Where do I sign up?

[whenry]

My nephew would kick my ass on various video games but cant drive a street car(what's a manual trans?) much less a race car. My problem is that I wasnt getting any input thru my ass which as JBB will tell you is the most important sensor in racing. I was pretty good on a race track and absolutely horrible on computers.

[ke0ki2k]

I still think you guys just haven't gotten the full effect, mainly because it takes so much practice to get anywhere near proficient. iRacing is the only game I can really endorse, any other 'video games' you guys are talking about like Forza or GT or any other PC based games like Race07 or GTR are pitiful attempts at representing the real thing imo - i've tried them.

And even on iRacing when youre starting off and you suck, and everyone around you sucks - wrecking into you, it feels like a bad joke. But when you start to get your times close to the consistently fast C, B, and A license drivers at the pointy ends of the field who know what they're doing, the racing feels as real as anything I've done on the kart and i've had some pretty good scraps with decent fields in the shifters. You can sense what the car is doing, you're sliding it around (which, if you haven't played for a while, you just can't sense...it takes time) trying to keep the pace and either catch up, get past, or hold someone off. When you jump on the throttle too early, catch too much curb, or trail off the brakes too quick and the car gets out of shape, it gets your heart going, and when you catch it its as rewarding as doing it in real life.

[Wheelman_13]

They've already done one round of the Gran Turismo academy with GT4 a few years ago. This guy, I believe started from no real-world experience and did pretty well.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/arch ... -race.aspx

I've used the video game stuff to memorize track layouts where I haven't been somewhere. "Driving" it in a game is a much better mnemonic device than just watching vids on youtube. You'd just have to remember to apply your own cars physics when it comes to picking braking points and such. How much good it does or doesn't do will probably be down to how well you can translate between game feel and real feel.

I'll have a much better frame of reference after next weekend (chumpcar @ sebring....where I've driven endless laps on Forza 3).

[edit] I need to try iracing at some point [/edit]

[John Brown]

Richard, he is good..and rich. And he has prior,and as I mentioned... real good coaches.

I just meant to take a non-racer,except in the living room..and he kicks ass there,to think he can drive a race car in the real world.. is far-fetched.

Yea,it will interesting how your video racing compares to your real racing..

[flier129]

On a nerd stand-point, there's too many variables IRL(in real life) for the current hardware to calculate and "throw into the mix". Although it has come a long ways.

Entertainment for me, I'll keep dreaming about getting on the track, then realizing how small my budget is,lol!

[thrdeye]

Another huge thing that iRacing has over the other stuff is the feel of the track thorugh the steering wheel. Every bump and ripple is there....and with your force feedback setup correctly, you can feel it.

[TedV]

my brother does the iRacing cause he doesnt have the money to run a real car. I like the story of the guy running a chassis force feedback rig , where it bounces you around like a real car does, had a crash, was racing in his bare feet, broke his ankle in the simulated crash. Thats about the only way I could run a sim.

I haven't done much sim racing cause it doesn't have the same feel as real racing. I did play on the BP gasoline iRacing sim at a gas station once. Track was Lime Rock. I went into 1 deeper than the worker there thought possible, he had no clue how I was making it thru. I did keep spinning up the hill cause I couldn't feel the yump. Got the rear light, spinning inside rear tire, ending not so well. The seat of the pants sensation is not there, Knowing what it feels like and not having it just sucks.

at least in the program they have to run some real cars.

[AcuraAttack]

I'm just going to leave this here... http://www.topgear.com/uk/photos/geek-r ... ?imageNo=0

[John Brown]

Im throwing the BS card here....

Any body on here,thats turned a sub-35 second lap at Road Atlanta will tell you.. you WILL NOT do it by going 100-110 thru 12 or 100 on the back straight. For him to do a 1:24 lap there,he will have to do 125 or better thru 12... (where the men are parted from the boys) and 150+ on the back.

Im glad there is somewhere folks can call themselves racers tho...

[TedV]

Actually, it is believable on the times. The record for Pro Star Mazda is 6.5 seconds a lap faster. The winged cars make the time up from 1 thru 7 with higher speeds thru the twisties from down force. The same down force slows em down on the back straight.

The point I find interesting, the guy is a hot shoe with virtual racing yet he pukes his lunch inside the helmet in the real car from the sensations you don't get from a computer. I don't know how I would handle 2+ lateral G's, but I sure would like to find out.

[ke0ki2k]

Gonna say, there are onboards of guys running the actual series ripping off 1:18's - star mazdas are fast as balls... 250 hp, 1200 pounds, 12 inch wide rear wheels? hell yes. Gregger is the original 'alien' - probably one of the overall fastest sim 'racers' there has ever been. Hes been getting quite a few opportunities to test real cars, think he ran an F3 car in europe as well. Not surprising he puked in the helmet, looks like he might not get much exercise.

[Dentspeed]

I would say Brian Heitkotter(however you spell it) is fast as hell, and a quick learner on road racing.

[Wheelman_13]

Ok, as a follow up on this one...because I said I would.

Forza 3 Sebring vs. Real Sebring:

The turn sequence, the width of the track in most places, and actually the level of light mid-day was pretty spot-on. The only two turns I felt were significantly different game vs. reality were 13 and 16. 13 feels a lot more open in the game, and I use the curb pretty aggressively in a street car. I looked at the curb on my first real-world lap, but did not want to use it because I was worried about breaking the car....our springs came from e-bay and our shocks were already dead. 16 is sort-of the same situation. On the game, I turn in early straddle the FIA curbing and knock a cone out of the way. In reality, give the camber of the turn and severity of the curb it probably would have really upset the car to hit it at-speed.

However, other than that, I pretty much settled in to the same lines I use in the game. So, in that respect it was pretty close with the exceptions noted above. I wasn't having to totally learn the lines from scratch. I tried replicating the Civic in the game and driving conservatively like I was considering the situation (short shifting, staying off of curbs, braking early), I still couldn't drive slow enough in the game to replicate my real-world pace. Grant it, there aren't tuning options on Forza for "blown shocks", "e-bay springs", and "craigslist engine". 3:00.7xx in real life, 2:50.xxx basically coasting in the game.

So....did the game help....yeah, after a lap to sort of take stock of any differences, I was able to pick up speed pretty quickly even while driving carefully. Was the game exactly like reality.....as far as "Feel" there were definitely similarities....but yeah, if you had no grasp of vehicle dynamics before-hand....not gonna happen (somewhat to John's point).

[Oberstwill]

I crush the pros on MAdden and also on some of the golf games.......I could see how it helps with learning the track, but as puke boy demonstrated, just because you are good for a couple of laps does not a real driver make.

[John Brown]

lol... "puke" boy???

who is that?

edit::: oh, I got cha. the fatty in the Mazda... lol. I still dont believe that data on him. I dont care how fast you are thru the esses.. you aint gonna turn that lap time by going 100mph on the back straight and turn 12. You'd have to go 160 thru the 400 yards of esses to make up that much time.