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Comment by munchbunny | Hacker News Reader

When it comes to racing, the new push into e-sports is really exciting to me because it adds a huge element of accessibility. Cars are expensive, and actually owning a car that you take on the track is expensive and time consuming, but with a racing wheel, a PC/console, and a VR headset, you can get a pretty visceral and convincing facsimile of a high performance car.

The first time I tried racing in VR (in Dirt Rally), I had the brilliant idea of using a Group B car. On a flat screen, it just feels really fast and requires intense focus. In VR, you really feel like you're sitting on a rocket and the car is trying to kill you.

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I live not far from the Nordschleife and I own a car built for the track. Nothing insane but fun enough to drive. The e-sports is appealing to me in some ways, I am considering getting a proper setup. But there is simply no comparison going into Schwedenkreuz at 200kph+ in a real car vs a video game (call it a simulator, if you wish). When things go wrong, they go wrong very fast and it could hurt. This is what keeps you focused. A lot of the people who play those video games, they come to drive the real thing. It ends in tears quite often.

The vdeo game simply does not reflect things like: track surface bumpiness, knocks in the car, feeling of the steering rack, driving over curbs, the forces on ones wrists and what happens to them after 20 laps, having to actually move your head to check the mirrors, tires going off, brakes fading, changing weather conditions and having to choose a different line in the wet and dry, dirt on the surface, brake discs going out of shape from overheating, etc. The video game experience does not relate to the real driving. All the forces under braking, acceleration, going over the crest, compression when going into the dips, gear not going in because the forces between the engine and the gesrbox do not allow for it to go in - it's all missing. It's a washed down experience. It's good maybe for concentration training and learning general track layout.

What's really annoying in virtually every video game is that, somehow, none of them even manages to really reflect the track width. All other things like changing weather is just algorithm, once you learn the algorithm, there's no surprise anymore.

* edit for readability

You need to try iRacing in VR. It covers about a third of the stuff on your list.

> no track surface bumpiness... none of them even manages to really reflect the track width.

iRacing laser-scans real-world tracks. You feel the bumps through your force feedback wheel and/or motion rig if available.

> having to actually move your head to check the mirrors

You absolutely have to crane your neck 1:1 in VR. Super immersive in flight sims particularly.

> having to choose a different line in the wet and dry, dirt on the surface

Even simpler sims model this kind of thing, and especially all of the market leaders. iRacing models rubber build-up during the course of the race, track temperature, water evaporation, etc.

> This is what keeps you focused.

Obviously there's no fear of death in a simulator; but the drivers in these virtual races take this stuff seriously. This isn't Forza.

> is just algorithm, once you learn the algorithm, there's no surprise anymore.

I'm not sure if you've played any modern sims, but they're incredibly sophisticated. iRacing is used by Nascar, etc. teams. DCS A-10 is an offshoot of a military simulator for pilot training.

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Oh and forgot to add... the F1 game featured in the article is trash as far as driving physics go. It's a 'game', not a 'sim'.

I shall give it a try then, thanks for feedback.

The sim expo (http://www.nuerburgring.de/en/events-tickets/automobile/blan...) has been at the Nürburgring about a couple of moths ago. Does anyone know anything similar happening in Germany / Belgium / Netherlands in the near future?

Even the super cheap options like Assetto Corsa (my sim of choice because I can't afford to maintain the skill and money required by iRacing) meet many of the challenges you listed. Check out EmptyBox on youtube [0]. He's recently started using VR headsets in his regular races and he is quite good at sim racing. He also is entertaining.

It's certainly not a replacement for an actual car, track time, etc, but the $1000 I spent on hardware to get a simulation of it (that I also use for other things like Flight simulation) was well worth it.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEze6vbAp-s

It sure must be fun to go for track days, especially if you live near the Nordscleife but there's one critical element that you won't get into unless you're a semi-professional racing driver: the competition. Yes, hotlapping can be a competition but wheel to wheel racing is where the fun is at.

Someone already replied to you about how detailed iRacing can get. Some other sims are also quite good, but IMO none come close to iRacing's fidelity let alone the great online competition with safety ratings and sanctioned series.

You absolutely do have to care about tire temperatures, bumps on the road, dirty/clean/hot/cold track (e.g. shadows are cold) and brake temperatures. Especially once you get into the single seaters like Star Mazda or Formula Renault, where you have to start with cold, underpressurized tires because for competitive times you need an aggressive car setup that only starts working once you're warmed up.

It's no substitute for track days, but no-one in their right mind would let me take a 1966 Lotus 49 Formula 1 car (only a handful in existance) on the Nordschleife, let alone go wheel-to-wheel with others on one.

> you can get a pretty visceral and convincing facsimile of a high performance car.

What? Higher resolution displays, better rendering, better input devices, and headsets with 360 degree fields of view help the immersion - but a huge part of driving (and other extreme sports you might want to emulate as an E-sport) is the raw acceleration, which you just can't duplicate with a video game (other sports have a physical exertion component, which is also hard to simulate).

You don't feel like you're on a sitting on a rocket. You imagine you feel like you're sitting on a rocket.

I'm okay with just imagining feeling like I'm sitting on a rocket if it means I also only have to imagine paying for the rocket.

My point is that VR hits a "close enough" point at a much lower price, and flat screens didn't really do it. This dynamic doesn't exist with, as an example, skiing, where actually skiing isn't much more expensive than virtually skiing.

Maybe one day having a car for the track will be economically feasible, but for now I'm pretty happy with primarily accessing the sport through VR at a fraction of the price. I've actually looked at the cheap end of actually racing cars, but it's just not feasible because of hidden costs until a lot of things change about my lifestyle. Until then, a VR headset is far more doable.

I suspect a lot of people are in a similar boat, so having something pretty cool to actively participate in is a big improvement over just watching.

> My point is that VR hits a "close enough" point at a much lower price, and flat screens didn't really do it. This dynamic doesn't exist with, as an example, skiing, where actually skiing isn't much more expensive than virtually skiing.

That's a good point. I'm not sure that skiing is a great example - it can be an extremely pricey hobby if you don't live near a good hill - but I agree there's a broad distribution of the experience achievable against the cost (I imagine an XKCD-style graph in the style of [1] or [2], with "How much it costs" on the X axis and "How awesome it is" on the Y axis, with labels for "VR auto racing", "Actual auto racing", "simulated bowling", "actual bowling", "Kerbal Space Program", "SpaceX", "Surfing", "Simulated surfing", etc.

[1]: https://xkcd.com/1904/

[2]: https://xkcd.com/1880/

But now it's less of a team sport and more about the driver. That can be good or bad, depending on what drew you to motor sports and F1 in the first place.

Merc-AMG's team make things look easy, but I guess that's because the audience just isn't liking the technical expertise required to consistently perform like they have.

F1 cars ultimately have to answer to physics, but F1 games are up to the designers and the game engine, which may not accurately represent everything (I trust they are trying, I have to believe people working on F1 2017 also love F1 the sport). Ultimately though they have to make tradeoffs because they can't fully represent physics, so that may mean advantages through game code. Maybe damage doesn't get applied to the car as it should or maybe there's network issues with collision. Smarter people than I could probably find some exploits.

Significant coverage also goes to drivers outside of F1 races, as they are multi-millionaires with planes and expensive cars. They probably aren't signing eSports drivers for multi-million dollar contracts.

I'm totally casual at F1 2017 though. I don't even have a wheel, so this opinion probably counts as much as my opinion on F1 aero design. :)

Haven't F1 been running on all manner of rules to put the driving more on the driver and less on the electronics?

That was the theme around 20+ years ago, and they have continued to change rules to emphasize individual driving ability (e.g. restrictions on team orders, although those are de-facto gone, restrictions on engineer-driver communication during the race, etc.), but it's still very much a team sport. Unlike many other major series, especially those in the US, each team is required to build it's own chassis - so other than components like engines that have relatively few suppliers, everything from the ground up may be tweaked with tiny engineering problems and the various solutions being critical to results. Like the parent post, THAT'S what I love about F1.

When it comes to racing, the new push into e-sports is really exciting to me because it adds a huge element of accessibility.

It could also break down gender barriers where either rules or physical intensity of a sport results in segregation (e.g. soccer) or a lack of female participation (e.g. F1).

The lack of female participation already starts at karts although the physical demands there are not high enough to give males an advantage. They may even have an advantage due to lower weight. Either girls are just not interested in motorsports or it's something else.

Jeri Ellsworth encountered active discouragement back when she was racing dirt track cars.

Why do you have to bring gender into this. If you really want to talk about females, I'll tell you where it really matters - there are many female engineers and mechanics in every team already contributing to the sport.

Some of the leading teams actually are led by a female engine director.

F1 is about the most meritocratic environment in the world because of the single-minded focus on winning.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/may/16/f1-formula-one...

Imo just knowing the actual track layout makes watching racing 10x more enjoyable. You understand what camera is after which.

Which Group B car? Some are more insane than others (which is an insane comparison itself).

The Peugeot 205. I assume you also play Dirt Rally and know what I mean, but for everyone else, the car in particular has a bad case of turbo lag that masks ridiculous amounts of rear biased acceleration as long as you can keep the RPMs up.

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