TXE36

Yep, pretty much all with your eyes. I was frankly quite surprised how fast you could drive a real car with just your eyes. No comparison with driving with your eyes and butt.

For the near future, the best a sim could likely do is be like driving your actual car by remote control with visual cues coming from a 3d camera where your head would be in the car.

-Mike

User 52121

Yes, that too - it all plays a part. You definitely need to "tune in" to other senses since you lose your ***-o-meter.

In VR, your peripheral vision does a good job helping you to sense yaw as well. But a lot of "feel" gets transmitted through the steering wheel itself. You can feel it go limp, the grip falls off, the forces die off, etc.

caymannyc

This is pretty interesting - people who only did sim racing transitioning to real, high level racing.


http://www.gamespot.com/articles/mee.../1100-6419397/


And lots of other real world examples on youtube:




VR is obviously not a perfect 100% replacement, and even those top sim racers needed to spend many hours acclimating to a real car, but it's an amazing training resource. Again, in the professional motorsports world, you're the weird one if you DON'T practice on the sim (Kimi Raikkonen is notorious for refusing to sim, whereas Vettel and Hamilton sim). I think I recall even Schumacher used to spend a lot of time in the sim.

StoogeMoe

Ok I'm sold. How much does it cost to set up an iRacing system?

hf1

Sorry, no ***, no good for me.

caymannyc

http://perfectsimracer.com/race-simu...te-guide-2016/


Here are some resources.


You can also buy something like this:


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...g&gclsrc=aw.ds

or cheaper:


https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/con...2C&A=details&Q=


You can buy "professional" sets but those start at around $50K!


If you are trying to keep it to a couple thousand, like most people who run and excel at I Racing do, all you need is a good stable chair, a desk, and the best steering system set you can afford (quality of pedals and shifting are less critical). If you're going VR, a computer capable of handling the Oculus (most new desktops with a graphics card should work) and download the I Racing software (not expensive). If you're going with standard screens, I'd say find a desk large enough to support 3 computer screens (even though the guy linked to that article who made it to the Red Bull F1 development team was playing on a 16" single screen!).


Other posters here probably have better sets than I do so they can further advise you if you want a really "good" setup. Mine is fairly cheap lol.


The really expensive part about "racing" is not the actual race itself but the hours and hours of seat time, where you're constantly changing your setup to find the optimal configuration for a particular track. It's a massively tedious process where you just have to repeat test laps over and over and study the results in between sets. Give up a couple tenths on corners 1 and 2 to gain half a second on corner 3 before the long straight sort of thing. F1 teams have highly promising "test drivers" whose sole purpose is to live in the simulator experimenting with different settings, and occasionally doing some off-season testing in the real car. Those poor guys spend many very very late nights tinkering around on the simulator with the engineers, especially during the season when tech updates are constantly flowing in. With the simulator, and iRacing in particular, you can really play around with your car's settings and do thousands of practice laps on real tracks. You can get some high quality practice without spending tens of thousands on tires, brakes and gas, and without risk of wrecking your car because you chose too aggressive of a line.

User 52121

Depends on how far you want to go and what equipment you already have.

You can certainly pick up a basic Logitech wheel and pedal setup for $300, clamp it to your desk, download the software on a few-year-old machine, and have a go. You'll need to turn the graphics down a bit, but you'll be able to pull it off.

The experience won't ever go much beyond a toy and a game, though.

If you look at it as a legitimate training device, you'll need to spend a bit more. To start from the ground up, with ZERO carrying over from old machines, etc., and wanting to take a setup semi-seriously, I'd expect to spend somewhere between 6-8k. That'd include a PC, a good mid-range wheel, a good set of pedals, a dedicated cockpit setup, VR goggles, etc. Of course the sky is the limit. The best steering wheel setup on the market is $5k and that's JUST the wheel! (I have used one personally and comparing it to even mid-fi stuff like the Fanatec ClubSport wheel - you see where the money goes, it's worth it... I'm considering buying one myself.)

Sounds like a lot but the difference in feel and overall usefulness of the setup will be substantial. You really do get what you pay for. Yeah, you could buy a whole 944, or likely a tired Spec Miata for that money... BUT you have the potential to get WAY more value out of the sim rig. 24x7 racing, racing in the wet, the cold, the snow, after work, etc. It doesn't cost you to run (other than the monthly fee to iRacing), no tire/fuel/entry fees, etc. And with iRacing, the chance to race against some of the world's best (literally... we've had Patrick Long race with us before, Jordan Taylor, Jacques Villeneuve.... lots of real life pro's).

I'll contradict caymannyc a little here - if you were to stick with entry-level stuff everywhere but ONE component, I'd go with a good set of pedals first. The pedals included in the "cheap" wheels are junk. Very hard to use muscle memory on them.

caymannyc

That's fair enough and true.


One additional benefit (sorry I keep ranting about sims) of sims is that you can get high quality coaching with real-time measurable data online. If you were to hire an in-person coach, you're paying not just for track time but you're paying money during the time it takes to download the data onto your computer and it's a lot harder to make changes to your car. Plus if there's a specific section of the track you're struggling with, it's much easier to do repeats of just that section, with no distraction from other cars or risk of damage. Also, having the weight of an instructor sitting next to you will obviously also change the handling dynamics of your car. Plus you can upload data on one of many discussion forums and you'll have a lot of people willing and eager to analyze your performance for free.


And this is kind of a sad, hidden reality of "coaching," but there are quite a few questionable characters out there offering their "services." They may try to sell you services you don't need, sometimes intentionally give you bad advice to drag on the "instruction" longer (more $$ for them), give you half-truths or incomplete information to limit your progress, and occasionally try to use you to get track time for themselves. You meet these types when you hang out at the track enough. "Oh before I teach you anything I need to see what your car is capable of" while they do lap after lap of "testing", or they'll offer to get your car "track ready" with parts that you don't really need (upgraded oil pans or fly wheel pulleys lol) or "break in the engines and tires for you". They could have just told you to keep the RPMs low to break in new parts but instead they'll do it themselves and throw in a few drifts or hard corners. I want to punch the computer screen just thinking about those guys, man it pisses me off that I didn't know any better.

User 52121

True - though I would primarily consider simulators as a way to train for the mental and concentration side of track driving.

A good setup will also have accurate car handling, etc. and is a good way to learn more "generic" car control skills (catching slides, spins, etc.) but I would not consider it something to learn "specific" car skills. As in... unless your exact car is modeled exactly in the sim, what you get in the sim is likely going to be a little different from what you'd get in the real world. Different enough that comparing to "having an instructor in the right seat" wouldn't make up that difference.

While I have not personally seen this in the track driving circles (and can tell you that at least the "big 4" pro coaches I'm aware of - Peter Krause, Dave Scott, Dave Murray, Dan Clarke - give advice worth more than your racecar's weight in gold)... I have *definitely* seen this on the airplane and pilot instructor side, first hand.

ProCoach

Actually, I have found sims to be incredibly valuable in honing my vision and slip (yaw) rate calculations in my head.

Of course, in a static sim you don't get the forces acting on your body and inner ear, but what you do get, especially in those sims that have good driving dynamics, is a point at which the car's attitude changes from tracking true to pointing inward or outward of the desired path. Like your explanation at the end.

The RATE at which the yaw develops and how quickly and correctly you can respond are the things that the sims teach best for me.

Manifold

^ This!

Vision and yaw sensitivity are foundational. Other driver sensory inputs - even G-forces - are less reliable indicators of what's happening.

From vision, we can judge line, speed, deceleration, and acceleration. Yaw sensitivity helps us judge what corrections are needed.

I hear that top sim racers can put down very similar lap times with G-forces, tire noise, etc. turned off.

hf1

For me, g-force inputs to the body precede the visual inputs. My eyes only confirm what the body has already sensed few hundredths or tenths of a second ago. Or I may be missing something huge, and should learn how to perceive these visual changes at the same time (or before) the body senses them. Food for thought.

Manifold

G-forces have a palpable quality which can certainly make them seem like the primary sensory input, but all senses are being simultaneously processed by the brain (largely subconsciously), and it can be difficult to know exactly how sensory inputs are being processed and integrated unless you do the kind of experiments possible with sims, brain imaging, etc. You may be perceiving visual changes and heavily relying on them without being fully consciously aware of it.

Consider that if you're approaching a turn at a nearly constant 140 mph, the G-forces are nearly zero, and you mainly use your vision to decide when to initiate braking. Once braking is initiated, G-forces are large, but judgments of when to start releasing brake pressure and at what rate, how quickly to wind in steering for corner entry, etc. may still be based more on visual input rather than G-forces.

DTMiller

iRacing, even with a fairly pedestrian setup, has vastly improved my driving. I would say anyone who hasn't benefitted from it should keep at it as there is a significant adjustment period moving from real life to the sim (and vice versa) but it's worth it.

hf1

Are there racing sims/rigs for motorcycle racing?