Race and Vehicle Simulations

In the world of simulations, and perhaps none more so that of race simulations, the word “hardcore” gets bandied around a lot. With each new title announced or released, almost as soon as news has broken, people are categorising the title along the spectrum of how hardcore it is or, as if often the case, is not.

With racing simulations, we have titles like Grid and Dirt firmly occupying the “arcade” end of the spectrum (I won’t go as far as the likes of Mario Kart; I think you’ll understand I am talking of a spectrum within a spectrum here). In the middle ground, we have the likes of the Gran Turismo and Forza series which are increasingly labelled under the now-popular “sim-cade” title. And of course, at the top of the spectrum we have the likes of rFactor, the Game Stock Car series and iRacing.

Within these sub-genres, there is also a spectrum; Forza is, by many, regarded as a more serious simulation than GT, and netKar Pro, especially in original trim, was undoubtedly up there as the most hardcore of the hardcore racing sim titles. Whilst there are some empirical measurements, for want of a better word, of just how realistic a title is (in-sim performance vs real world; track accuracy; level of detail of the modelling of various aspects and so on), this categorisation is largely a subjective matter, and you probably don’t need me to tell you that much debate ensues over just what the pecking order is.

Some titles seem particularly prone to such debate. Live For Speed had a devoted user-base that other titles could only dream of, and there is no doubt that for many LFS really was the sim of all sims. But despite all the clever and fancy physics modelling going on within the title (it was to my mind the first sim to get a proper handle on tyre flex, for example), many saw it simply as “arcade”. Perhaps if the conversation were taking place now rather than 5 years ago it would be “sim-cade”. Who knows? Quite why there was such difference of opinion remains something I am not too sure about. More recently, it is unlikely to have escaped the attention of sim racing fans that SMS’s Project CARS seems to have picked up the mantle of most-debated-on-the-sim-scale. Just recently things really seem to have escalated in this area, but that’s another story for another day.

Whilst some would argue heatedly over whether title X is a sim, sim-cade or even arcade, there are some titles that generally seem to be above such debate, at least in wider circles. A good case in point is iRacing, a title which has, it’s probably fair to say, held the title of king of the sims for a good chunk of the time that has passed since its release. Now I’m not getting confused here; let’s make it clear that not everyone likes it. For some it’s the price of content and monthly subscription rates, for others it’s the race structure and somewhat hit-and-miss appeals system. But whilst these are factors that do not really affect iRacing’s claim to being classed among the upper end of the sim spectrum, there are also those who take issue with elements of the physical simulation. I’ve seen the term “IceRacing” used numerous times for example, with a number of people clearly not happy with the perceived level of grip on offer from Kaemmer’s black round things. There’s also the infamous (and perhaps somewhat overblown) “two-footed-magic-save-hack”. Whilst there is real-world theory to support it as a physical phenomenon, the ensuing discussion over on the iRacing forums led to the discovery of an undeniable physics flaw relating to the application of torque on the chassis by the drive train. Do these things mean it isn’t a sim? To nearly all simmers, no. It simply means it isn’t perfect. There are flaws. There are errors. There are quirks. But it is still very much a sim.

When we talk about arcade, sim-cade or hardcore simulation when describing the likes of Grid, iRacing, Project CARS and the rest, most of the conversation seems to centre on the interaction between driver, car and track. It’s about whether or not input X in car Y in situation Z has an output that matches our expectations of real life. For some it’s as simple as “Can you do doughnuts?”, while others take a more astute approach: “Does increasing the throttle from 30% to 75% at 2500rpm in 3rd gear exiting an off-camber corner cause the rear end to push out the correct amount?”. Either way, we have expectations (justified to varying degrees by our individual experience, knowledge and understanding) of what should happen, and we judge what actually happens against those expectations. For many years people have stated the old mantra “As simulations become more realistic, they will converge to being the same product”. Whilst there is an obvious logic to this statement, I would contend it is undeniable that the current crop of sims are some way from this singularity. Take a similar car out in iRacing, netKar Pro or rFactor, and were it possible to transplant their physics engines into a common interface, I dare say anyone accustomed to these titles will likely be able to tell which one they are playing. All sims are flawed, all have issues, and all are different. But despite the differences, and whilst one might have their own pecking order for iRacing, nKP and rF, I doubt many would classify one or the other as anything other than a racing sim. But something recently has caused me to ponder this.

In choosing the title for this website, we wanted to make it clear that we were interested in car sims (like those mentioned so far in this piece) as they are our bread and butter. But also, as can be seen in Bob’s piece on SCS’s Scania Truck Simulation, we have interests that spread beyond these confines. The car sims will undoubtedly make up the majority of our content, but every now and then we might like to spread our wings a little. You’ll probably have noticed that the allusion to car sims within our title is the “Race simulations” part. Not “car sims”, but “race sims”. Why? I’m not quite sure to be honest, but all of the car simulations mentioned above simulate cars on tracks, so why not? Isn’t it just semantics? Maybe, but maybe not.

What has caused to me question of lot of the titles we call “racing simulations” is a title which I am sure many would not. The title in question is iGP Manager. For those who aren’t familiar with iGP, in a nutshell it is an F1 management title. You pick suppliers, sponsors, drivers, staff. You develop your car, practice for a race and determine car setup for your drivers, define strategy ahead of qualifying and the race, and then you leave your drivers to do their best come race day. During the races you can leave them to it, or you can watch and monitor certain statistics such as live timing, tyre temperatures and fuel use, and in your managerial role you can take on race engineer duties and alter strategy on the fly. In a sense it’s an incredibly simple title. Whilst there are a number of decisions to be made outside of the races, and the number of possible permutations will have a large number of zeros on the end, the strategy for success is a largely linear one: get the best drivers you can afford and attract to your team, secure as much sponsorship income as possible, and develop your car as best as you can. This is glossing over things, but I hope you get the idea.

Could traditional racing simulators learn something from iGP?

Race strategies are also pretty simple. Or so I thought. On the surface, choosing the strategy is a fairly straightforward process: soft tyres are quicker than hard tyres but don’t last as long; pit stops obviously take time and so you want as few as possible. You want to strike the optimum balance between pace on the track and time in the pits. That’s about it. Yet choosing a strategy can be agonising. Sometimes that strategy you’ve spent so long tweaking turns out to be a real dud as you watch your nearest competitor head off into the distance. Other times the roles are reversed, and that winning strategy you settled on seems so obvious that you can’t believe that your competitor messed it up so badly. Perhaps most galling of all is when you think you’re in contention, running right up at the sharp end, only to see your competitor pit a lap earlier or later and stealing a march on you. Sometimes when you fuck up it’s better to really fuck up. Actually, no, scrap that. Most galling is when you are running in a strong position and run out of fuel in the pit lane on the final lap (unlucky, Jon).

So if it is so simple, why is it so difficult to get right? In short: it’s so difficult to get right because it isn’t so simple. The relative durability and pace of the different tyre compounds are not fixed, easily predictable parameters. Instead, they are complex variables interdependent on one another and a whole host of other parameters. The first thing to consider is the compound impact of the abrasiveness of the track surface and effects of the circuit layout on the tyres (conveniently supplied as a “Tyre wear” rating for each track in the circuit information). The next key factor is temperature, which is determined from real-world data (Jon looked out of the window ahead of last season’s round at Silverstone, whilst league member Suresh handily provided us with a weather report from outside of his door in Singapore prior to qualifying). This is updated by the minute, so if the clouds roll over on a sunny day you better hope the drop in temperature doesn’t adversely affect your setup too much. Conversely, if you did your setup work in cooler temperatures, you can find yourself nervously watching the ambient temperature hoping the sun doesn’t appear.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. The harder tyres take longer to warm up than the soft variants, so time lost at pit stops isn’t restricted to time spent in the pit lane. Whilst with a bit of forethought this can be taken into account and the relative pace of the different compounds can be guesstimated over the length of a stint, what is nigh on impossible to account for is what your competitors will do. Whilst the time lost getting a set of the harder tyres up to optimum operating temperature might be offset by time gained from ultimately running longer in the stint, if that dropped time sees you lose track position, crucial ground can be lost trying to regain it. Similarly, a set of softs might see you gain an initial advantage, but if you’re stuck behind someone on cold hard tyres and you’re not past by the time they are up to pace, that advantage has diminished if not turned to disadvantage. With a number of laps until your next stop, knowing a competitor ahead is pitting imminently, should you tell your driver to push to gain a short term advantage on the overlap in the knowledge that in doing so you are sacrificing longer term pace by pushing the tyres too hard? Should you sacrifice some overall race pace to try and get the jump in qualifying? Combining the changing weather with the fact the track changes over the course of a race, the length and order of the individual stints takes on even greater importance.

Even on a circuit where tyre choice is a no-brainer, strategy is anything but. Monaco is a prime example: the low speeds, relatively cool temperatures, and tight and twisty layout make soft tyres the only choice. Doing the calculations, a 3-stop strategy is the way to go. Easy. Except again, it isn’t. In our league’s last visit to the land of extravagance and £20 pints of beer, one of our league front-runners made a seemingly bad strategy call. He opted for a sub-optimum 4-stop strategy, and at half race distance was languishing down in the middle of the pack a long way from the sharp end. However, as the leaders started to encounter the dreaded backmarkers, he started to make up ground. As the leaders were slow to react and continued to see time pour away, he closed in. As the race played out, his punt on (sorry, Tero, “inspired decision to adopt”) an alternative strategy saw his driver proceed to the front of the running order, and ultimately hold on for a narrow win. A sub-optimum strategy turned out to be the best when all stochastic factors came into effect.

So where am I going with this? Well let me first pose a question: is iGP a simulation? After a few races, I’d have said no. Putting the races to one side, as a management title to ask if it is a simulation is bit like asking if Themepark is a themepark management simulation. This isn’t meant in any way as a glib comment or a slight against iGP: I think it is a great title and it has provided me with a lot of entertainment. It is also in a sense relatively simple (though it is worth noting it is in constant development and numerous features have been added since release and are continuing to be added); for me it is a management game, and a fun one at that. It obviously isn’t a driving simulator, since you can’t drive the cars. And whilst there are many factors in play, and their servers are doing all sorts of calculations during the races (which, unlike some other similar titles of this sort, are all calculated in real time), there is nothing on the scale of the conventional racing sims when it comes to physics engines and tyre modelling. To call it a vehicle simulation would be, I think, something of a stretch. However, one thing I won’t hesitate to call iGP is a racing simulator.

Perhaps the highest praise I can offer to iGP in this respect is that playing it has had a massive impact on my viewing of real world F1. Whilst I always found it easy to sit back and admire the nous of Ross Brawn as he called seemingly perfect strategy after perfect strategy during the Schumacher years, and similarly sat there and was astounded by some of the dreadful decisions made by Ferrari in recent seasons, I’ve always taken it a little for granted. It’s something which, on the surface, is pretty simple. Just like forming a pre-race strategy in iGP appears. It’s easy to look at someone getting it right or wrong after the event and think how obvious it is how things panned out. But now I watch the races with what I feel is an added insight and interest. I find myself paying far more attention to the splits and deltas, visible tyre wear and traffic gaps. I’ve found myself thinking “Well I wouldn’t have done that in iGP” as McLaren seem to try there best to lose a race; I have increased admiration for Perez as he gets more life out of a set of soft tyres than anyone else; I’ve thought “Been there, done that” as Kimi drops down the order like a stone as he tries to survive to the finish line on rubber that is a long time past its best.

Whilst iGP represents the world of F1, in many ways there are things which are quite inaccurate (or, perhaps more fairly since it isn’t an official F1 title, are different). For starters, you are not required to run both compounds of tyre in a race. Additionally, the implementation of KERS does not operate like in real world F1; instead of charging and use governed on a per lap basis, instead the KERS charges over the course of the first few laps, and this supply lasts you for the duration of the race. Were such equivalent discrepancies between reality and virtual representation present in a conventional racing sim, the title would no doubt be ridiculed by the community and consigned to the arcade end of the sim spectrum. But in iGP, it doesn’t really matter. Whether you call it “F1” or “Super Magic Coloured Dot Racing”, the title succeeds in capturing the essence of the sport and, “inaccuracies” or not, it does a fantastic job of simulating the racing.

That might look like just a purple dot, but that purple dot is Jon’s star driver.

So to bring this back to where I began, how does iGP fit in with the conventional sim racing titles we know and love? Despite its “simple” nature, I find it hard but to conclude that iGP as a racing simulator is right up there. It isn’t hard to imagine it being far more “hardcore”; a full bank of telemetry data and a few bucket loads of extra detail and functionality would soon see to that. But when we talk about racing simulators (with the emphasis on racing) as we are used to calling them, I think many could learn a lot from iGP. iRacing’s tyre temperature foibles might have an affect on the behaviour of the car over the course of a lap, and undoubtedly detract to some degree from its successes as a simulator of the included vehicles. But where the impact is really felt is when it comes not so much to the driving per se, but rather the racing as a whole. Should the focus of accuracy and detail in a simulation be millimetre perfection in track layout when something so fundamental to the racing as proper tyre temperature, wear and life-cycling appears to be so relatively primitive? The Williams FW31 could do with a phone book-sized manual to guide you through setting it up properly, yet tyre management, such a huge part of F1 (and not just in the current Pirelli era), forms such a relatively small part of the driving experience. iRacing is in constant development, and Kaemmer’s ever-evolving New Tyre Model is slowly but surely improving all the time. But it feels to me like sometimes the focus isn’t quite in the right place. It’s not just iRacing, and it’s not just tyre temperatures.

Assetto Corsa stands as possibly the most highly anticipated title in sim racing circles. With both the online component and the welcome inclusion of AI, it is clear that a large part of the AC experience will be in the racing. Whilst Stefano has shown in nKP and FVA what he is capable of (including some very good tyre modelling; heating and wear included), in AC I see another area which is going to be very important: brakes. Much of AC’s line-up is comprised of standard road cars. Whilst they might be sports cars, something that plagues nearly all road cars when on a track is brake fade. In reality, anything over a few laps of most circuits in an E30 M3 is going to require some serious attention to brake and tyre temperatures. The presence or absence of well modelled brake fade will have a big impact on what it is like to drive such a car in a sim, but an even bigger impact when it comes to racing. Brake fade brings with it a fairly major issue in sim racing, namely a lack of feeling in a normal sim brake pedal. Even a fancy hall sensor will make no odds in this respect. But does that mean it shouldn’t be included? I say no, others may disagree.

As much of a fan and advocate of racing sims as I am, the truth is I spend a very small percentage of my seat time actually racing. I’ve often wondered why this might be the case. I’ve had enough experience to know that, generally, open servers in various titles are a big no-no. But even in organised racing environments such as over on the iRacing servers, the appeal which racing has held for me has always felt somewhat limited. I’ve had some experiences on iRacing that are sure to put many off (waiting the best part of an hour for a race to start only to be taken out from behind in the first corner, for example), but that doesn’t account for why I feel far more inclined to run practice laps or time trials than to engage with other racers. And whilst far from the most experienced of racers, I’m experienced enough to know how to behave on track, and am comfortable enough dicing with others. Indeed I have enjoyed some fantastic racing in a number of titles, including iRacing, over the years.

Some time ago I came to the conclusion that it isn’t really racing simulators I am interested in, it is driving simulators. It isn’t the racing that interests me, but more the pleasure and challenge of driving the car itself. Whilst I think there is some truth to this, I’ve also come to the realisation that this isn’t quite the full story. I have realised that what I don’t like is having to race at 100%, 100% of the time. In probably any title, you can go into a race, back things off a bit, and pick up places as others overstep that fine line between on the edge and over it. But I don’t want to compete purely on attrition, I want to race. Real racing, in many forms at least, is not about going all out, all of the time. Yet until racing simulators improve in some of the key areas of car preservation (engines, transmission, brakes, tyres), provided you can maintain full on attack without mistakes, too often it is possible to sustain this approach where in real life the machinery would not allow it. Ask your driver to go all out in iGP and soon your tyres will be toast and components on the car will deteriorate at a higher rate, just as in reality. Racing sims far too often seem to do too little to reflect this fact.

There are a whole host of things that could help to remedy this. As I have discussed before, one the greatest appeals for me amongst the proposals for Racing Legends was that of car ownership. If a sim car weren’t simply a collection of polygons and data values reset each time it were loaded, but instead had some persistence of existence, with the player having some semblance of ownership (and responsibility), it might have a big impact on one’s approach to how it would be treated. Similarly, if abusing a sim car carried with it greater repercussions, in line with the real world, these things would matter a lot more. Think of a Tamagotchi with wheels.

I worry sometimes when I write a piece like this that it will be perceived as overly negative. I think it’s fair to say (and I have been told on numerous occasions) that I am very good at seeing the bad points in something. Whilst I might not say so as often,  I do see the positives too. I think iRacing, for example, is a superb simulation, and it does many things very, very well. But I also think the sim racing landscape is potentially on the brink of changing. Whilst a number of facets of rFactor are really showing their age in comparison to some of today’s top titles, ISI seem to be making great strides with rFactor2 in many of the areas that help qualify iGP for me as such a success when it comes to simulating racing. The advanced new tyre model in conjunction with the modelling of the ambient environment and “live track” conditions already make it quite a different experience from the competition. No longer does “What time have you run at this circuit” really mean anything; to glean any real significance from the answer also requires knowledge of the time/temperature and how rubbered in the track was. As with all titles, rF2 (in its beta form, it is worth stressing) has divided some in the community. Many love it, some appear to loathe it. However, whether or not you think it is the best simulation of a given car or not, and whichever way the remaining development goes, there are enough things in place to suggest it could significantly move the goalposts in terms of simulating actual racing. Similarly, in our recent interview, Ash McConnell mentioned the recent inclusion of heat transfer by Gregor Veble in his constraint based physics engine powering ORC. This is a very real feature that, depending on implementation and the car in question, could potentially have significant effects on how one needs to manage the car. Such advances really could be a game changer for sim racing.

Just as techniques improve in all areas of software development, the modelling of tyres, aerodynamics, transmissions and so on are all incrementally getting better. Whilst things sometimes take a step backwards (see Jon’s interview with Stefano about removing features from nKP, for example), overall it’s probably reasonable to say that the simulations we drive and enjoy are moving forwards, and in the process getting closer and closer to reality. However, there are some areas that are arguably some way behind the curve, and that only now are starting to catch up. GTR introduced sim racers to the world of live track technology yet it has been sadly, and perhaps strangely, absent ever since. Tyre models have improved undoubtedly in many areas, but some aspects of this seem to not to have been given the level of attention they arguably deserve.

Perhaps the biggest question mark hangs not over the heads of the developers on whom we depend to provide the things we want, but over those of us simmers. Do people want to race a car that suffers brake fade after just a couple of laps? Whilst less realistic, would it be more fun if it didn’t? Do sim racers want to have to worry about tyre temperatures and condition to such a degree that it becomes as important as any other factor when racing? In the clamour for realism, and the instant denouncement of its absence, maybe we in the sim community need to be more honest with ourselves and with each other about exactly what it is that we want. I feel and believe that I want absolute realism, or at least as much as can be shoehorned into a PC program. But would I want to run laps of the Nurburgring in a car that is begging for mercy half way around? Would it be enjoyable? Some might say that one of the many benefits that simulated racing holds over its real life counterpart is that we can avoid such things, but then isn’t that what the sim-cade genre is for; to maintain elements of realism, but water it down for enjoyment’s sake? Perhaps the answer is to stop looking at things in such simple terms and accept it isn’t as black and white as something being a sim or not. The introduction of “sim-cade” into the simmer’s lexicon helps to some degree, but the fact is it isn’t a three-stage spectrum, it is a continuous one.

We might slowly be heading towards convergence, but with so many elements of simulated racing still left to be given the proper attention they demand, there’s still a long, long way to go to until we reach the fabled singularity. I’m looking forward to enjoying the progress.

“It’s race six of the 1994 season, Mika and I have worked so hard on development to bring the McLaren-Peugeot into contention for wins, though I seem to be the only one to have taken any wins so far. The opening race at Sao Paolo was mine, with Jean Alesi taking second I got a leap on the championship battle that was to emerge with Michael Schumacher in his Benetton-Ford B194.  He won at Aida, then Imola, where I got third behind Hill. Monaco was all about the two of us but I emerged as the victor.  Sadly, in Barcelona Michael had it all his own way.

Now we’re in Montreal.  Michael stuck it on pole, with me on the front row beside him. We got away well and now I’m tracking behind him as we approach the first pit window. Hill in third is over twelve seconds back and battling hard with Mika and his team mate David Coulthard. My tyres are starting to struggle and Michael has a clear edge in the braking areas, I don’t think I can beat him here, unless I can work the pit stops to my advantage, he’s pushing hard as we come up to the pit window.  We chop under the bridge into the braking area for the turn eight chicane and I notice Michael has gone deep, I brake at my normal point, where I have the last twenty laps, he locks his inside front hard and pushes wide, over the chicane. I take the gap, I see Schumacher’s blue and green Benetton bouncing on the grass to my left, and then in my left mirror, sideways, rejoining the track wildly as I power down to the hairpin. I didn’t expect that, a grin spreads across my face. Still, there’s a long way to go in this one.”

Wait a minute, that doesn’t sound like the 1994 Formula One season. The season Senna started as favourite until that tragic weekend in May, the season that McLaren’s move to Peugeot engines began a dry spell that would last till 1997, the season that Schumacher took second place in Barcelona, despite his Benetton being stuck in fifth gear.

That’s because it was my 1994 season, as it played out in Geoff Crammond’s seminal simulator “Grand Prix 2“.  Such was the depth of this sim, the atmosphere, the attention to detail, that one could sculpt a story around it, build a fiction that could encapsulate a simracing mad teenager’s mind so much that focus on that next practice session took precedence over any suggestion of pesky homework.

I spent too much of my time in this cockpit.

It wasn’t just Grand Prix 2 (GP2), of course, I had lived through four full seasons in its predecessor, as well as two full Indycar seasons in Papyrus’ “Indycar Racing” the sim that allowed simracing legend David Kaemmer take the fight to Crammond, in which similar stories could be pieced together from races.  I still remember a white knuckle lap around Laguna Seca to steal pole from Bobby Rahal’s Lola after an hour-long tussle for the spot. I remember throwing a 32 second lead into the wall at the Vancouver street race due to a lapse in concentration and my parents being baffled at my inexplicable rage through dinner.

This depth allowed a racing sim to take over all of one’s free gaming time, which when I was fourteen was quite a lot, and it was in these sims that the foundation of what I now get to call a hobby was born.

Back in these days online racing was just a dream, and once or twice I hooked a 14.4bps modem up to a friend to manage a two player punt around in GP2 and speculated on a future where one could race random people the world over on the great race tracks of the world. Back then conceptions of online racing never got in the way of good, offline racing, against AI that, in some cases, was believable and immersive. I effectively decided I disliked Paul Tracy due to the way Papyrus made his on-track persona, and I respected and loathed Schumacher for his devastating race pace that allowed him to beat me on more than one occasion.  At season’s end, I would concoct a plot for the driver market, and move drivers between teams using mod tools to make sure the right helmets were in the right cars, and even contended a season in a midfield Tyrrell. The headlines roared out about my mistake, how would he get out of this contract in an uncompetitive car?

It was a time when every sim offered this kind of immersion. You could compete in a full season racing the guys you see on TV in Formula One, Indycar, NASCAR, by 1997 Codemasters entered the fray with TOCA Touring cars featuring the (then vibrant) BTCC series.  There were many directions for one’s imagination to race, and then came Grand Prix Legends (GPL), and the immersion stepped up another notch.

Racing Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Jacky Ickx, Lorenzo Bandini, in a sim? In 1998 I had only a passing knowledge of Formula One in 1967, now I am a noted expert on the subject!  GPL gave us accurately reproduced tracks of the era, along with cars that sounded like sheer heaven, and sometimes drove like sheer hell, accurate race program covers, an interface with that aged look and feel that we normally only got with World War two flight sims.  A full season in GPL took its toll, and my insistence on driving a Ferrari also meant that the best I could hope would be to beat Bandini over the season. A move to Lotus for my next season saw me repeatedly crushed by the genius of Clark in computer form, over and over. Never has a robotic version of a world champion garnered so much grudging respect as had Jimmy Clark back in the winter of 1999.  But then came VROC, and everything changed.

When the clouds of reverie disperse, we find ourselves in 2012, only seven years before Bladerunner will take place, where cars will fly, and androids may or may not dream of electric sheep; the simracing arena has changed,  and online racing is the focus of every sim out there that has any claim to the name. Major licences such as Formula One and NASCAR are given offline blasts in games that any serious simulation enthusiast would regard as “arcade” and a multitude of online only simulators own the serious simmer’s time, with examples of cars from the aforementioned series available as a “weapon of choice.”

Forums are naturally alight with competitive gripes, with lengthy discussions on better tyre physics or stronger realism, and in a sense, immersion. But is some of that immersion lacking from the very nature of the sim?  Can the immersion of racing against a field of drivers you see racing on TV, week-in, week-out be comparable to racing against a series of names you’ve never heard of?  Is racing Jimmy Smith the same as racing Jimmy Clark?  I think not.

In recent times, the issue that the offline sim has had, is poor AI. Games such as GTR2, GT Legends, the P&G add-on for GTR2 (It’s too close to being a completely new game to be really called a mod) and a number of others suffer from using ISI AI code that was seemingly thrown in as an afterthought to a sim that would be focussed on online play.  With AI that can do curious things, like line up and park behind a car that has spun, or turn in mercilessly on a human player that is alongside it into a turn, how can you be immersed? How can you run a full season against AI that does things that can only be classified as “daft as a brush?”  You can’t, and so the online packages get adopted.

But for many, online racing is not satisfying. At times you can get onto a server and spend hours just trying to get within a second or two of the incumbent drivers.  You could race for years without having a shot at victory, car choice gets limited to the fastest car or nothing, and when the race comes to an end, unless you race in a league there is little point to it, no championship points, no long-term campaign.  Even if you win the race any elation you have is not shared, there is no cinematic cut-scene with a champagne bottle cork launching into the air, nothing but back to a menu, and back to staid, real life.

Of course, this is the thing about online racing, it is real life. You, and all the other people in the race are really in there, doing this race, making it happen. It’s a great, great thing, but do we not sometimes like to play with simulators to explore our imagination?  Most Falcon 4 players don’t want to really be in a theatre of war, but they love their sim because they get to explore the depths of their imagination to see what it could be like.  When a Flight Simulator X player completes some insane challenge to land a Sea King on an Aircraft Carrier in extremely turbulent weather, they feel a sense of achievement, where the real life Sea King pilot would much prefer a nice, calm, sunny day.

Simulators of all forms, on the most part, give us the chance to drive vehicles we wouldn’t get the chance to drive in real life, and they can put us into situations that are tough. When we race online it’s sometimes too close to the bone, too real, and emotions run high, who needs the stress? We’re supposed to be doing this for fun.

There was a long period in video gaming when many a game would offer both an online and an offline component, appealing to both ends of the market.  I feel, in the modern era, when we look at the relatively small niche of simracing that encapsulates anything that can seriously be called a simulator, that offline play is neglected.  Is there no call for a serious simulator that takes on the IZOD Indycar series anymore, for instance? Whilst I understand that the global popularity of series such as Formula One or NASCAR have such broad appeal that a game has to be playable by a wide audience, there are many series out there that could be developed into a solid, deep and time consuming offline sim: DTM, GP2, GP3, Grand-Am, WEC, ALMS, even the Lotus Cup UK!

This isn’t an offline Grand-Am sim…

Throwing a Lotus 49 into an online sim doesn’t give the offline player the chance to be 1967 Formula One World Champion any more than chucking a Porsche 911 GT3 in would let you virtually battle René Rast for the Porsche Supercup title, and offline racing, indulging in our imaginations, is where this whole business started from.

With some good AI, attention to detail and realism, any racing series could be a great challenge for the offline simracer. It gives the player the chance to play the time of day that suits them, to save their game and come back to it if their five year old kid piles into the room mid race, to enjoy poring over tyre management (Crammond’s GP series enforced F1’s tyre restriction rules of the era) in their own time, and to be able to adjust the performance slider to fit in with their pace to make sure that they get the kind of enjoyment from their driving simulation that they want.

When I compare that to the Lion’s den of online racing, I have to assume that someone might want to give it a go.

V8’s are coming to Automation!

Hands up who knows what I am talking about?  Of course, I refer to the new game in development over at Camshaft software: Automation.  Presenting a detailed car industry simulation, Automation is proving quite addictive in its early stages, where no industry is yet possible; for now, we just have an engine builder, and it’s a lot more fun than I ever imagined.

A V8 is prepped on the workbench.

Many will be excited by the potential for this “car tycoon” game in the form of the industry simulation, and building up your own car brand to be a world beater. Creating a world leading supermini or luxury sedan has never really been my thing, but putting the thing together does fascinate me, and the early engine builder demo had me locked right in when a proposal was put forth for me to build a high revving, low capacity engine for single-seater racing cars.  Studying the laptop screen intensely, as I was, the blonde asked me what I was up to “Oh, just trying to achieve the perfect cam profile”, she left the room promptly.

As the development of Automation moves on there could be more and more of this sort of thing, and the chance, I hope, to develop racing cars from scratch, engine, gearbox, suspension geometry, you name it, but where does it go?

This is where it gets fun, for me. The potential of Automation could well span across more than just the genre it encapsulates, it could become an institution.  Let me explain:

The Automation forums are teeming with people who are excited about this game. People who, engineering background or not, enjoy the creative aspect of designing and building cars, whether for the road or the track. Knowledge of the simracing community is not a given but what is reasonably common is that these people would like to be able to try out their creations in some manner of vehicle simulator.  Sure, they may just want to pootle around and may not have the desire to be bellicose with competitive spirit, but some hints have suggested that the Automation guys have thought about talking with sim developers for some kind of cross-over of vehicles built within Automation, to a simulator environment.

Quite how far this has or has not gone I do not know, but allow me to dream for a moment…

At present iRacing have world championships for both road and oval side racing. These series, we are given to understand, attract the fastest simracers in the world, competing every few weeks to be crowned at the end of the season and receive a nice big cheque.  One of these series is based on a Formula One car, that being the accepted pinnacle of road racing.

But F1 racing, in real life, is not like this, it is not a championship where everyone drives a Williams Toyota FW31, but rather a team based sport where technical endeavour has always been a driving factor. Sure, great drivers make it to F1, but they do not always make it to great cars.  The true spirit of F1 racing, from the earliest days of pre-war Grands Prix, to the modern era, is about a team of people pulling together to create a car from the ground up. They may buy in brakes from AP or Brembo, or sparkplugs from Champion, but the main basis of the chassis is made in-house, and in some cases the engines are built in the same factory.

So, for simracing, we have driver championships, but how about replicating this team spirit?  If a deal were struck between developers, what is to stop teams of people getting together to develop cars to race? With differing aerodynamics and suspension design, built within fairly loose criteria (Give it 50 years for the rule book to hit the 200 page point!) defining dimensions and engine rules, and then let those teams hire top simracers to race their creations in a serious bid at a virtual F1 series.

With a common in-game economy there could even be dedicated engine builders, for off the shelf units to be picked up by teams, or even custom chassis design consultation from engineers.  All of which leading to a point where your driver runs your creation on track for the first time, races it competitively and scores points for both constructors and the driver championships.

The top guys may want something more modern than this!

Where this gets even more exciting, would be a collaboration with the developers at iGPManager, which could bolt in and provide a web-based race interface for the team managers to use during races, to decide on fuel strategy and pit stops. Leaving the driving to the driver.

Feeder Formula could help drivers develop, at the same time team owners build up their skills by running in spec F3 or GP2 series, with off the shelf chassis being allied to engines built by Automationeers keen to build the strongest low-capacity engine they can muster, building up their coffers by supplying engines to teams, with the hope that one day they will have the funds to build engines for the F1 series.

But hang on, what is this, three developers, talking to each other? Making a collaborative MMO styled game that offers a potential interest point for budding engineers, strategists as well as quick drivers?  Where a team of like-minded, if differently skilled people get together to truly achieve something special in a virtual environment, could it happen?

I believe it could, and at the same time it could create a merging of communities to create a genuine virtual motorsport industry, with teams eventually pulling in real world sponsors, broadcasting deals, and teams of people building bonds across the globe based around victory in a genuine virtual team sport.

Over to you developers.

Quite a few column inches over recent weeks have been dedicated to seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher’s rant about the current situation with tyres in Formula one racing.  His concerns, that in races drivers have to drive to delta times in the early laps so as to maintain enough rubber for the latter part of the stint, so as to avoid tyre “drop off” has launched divisive debate in the motor racing community at large.

Putting aside the obvious point: that old Mike might not complain so much were his Mercedes WGP-W03 a little easier on tyres, the debate is something relatively new to the sport.  In the past, racing to deltas has been important for a number of reasons: the main one being tyre wear.  At various stages of the sport, tyre wars have caused manufacturers to push tyres to the limits to gain optimal performance from them, this has resulted in unexpected situations, where a given circuit’s abrasiveness or surface variation has meant drivers have to look after their tyres if they are to make it through the race.  At other times, there were rules imposed to manage tyres, such as the 2005 season, when tyre stops were banned mid race, and drivers had to make one set last the distance.

But this is different, in 2011 and 2012 Pirelli have been asked to spice up the show, to present tyres that will give the teams a headache. In the past tyre manufacturers were making the best tyres they could, sometimes that would not work out, other times it would.  It was a judgement call for Michelin in 2005 to bring tyres to the US Grand Prix that would be as fast as possible, if they could not cope with the loadings through the banked 200mph turn then they would find out on the day, which they did, and they were wrong. They made a mistake and the tyres did not work.

Now, Pirelli are essentially making tyres that do not work, and for some this goes against the spirit of the sport, but for many it is not that defined. Many, it seems, feel that the spirit of the sport should entail the drivers driving balls out, every lap, and never having to be concerned for the longevity of their tyres.

Whereever you stand on this debate, it is hard not to appreciate that since the very beginning of motor racing, drivers have always been concerned with their tyres.  It is fair to say, I think, that during a race the average racing driver thinks about their tyres more than just about anything else. Perhaps F1 should be the pinnacle, and this should not be a concern, the best tyre technology should be available. But, maybe, the best drivers in the world should be challenged in more areas than in sheer pace?

Remember this? It’s a racing car simulator.

Working, as it is my want, this post around to the simracing world, it is quite clear from watching the best simracers in the world on live broadcasts that they run balls out, and whilst tyre temperature could be a concern, they are rarely concerned about wear. Pit stops in iRacing World Championship GP Series are always for fuel, and even though new tyres are always fitted, the general consensus is that they could go the distance with relatively little drop off in performance.

This seems to be a theme in iRacing, particularly with the NTM.  Having run races in the LMP2 Honda ARX (which admittedly, would have longer lasting endurance tyres) and the Dallara Indycar, it seems to be that I can run a full tank of virtual fuel through these cars and still have very strong tyre life. Is this right?

Well, not in my real world experience, where I have always found tyres go through a wear cycle naturally, and after a certain number of kilometres are good for nothing but bolting on to practice car control on a skid pan.  The only sim that truly reflects this, in the current market, is netKar Pro.  Other sims make a stab, and in many a sim you have to manage tyres, but in netKar Pro the tyre’s lifecycle is there to see. You head out of the pits on a cold set, then on your first flying lap there is solid and reliable grip, it feels great, but then, with every passing lap the tyres slowly deteriorate and you have to adapt your driving.

Last year, when I was racing with the guys over at Race Department netKar Pro club in the very impressive Formula KS2, I fell victim to more experienced drivers in my early races due to this.  I could extract the pace needed for a great grid position over one qualifying lap, but as the race wore on I lost pace, and had to learn how to adapt my style and drive the car in slightly different ways, to maintain reasonable laptime on tyres that were slowly degrading.  My inexperience meant that in the mid-point of races I was losing time as it took me a few laps to adapt my style, then the pace would come back, only to find the tyres going away more and more in the final laps, and more adjustment needed.  In other words, doing exactly what you see drivers in GP2, Formula Renault 3.5, Indycar and any other race series with notable race lengths.

This added to realism, this added to immersion, and presented me with a challenge as a virtual racing driver that was far above the challenge of nailing the same apex, lap after lap on good tyres.  As the fronts start to wear, the turn in point for any given corner changes, as does the braking point, the point at which you get off the brakes, and the speed you can carry through the turn; as the rears start to wear you have to adjust how early and how hard you get on the throttle.  If the tyres don’t wear, you do all of these things at the same time every lap, particularly when there is no variance in track temperature and grip.  So your sim-race becomes more about muscle memory than anything, favouring those drivers with more practice time to hone their perfect lap over and over.  In real life, tyres are organic and change all the time, replicating this in a sim is the challenge of a lifetime for David Kaemmer, Stefano Casillo et al; It may never be perfect, but representing this variance in performance and behaviour should be a factor in any sim.

Having spoken to a few iWCGPS drivers on this subject, it was to no great surprise that many disagreed. One particular driver was quite effervescent in his disagreement “Look at F1 now” he brayed, in his dulcid, posh tones, “exciting drivers like Lewis Hamilton have been castrated, we should be watching them at the peak of their skill on every lap, pushing the car to the edge.” Perhaps Lewis would agree, but would Jackie Stewart? Or Stirling Moss?  Surely an ability to control tyre performance should be part of the top line grand prix driver’s armoury?  “Maybe JD” responded my suave opponent “…but no one wants that in their simracing do they? You want to go balls out, every lap pushing, on the edge, anything else just isn’t fun. And tell me this JD, isn’t simracing supposed to be fun?”

This is supposed to be fun you know!

It’s a fair point, but it’s also fair to assume that fast drivers will always prefer a situation that allows them to go faster, and oppose a situation that causes them a headache. The curious thing, is that at the same time many of the same fast drivers push for more and more realism in their sims, pointing to, once again, that crucial dichotomy between competition and realism in simracing.

Those of you that know me will know that i always fall on the side of realism. But, if you ask me, regardless of what Michael Schumacher has to say, F1 has thrown up some surprising races this year, paradoxically, the iWCGPS has not. Would a heavier aspect of tyre management add some spice?

I’m willing to bet it would.