car "feels" to the person, and unless they can separate the three, the feedback you're going to get isn't very good. some of them can feel it and verbalize it, but unless they drive AND have some engineering knowledge, they aren't going to be able to tell you what's what. When they CAN tell you, then you better hope the guys coding have background in vehicle dynamics because it very well could lead the devs to chase their own tail.

just to illustrate:
in build 1, the lambo's o/s was almost unsaveable.
so, is it the car? or is it the tires. can the pro driver tell you that? bet not. First thing they reach into is "the tire model is ****ed".

But is it? how do they know that. Tire data isn't readily available in the paddock, and even if teams have it, the drivers I guarantee you won't know it (not even the factory guys).

It's basically one equation (does the game "feel" real), with three unknowns. Relying on a person who is actually influencing one of the unknowns (input) isn't exactly a reliable way to solve the problem.

 

I agree with others, 1h 12m to enter game, navigate and familiarise yourself with the interface, set up the graphics/sound/controller, load up the game, adjust car settings etc.
I would be surprised if he got more than half a dozen laps in that time.

Steam appears to 'start the clock' the minute you press 'Run' on the game.
There was one game (the newest CoD if I remember) it said I had played for about 45 minutes, when in fact I hadn't even played one game. All the time was spent checking out the settings etc.

I wonder if he was coaxed into leaving the review or had played it but was owned by some 12 year old kid so blamed the game.
Or do we know if he was the REAL driver, or someone taking his name?

I think to write off a game on the first EA release is naïve at best.
That would be like jumping into a 'stock' car and writing that off before any adjustments had been done.

 

Phew, that was a lot of reading just to find out that one guy likes the car and another one doesn't.
Well alrighty then.

 

You say being a pro driver has little to do with how accurately you can review a sim. Nicki Thiim accurately reviewed the sims, he mentioned the AC tire physics being the best of all 3 games, and said iRacing suspension is more realistic than any of the others. So he accurately reviewed the sims.
That he ultimately chose iRacing as being the most realistic sim is just a matter of which physics behavior he found to be of most importance when judging which sim is closest to reality, a personal preference. It's not a matter of him not being able to accurately review a sim.

 

Pro driver is more competent to review a sim because sim tries to replicate real life and not other way around.