20 ms·

Formula 1 e-sports now more exciting than the real thing

126 points by okket 9y ago

QAPereo 9y ago
To be fair, a caratoid drip of pure Xanax is more exciting than watching flashes of advertising blast past you at carefully limited speeds.
- Frye 9y ago
  Yup. Nothing exciting to see here.
- EpicEng 9y ago
  Yah, totally, what are these idiots thinking? Let's just get rid of all forms of entertainment and hook everyone up to a line of Xanax.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    I can’t believe you actually took my comment to mean that, which leaves your response as a truly bizarre one.
munchbunny 9y ago
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.
- pryelluw 9y ago
  Which Group B car? Some are more insane than others (which is an insane comparison itself).
  - munchbunny 9y ago
    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.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  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. :)
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Haven't F1 been running on all manner of rules to put the driving more on the driver and less on the electronics?
    - TallGuyShort 9y ago
Avshalom 9y ago
So I mean first order "excitment" is over takes and how often first changes. Which this article doesn't mention at all.
- ramy_d 9y ago
  Didn't sound like the real race had any except 13th/14th? but I watched a bit of the video and there was tons of excitement and I can't say I've ever cared for F1
bitL 9y ago
Give me a low-latency link to a remotely controlled F1, and I can forget about all the drivers... Besides, F1 with the introduction of halo is already alienating its long-time fans, making cars slowly matching the ugliness of current IndyCar chassis, so many fans will seek to escape watching those monstrosities off to e-sports, where they can drive pleasant cars. For me this was the last season I was watching F1 unless they come back with open cockpit. I will watch Roborace once they go live, as those cars simply look stunning and at some point will be much faster than any human-driven cars.
Bud 9y ago
The truth is, even in its real-world incarnation, this always was a pretty lame sport, and now in a climate-change context, it's even more lame. So it's actually great if the esport version takes over. Entirely. Auto racing is pathetic.
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
  And now they can try and total each others cars on purpose, and not be in a morally dubious place.
  - cucuuc 9y ago
    Total yourself. Oh wait you might survive thanks to F1 technology in your car
    - sctb 9y ago
      Could you please not post like this? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- alexanderstears 9y ago
  There's a real 'trees in the forest' effect here - you're mad at cars on the track, not the hundreds of thousands of cars that drive people to go watch the cars on the track. Racing is probably a carbon reduction program, it's where car companies learn to make better cars. Formula 1 used to help create new technology but I don't think that's the case any more. Endurance racing has always been beneficial though and it continues with the le mans cars. Manufacturers are slashing carbon emissions though new materials, better engineering, and more efficient motors and the race track is an excellent place for them to develop that technology. Auto racing is important as a place to try new things and shake up the status quo.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  You're talking about F1, the sport that is showing you can smash lap records after downsizing from large V-10's to smaller V-6 hybrids? That F1?
microtherion 9y ago
I misread the title, thinking they were talking about Formula E. http://www.fiaformulae.com/en http://www.fiaformulae.com/en Watching other people play video games has never felt remotely appealing to me. Must be one of the things somebody my generation truly does not get.
- Avenger42 9y ago
  Not sure who you include in "your generation", but I'm 37 and I just spent the last 4 months or so watching a Super Metroid double-elimination tournament and enjoyed every minute of it. It also re-introduced me to several speedrunners in the community and I'm now a regular watcher and occasional streamer on Twitch.
  - microtherion 9y ago
    Let's just say that by "My Generation", I meant that I'm roughly as old as the Who song of that name... And I did not mean my remark in a normative way. I watch all sorts of sports, I play all sorts of video games, and I have occasionally enjoyed watching Machinima. I don't consider these activities morally superior to watching e-sports or other forms of video game streaming, I just don't see any personal appeal whatsoever in the latter.
    - arcticfox 9y ago
      I don't think it's a generational thing, I know plenty of older fans of the eSport I follow (Age of Empires 2). There are way more younger fans / players, of course, but that's true of anything about video games. In many ways, eSports are way better IMO than the traditional sports I watch: the players are more relatable, the casting is more interactive, the broadcasts are more available, the games are strategically much deeper.
- wil421 9y ago
  I feel the exact way! My coworker was talking about how his kid would rather watch someone play video games on YouTube. They got him he same game for whatever console and he rarely plays. I can remember when game over meant try again from the start.
justin66 9y ago
> Indeed, so boring was the final race of the season (and to be honest, the two that preceded it) Abu Dhabi is a boring racetrack that makes passing quite difficult, but if you could not find something interesting about the Brazil race (Ricciardo started at 14th and made his way up to 6th and Hamilton started on the pit lane and clawed his way up to 4th) or the Mexico race (won by Verstappen, a 20 year old guy who was not driving a Mercedes or Ferrari, with a 19 second margin over the 2nd place Mercedes, which has been dominant and is a much better car), it's possible you're just not an F1 fan. That's fine, and it probably points to a good audience for the "e-sports" racing. Maybe some of those guys will convert to being F1 fans, maybe some of them won't, but it is not an expensive experiment for F1 to run. Pretty much all they have to do is push this while not embarrassing themselves too badly with the fans of motor racing who couldn't care less about e-sports. (who knows? The loud reaction among fans to the F1 logo change might indicate that they're all insane anyway, so it is impossible to predict)
- pfooti 9y ago
  Yeah, I think you're right about most of this - I watched most of the races this season. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in most races in the middle of the pack too, like "will force india do well, or will they crash into each other" or just watching fernando alonso drive the wheels off of his mclaren, despite it lacking top-end speed. That said, I also noticed that a lot of cars had to hold back quite a bit: the current aerodynamics of the cars means the choppy air seems to run about 1.5 seconds off of the back of the lead car, so if you're staying in clearer air, you're out of DRS. Meaning: people even trying to get into overtaking of the lead car are drastically lowering the lifetime of their tires if nothing else. Combine that with the wider car and there's not a lot of actual overtaking going on in race-leadership positions. It happens, but not a lot - more often I think there's the under/overcut calculations about when a pit stop happens, and the pass happens virtually with time lost in the pit lane. This is all exacerbated by mercedes's dominance in the qualifying rounds. In a season where so many races were won from the front row if the leaders get out of the first lap clean without a crash, this is all huge. It adds up to: Hamilton totally dominated the second half of the season, easily winning the championship and Mercedes taking the constructor's championship even earlier. In terms of leadership swaps and contention for first, it's a boring season. Still: can't discount Hamilton here, he is an amazing driver and clearly the best on the circuit. Overall? I had to start watching the red bulls and force india scrapping over the midfield, because the front of the pack was indeed boring. And I'm not sure that really appeals to average viewers.
cyberferret 9y ago
I agree with other commenters here - while some of the races turned into a procession, in almost all races, there were elements of interest among the smaller teams lower down the ranks. I think the biggest problem here is the depth of the pockets of each team. Those with bigger engineering budgets are dominating the podiums, while the smaller team struggle with 'hand me down' parts that are outdated when they get to them. F1 has had to ride the hard line between actually showing progress in automotive R&D and still being somewhat a gladiatorial sport. The progress made with hybrid engines, energy recovery, construction materials etc. have been monumental, especially in the past decade. However, that has also lead to less noisy cars, and a reduced element of danger. Good things when it comes to road car operation, but can work against the sport in the heat of battle on the track. We can applaud the safety standard that get better each year, especially after the death's of Senna, and more recently, Jules Bianchi, but that sense of safety is also turning people away. No one wants to see a driver die (A driver's chance of dying in an F1 season in the 60's/70's was something like 20%), but again - the sport has become somewhat sterile and staid because of it. (Not to mention - Ugly, with the introduction of the 2018 halos). Perhaps the fascination with eSports is that you CAN actually bang another car off the track, and you will get to see the spectacle of a crash without having to live with the fact that you might end someones life in the resulting conflagration?
- Already__Taken 9y ago
  F1 has a massive cultural problem about who wins. Every broadcast ends with cutting away from some incredible mid-pack dicing to watch 1 car on its own do a final clear lap and cross the line, then people celebrating. Even when cutting to overtakes when cars pass. That move was set up 5 corners ago that's the interesting part.
alistproducer2 9y ago
I actually watched the video in the article and thought it was really exciting. I prefer it to the real thing because the drivers can take more risks, leading to more exciting passes.
trophycase 9y ago
Reminds me of Sinulacra and Simulation
Siecje 9y ago
Why do they drive off the track?
yummy 9y ago
I've been watching F1 for about 13 years and it's always the same after a boring race. No matter how exciting a couple of preceding races could have been, there's gonna be a shit storm. Too bad it's the last race of the season. Back in 2009 it was clear the track is rubbish. E-sports? That's nice, but we've had sim racing for a long time. And F1 2017 is not even a simulator. It's made for the broad audience, who would play it on a PS4 with its controller, but not for hardcore sim racers. Vandoorne competed in a serious rFactor F1 league and it's not like he was the fastest guy.
- exDM69 9y ago
  > Vandoorne competed in a serious rFactor F1 league and it's not like he was the fastest guy. Having had a royal ass-kicking delivered to me by Stoffel Vandoorne and Rubens Barichello in iRacing, I have to say that they might not be the fastest simracers out there but boy are they fast! I'm not a top-tier simracer by any means but these guys were at a whole different level. Verstappen also used to do tons of simracing at top levels in the past. I wonder why they never mention that in the broadcast, because I think it's a major influence to him. Before he ever sat in a single seater car, he had had thousands of hours in a virtual one. His epic save in the rain at Interlagos 2016 was a classic simracer move. Anyone else would have braced for impact but he sat there as calmly as one can because he'd been there before in a sim, just waiting for the front wheels to bite and then let go of the brake at the right moment. You can't practice that in a real car because you don't end up in that kind of situations often enough and walk away from them.
klank 9y ago
> the real problem ...<snip>... cars that cannot follow each other closely in the turns Can anybody speak to what the issue is preventing cars from following each other closely in the turns? Loosing "clean air" and aerodynamic downforce is my completely uneducated in F1 guess.
- chadgeidel 9y ago
  Take a look at this video from Kyle.Engineers (a practicing aerodynamic engineer) YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzlp6TxqM5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzlp6TxqM5o
- exDM69 9y ago
  A lot of very knowledgeable people agree that it's the dominant role of the front wing in the modern cars. Compare a 2016 car [0] with a 1999 car [1]. The front wing is responsible for a lot of the downforce but loses too much of its efficiency when in turbulent air. The remedy would be moving the rear wings higher (more slipstream with the turbulent layer of air higher above the cars), simplifying the front wings (which increases drag in clean air) and making the car underbody provide more downforce. Unfortunately, that's not the direction the F1 regulations have been moving to. [0] https://cdn-8.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/3600000/3610000/3612000/3612400/3612438/s8/f1-australian-gp-2015-nico-rosberg-mercedes-amg-f1-w06-front-wing.jpg https://cdn-8.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/3600000/3610000/... [1] http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/upmp418.jpg http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/1...
jerkstate 9y ago
Yeah, Vettel and Ferrari threw away the championship starting in Singapore, but really cemented their downfall with a last minute mechanical failure on the grid.. stuff that doesn't (and probably shouldn't) happen in sim racing, that represent the culmination of decades of engineering philosophy, hundreds of millions of dollars spent, hundreds of thousands of man-hours.. what were we comparing F1 to again? video games?
- daemin 9y ago
  Video games that are a culmination of decades of engineering, artistic, and design philosophy. Millions of dollars spent, and many thousands of man hours put into each version delivered. Not quite as much as F1 but do not underestimate the technical effort and coordination to get a game shipped.
  - exDM69 9y ago
    The engineering put into the game is unquestionable. But the amount of engineering in the competition itself is pretty small compared to real racing. Top-tier sim racing teams actually do have race engineers and test drivers with telemetry and all to set up the cars. Racing sims have roughly the same amount of things to tweak as the real cars do. But in F1, the often forgotten fact is that every car is different and engineered for the particular race track. The Ferrari that runs at Monza (low downforce) is significantly different from the Ferrari that runs at Monaco (high downforce) or Silverstone (medium-high downforce compromise). By contrast, every car is the same in simracing, apart from the setup (which can make a huge difference).
  - jerkstate 9y ago
    Don't get me wrong, I love sim racing and there is definitely a place for sim racing competition, but it's really no comparison to the real thing in my mind because of the high stakes contribution to the competition by hundreds of engineers, not just 1 driver.. the outcome is different teams really have different personalities and those personalities show through in the performance of their car, team, etc. through randomness of mechanical performance/failures, pit stop strategy/execution, team strategy/execution, and so many more dimensions than you will get in a sim competition. As the great Murray Walker said, "anything can happen in F1, and it usually does"
bamboozled 9y ago
The following message is exactly why I finally gave up on F1: "This video contains content from Formula One Management, who has blocked it..." That is the message I got trying to watch the video embedded in the article. The exclusivity and false sense of importance portrayed by F1 is just really lame, I feel like they go out of their way to make it hard to watch. This coupled with the fact the actual racing has been boring and over regulated makes me glad I don't waste my time with F1 any more.
- yaegers 9y ago
  I feel you on the boring parts of F1. This, coupled with the idiotic halo they just have to put on the cars next year will mean that I spend my weekends a bit differently. But, to the matter at hand, the vid only seems to be blocked when it is embedded on websites. I had a "watch this on youtube" link in the message and when I clicked there it took me to youtube.com and the vid started playing. Whatever the reasoning is to block embedded vids but not the vid altogether is beyond me. But then again, so is uglyfying the car with apendages that make it look like a flipflop...
aleksandrm 9y ago
They also needed to save fuel, I know Raikonnen did and probably Verstappen too so that was pretty boring when drivers cant push to the max. Add refueling back, make it more exciting. Instead they keep making the rules worse, like changing the number of allowed engines in 2018 from 4 to 3 before penalties kick in
- exDM69 9y ago
  > They also needed to save fuel, Fuel saving is not really a thing any more. It was when the new turbo-hybrids were introduced but with the new injection systems and higher efficiency engines as well as increased fuel limits, there hasn't been really a need for running economy for the sake of making it to the end on fuel. Mercedes engines give more than 50% thermal efficiency now. That is phenomenal. > Add refueling back, make it more exciting. Not only is refueling terribly dangerous but I can't really agree that it would be more exciting to see teams play with strategy rather than try to overtake on track or by undercut/overcut on the pit lane (I liked seeing Ferrari play their good old fake pitstop overcut with Räikkönen vs. Perez a few races back, just like in the Schumacher-Todt days). A lot of people are agreeing that the major inhibitor to the competition are the current front wings. They develop a lot of the cars' downforce and are the reason the cars are so fast at the moment, but completely lose their efficiency when following another car. Compare a last year F1 front wing [0] with one from about 15-20 years ago [1]. All those bits and pieces are there for a reason. They're the product of days and months of CFD work in supercomputer clusters (F1 regulations actually limit the amount of FLOPS in the aero clusters!). Additionally, when there's a minor collision in the first lap, a few of those bits might go missing but not enough to warrant a front wing change. That means that the driver is impaired for the rest of the race, and none if it is conveyed to the viewer (unless Martin Brundle spots it and tells it to the viewers). A few years back there was the "overtaking working group" (OVG) that looked into this and their verdict was that the rear wings need to be higher and front wings simpler and make the underbody create more downforce (ground effect, without skirts though). Unfortunately that's the opposite of what they've been doing for the past few years and it shows. [0] https://cdn-8.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/3600000/3610000/3612000/3612400/3612438/s8/f1-australian-gp-2015-nico-rosberg-mercedes-amg-f1-w06-front-wing.jpg https://cdn-8.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/3600000/3610000/... [1] http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/upmp418.jpg http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/1...
frik 9y ago
F1 2017 is not a simulator. It is a okay game, that lacks some love (presentation and menu is boring and lackluster). I fondly remember Grand Prix 1-4 games, that at least realistically represented everything going on in Formula 1 and had quite realistic physics, etc for their time. Unfortunately the last Codemasters game that were awesome and really polished were GRID 1 and DiRT 2. Now Codemasters owns the DriveClub devs, I hope we see a new polished game from them again.
- Already__Taken 9y ago
  As long as they're making a game to a deadline that has a shelf live, it won't be. They should make a game for an era like "the V6 era" and give us a supported racing game, with DLC of current drivers or setups per season, but the core game is built as a community, and iterated upon. A new game each year is just like map packs that divide player bases.
- exDM69 9y ago
  Ironically, watching iRacing (arguably a very realistic simulator) Pro series with F1 cars has all the same problems as real F1 racing has. Not a lot of overtaking (a bit more than the real thing, though) and lots of subtle things that aren't visible to the casual observer. Dirt Rally is a recent Codemasters game that is excellent, if you're into rallying. It's almost as good as Richard Burns Rally, and miles ahead of any other rally game/sim.
  - frik 9y ago
    Formula 1 is okay. I am not sure if Liberty Media knows what treasure they bought, at the moment all their minor adjustments were only confusing. Sure, I wouldn't mind if they go back to V12 engines like in 1999. But the current season, and the last few years were fine. A lot better than the Schumacher and Vettel era, that was a boring time. Nowadays 3 teams have competitive cars, and three more teams (or so) drive for the podium and get there occasionally. Dirt Rally is not for me, it's like Project Cars unrealistic hard while not be very realistic, in contrary to Grandprix Legends and Assetto Corsa. Dirt 3+4 with this Ken Block shit or random generated boring generic tracks - no thanks. DiRT 2 is still the best in presentation (it looks better in 4K on PC than DiRT Rally, see YouTube videos), DiRT 2 has a nice single campaign, a nice menu, great tracks in 8 different regions, a great physics engine and car deformation and so much more - I don't get why their newer games all are a lot less fun to drive and in general build together so lackluster. Maybe they should take a break for a year, not releasing yearly updates to F1, DiRT (and DiRT). A new DiRT 2 and a new GRID 1 and a new DriveClub would be awesome - do it.
LoSboccacc 9y ago
well of course, chassis and engines are heavily regulated, it's closer in excitement to those mono-maker racing and as distant as f1 as one of those. heck, first season was mono maker and last just had custom powertrains. f1 used to be about the best maker, not the best driver. quite a philosophical difference there.
- justin66 9y ago
  > f1 used to be about the best maker, not the best driver. quite a philosophical difference there. In terms of prize money, F1 still cares a lot about the constructor contest. It's not something fans are conscious of, necessarily. For example, sixth place in the constructor contest was decided on the last race, and there were three teams that could have taken it. It doesn't sound like much but it's worth twelve million dollars...
thinkMOAR 9y ago
yaaay for something that covers the winter stop :)
crashdown 9y ago
MotoGP > F1

126 points by okket 9y ago

To be fair, a caratoid drip of pure Xanax is more exciting than watching flashes of advertising blast past you at carefully limited speeds.

Frye 9y ago
Yup. Nothing exciting to see here.
EpicEng 9y ago
Yah, totally, what are these idiots thinking? Let's just get rid of all forms of entertainment and hook everyone up to a line of Xanax.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  I can’t believe you actually took my comment to mean that, which leaves your response as a truly bizarre one.

munchbunny 9y ago

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.

pryelluw 9y ago
Which Group B car? Some are more insane than others (which is an insane comparison itself).
- munchbunny 9y ago
  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.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
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. :)
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Haven't F1 been running on all manner of rules to put the driving more on the driver and less on the electronics?
  - TallGuyShort 9y ago

Avshalom 9y ago

So I mean first order "excitment" is over takes and how often first changes. Which this article doesn't mention at all.

ramy_d 9y ago
Didn't sound like the real race had any except 13th/14th? but I watched a bit of the video and there was tons of excitement and I can't say I've ever cared for F1

bitL 9y ago

Give me a low-latency link to a remotely controlled F1, and I can forget about all the drivers... Besides, F1 with the introduction of halo is already alienating its long-time fans, making cars slowly matching the ugliness of current IndyCar chassis, so many fans will seek to escape watching those monstrosities off to e-sports, where they can drive pleasant cars. For me this was the last season I was watching F1 unless they come back with open cockpit. I will watch Roborace once they go live, as those cars simply look stunning and at some point will be much faster than any human-driven cars.

Bud 9y ago

The truth is, even in its real-world incarnation, this always was a pretty lame sport, and now in a climate-change context, it's even more lame. So it's actually great if the esport version takes over. Entirely. Auto racing is pathetic.

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
And now they can try and total each others cars on purpose, and not be in a morally dubious place.
- cucuuc 9y ago
  Total yourself. Oh wait you might survive thanks to F1 technology in your car
  - sctb 9y ago
    Could you please not post like this? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
alexanderstears 9y ago
There's a real 'trees in the forest' effect here - you're mad at cars on the track, not the hundreds of thousands of cars that drive people to go watch the cars on the track. Racing is probably a carbon reduction program, it's where car companies learn to make better cars. Formula 1 used to help create new technology but I don't think that's the case any more. Endurance racing has always been beneficial though and it continues with the le mans cars. Manufacturers are slashing carbon emissions though new materials, better engineering, and more efficient motors and the race track is an excellent place for them to develop that technology. Auto racing is important as a place to try new things and shake up the status quo.
TallGuyShort 9y ago
You're talking about F1, the sport that is showing you can smash lap records after downsizing from large V-10's to smaller V-6 hybrids? That F1?

microtherion 9y ago

I misread the title, thinking they were talking about Formula E. http://www.fiaformulae.com/en http://www.fiaformulae.com/en Watching other people play video games has never felt remotely appealing to me. Must be one of the things somebody my generation truly does not get.

Avenger42 9y ago
Not sure who you include in "your generation", but I'm 37 and I just spent the last 4 months or so watching a Super Metroid double-elimination tournament and enjoyed every minute of it. It also re-introduced me to several speedrunners in the community and I'm now a regular watcher and occasional streamer on Twitch.
- microtherion 9y ago
  Let's just say that by "My Generation", I meant that I'm roughly as old as the Who song of that name... And I did not mean my remark in a normative way. I watch all sorts of sports, I play all sorts of video games, and I have occasionally enjoyed watching Machinima. I don't consider these activities morally superior to watching e-sports or other forms of video game streaming, I just don't see any personal appeal whatsoever in the latter.
  - arcticfox 9y ago
    I don't think it's a generational thing, I know plenty of older fans of the eSport I follow (Age of Empires 2). There are way more younger fans / players, of course, but that's true of anything about video games. In many ways, eSports are way better IMO than the traditional sports I watch: the players are more relatable, the casting is more interactive, the broadcasts are more available, the games are strategically much deeper.
wil421 9y ago
I feel the exact way! My coworker was talking about how his kid would rather watch someone play video games on YouTube. They got him he same game for whatever console and he rarely plays. I can remember when game over meant try again from the start.

justin66 9y ago

> Indeed, so boring was the final race of the season (and to be honest, the two that preceded it) Abu Dhabi is a boring racetrack that makes passing quite difficult, but if you could not find something interesting about the Brazil race (Ricciardo started at 14th and made his way up to 6th and Hamilton started on the pit lane and clawed his way up to 4th) or the Mexico race (won by Verstappen, a 20 year old guy who was not driving a Mercedes or Ferrari, with a 19 second margin over the 2nd place Mercedes, which has been dominant and is a much better car), it's possible you're just not an F1 fan. That's fine, and it probably points to a good audience for the "e-sports" racing. Maybe some of those guys will convert to being F1 fans, maybe some of them won't, but it is not an expensive experiment for F1 to run. Pretty much all they have to do is push this while not embarrassing themselves too badly with the fans of motor racing who couldn't care less about e-sports. (who knows? The loud reaction among fans to the F1 logo change might indicate that they're all insane anyway, so it is impossible to predict)

pfooti 9y ago
Yeah, I think you're right about most of this - I watched most of the races this season. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in most races in the middle of the pack too, like "will force india do well, or will they crash into each other" or just watching fernando alonso drive the wheels off of his mclaren, despite it lacking top-end speed. That said, I also noticed that a lot of cars had to hold back quite a bit: the current aerodynamics of the cars means the choppy air seems to run about 1.5 seconds off of the back of the lead car, so if you're staying in clearer air, you're out of DRS. Meaning: people even trying to get into overtaking of the lead car are drastically lowering the lifetime of their tires if nothing else. Combine that with the wider car and there's not a lot of actual overtaking going on in race-leadership positions. It happens, but not a lot - more often I think there's the under/overcut calculations about when a pit stop happens, and the pass happens virtually with time lost in the pit lane. This is all exacerbated by mercedes's dominance in the qualifying rounds. In a season where so many races were won from the front row if the leaders get out of the first lap clean without a crash, this is all huge. It adds up to: Hamilton totally dominated the second half of the season, easily winning the championship and Mercedes taking the constructor's championship even earlier. In terms of leadership swaps and contention for first, it's a boring season. Still: can't discount Hamilton here, he is an amazing driver and clearly the best on the circuit. Overall? I had to start watching the red bulls and force india scrapping over the midfield, because the front of the pack was indeed boring. And I'm not sure that really appeals to average viewers.

cyberferret 9y ago

I agree with other commenters here - while some of the races turned into a procession, in almost all races, there were elements of interest among the smaller teams lower down the ranks. I think the biggest problem here is the depth of the pockets of each team. Those with bigger engineering budgets are dominating the podiums, while the smaller team struggle with 'hand me down' parts that are outdated when they get to them. F1 has had to ride the hard line between actually showing progress in automotive R&D and still being somewhat a gladiatorial sport. The progress made with hybrid engines, energy recovery, construction materials etc. have been monumental, especially in the past decade. However, that has also lead to less noisy cars, and a reduced element of danger. Good things when it comes to road car operation, but can work against the sport in the heat of battle on the track. We can applaud the safety standard that get better each year, especially after the death's of Senna, and more recently, Jules Bianchi, but that sense of safety is also turning people away. No one wants to see a driver die (A driver's chance of dying in an F1 season in the 60's/70's was something like 20%), but again - the sport has become somewhat sterile and staid because of it. (Not to mention - Ugly, with the introduction of the 2018 halos). Perhaps the fascination with eSports is that you CAN actually bang another car off the track, and you will get to see the spectacle of a crash without having to live with the fact that you might end someones life in the resulting conflagration?

Already__Taken 9y ago
F1 has a massive cultural problem about who wins. Every broadcast ends with cutting away from some incredible mid-pack dicing to watch 1 car on its own do a final clear lap and cross the line, then people celebrating. Even when cutting to overtakes when cars pass. That move was set up 5 corners ago that's the interesting part.

alistproducer2 9y ago

I actually watched the video in the article and thought it was really exciting. I prefer it to the real thing because the drivers can take more risks, leading to more exciting passes.

trophycase 9y ago

Reminds me of Sinulacra and Simulation

Siecje 9y ago

Why do they drive off the track?

yummy 9y ago

I've been watching F1 for about 13 years and it's always the same after a boring race. No matter how exciting a couple of preceding races could have been, there's gonna be a shit storm. Too bad it's the last race of the season. Back in 2009 it was clear the track is rubbish. E-sports? That's nice, but we've had sim racing for a long time. And F1 2017 is not even a simulator. It's made for the broad audience, who would play it on a PS4 with its controller, but not for hardcore sim racers. Vandoorne competed in a serious rFactor F1 league and it's not like he was the fastest guy.

exDM69 9y ago
> Vandoorne competed in a serious rFactor F1 league and it's not like he was the fastest guy. Having had a royal ass-kicking delivered to me by Stoffel Vandoorne and Rubens Barichello in iRacing, I have to say that they might not be the fastest simracers out there but boy are they fast! I'm not a top-tier simracer by any means but these guys were at a whole different level. Verstappen also used to do tons of simracing at top levels in the past. I wonder why they never mention that in the broadcast, because I think it's a major influence to him. Before he ever sat in a single seater car, he had had thousands of hours in a virtual one. His epic save in the rain at Interlagos 2016 was a classic simracer move. Anyone else would have braced for impact but he sat there as calmly as one can because he'd been there before in a sim, just waiting for the front wheels to bite and then let go of the brake at the right moment. You can't practice that in a real car because you don't end up in that kind of situations often enough and walk away from them.

klank 9y ago

> the real problem ...<snip>... cars that cannot follow each other closely in the turns Can anybody speak to what the issue is preventing cars from following each other closely in the turns? Loosing "clean air" and aerodynamic downforce is my completely uneducated in F1 guess.

chadgeidel 9y ago
Take a look at this video from Kyle.Engineers (a practicing aerodynamic engineer) YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzlp6TxqM5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzlp6TxqM5o
exDM69 9y ago
A lot of very knowledgeable people agree that it's the dominant role of the front wing in the modern cars. Compare a 2016 car [0] with a 1999 car [1]. The front wing is responsible for a lot of the downforce but loses too much of its efficiency when in turbulent air. The remedy would be moving the rear wings higher (more slipstream with the turbulent layer of air higher above the cars), simplifying the front wings (which increases drag in clean air) and making the car underbody provide more downforce. Unfortunately, that's not the direction the F1 regulations have been moving to. [0] https://cdn-8.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/3600000/3610000/3612000/3612400/3612438/s8/f1-australian-gp-2015-nico-rosberg-mercedes-amg-f1-w06-front-wing.jpg https://cdn-8.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/3600000/3610000/... [1] http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/upmp418.jpg http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/1...

jerkstate 9y ago

Yeah, Vettel and Ferrari threw away the championship starting in Singapore, but really cemented their downfall with a last minute mechanical failure on the grid.. stuff that doesn't (and probably shouldn't) happen in sim racing, that represent the culmination of decades of engineering philosophy, hundreds of millions of dollars spent, hundreds of thousands of man-hours.. what were we comparing F1 to again? video games?

daemin 9y ago
Video games that are a culmination of decades of engineering, artistic, and design philosophy. Millions of dollars spent, and many thousands of man hours put into each version delivered. Not quite as much as F1 but do not underestimate the technical effort and coordination to get a game shipped.
- exDM69 9y ago
  The engineering put into the game is unquestionable. But the amount of engineering in the competition itself is pretty small compared to real racing. Top-tier sim racing teams actually do have race engineers and test drivers with telemetry and all to set up the cars. Racing sims have roughly the same amount of things to tweak as the real cars do. But in F1, the often forgotten fact is that every car is different and engineered for the particular race track. The Ferrari that runs at Monza (low downforce) is significantly different from the Ferrari that runs at Monaco (high downforce) or Silverstone (medium-high downforce compromise). By contrast, every car is the same in simracing, apart from the setup (which can make a huge difference).
- jerkstate 9y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I love sim racing and there is definitely a place for sim racing competition, but it's really no comparison to the real thing in my mind because of the high stakes contribution to the competition by hundreds of engineers, not just 1 driver.. the outcome is different teams really have different personalities and those personalities show through in the performance of their car, team, etc. through randomness of mechanical performance/failures, pit stop strategy/execution, team strategy/execution, and so many more dimensions than you will get in a sim competition. As the great Murray Walker said, "anything can happen in F1, and it usually does"

bamboozled 9y ago

The following message is exactly why I finally gave up on F1: "This video contains content from Formula One Management, who has blocked it..." That is the message I got trying to watch the video embedded in the article. The exclusivity and false sense of importance portrayed by F1 is just really lame, I feel like they go out of their way to make it hard to watch. This coupled with the fact the actual racing has been boring and over regulated makes me glad I don't waste my time with F1 any more.

yaegers 9y ago
I feel you on the boring parts of F1. This, coupled with the idiotic halo they just have to put on the cars next year will mean that I spend my weekends a bit differently. But, to the matter at hand, the vid only seems to be blocked when it is embedded on websites. I had a "watch this on youtube" link in the message and when I clicked there it took me to youtube.com and the vid started playing. Whatever the reasoning is to block embedded vids but not the vid altogether is beyond me. But then again, so is uglyfying the car with apendages that make it look like a flipflop...

aleksandrm 9y ago

They also needed to save fuel, I know Raikonnen did and probably Verstappen too so that was pretty boring when drivers cant push to the max. Add refueling back, make it more exciting. Instead they keep making the rules worse, like changing the number of allowed engines in 2018 from 4 to 3 before penalties kick in

exDM69 9y ago
> They also needed to save fuel, Fuel saving is not really a thing any more. It was when the new turbo-hybrids were introduced but with the new injection systems and higher efficiency engines as well as increased fuel limits, there hasn't been really a need for running economy for the sake of making it to the end on fuel. Mercedes engines give more than 50% thermal efficiency now. That is phenomenal. > Add refueling back, make it more exciting. Not only is refueling terribly dangerous but I can't really agree that it would be more exciting to see teams play with strategy rather than try to overtake on track or by undercut/overcut on the pit lane (I liked seeing Ferrari play their good old fake pitstop overcut with Räikkönen vs. Perez a few races back, just like in the Schumacher-Todt days). A lot of people are agreeing that the major inhibitor to the competition are the current front wings. They develop a lot of the cars' downforce and are the reason the cars are so fast at the moment, but completely lose their efficiency when following another car. Compare a last year F1 front wing [0] with one from about 15-20 years ago [1]. All those bits and pieces are there for a reason. They're the product of days and months of CFD work in supercomputer clusters (F1 regulations actually limit the amount of FLOPS in the aero clusters!). Additionally, when there's a minor collision in the first lap, a few of those bits might go missing but not enough to warrant a front wing change. That means that the driver is impaired for the rest of the race, and none if it is conveyed to the viewer (unless Martin Brundle spots it and tells it to the viewers). A few years back there was the "overtaking working group" (OVG) that looked into this and their verdict was that the rear wings need to be higher and front wings simpler and make the underbody create more downforce (ground effect, without skirts though). Unfortunately that's the opposite of what they've been doing for the past few years and it shows. [0] https://cdn-8.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/3600000/3610000/3612000/3612400/3612438/s8/f1-australian-gp-2015-nico-rosberg-mercedes-amg-f1-w06-front-wing.jpg https://cdn-8.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/3600000/3610000/... [1] http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/upmp418.jpg http://www.racecar-engineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/1...

frik 9y ago

F1 2017 is not a simulator. It is a okay game, that lacks some love (presentation and menu is boring and lackluster). I fondly remember Grand Prix 1-4 games, that at least realistically represented everything going on in Formula 1 and had quite realistic physics, etc for their time. Unfortunately the last Codemasters game that were awesome and really polished were GRID 1 and DiRT 2. Now Codemasters owns the DriveClub devs, I hope we see a new polished game from them again.

Already__Taken 9y ago
As long as they're making a game to a deadline that has a shelf live, it won't be. They should make a game for an era like "the V6 era" and give us a supported racing game, with DLC of current drivers or setups per season, but the core game is built as a community, and iterated upon. A new game each year is just like map packs that divide player bases.
exDM69 9y ago
Ironically, watching iRacing (arguably a very realistic simulator) Pro series with F1 cars has all the same problems as real F1 racing has. Not a lot of overtaking (a bit more than the real thing, though) and lots of subtle things that aren't visible to the casual observer. Dirt Rally is a recent Codemasters game that is excellent, if you're into rallying. It's almost as good as Richard Burns Rally, and miles ahead of any other rally game/sim.
- frik 9y ago
  Formula 1 is okay. I am not sure if Liberty Media knows what treasure they bought, at the moment all their minor adjustments were only confusing. Sure, I wouldn't mind if they go back to V12 engines like in 1999. But the current season, and the last few years were fine. A lot better than the Schumacher and Vettel era, that was a boring time. Nowadays 3 teams have competitive cars, and three more teams (or so) drive for the podium and get there occasionally. Dirt Rally is not for me, it's like Project Cars unrealistic hard while not be very realistic, in contrary to Grandprix Legends and Assetto Corsa. Dirt 3+4 with this Ken Block shit or random generated boring generic tracks - no thanks. DiRT 2 is still the best in presentation (it looks better in 4K on PC than DiRT Rally, see YouTube videos), DiRT 2 has a nice single campaign, a nice menu, great tracks in 8 different regions, a great physics engine and car deformation and so much more - I don't get why their newer games all are a lot less fun to drive and in general build together so lackluster. Maybe they should take a break for a year, not releasing yearly updates to F1, DiRT (and DiRT). A new DiRT 2 and a new GRID 1 and a new DriveClub would be awesome - do it.

LoSboccacc 9y ago

well of course, chassis and engines are heavily regulated, it's closer in excitement to those mono-maker racing and as distant as f1 as one of those. heck, first season was mono maker and last just had custom powertrains. f1 used to be about the best maker, not the best driver. quite a philosophical difference there.

justin66 9y ago
> f1 used to be about the best maker, not the best driver. quite a philosophical difference there. In terms of prize money, F1 still cares a lot about the constructor contest. It's not something fans are conscious of, necessarily. For example, sixth place in the constructor contest was decided on the last race, and there were three teams that could have taken it. It doesn't sound like much but it's worth twelve million dollars...

thinkMOAR 9y ago

yaaay for something that covers the winter stop :)

crashdown 9y ago

MotoGP > F1