Quality of sim can be measured by how ruthlessly it exposes driver's lack of talent

This is an epiphany I just had. A less high-fidelity racing sim flatters the driver, making anyone feel like they can drive a very sophisticated racing car close to the limits of traction around a race track for twenty laps without coming off. By contrast, AC can be a humbling experience which appears to have taught me that I only have the talent to maintain a really fast, consistent pace in the road cars. That's why I've switched from the Lotus Evora GTC at Brands Hatch to the less pants-on-fire BMW M235 Racing because I simply do not have the skill to keep the Lotus on the track for twenty hard laps at a truly competitive pace. I guess this is a good thing to realise about a high-quality racing sim but it's humbling!

 

you may have a point there
I get myself exposed quite often.

 

If only it was that simple!
The old hard VS. realistic argument. hours of pleasure in perspective, if not new at least always entertaining.

 

I think of a few ways to explain the gap in talent.
1) good difficulty - the most delicate of inputs matter, and you can be anywhere near those inputs and improve your times
2) bad difficulty - inputs are inconsistent, or there's a precipice you need to balance on - the closer to the edge you get the faster, but go over the edge once and you die.

Being 'forgiving' usually means the first rather than the second; but it should be understood as "time penalties are proportional to the size of your mistake", not "there is no penalty for mistakes". Keeping more people in contention is good for racing.

 

lol AC is easy tho.

*runs*

 

Devil's advocate to William...

This one helluva sim!

...speaking from experience of course

 

You maybe on to something, but it can have a lot to do with car, track, wheel, pedals, FOV, PC settings, drivers and a lot of other variable. I like your honesty, but you might find that it could have been as simple as the Lotus did not suit your driving style. I agree that if someone came from a more arcade style driving game like NFS, Crew, Burnout etc etc you could be caught out by needing to brake around corners and such, but most sim based racing games are difficult till you figure out how they react and play, so going from rF/rF2, iRacing, PCars, etc etc etc would be far less of a problem (possibly, maybe, perhaps).

Good thread.

 

I don't think difficulty is a good measure of realism. For example it is much harder to drive the yellowbird in gt5 than it is in ac or any other sim. Also there are some games that are purely arcade that can be more difficult to drive than iracing. And not just because of physics but also because of the controls for example. Quality of ffb can make catching slides easier or harder just on its own. Laggy, slow and uncommunicative ffb (gt5) makes catching slides a chore. In ac or rf2 the quality of ffb helps you instead.

A good sim has depth. The cars allow more than one driving style and there are no simple tricks to achieve things. There are no 2 feet in tricks that always save you from slides even though the principle does work in real life and should work to some degree in the sim as well. But it should not be a silver bullet for any single issue. A depth can mean that to achieve a lap time that is x seconds away from world record can be achieved in many ways. Over driving or under driving. Going sideways like that yellow ruf around the ring or understeering like ubisofts pc releases.

It is not about slides being catchable or not for example. Some slides are catchable, some slides the driver can iniate and control relatively easily while others are more difficult. Some slides are always catchable if you have the space. In current form ac for example lacks pretty much the uncatchable slides. As long as you just steer fast enough and far enough you can catch anything the game throws at you. In rf2 you can catch some of those if you are good just like it works in real life. In iracing you can pretty much catch only your breath, anything else is by chance. In a sim you can go off even if you feel you are fully in control and have a good feel for the car. You just went into fast or ran out of skill. A simcade on the otherhand tends to rely more on unforgivable slides and "physics effects" to create that depth.

But similarly gt5 slides are pretty hard to catch and it doesn't make it a sim. It is a sum of all of the things and there is not one single thing that imho makes a game to be a sim or simcade.

 

I must be very lucky

 

That isn't my experience of AC, and judging by what I see online.....it isn't the case for the vast majority either

 

It's really easy to drive any car in A.C. at 95%. Car behaves exactly as you would expect. What is really difficult is the rest 5%. As it is on real life.

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I was over exxaggaration on my part. Could not help not making small joke there when writing that .

Judging by what you see online the main deduction is that most people in ac are very new to racing sims. Game stock car for example is harder to drive than ac but when you go online you rarely see people spinning out or losing control. It is just one of the curses of popularity imho. The more players the more people you have who don't know much.
And I think every sim and simcade title will instantly become a lot better to drive online when some kind of rating system is in place. The races we have on aloog1 server are just as good as the races on iracing on higher license levels. Doesn't mean the racers in those titles are better. It is just a system that weeds out those who like pingpong and having duels in chats so the drivers who actually give a damn are let in to have fun.

 

I find AC easier BECAUSE it's realistic.

 

There is something that I have noticed online when watching others on the monitor that puzzles me. I see some guys catching slides when taking corners, but the way that it happens just doesn't look right to me. It's almost as if the car will suddenly not spin out any further, even when an excessive amount of power is being applied by the driver. This gives the impression that the car is being stopped from spinning out, but not because of careful throttle control by the driver. It looks more like some limitation of the physics engine that the driver is exploiting. I know that sounds daft, but that's what it looks like on the monitor.

Maybe it has something to do with my FOV settings? What puzzles me is that I never get that "unrealistic" feel when I am driving my own car, and yet the viewpoint is basically identical....

 

I dont remember what the clip was called but i think it was rfactor where people pressed the brake and kept the throttle and the car just went straight (or something, was a while since i saw it) Hopefully someone know which clip im talking about so they can link it. I dont know if it works in AC though. Was with some open wheeler i think.

 

This.

I've done Karting, track experience days, driven a race school single seater, I drive a 200bhp road car. OK it's not direct experience of high level motorsports but it counts for something. AC just feels more real than any other sim I've tried. I drove a driving school single seater at Oulton, the day was cold, the track had damp patches. I was nervous but after 1 lap I was sliding the car around, catching slides just seemed natural, like the car was telling me what to do, helping me. It was exhilarating rather than scary. I'm far from being a driving prodigy, lol, I'm sure I wouldn't have felt so confident in a Lotus 49... But sliding a car around and catching slides in rl isn't that difficult. That day at Oulton, I get the same feeling from AC

 

I don't think that works in AC, Kofotsjanne.

 

Is it the result of some sort of mild warping? Being online are you really seeing what the other cars doing or an approximation of it?

 

Sure, but at what speed ? In any sims it's easy to slide at low speed. In AC it's easy to slide at 220+. You can even be imprecise and still save it without too much problem.

 

In rF2 too, and it's not a coincidence that both in AC and rF2 the FFB is very comunicative and responsive.