23 ms·

Pro drivers are competing with gamers after F1 and Nascar canceled races

550 points by LiweiZ 7y ago

notacoward 7y ago
My daughter immediately asked: who's winning? Darn good question, and I didn't find an answer in the article (though admittedly I skimmed a bit).
- tc313 7y ago
  The gamers are generally faster because the games are not perfect simulations of reality.
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    Or even if they were, the "real" drivers are trained to respond to a completely different set of sensations. The simulation can be perfect, but when you're sitting still, you don't feel things such as whether the simulated car is slipping at all (just an example, there are of course a thousand other things).
    - Scene_Cast2 7y ago
      Well, you feel it but in a different way. People spend a lot of money on Force Feedback wheels, with the fancier ones running into 4 figures. Through the wheel, you're expected to feel everything including tyre grip, slip, road conditions, etc.
      - Hamuko 7y ago
        >Through the wheel, you're expected to feel everything including tyre grip, slip, road conditions, etc. Well, there are other solutions for that as well, but that's beyond most mortals.
    - 6510 7y ago
      The not dying part seems limiting.
      - lucb1e 7y ago
        I was watching a part and yes. You're making a joke but this (plus that it wasn't for competition points; there was no point to winning) was clearly affecting the race and reduced my enjoyment because they just weren't always giving it their all.
    - p1necone 7y ago
      With force feedback wheels and pressure sensitive brake pedals you can get a feel for traction pretty well.
      - DingleDook101 7y ago
        Don't bother on HN. These bubble boys don't even know anything about vehicles.
  - p1necone 7y ago
    Sim accuracy could affect times either way (also some sims are pretty darn accurate). I suspect the biggest difference is the risk taking aspect. Sim drivers don't have to think about safety at all.
    - smileysteve 7y ago
      They had damage on low, but having watched it, considering the damage to the car is important to the finish.
    - dharmab 7y ago
      Except in iRacing, where even minor incidents are tracked across races and low safety rating has disqualify you from higher split
    - tc313 7y ago
      > Sim accuracy could affect times either way I meant that pro sim racers are generally faster than pro drivers at sim racing, not that the simulation times are faster than the real times.
  - Jaxkr 7y ago
    Professional drivers destroy in simulations like racing.com
    - JshWright 7y ago
      Professional drivers that also spend a lot of time sim racing, that is... The same is true in this series. Drivers like Max Verstappen and Lando Norris (among the best drivers in the world) so very well, but they also spend a lot of their free time playing these games. Other world class drivers (Hamilton, Vettel, etc), likely wouldn't do anywhere near as well. Obviously there is some overlap in the skills required, but at the end of the day, experience gaming is going to help more than more experience in a real car.
      - AmericanChopper 7y ago
        Hamilton’s done a few exhibition sim races, and generally does very well in them. The skills translate much better from track to sim than they do the other way around. If you watch the break and throttle pressure on these streams, it’s obvious that the professional racers are much better. They do things like trail breaking, and managing engine power a lot more competently and consistently than the sim enthusiasts. I’d imagine the main obstacle would be getting used to the different feedback sources. It’s also worth noting that most F1 drivers (I don’t really know about other motorsports) do at least some sim training. Kimi is the only current driver I know of who’s said he doesn’t use the sim.
        JshWright 7y ago
        Yeah, 100% agree that real experience translates to gaming experience better than gaming experience would translate to a real car. The sims that the teams run (especially the top teams) are significantly more advanced than a CodeMasters game and fancy steering wheel...
        AmericanChopper 7y ago
        Not sure what the teams use these days, as they seem to have become more secretive about it as the technology has gotten better. But I’ve seen some of the commercial products that have the enormous surround screen, moving chassis, and thing attached to the helmet to simulate force on the neck. I’d imagine the better off teams have facilities like that. The software would certainly be better than the CodeMaster game, but I can’t imagine it being that much better than iRacing (apart from being more customised to the current tracks/cars).
  - dharmab 7y ago
    A few of the real drivers are also highly ranked simmers as well. Max Verstappen (one of the best drivers in F1) is commonly seen in public iRacing races
    - ultra2d 7y ago
      Obligatory reference to him practicing an overtake [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y5-DZNjBOg&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y5-DZNjBOg&feature=youtu.be] before doing it in real-life. Also see https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Max-Verstappens-move-on-the-outside-of-Blanchimont-so-impressive https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Max-Verstappens-move-on-the-out... .
  - philjohn 7y ago
    Except first place was the Renault test and reserve driver ...
- josephpmay 7y ago
  In the case of the big Nascar race today, the winner (Hamlin) is a professional IRL racer who was discovered in the eSports world
- notatoad 7y ago
  earlier this week, there was an article about F1 drivers playing the codemasters F1 game, and the best pro driver came in 8th and seemed pretty happy to have done that well. the rationale is that driving is not just a challenge of operating the controls, but a physical challenge too. when you take away the physical aspect, the drivers lose not only the advantage of their physical training, but also an important input that they use for reactions.
  - saberdancer 7y ago
    You underestimate the pro drivers. The reason why they came in 8th or so is that they did not train for it. They were competing as rookies in a game that some of the sim races spent hundreds of hours in. They are bound to be much slower that "pro" simracers. The other sensory inputs are a factor, but most drivers adapt very fast to it. Give them enough seat time and you see them top of the charts, they are not pro real life drivers because they lack reflexes or understanding of racing dynamics.
- kbirkeland 7y ago
  In this case, it looks like a NASCAR spotter was the winner: https://kickinthetires.net/esports/spotter-josh-williams-upsets-the-pros-in-the-replacements-100/ https://kickinthetires.net/esports/spotter-josh-williams-ups...
- thsealienbstrds 7y ago
  GT Sport has a DLC-mode where you can do time trials vs. Lewis Hamilton's lap times. On a track where he clocked 1 minute 37 seconds, I was pretty shocked to find that the top 10 GT Sport players _all_ clocked lap times around 2 seconds faster than that.
  - saberdancer 7y ago
    Whats so shocking about it? Hamilton probably spent an hour or so for each of those laps, maybe less. Top 10 guys spend days or weeks doing it.
    - thsealienbstrds 7y ago
      Yeah it makes sense when you think about it, but the first time you see it you're like wtf.
W-Stool 7y ago
As someone who has raced formula race cars and who has been an enthusiastic participant in racing simulations since way back in the old days of Grand Prix Legends let me assure you - a simulated race car has almost nothing in common with the real experience other than your hands are turning a wheel and your feet push pedals. The sensations in a real race car are simply overwhelming - the noise, g forces, heat, and the lack of being able to see much other than straight ahead. Grand Prix Legends and iRacing were/are both tremendous fun and a real achievement - but they are nothing like the real thing.
- Igelau 7y ago
  Aw shucks. Here I thought it was going to be totally identical.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    Haha, right. That comment had literally zero information value. Obviously playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is nothing like ollying your skateboard let alone any of the other tricks. Thinly veiled attempt to use online comment forum as a personal blog.
    - Hamuko 7y ago
      >Obviously playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is nothing like ollying your skateboard let alone any of the other tricks. Simulator racing is pretty different from Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. There's so much shit that you can buy to get you closer to the real deal. Not really so much the case with Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. https://youtu.be/o1V8QEAdGNM https://youtu.be/o1V8QEAdGNM
- DingleDook101 7y ago
  Thanks captain obvious.
- braythwayt 7y ago
  Your comment speaks to whether someone who enjoys racing an actual car would enjoy the simulation. But in the context of sports-as-trillion-dollar-entertainment-businesses, what is interesting here is not whether simulated racing is the same as racing IRL for competitors, but the degree to which it is the same for spectators. Your comment still stands, though!
roamerz 7y ago
This was an invitational. I suspect without any supporting evidence that they tried to keep this to to Nascar participants # 1 for the familiarity it brings the fans (Go Jr!) but also because I doubt a ‘real’ racer would have won the race had the best of the online only competition been allowed to complete. And after watching the race it was sadly just as good as a real race. They have become quite boring the last few years.
- psh1295 7y ago
  At a recent sim competition in Miami ("Miami's Fastest Gamer") in which various real-world drivers competed with sim racers, the top three spots were real-world drivers -- Juan Pablo Montoya, Ed Jones, and Eduardo Barrichello. However, the best sim racers can definitely hold their own (eg James Baldwin came in fourth) and perhaps some of this boiled down to experience more than anything else. Although there's definitely a lot of differences, the skills between e-racing and real-world racing seem somewhat more compatible with each other than other e-sports. Reference: https://wtf1.com/post/juan-pablo-montoya-won-a-sim-racing-competition-in-miami/ https://wtf1.com/post/juan-pablo-montoya-won-a-sim-racing-co... https://www.essentiallysports.com/f1-news-juan-pablo-montoya-impresses-everyone-by-beating-many-youngsters-to-win-miami-e-sports-crown/ https://www.essentiallysports.com/f1-news-juan-pablo-montoya...
  - rozab 7y ago
    Its worth noting that real world drivers do put incredible amounts of hours into these consumer simulators. It's not like they're winning on their real-world experience alone.
lordnacho 7y ago
Soccer clubs are arranging matchups between pro players who now have no real matches to play. Could be a big thing for eSports. It's well known that a lot of pro soccer players spend a lot of time on consoles, to the point where they complain if they feel their virtual stats are too low.
elchief 7y ago
I beat Paul Tracy in a mountain bike race when I was a teenager. I can only imagine the thrill of beating a pro driver in a driving game
protomyth 7y ago
Well, NASCAR driver have been using computer games to practice for tracks for a while. https://expmag.com/2020/03/these-hyper-realistic-video-games-help-nascar-drivers-on-real-speedways/ https://expmag.com/2020/03/these-hyper-realistic-video-games... There is a video of Dale Jr and Martin Truex Jr talking about using a networked video game to test a strategy at one track.
- TomatoTomato 7y ago
  Dale Jr was well known (at least in the community) for playing/practicing heavily with the Sierra/Papyrus NASCAR Racing series even in the late 90s. AFAIK, he was one of the first big time names who attributed some of his success to the game.
- ehnto 7y ago
  BMW use a very expensive simulator to practice and test setup changes on their DTM car.
firekvz 7y ago
An online tournament of FIFA 20 (soccer game by EA Sports) just finished between the 20 teams from "la liga", spanish league.. Each team sent their best player and it was streamed at twitch.tv At some point I think it had over 50k viewers Heres the link of the channel of the one behind the idea: https://www.twitch.tv/ibai https://www.twitch.tv/ibai I think its worth to mention that all the profits of the stream and donations are going to charity It was casted by actual tv commentators and it had media coverage from major sport newspapers: https://www.marca.com/esports/fifa/2020/03/21/5e763cd522601d26358b4578.html https://www.marca.com/esports/fifa/2020/03/21/5e763cd522601d... https://esports.as.com/fifa/Torneo-FIFA-20-Ibai-LaLiga-Challenge_0_1338766120.html https://esports.as.com/fifa/Torneo-FIFA-20-Ibai-LaLiga-Chall...
BooneJS 7y ago
I enjoyed many hours of GPL before I had a family. Now that they’re a bit older... any steering wheel recommendations? ;)
- Fuzzwah 7y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/wiki/buyingguide https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/wiki/buyingguide
reilly3000 7y ago
I've been thinking about getting my sports-starved friends and family into watching CS:GO tournament play. It would have never crossed my mind before, but we live in a different world now and that is among the best esports has to offer.
- dron01 7y ago
  Wow! I understood it right? Your family is now able to watch CS:GO match? Can they last a full BO3?
- dmos62 7y ago
  It must have some pretty accessible commentary to engage with non-gamers.
jedberg 7y ago
This reminds me of the time they got bands to play Rock Band with their own songs. They put them on expert mode and some of them failed. The best was when the singer failed despite sounding identical to the track, since he was singing over himself. I wish I could find that video.
- sk0g 7y ago
  Rock Band is really nothing like playing the actual instruments though. Wonder how the guitar and bass players would fare in Rocksmith, however.
  - jamesgeck0 7y ago
    Only to an extent. Rock Band 3 added a "Pro Mode" which, on the highest difficulty, required playing the song note-for-note. The pro mode keyboard and guitar peripherals double as actual MIDI controllers.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    No but the funniest part was the lead singer "failing" when singing his own dang song.
- MrMember 7y ago
  I've always liked this short article written by Krist Novoselic, bassist for Nirvana, about trying to play the bass line to In Bloom in Rock Band 2. https://web.archive.org/web/20090122035037/http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2008/12/old_songs_on_a_new_screen.php https://web.archive.org/web/20090122035037/http://blogs.seat...
puredata 7y ago
Correction, it's not the only e-sport that translates well. Much smaller scale but FPV Drone racing is heavily practiced on simulators as well and skillsets translate to one another pretty well.
- dumbfoundded 7y ago
  Any sport involving any sort of physical contact is really difficult. The sports without are pretty easy to do while following CDC recommendations: poker, chess, golf, bowling, racing, biking. Sports like track & field are somewhat in the middle but they're just timed. It would be feasible to just have people do these alone in standardized conditions with a single moderator.
  - tempestn 7y ago
    Don't you think to be considered a "sport" there needs to be an element of physical aptitude? Poker and chess are both games of skill, but I wouldn't call them sports.
    - yreg 7y ago
      In a this ESPN article on Fabiano Caruana, they noted "In October 2018, Polar, a U.S.-based company that tracks heart rates, monitored chess players during a tournament and found that 21-year-old Russian grandmaster Mikhail Antipov had burned 560 calories in two hours of sitting and playing chess -- or roughly what Roger Federer would burn in an hour of singles tennis." https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmasters-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-lose-weight-playing-chess https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmaste... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#1873%E2%80%931945:_Birth_of_a_sport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#1873%E2%80%931945:_Birth...
      - lobotryas 7y ago
        That doesn’t address OP’s point at all.
    - 7y ago
johnnymonster 7y ago
I wish other athletes from other sports did the same!
unfocused 7y ago
You guys should check out "Le Mans: Racing is Everything (2017)" on Amazon prime. In it, Nissan has a driver that was a gamer, and converted him to a professional driver!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
I went in a big expensive F1 simulator that one of the big oil companies was showing off with at the tennis tournament in Qatar about 9 years ago. The guy to go in it before me was Rafael Nadal, so it wasn't a toy. Three screens, the entire machine moves to simulate acceleration and braking, the lot. It was less intimidating than a child's go-kart.
namelosw 7y ago
Wow, this is nice. I hope there are more events and platforms like this. Let's face it, most of the Olympic games are boring. If we can model things in the virtual world good enough, the Roman-style arena games would be more popular than the Olympic games.
- BooneJS 7y ago
  Winter Olympics are not better “virtually”
hammock 7y ago
These comments all say "x hours ago" but I swear I saw this thread and the exact same comments a few days ago. What twilight zone am I in? @dang
justlexi93 7y ago
Pretty curious how the "real drivers" are going to do for gaming driving. My family had a stock car growing up, and afaik the simulated races have almost nothing in common with the real experience. Yeah there might be a wheel to turn and even in fancy driving games feet pedals, but the other sensations in a real race car are simply overwhelming - the noise, g forces, heat, and the lack of being able to see much other than straight ahead. Will be pretty fun to watch how these drivers play out in the simulated races! imo they are probably going to get pwnd.
jpatte 7y ago
After reading the article I'm not entirely sure all these drivers did participate in the race using their own setups while staying home. Especially after this part: "[Pike] and Majors tried to fill up a field that reflected this big tent, letting in fellow NASCAR crew members, as well as some public relations and social media specialists." Can someone please tell me they did not turn a strong recommendation to avoid public events (which lead to the competition being cancelled) into an opportunity to gather tens of people at one place?
- leereeves 7y ago
  Metaphorically, "field" means the group of people competing, and "big tent" means an inclusive group. So there's a natural interpretation that doesn't mean they all gathered in one place.
  - jpatte 7y ago
    Ah thanks, I suspected something like that but wasn't sure how to read this.
deltron3030 7y ago
I'm suprised that they don't explore VR telepresence, where they could drive a real F1 car, or a miniature version while sitting in a simulator. What's hard to simulate in virtual simulators besides gforces are the tyre models, it's basically the main interface between car and environment.
- saberdancer 7y ago
  Teams are doing "engine in the loop" simulators where the sim sends throttle information to the the engine and feeds back the information about power response to the sim. I'm sure they could do more but it is expensive and of limited benefit.
- dmos62 7y ago
  Something along those lines might open up venues for new sports that aren't constrained by danger to crew. FPV drones are a version of that, though I was imagining something more grandiose.
djaychela 7y ago
It's definitely not circuit racing, but I had some experience in Rally driving for about 10 years. Did mostly gravel stuff, and did the UK WRC round 4 times in a self built car. Definitely low budget (and low talent!) stuff, but I think I have some experience and know how a car should handle on a loose surface. I've never found a rally driving game that handles like a real car. The physics always seems off - in Dirt Rally (the last one I tried seriously, and the one that everyone raved about), the car still seems to have the old physics of pivoting around the centre of the car, but whatever, it's miles off. The mini cooper in there is about the same power and weight as the Skoda Felicia that I drove, but it behaves nothing like it. I wish it did, as I no longer have the money or time to do anything like this, and if it felt anything like the real thing I'd have a fun hobby to take part it. But I always get hugely frustrated when I can't get anywhere near what I used to be able to do - place the car with precision on the road, get a good rhythm up and start to flow, and don't seem to be able to adjust to the way the cars handle in these games. I'm sure some of it is that you can't feel what's going on - through the seat, steering wheel and pedals - in the way that you can in the real thing, but I think there's more to it than that. Forza was pretty different - even playing it using just controllers showed that it was handling much like a car would on track (I've done some tarmac rallying as well, so I'm used to the limit on tarmac as well as gravel), but I'm not really interested in circuit racing, alas!
- attheicearcade 7y ago
  Richard Burns Rally is often touted as the closest to reality. I know Nikolai Gryazin (WRC2) plays fairly often - he actually used it to practice the Czech stage Semetin before going on to win it in real life: https://m.rally-base.com/2019/barum-czech-rally-zlin-2019/?ssId=5558 https://m.rally-base.com/2019/barum-czech-rally-zlin-2019/?s...
  - dmos62 7y ago
    Seconded. I enjoyed rally games at one point and found this one the most realistic (not that I actually did any rally). Also very hard. I had to use low-power cars only to be able to control them. There's something relaxing about driving a long track alone, even in a game.
dron01 7y ago
As a viewer I dont really feel (and defiantly do not see) the difference between how physically prepared e-sports or real life drivers are. I see track, cars, racing lines, overtakes. So I really enjoy watching e-racing. Only complain is that e-racing spectating camera work needs improvements. There is huge untapped potential in how e-racing is presented. I hope games will experiment more in this (spectating) direction.
- saberdancer 7y ago
  Camera work is a really underappreciated feature. Most sims do not have realistic looking cameras and this makes them look worse on TV. Usually camera is centered on a single car while in real life camera operator usually focuses on a group of cars (for example if there are two cars fighting, he is aiming between the cars, not at one of the cars). This is a feature I'd love for sims to better develop. It shouldn't be massively difficult to do so hopefully we get it sooner than later.
  - dmos62 7y ago
    Depends if we want an automatic solution, that is filming and directing automatically, or if we want to have the facilities for people to come in and control the cameras individually (and direct the resulting feed). The labour intensive approach is probably simple enough in terms of tech.
bitL 7y ago
Watching an e-sports race is as boring as watching a real F1 race. The interesting part of e-sports is actually playing it and not watching another bunch of dudes having fun. I think F1 is completely missing the point here.
- ricardobeat 7y ago
  Presumably people who enjoy watching real F1 will enjoy it too then? Pro racing is already a lot more interesting on TV than in person (besides the experience aspect).
edsancha 7y ago
I love the initiative, but I disagree with the paragraph saying: "That’s obviously not the case with other sports." Esports cyclist racing is growing and it translates almost 1:1 real-life skills.
- scrumbledober 7y ago
  That's hard to compare with but honestly difficult to even call that an e-sport. It's more like a remote sport?
raiyu 7y ago
I've tracked my car for 5 years, then started racing for the past 5 years, and moved up to pro racing two years ago competing in Pirelli World Challenge and MX-5 Cup. The simulators today are fantastic. The skills you learn in the simulator are 100% transferable to real life, and they happen without you having to think. I went 9 years without using a sim and then two years ago started using it. What gets transferred immediately are how you turn the steering wheel, catching the car in slides, and your gas pedal application while this is happening. People often forget that our bodies are complex operating systems and they are operating distinctly. There is plenty of documentation that shows mirroring for knowledge transfer works, and when you use a sim the habits that you develop are available subconciously to you. I'll give you two examples, the first is at my last race in Global MX-5 Cup at Laguna Seca. At the start of the race on the opening lap I was going through the corkscrew and got hit at the apex of the right hand corner. The car immediately went into a large slide because of how much steering input I had. I immediately started to correct with both steering input and gas pedal application. I had to correct the two slides to save the car. Immediately upon impact my body was doing what I needed to do, it was completely subconscious, so much so that the only conscious thought I had was, wowee fun, just like the simulator. There was no fear, despite the fact that the slide was massive and I was likely to hit the wall if I didn't catch it. The second happened a couple of months earlier. I was testing at Sonoma in my BMW m235ir for a Pirelli race. I was going out on old tires, that we were going to swap for fresh ones at the next session. Going through the double right hair pin, I applied a bit too much throttle, car started to slide, I was correcting, but under corrected and went back to full throttle too soon. The car spun, hit the wall, caused $10,000 in damage. The reason that happened was whenever I played the sim I always kept my foot in the gas. Just trying to save the car and have fun. Then I realized, that when I use the simulator I can't approach it from a "fun" mentality, because my brain is remembering what I'm doing. I have to treat it like real life, or I will do something stupid in the car. There are certainly differences between how a real car handles and a simulator handles, but the skills are the same and what you are really honing is the ability to control the car which is completely transferable. The brake points are very transferrable so it is a great way to push yourself in a simulated practice to get ready for a real race. Learning the track is obviously a benefit. iRacing has done a fantastic job at all of the above. Coming from a tech background I'm actually blown away by the realism and how much it teaches you transferrable skills. If you take one of the top 5 people in iRacing that's never been in a car before and put them into a race car they will be quick. This is because everything that will be happening they have already trained for. They won't have fear because everything will feel the same. As long as you don't have fear, and have the underlying skill, subconsciously you will do what you need to. The reverse isn't as true. Being quick in real life doesn't mean that you will be fast in the simulator. This is simply because it can't replicate the physics 100%. In iRacing it is very sensitive to understeer as you enter a corner, where in real life you can get the car to slide a bit more with some hard inputs into the steering wheel. But overall I would say it is a 90%+ effective tool, so much so, that anyone who isn't using one in pro racing today, is really at a disadvantage. The other thing that is critical to racing is practice. Any sport you take seriously the more time you spend doing it the better you will be. Unfortunately racing is extremely expensive, and so no one but the absolute pros can spend as much time as they would like in a race car. Being able to hop on the simulator, at any time, is amazing to help you continue your training and stay sharp during the offseason, or at times like this when all racing is pretty much cancelled. Anyone who is saying that this isn't transferrable is simply incorrect. They've already taken pure sim racers and put them behind the wheel of real race cars and those people did phenomenally well. There is more strain physically in a real car, g-forces, breathing, pulse will be higher, but these things are much easier to train for. There is a reduced amount of feedback certainly, one of the biggest issues for me is not getting a great feel for the brake pedal, but this is where muscle memory comes in, you keep doing laps and refining and your muscles will recognize what inputs you need even though the g-forces aren't there. Furthermore I tried VR iRacing for the first time and it was insane how amazing the VR is. It is completely life like, just missing the rush of air around me. I was at Road Atlanta doing laps and went through the last corner on my first lap. You come down a massive hill, hit the compression, and turn right into the fastest corner of the track where you also have walls on both sides that are very close. This is not the corner to fuck up. There is tremendous g-forces in this corner in real life. On the way down the hill I feel fine in VR. The second I hit the compression I get dizzy. This is because my eyes and everything around me is recognizing this part of the track and my body is tensing because it remembers real life. But my body isn't feeling the compression. So the difference between what my eyes see, my brain interrupts, and the lack of sensation in my body is making my brain go haywire and makes me dizzy. The first time I just thought it was odd. The second lap same exact thing happens. The third lap again. It happened every time I had to take the VR off because I started getting a headache. Anyway those are my real life stories. If there is anyone on here racing or tracking their car I highly recommend they get a great sim and install it in their house. It will be a lot cheaper than tracking and infinitely less expensive than racing and it will tremendously improve your skills. This is probably less relevant for top of the sport racers, but if you watch today's youngest F1 athletes all of them do sim racing and all of them are extremely quick. Specifically Lando Norris and Max Verstappen.

550 points by LiweiZ 7y ago

My daughter immediately asked: who's winning? Darn good question, and I didn't find an answer in the article (though admittedly I skimmed a bit).

tc313 7y ago
The gamers are generally faster because the games are not perfect simulations of reality.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  Or even if they were, the "real" drivers are trained to respond to a completely different set of sensations. The simulation can be perfect, but when you're sitting still, you don't feel things such as whether the simulated car is slipping at all (just an example, there are of course a thousand other things).
  - Scene_Cast2 7y ago
    Well, you feel it but in a different way. People spend a lot of money on Force Feedback wheels, with the fancier ones running into 4 figures. Through the wheel, you're expected to feel everything including tyre grip, slip, road conditions, etc.
    - Hamuko 7y ago
      >Through the wheel, you're expected to feel everything including tyre grip, slip, road conditions, etc. Well, there are other solutions for that as well, but that's beyond most mortals.
  - 6510 7y ago
    The not dying part seems limiting.
    - lucb1e 7y ago
      I was watching a part and yes. You're making a joke but this (plus that it wasn't for competition points; there was no point to winning) was clearly affecting the race and reduced my enjoyment because they just weren't always giving it their all.
  - p1necone 7y ago
    With force feedback wheels and pressure sensitive brake pedals you can get a feel for traction pretty well.
    - DingleDook101 7y ago
      Don't bother on HN. These bubble boys don't even know anything about vehicles.
- p1necone 7y ago
  Sim accuracy could affect times either way (also some sims are pretty darn accurate). I suspect the biggest difference is the risk taking aspect. Sim drivers don't have to think about safety at all.
  - smileysteve 7y ago
    They had damage on low, but having watched it, considering the damage to the car is important to the finish.
  - dharmab 7y ago
    Except in iRacing, where even minor incidents are tracked across races and low safety rating has disqualify you from higher split
  - tc313 7y ago
    > Sim accuracy could affect times either way I meant that pro sim racers are generally faster than pro drivers at sim racing, not that the simulation times are faster than the real times.
- Jaxkr 7y ago
  Professional drivers destroy in simulations like racing.com
  - JshWright 7y ago
    Professional drivers that also spend a lot of time sim racing, that is... The same is true in this series. Drivers like Max Verstappen and Lando Norris (among the best drivers in the world) so very well, but they also spend a lot of their free time playing these games. Other world class drivers (Hamilton, Vettel, etc), likely wouldn't do anywhere near as well. Obviously there is some overlap in the skills required, but at the end of the day, experience gaming is going to help more than more experience in a real car.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      Hamilton’s done a few exhibition sim races, and generally does very well in them. The skills translate much better from track to sim than they do the other way around. If you watch the break and throttle pressure on these streams, it’s obvious that the professional racers are much better. They do things like trail breaking, and managing engine power a lot more competently and consistently than the sim enthusiasts. I’d imagine the main obstacle would be getting used to the different feedback sources. It’s also worth noting that most F1 drivers (I don’t really know about other motorsports) do at least some sim training. Kimi is the only current driver I know of who’s said he doesn’t use the sim.
      - JshWright 7y ago
        Yeah, 100% agree that real experience translates to gaming experience better than gaming experience would translate to a real car. The sims that the teams run (especially the top teams) are significantly more advanced than a CodeMasters game and fancy steering wheel...
        AmericanChopper 7y ago
        Not sure what the teams use these days, as they seem to have become more secretive about it as the technology has gotten better. But I’ve seen some of the commercial products that have the enormous surround screen, moving chassis, and thing attached to the helmet to simulate force on the neck. I’d imagine the better off teams have facilities like that. The software would certainly be better than the CodeMaster game, but I can’t imagine it being that much better than iRacing (apart from being more customised to the current tracks/cars).
- dharmab 7y ago
  A few of the real drivers are also highly ranked simmers as well. Max Verstappen (one of the best drivers in F1) is commonly seen in public iRacing races
  - ultra2d 7y ago
    Obligatory reference to him practicing an overtake [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y5-DZNjBOg&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y5-DZNjBOg&feature=youtu.be] before doing it in real-life. Also see https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Max-Verstappens-move-on-the-outside-of-Blanchimont-so-impressive https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Max-Verstappens-move-on-the-out... .
- philjohn 7y ago
  Except first place was the Renault test and reserve driver ...
josephpmay 7y ago
In the case of the big Nascar race today, the winner (Hamlin) is a professional IRL racer who was discovered in the eSports world
notatoad 7y ago
earlier this week, there was an article about F1 drivers playing the codemasters F1 game, and the best pro driver came in 8th and seemed pretty happy to have done that well. the rationale is that driving is not just a challenge of operating the controls, but a physical challenge too. when you take away the physical aspect, the drivers lose not only the advantage of their physical training, but also an important input that they use for reactions.
- saberdancer 7y ago
  You underestimate the pro drivers. The reason why they came in 8th or so is that they did not train for it. They were competing as rookies in a game that some of the sim races spent hundreds of hours in. They are bound to be much slower that "pro" simracers. The other sensory inputs are a factor, but most drivers adapt very fast to it. Give them enough seat time and you see them top of the charts, they are not pro real life drivers because they lack reflexes or understanding of racing dynamics.
kbirkeland 7y ago
In this case, it looks like a NASCAR spotter was the winner: https://kickinthetires.net/esports/spotter-josh-williams-upsets-the-pros-in-the-replacements-100/ https://kickinthetires.net/esports/spotter-josh-williams-ups...
thsealienbstrds 7y ago
GT Sport has a DLC-mode where you can do time trials vs. Lewis Hamilton's lap times. On a track where he clocked 1 minute 37 seconds, I was pretty shocked to find that the top 10 GT Sport players _all_ clocked lap times around 2 seconds faster than that.
- saberdancer 7y ago
  Whats so shocking about it? Hamilton probably spent an hour or so for each of those laps, maybe less. Top 10 guys spend days or weeks doing it.
  - thsealienbstrds 7y ago
    Yeah it makes sense when you think about it, but the first time you see it you're like wtf.

W-Stool 7y ago

As someone who has raced formula race cars and who has been an enthusiastic participant in racing simulations since way back in the old days of Grand Prix Legends let me assure you - a simulated race car has almost nothing in common with the real experience other than your hands are turning a wheel and your feet push pedals. The sensations in a real race car are simply overwhelming - the noise, g forces, heat, and the lack of being able to see much other than straight ahead. Grand Prix Legends and iRacing were/are both tremendous fun and a real achievement - but they are nothing like the real thing.

Igelau 7y ago
Aw shucks. Here I thought it was going to be totally identical.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Haha, right. That comment had literally zero information value. Obviously playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is nothing like ollying your skateboard let alone any of the other tricks. Thinly veiled attempt to use online comment forum as a personal blog.
  - Hamuko 7y ago
    >Obviously playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is nothing like ollying your skateboard let alone any of the other tricks. Simulator racing is pretty different from Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. There's so much shit that you can buy to get you closer to the real deal. Not really so much the case with Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. https://youtu.be/o1V8QEAdGNM https://youtu.be/o1V8QEAdGNM
DingleDook101 7y ago
Thanks captain obvious.
braythwayt 7y ago
Your comment speaks to whether someone who enjoys racing an actual car would enjoy the simulation. But in the context of sports-as-trillion-dollar-entertainment-businesses, what is interesting here is not whether simulated racing is the same as racing IRL for competitors, but the degree to which it is the same for spectators. Your comment still stands, though!

roamerz 7y ago

This was an invitational. I suspect without any supporting evidence that they tried to keep this to to Nascar participants # 1 for the familiarity it brings the fans (Go Jr!) but also because I doubt a ‘real’ racer would have won the race had the best of the online only competition been allowed to complete. And after watching the race it was sadly just as good as a real race. They have become quite boring the last few years.

psh1295 7y ago
At a recent sim competition in Miami ("Miami's Fastest Gamer") in which various real-world drivers competed with sim racers, the top three spots were real-world drivers -- Juan Pablo Montoya, Ed Jones, and Eduardo Barrichello. However, the best sim racers can definitely hold their own (eg James Baldwin came in fourth) and perhaps some of this boiled down to experience more than anything else. Although there's definitely a lot of differences, the skills between e-racing and real-world racing seem somewhat more compatible with each other than other e-sports. Reference: https://wtf1.com/post/juan-pablo-montoya-won-a-sim-racing-competition-in-miami/ https://wtf1.com/post/juan-pablo-montoya-won-a-sim-racing-co... https://www.essentiallysports.com/f1-news-juan-pablo-montoya-impresses-everyone-by-beating-many-youngsters-to-win-miami-e-sports-crown/ https://www.essentiallysports.com/f1-news-juan-pablo-montoya...
- rozab 7y ago
  Its worth noting that real world drivers do put incredible amounts of hours into these consumer simulators. It's not like they're winning on their real-world experience alone.

lordnacho 7y ago

Soccer clubs are arranging matchups between pro players who now have no real matches to play. Could be a big thing for eSports. It's well known that a lot of pro soccer players spend a lot of time on consoles, to the point where they complain if they feel their virtual stats are too low.

elchief 7y ago

I beat Paul Tracy in a mountain bike race when I was a teenager. I can only imagine the thrill of beating a pro driver in a driving game

protomyth 7y ago

Well, NASCAR driver have been using computer games to practice for tracks for a while. https://expmag.com/2020/03/these-hyper-realistic-video-games-help-nascar-drivers-on-real-speedways/ https://expmag.com/2020/03/these-hyper-realistic-video-games... There is a video of Dale Jr and Martin Truex Jr talking about using a networked video game to test a strategy at one track.

TomatoTomato 7y ago
Dale Jr was well known (at least in the community) for playing/practicing heavily with the Sierra/Papyrus NASCAR Racing series even in the late 90s. AFAIK, he was one of the first big time names who attributed some of his success to the game.
ehnto 7y ago
BMW use a very expensive simulator to practice and test setup changes on their DTM car.

firekvz 7y ago

An online tournament of FIFA 20 (soccer game by EA Sports) just finished between the 20 teams from "la liga", spanish league.. Each team sent their best player and it was streamed at twitch.tv At some point I think it had over 50k viewers Heres the link of the channel of the one behind the idea: https://www.twitch.tv/ibai https://www.twitch.tv/ibai I think its worth to mention that all the profits of the stream and donations are going to charity It was casted by actual tv commentators and it had media coverage from major sport newspapers: https://www.marca.com/esports/fifa/2020/03/21/5e763cd522601d26358b4578.html https://www.marca.com/esports/fifa/2020/03/21/5e763cd522601d... https://esports.as.com/fifa/Torneo-FIFA-20-Ibai-LaLiga-Challenge_0_1338766120.html https://esports.as.com/fifa/Torneo-FIFA-20-Ibai-LaLiga-Chall...

BooneJS 7y ago

I enjoyed many hours of GPL before I had a family. Now that they’re a bit older... any steering wheel recommendations? ;)

Fuzzwah 7y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/wiki/buyingguide https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/wiki/buyingguide

reilly3000 7y ago

I've been thinking about getting my sports-starved friends and family into watching CS:GO tournament play. It would have never crossed my mind before, but we live in a different world now and that is among the best esports has to offer.

dron01 7y ago
Wow! I understood it right? Your family is now able to watch CS:GO match? Can they last a full BO3?
dmos62 7y ago
It must have some pretty accessible commentary to engage with non-gamers.

jedberg 7y ago

This reminds me of the time they got bands to play Rock Band with their own songs. They put them on expert mode and some of them failed. The best was when the singer failed despite sounding identical to the track, since he was singing over himself. I wish I could find that video.

sk0g 7y ago
Rock Band is really nothing like playing the actual instruments though. Wonder how the guitar and bass players would fare in Rocksmith, however.
- jamesgeck0 7y ago
  Only to an extent. Rock Band 3 added a "Pro Mode" which, on the highest difficulty, required playing the song note-for-note. The pro mode keyboard and guitar peripherals double as actual MIDI controllers.
- jedberg 7y ago
  No but the funniest part was the lead singer "failing" when singing his own dang song.
MrMember 7y ago
I've always liked this short article written by Krist Novoselic, bassist for Nirvana, about trying to play the bass line to In Bloom in Rock Band 2. https://web.archive.org/web/20090122035037/http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2008/12/old_songs_on_a_new_screen.php https://web.archive.org/web/20090122035037/http://blogs.seat...

puredata 7y ago

Correction, it's not the only e-sport that translates well. Much smaller scale but FPV Drone racing is heavily practiced on simulators as well and skillsets translate to one another pretty well.

dumbfoundded 7y ago
Any sport involving any sort of physical contact is really difficult. The sports without are pretty easy to do while following CDC recommendations: poker, chess, golf, bowling, racing, biking. Sports like track & field are somewhat in the middle but they're just timed. It would be feasible to just have people do these alone in standardized conditions with a single moderator.
- tempestn 7y ago
  Don't you think to be considered a "sport" there needs to be an element of physical aptitude? Poker and chess are both games of skill, but I wouldn't call them sports.
  - yreg 7y ago
    In a this ESPN article on Fabiano Caruana, they noted "In October 2018, Polar, a U.S.-based company that tracks heart rates, monitored chess players during a tournament and found that 21-year-old Russian grandmaster Mikhail Antipov had burned 560 calories in two hours of sitting and playing chess -- or roughly what Roger Federer would burn in an hour of singles tennis." https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmasters-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-lose-weight-playing-chess https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmaste... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#1873%E2%80%931945:_Birth_of_a_sport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#1873%E2%80%931945:_Birth...
    - lobotryas 7y ago
      That doesn’t address OP’s point at all.
  - 7y ago

johnnymonster 7y ago

I wish other athletes from other sports did the same!

unfocused 7y ago

You guys should check out "Le Mans: Racing is Everything (2017)" on Amazon prime. In it, Nissan has a driver that was a gamer, and converted him to a professional driver!

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

yakshaving_jgt 7y ago

I went in a big expensive F1 simulator that one of the big oil companies was showing off with at the tennis tournament in Qatar about 9 years ago. The guy to go in it before me was Rafael Nadal, so it wasn't a toy. Three screens, the entire machine moves to simulate acceleration and braking, the lot. It was less intimidating than a child's go-kart.

namelosw 7y ago

Wow, this is nice. I hope there are more events and platforms like this. Let's face it, most of the Olympic games are boring. If we can model things in the virtual world good enough, the Roman-style arena games would be more popular than the Olympic games.

BooneJS 7y ago
Winter Olympics are not better “virtually”

hammock 7y ago

These comments all say "x hours ago" but I swear I saw this thread and the exact same comments a few days ago. What twilight zone am I in? @dang

justlexi93 7y ago

Pretty curious how the "real drivers" are going to do for gaming driving. My family had a stock car growing up, and afaik the simulated races have almost nothing in common with the real experience. Yeah there might be a wheel to turn and even in fancy driving games feet pedals, but the other sensations in a real race car are simply overwhelming - the noise, g forces, heat, and the lack of being able to see much other than straight ahead. Will be pretty fun to watch how these drivers play out in the simulated races! imo they are probably going to get pwnd.

jpatte 7y ago

After reading the article I'm not entirely sure all these drivers did participate in the race using their own setups while staying home. Especially after this part: "[Pike] and Majors tried to fill up a field that reflected this big tent, letting in fellow NASCAR crew members, as well as some public relations and social media specialists." Can someone please tell me they did not turn a strong recommendation to avoid public events (which lead to the competition being cancelled) into an opportunity to gather tens of people at one place?

leereeves 7y ago
Metaphorically, "field" means the group of people competing, and "big tent" means an inclusive group. So there's a natural interpretation that doesn't mean they all gathered in one place.
- jpatte 7y ago
  Ah thanks, I suspected something like that but wasn't sure how to read this.

deltron3030 7y ago

I'm suprised that they don't explore VR telepresence, where they could drive a real F1 car, or a miniature version while sitting in a simulator. What's hard to simulate in virtual simulators besides gforces are the tyre models, it's basically the main interface between car and environment.

saberdancer 7y ago
Teams are doing "engine in the loop" simulators where the sim sends throttle information to the the engine and feeds back the information about power response to the sim. I'm sure they could do more but it is expensive and of limited benefit.
dmos62 7y ago
Something along those lines might open up venues for new sports that aren't constrained by danger to crew. FPV drones are a version of that, though I was imagining something more grandiose.

djaychela 7y ago

It's definitely not circuit racing, but I had some experience in Rally driving for about 10 years. Did mostly gravel stuff, and did the UK WRC round 4 times in a self built car. Definitely low budget (and low talent!) stuff, but I think I have some experience and know how a car should handle on a loose surface. I've never found a rally driving game that handles like a real car. The physics always seems off - in Dirt Rally (the last one I tried seriously, and the one that everyone raved about), the car still seems to have the old physics of pivoting around the centre of the car, but whatever, it's miles off. The mini cooper in there is about the same power and weight as the Skoda Felicia that I drove, but it behaves nothing like it. I wish it did, as I no longer have the money or time to do anything like this, and if it felt anything like the real thing I'd have a fun hobby to take part it. But I always get hugely frustrated when I can't get anywhere near what I used to be able to do - place the car with precision on the road, get a good rhythm up and start to flow, and don't seem to be able to adjust to the way the cars handle in these games. I'm sure some of it is that you can't feel what's going on - through the seat, steering wheel and pedals - in the way that you can in the real thing, but I think there's more to it than that. Forza was pretty different - even playing it using just controllers showed that it was handling much like a car would on track (I've done some tarmac rallying as well, so I'm used to the limit on tarmac as well as gravel), but I'm not really interested in circuit racing, alas!

attheicearcade 7y ago
Richard Burns Rally is often touted as the closest to reality. I know Nikolai Gryazin (WRC2) plays fairly often - he actually used it to practice the Czech stage Semetin before going on to win it in real life: https://m.rally-base.com/2019/barum-czech-rally-zlin-2019/?ssId=5558 https://m.rally-base.com/2019/barum-czech-rally-zlin-2019/?s...
- dmos62 7y ago
  Seconded. I enjoyed rally games at one point and found this one the most realistic (not that I actually did any rally). Also very hard. I had to use low-power cars only to be able to control them. There's something relaxing about driving a long track alone, even in a game.

dron01 7y ago

As a viewer I dont really feel (and defiantly do not see) the difference between how physically prepared e-sports or real life drivers are. I see track, cars, racing lines, overtakes. So I really enjoy watching e-racing. Only complain is that e-racing spectating camera work needs improvements. There is huge untapped potential in how e-racing is presented. I hope games will experiment more in this (spectating) direction.

saberdancer 7y ago
Camera work is a really underappreciated feature. Most sims do not have realistic looking cameras and this makes them look worse on TV. Usually camera is centered on a single car while in real life camera operator usually focuses on a group of cars (for example if there are two cars fighting, he is aiming between the cars, not at one of the cars). This is a feature I'd love for sims to better develop. It shouldn't be massively difficult to do so hopefully we get it sooner than later.
- dmos62 7y ago
  Depends if we want an automatic solution, that is filming and directing automatically, or if we want to have the facilities for people to come in and control the cameras individually (and direct the resulting feed). The labour intensive approach is probably simple enough in terms of tech.

bitL 7y ago

Watching an e-sports race is as boring as watching a real F1 race. The interesting part of e-sports is actually playing it and not watching another bunch of dudes having fun. I think F1 is completely missing the point here.

ricardobeat 7y ago
Presumably people who enjoy watching real F1 will enjoy it too then? Pro racing is already a lot more interesting on TV than in person (besides the experience aspect).

edsancha 7y ago

I love the initiative, but I disagree with the paragraph saying: "That’s obviously not the case with other sports." Esports cyclist racing is growing and it translates almost 1:1 real-life skills.

scrumbledober 7y ago
That's hard to compare with but honestly difficult to even call that an e-sport. It's more like a remote sport?

raiyu 7y ago

I've tracked my car for 5 years, then started racing for the past 5 years, and moved up to pro racing two years ago competing in Pirelli World Challenge and MX-5 Cup. The simulators today are fantastic. The skills you learn in the simulator are 100% transferable to real life, and they happen without you having to think. I went 9 years without using a sim and then two years ago started using it. What gets transferred immediately are how you turn the steering wheel, catching the car in slides, and your gas pedal application while this is happening. People often forget that our bodies are complex operating systems and they are operating distinctly. There is plenty of documentation that shows mirroring for knowledge transfer works, and when you use a sim the habits that you develop are available subconciously to you. I'll give you two examples, the first is at my last race in Global MX-5 Cup at Laguna Seca. At the start of the race on the opening lap I was going through the corkscrew and got hit at the apex of the right hand corner. The car immediately went into a large slide because of how much steering input I had. I immediately started to correct with both steering input and gas pedal application. I had to correct the two slides to save the car. Immediately upon impact my body was doing what I needed to do, it was completely subconscious, so much so that the only conscious thought I had was, wowee fun, just like the simulator. There was no fear, despite the fact that the slide was massive and I was likely to hit the wall if I didn't catch it. The second happened a couple of months earlier. I was testing at Sonoma in my BMW m235ir for a Pirelli race. I was going out on old tires, that we were going to swap for fresh ones at the next session. Going through the double right hair pin, I applied a bit too much throttle, car started to slide, I was correcting, but under corrected and went back to full throttle too soon. The car spun, hit the wall, caused $10,000 in damage. The reason that happened was whenever I played the sim I always kept my foot in the gas. Just trying to save the car and have fun. Then I realized, that when I use the simulator I can't approach it from a "fun" mentality, because my brain is remembering what I'm doing. I have to treat it like real life, or I will do something stupid in the car. There are certainly differences between how a real car handles and a simulator handles, but the skills are the same and what you are really honing is the ability to control the car which is completely transferable. The brake points are very transferrable so it is a great way to push yourself in a simulated practice to get ready for a real race. Learning the track is obviously a benefit. iRacing has done a fantastic job at all of the above. Coming from a tech background I'm actually blown away by the realism and how much it teaches you transferrable skills. If you take one of the top 5 people in iRacing that's never been in a car before and put them into a race car they will be quick. This is because everything that will be happening they have already trained for. They won't have fear because everything will feel the same. As long as you don't have fear, and have the underlying skill, subconsciously you will do what you need to. The reverse isn't as true. Being quick in real life doesn't mean that you will be fast in the simulator. This is simply because it can't replicate the physics 100%. In iRacing it is very sensitive to understeer as you enter a corner, where in real life you can get the car to slide a bit more with some hard inputs into the steering wheel. But overall I would say it is a 90%+ effective tool, so much so, that anyone who isn't using one in pro racing today, is really at a disadvantage. The other thing that is critical to racing is practice. Any sport you take seriously the more time you spend doing it the better you will be. Unfortunately racing is extremely expensive, and so no one but the absolute pros can spend as much time as they would like in a race car. Being able to hop on the simulator, at any time, is amazing to help you continue your training and stay sharp during the offseason, or at times like this when all racing is pretty much cancelled. Anyone who is saying that this isn't transferrable is simply incorrect. They've already taken pure sim racers and put them behind the wheel of real race cars and those people did phenomenally well. There is more strain physically in a real car, g-forces, breathing, pulse will be higher, but these things are much easier to train for. There is a reduced amount of feedback certainly, one of the biggest issues for me is not getting a great feel for the brake pedal, but this is where muscle memory comes in, you keep doing laps and refining and your muscles will recognize what inputs you need even though the g-forces aren't there. Furthermore I tried VR iRacing for the first time and it was insane how amazing the VR is. It is completely life like, just missing the rush of air around me. I was at Road Atlanta doing laps and went through the last corner on my first lap. You come down a massive hill, hit the compression, and turn right into the fastest corner of the track where you also have walls on both sides that are very close. This is not the corner to fuck up. There is tremendous g-forces in this corner in real life. On the way down the hill I feel fine in VR. The second I hit the compression I get dizzy. This is because my eyes and everything around me is recognizing this part of the track and my body is tensing because it remembers real life. But my body isn't feeling the compression. So the difference between what my eyes see, my brain interrupts, and the lack of sensation in my body is making my brain go haywire and makes me dizzy. The first time I just thought it was odd. The second lap same exact thing happens. The third lap again. It happened every time I had to take the VR off because I started getting a headache. Anyway those are my real life stories. If there is anyone on here racing or tracking their car I highly recommend they get a great sim and install it in their house. It will be a lot cheaper than tracking and infinitely less expensive than racing and it will tremendously improve your skills. This is probably less relevant for top of the sport racers, but if you watch today's youngest F1 athletes all of them do sim racing and all of them are extremely quick. Specifically Lando Norris and Max Verstappen.