real cars are not as fast as computer sim cars

GT4, PGR, PGR2 and Forza are not sims, they are arcade games, albeit some of the better arcade games as of late.

Try playing some of the best sims (FIA GT Racing, Live For Speed, GT Legends, rFACTOR, etc) and you will revise your opinion...

 

Pretty good. I drove the old version of the NSX-R at Seca in Forza:

1:39 unloaded
1:26 all options

The Stick


PS: I tried the same with the 2004 NSX-R fully loaded but it doesn't have enough FFB anymore for me to tell what the car is doing.

 

Give it a try on the PS2.

 

Aside from it being fun, there is a good reason to compare these times: The IRL times are the ultimate benchmark for how realistic a sim is.

To give you an example: When we (a whole team) developed tracks for Grand Prix 3 we had to deal with things like grip levels of the tarmac etc. That has a direct influence on the feel of the track and ultimately on the lap times. So we used IRL times as a benchmark and tinkered with our parameters until our best drivers (not me) got close to the IRL times. It was our goal not to beat those times nor to be too far away from them.

So when I compare my Ring laptimes with Stuck it is not about bragging that I beat him or not. That'd be silly for all the reasons you mention. But if I get close to his times I know I did probably well in the sim and that the sim is doing its job as well. That's all. In the same way I have the feeling there is a problem with the huge time difference between Clarkson's sim and IRL times. Something isn't right, he should have been closer to the sim times or vice versa.

 

Yeah, 1:26's are probably about what I would run in a loaded NSX-R. It seems to be about a second slower than my GT3 on most tracks. It might as well not even show up if the F355 comes out though!

 

Which is only proven by THIS amusing piece of footage...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3593391196630187578&q=top+gear+transit

It's worth the 8 min 39 sec of your time....

 

I don't understand how that proves anything about his driving abilities.

 

Uh... pitch a 136 HP Van against a 207 HP saloon on the Nurburgring and the truck is only a quarter of a second per mile of track slower than the saloon...

To ME... (but the again, who am I?).... this kinda shows that if you can't make the most of the 70 HP extra, lower center center of gravity and refined suspension... you simple can't be a great driver...

I am nowhere near a "fast driver" but we used the start and finish point as they do in the video and with my bog standard Audi A4 Stationwagon (90 HP diesel) I did that same piece of track in 10 minutes 19 seconds.

Clakson does it in 9 minutes 59 seconds with more than twice the HP, squeezing 20 seconds out of 20 km's of track.

I'm not impressed with myself... but also not with Clarkson.

 

How many times has clarkson driven the ring?
How many times has clarkson driven that car?
How many laps did clarkson get to do before the 9:59?

I don't know the answers to these questions.

And, Sabine, as she admitted has done 40-50 thousand (or maybe it was 14-15 thousand) laps of the ring. She is probably, the most experienced ring driver there is. I just can't see how we decide he is a crappy driver because of this.

 

She's not too hot either, you seen some of the video's!? She's a good driver but as a "pro" well...

 

Fact remains that Mr. Clarkson makes a living out of talking about all kinds of cars in a TV show, commenting on them (and definitely NOT always in a friendly way) AND taking them to all kinds of tracks which is after all what this thread started with, so one might expect some excellent driving skills from him.

No, I don't know how many laps Clarkson ever did at the ring and in which cars.

I know that I have only done 10 - 15 laps at the ring in my entire life, that I am a mediocre driver and spend most of my hours in my office instead of at the wheel of an array of different cars to put a TV show together.

Would I manage to squeeze those extra 20 seconds out of the Audi before I'd dare to put my name at stake on (inter)national television?

Yes I would!

After all, you have between 130 and 170 turns (depending on what you count as a "turn") and some 20 kilometers of track to make up that time. That is roughly 0.15 seconds per turn ! Not an unfeasable task.

Pitch that against what he did in the 207 HP Jaguar and draw your own conclusions.

Yes, Sabine probably has the best knowledge of that track but how often has she taken a 136 HP Diesel Van around it?

Pitch the time of the Van against that same 207 HP Jaguar and draw your conclusions again.

For me, it does put Mr. Clarkson's driving skill in a totally different light and therewith his (sometimes VERY harsh) "verdicts" on cars.

In my eyes, there is VERY little use in taking cars to tracks, judge them on their on-track qualities etc etc under those circumstances.

And now back to sims! Hahahahaha!

 

Regarding the Ring: That's precisely why I was happy to get close to Stuck's time in the sim. The track is so darn long and has so many turns that it is very easy to screw up. Actually Jacky Stewart mentions that in the interview where he drives the Ring in a RR Convertible: You'll never have such a thing as a perfect lap around the Ring. Heck, just memorizing the outline took me many hours and laps in the sim.

Anyway, back to the task at hand. Here my numbers from GT4:
NSX standard 1:41
NSX loaded 1:26

I also realized that GT4 has a LOT more versions of the NSX than Forza. All kinds of different models and years, heck even an Acura version is in there. In some I didn't manage to go below 1:45. Just goes to show we should really know what version Clarkson drove in the sim and IRL to compare apples to apples.

Also thought some more about why some folks think it makes little sense to compare sim with IRL lap times. The more I think about it the more it makes actually sense to me: A real racing driver (not Clarkson, not me, not most people on FChat anyway) doesn't really have fear while driving. They have no death wish and they don't want to get hurt, but when a Michael Schumacher or an Ayrton Senna go out there to set pole time, they don't hold back. Not anything at all. They drive the snot out of their cars as if they could never have a failure or an accident. Nikki Lauda called that "flipping the switch". When you do that, you're in a different state of mind where only skills apply, not fear.

So if I match Stuck's time around the Ring does that mean I'm a great driver? Hell no. IRL I'd not get nowhere close that time. But with the added protection of driving virtually I can at least measure my skills against his. And that is really where the argument about game vs sim comes in. Admiral Thrawn points out that none of the console sims deserve that name and he has a point. They're damned good, but they aren't really sims. GTR is a different matter I agree. So my head isn't really swelling by matching Stuck's time around the ring. If I'd manage that in a sim the caliber of GTR I'd get a little tipsy. If I'd managed that IRL I'd be calling a news conference...

 

No problem, if we'd all agree on everything, what would be the point of this website?

You're quite right about the physical strains. Heck just doing 15 minutes of racing a go kart get to me physically. Racing a bigger machine on a fast track also gets to you emotionally/mentally, so yes these are all things lacking from the sim.

The experience is different. But not totally: While we were lapping around the USGP F1 track in Indy I was wondering what the guy in front of me was doing: He was all over the place and off the ideal line by a mile. Then it dawned on me: Obviously he never played any of the games and his first lap on the IRL track was his actual first lap. For me the place felt and looked the same as it did in all those hours I was pounding it in the sim. True I didn't go at speed, so there was very little anxiety and the walls didn't close in on me. But the look of the place, the banking, the line all were very much like old friends to me. I hope to have a similar experience once I make it to the Ring.

PS: Those are Ralf's tire marks going into the wall.
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Jameel, did you ever play one of the games mentioned here (GT4, GTR) with a FFB wheel? Not to pick on you, but it is amazing how much you can actually feel coming back out of the wheel. None of the Gs, agreed, but the handling of the car, fishtail and spins you feel and you can correct (or not).

I was driving a Stratos through some esses on GT4 with the FFB Logitech wheel and I felt the weigh transfer through the car as I was negotiating the turns. It was utterly astonishing and hard to describe unless you have experienced it literally with your own hands.

Somebody mentioned on here that only 10% feedback come through the wheel and 90% through the eyes. I disagree with that: If that were the case I wouldn't be so helpless when I turn off FFB. While it is true, that the visual cues tell me when I'm about to go off the road through over or understeer, those cues alone would come WAY too late to correct a car on the edge of loosing control. I feel the car getting light (or heavy) through the fingers long before that and know I'm getting close to the edge. To give you an example: Going over the top of the hill at the Laguna Seca s/f line you feel how the steering gets light. Visually there is no clue, you're basically on a straight, but the wheel tells you, that you're about to loose adhesion. Not critical with less powerful cars, but a fully loaded NSX gets VERY nervous in that part if you're not careful.
I'd estimate FFB gives me more like 40% of feedback. Another 20% comes from the sound system, tire squeal etc.