How realistic is Sim Racing?

[mapuc]

Isn't it up to what size of what graphic card and CPU you have that determine how realistic sim racing could be ?

I myself are trying to save money to buy a decent set of Steering wheel with pedals. I've read about the one Skybird has and they look interesting, but again it's all about money.

Then it's my gaming computer it has 6 GB Graphic memory 3.3 GHZ CPU. Can't remember the RAM how much it has.

Markus

[Threadfin]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Isn't it up to what size of what graphic card and CPU you have that determine how realistic sim racing could be ?

Graphical fidelity is great, and some of these new sims are simply fantastic looking. But for me what makes 'realism' is physics and feel. I could drive GPL today with 1998 graphics and love it. Of course that shot above is beyond what we can achieve with GPL and so it becomes the standard. It nails the feel of Grand Prix Legends while looking far better.



To illustrate how good these sims look, here's a shot I took a few days ago in Assetto Corsa Competizione, driving the BMW M6 GT3.

[mapuc]

Thank you I forgot about the feeling sitting in a F1 car or in a rally car and feel the vibration from the engine.

Markus

[Threadfin]

The state of force feedback today is remarkable, it really is. There are two main components -- the sim -- and how it handles FFB -- and the wheel you have, which have varying levels of fidelity when it comes to transmitting the feel of the tarmac to your hands.

But a good modern sim with a quality wheel is amazing. I dare say it would blow away someone who has not experienced what it is like today. Sims like rFactor2, Assetto Corsa Competizione and Automobilista Motorsport Simulator 2 all have fantastic FFB.

Without the wheel you can't feel it of course, but AMS2 has a free demo on Steam if you have any interest in seeing what is all about.

[Skybird]

The trap is that the FFB has to be individually tuned for every wheelbase-sim combo. And when a sim introduces a new data set, or a hardware producers does a new firmware or driver, the hardware needs to be updated and then the data needs to be tuned in again with different values. If fell for that trap myself sometimes, too.

Same in VR, the gfx engine may have gotten an update of the underlying engine, say U4E, and in the VR helmet the image suddenly is way to dark and you have never heard of it, and then you start fuming in anger and despair since you do not get it fixed. Happened in ACC twice to me, I just did not know it that U4E had seen massive changes. The solution was to delete a certain complete folder. Until I learned that, I thought the sim were dead for me.

Also, nVidia driver options for VR sometimes need certain HIGHER values in setting to have a good VR experience and smooth frames and no stutterings - not lower settings, but higher ones! In ACC I had the problem when I switched to my newer helmet that the picture was laggy, stuttering, and I did not get it solved, also it was blurry. I had however reduced some settings in nVidia drivers of which I assumed they would kill frames if I keep them high, because the new helmet has 8 times as many pixels than the old one, and I did not replace the 1080 card. As soon as I moved up these settings - the stuttering vanished and since then ACC looks much better than it ever did befiore in the old helmet. And I thought I had lost aCC!

Finally, the temps in ACC initially almost killed my system, went into the high 90s with low car numbers. Danger zone! But Kunos worked wonders on post release optimizations. With a superiuor VR display and 8x more pixels I now can run 30 cars smooth and crispy without blurrings at temps that are typcial for gaming on this processor type, mid-70s or so.

So many things come together to get a good and working technical experience. Problem is that I cannot keep track of all these many things anymore as I could years back. I forget fixes again, faster, and more regular than in the past. Even forget that a fix exists. ..

[Threadfin]

Hey, way to sell it Skybird


Yeah, there's truth to that, but it's no worse to me than getting set up for a good flight sim like Falcon or DCS or something. If it needs to be re-done with every update then yes that's an issue of course.