Confused..

When is a 'sim' a 'sim', and when is a 'game' a 'sim' and when is a 'sim' a 'game'?
Is 'sim' a marketing thing?
You know to make us feel more special..
And so they can charged a bit more..
Are they all games, do we play them, or do we drive them?
Play at driving, or 'real simulated driving'?
Are they all just games, toys for us grow girls and boys?
I am 50, and I still say to my wife, that I am off to play with my cars..
I have played racing car games since I was a teenager, all we had then was amusement arcades..
A lot of 10p coins disappeared...
Confused, help needed for the old man..

 

a game can be a sim or some arcade machination.

that sim can also not be a sim.

It comes down to the user and what they use it for.

For all of us AC is a game but it is also a sim.

a sim is a realistic piece of software which replicates or attempts to. Not sim or arcade is where measures are taken to reduce the levels of realism.

we feel special because we have taken something which is hard and gotten(kinder) good at it. Arcade racers will likely never understand how horrid it feels to take a car and have no idea how to drive but then after a few million laps we get that euphoria of conquering that car, improving the lap time and getting as close as possible to the car of out dreams.

Are they just games, yes they are in the end but can you complain about that, is it a sin to have fun lol.

Im 18 no wife as far as i know and i still play with cars, parents get mad if i mess with the hotwheels however.

granturismo 3 & 4 is the game of my generation, boot up the old ps2, slap it a few times because that somehow made the disc read. Time changed and i went away from cars, AC brought that flame back burning more brightly then ever before.

I wasted a lot of 10p coins on some stuff which can barely be called chocolate

Im still a teenager, im also confused. Just wing it, that seems to work.

 

People like to be entertained. No matter if its playing a game or visit a classic concert.

People want to be feel special. No matter if its cause they found a way to cure cancer or using a wheel instead of a pad.

Go to the Project Cars thread in this forum or the one about Project Cars 2 on virtualr.net.

It doesn't need religious fanatism or anything slightly meaningful to get mad, even if its about videogames-studios.

 

it's different for everyone, for me this is a sim(ulator)
what we have are only games

 

Maybe not just game, but sim (racing) game. Although these sim racing games we play can also be used as simulator tools. Modifying them or not, for how we want the tool to be, like in the screenshot.

 

do guys really stop to play with cars when they grew? (at leats who can afford the real ones)

 

of course, the "simulator" can be running AC for it's physics, but to me true simulator is something that isn't compromised and it's sole purpose is to simulate that one thing, which is why you - imo - should be sitting in actual cockpit, not in your chair behind desk

 

....particularly an office chair with five wheels and two little armrests

 

pfffhhh! wheels on your office chair? sooo arcade.

i pulled the wheels off mine, much more sim.

 

I've also got a nice little cushion with a picture of a cat on it for back support

 

Many questions you have my friend, and a littla to much thinking you are.
A philosopher, nor a Jedi you re going to be soon.

How ever, a sim is a sim and will always be a "simulation".
The grade of reality is measured by immersion and immersion is measured by reality.
So the scientific quest is to close the gap as close as possible to be able to gather experiances in a sim near or equal to reality.
Equality is the goal, but unfurtunately it is not reachable, in any way.

In the end all efforts are nearings, and how ever good the results may be, they're still not real.

 

Mario Kart and Assetto Corsa. They're both games. A sim tries to reproduce real cars on real roads.

 

Double post.

 

For me, sim makes one feel he/she is closer to real life; game makes one feel he/she is farther away from real life. Therefore the criterion differs depending on the player.

In terms of racing genre, here are some random examples:
For ordinary non-gamer:
I know I can't drive a motorcycle on a rainbow - Mario Kart is a game.
I love Porsche 911 and I can drive it around streets in real life, as well as on my Xbox - Need For Speed is a simulator.

For serious gamers:
It is impossible to escape from 100 police cars and police heli by a sudden turn in to an alley - NFS is a game.
I can buy a used NA Miata, tune it, turbocharge it, and take it on a track in real life and on my Playstation - Gran Turismo is a sim.

For racing fans:
It is impossible to kick the rear out and maintain drifting in a heavy Nissan GTR by just flooring the gas and turning the steering wheel - NFS is a game.
This software makes me feel I can go on a whole series of BTCC with teammates and crew members, try to earn points and win championship - Race 07 is a sim.

For hardcore racers:
You can give both gas and brake at the same time mid-corner to rotate the car better? Real car doesn't do that - GT is a game.
The rear-heavy Lotus Evora needs some trail braking to avoid understeer, and this software gives Evora the same characteristic - Assetto Corsa is a sim.

Well some examples may not be good ones and people will point out mistakes. But my point is different (group of) people have different criteria for game/sim. Even 2 people both believe the same game is a game, their viewpoint might be totally different (e.g. NFS).

I guess that's why different communities are formed based on some consensus on these criteria, and that's why some people will argue with others forever (before get banned).


What's more, for some people:
If I were a goat I definitely would kick everyone's butt and jump off the top of 30 story building - Goat Simulator is a great sim!
For some others:
I drive a base model 2002 Toyota Corolla, and I know it is impossible for me to buy a Ferrari 458 or become a racing driver. But hell my husband/wife is the best and my kids are awesome, life is great - all mentioned above are games.

 

How to confuse you even more...

Real racing is a game, as by definition its an activity/sport goverened by a set of rules.

 

I play games. I play AC. I wouldnt say that im playing or gaming around the track but driving. Its still a game. All good, no one heff to be mad.

 

How do you use reality as unit of measure? I never went that deep before but am curious to know more. I always thought immersion much too abstract to quantify in a meaningful way. This makes the concept of immersion perfect fuel for marketing machines as timmy alluded.

Sim, simcade, and arcade, blurring the lines between them and so forth are all terms that are thrown around a lot these days at trade shows, PR communications and so on. No offence but until we drive virtual cars in a room with a plastic wheel I still consider this a "game". Some people will point out they have a $1300 Bodnar wheel or whatever which is made of metal parts and real leather. And all I can say is that is one expensive toy. Still a toy accessory to help play a game with. You can only call immersion and simulation on the type of setup Patrik posted. When stuff rumbles around you, when you notice the chassis around you buck and pitch as you wrestle that wheel, that is when you feel simulation, not when we are sitting in our wheeled office chairs or ikea pello "race seats"

That is not to say toys are bad. I like toys.

I also took the liberty to whip up some reading material on the topic of immersion and measuring it since that reality measuring unit somehow doesn't quite click for me

http://www.slideshare.net/oumsaokosal/measuring-and-defining-the-experience-of-immersion-in-games
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~pcairns/papers/Cairns_Immersion06.pdf

 

it is a game ... that happend to be in sim racing genre .. just like Fallout is a game -> isometric RPG .. no grey area to get confused about it

 

Reality is doing something with you, physically and chemically. This effects can be measured and used as a unit (in fact a collection of units). For example: Forces, neurological reactions and chemical processes (Brain activity + hormones (Adrenalin etc.) and so on.
So do Simulators, but there will be always a difference.

Computer Games are using visuals (Eye-Brain connection) manly to produce Immersion because of the lack of other influence transportation possibilities. This is because some ppl. are geting VR, FFB, Motion rigs etc. to cover other aspects too.

Lets say (hypotetical) you have Graphs of all the influences decribed above, then there would be always a gap in the records took while driving in real and driving simulated. The closer the data taken from a simulation are to the real ones, the higher is the immersion.

If the records would match 100%, then a person would not feel any difference and could not say what is real and what is simulated. But thats far away.
There are similarities to Artificial Intelligence and the experiments how to measure it (called "Turing Test").

PS: Thanks for the links, very interesting lecture.