Would You Race Fictional Cars & Tracks, And Why Not?

Will credit Dr. Straßer for putting an interesting question into right context.

As an old 'purist' simmer and classic motorsports addictive since 1970ies, speaking simracing with prime thoughts on how motorsports history can be preseved for coming generations, and, especially, heavy thoughts on priceless historic vehicles and - tracks of which have been washed out of knowledge of majority of just presents new generation, I've wrinkled my nose plenty times during decades speaking fictional sims.

E.g. just recent decade of watching popular and even respected youtubers occasionally racing fictional 100.000PS AC lawnmovers round fictional TrackMania AC conversions on colorful acid drugs dedicated for pre-teens, unfortunately seemingly with incurable severely damaged cell membranes.

Of which is about as far you can get from my perspective on simracing and motorsports racing in general.

OK, I like lawnmover AC mods, but the realistic ones.

And then fine with me setting me up for a fictional endurance challenge on Talladega SuperSpeedway, cutting inner circle grass round the clock, with or w/o pitstop/rest strategies, feeling the work on every body parts, just post event.

Still far from reality but some kinda semi-pseudo-realistic event, to hold blood-red nails in on the cliff edge, without falling into the abyss of total meaninglessness.

Though must say I since I entered the debate forum part of RD (first years just grabbed RD download section which intensifyed as NGR site was deceased and stuff left dormant at sites as rFactorCentral, DrivingItalia and so on), I've changed my mind a bit.

Regarding Fat Alfies work on Fonteny in fact I since first beta was available had minds about inspirations close to real world slopes.

This comes to my impression due to I during summer holidays in 1986 visited Département de la Mosélle, driving back and forth the beautiful country side land scapes (though only vague memories, even not a picture left from family album ).

But especially Fonteny changed my mind - at least speaking fictional tracks.
And have revisited my tons of track grabbings of fictional rF1 and GTR2 track mods, especially from the 00s and start 10s and actually racing them more than just the tryout driveout.

And experienced more of these in fact are thought-through excellent work for indeed fine race battles.

Speaking fictional tracks, the next on my to-do list of setting up a convincing classic race is this one:


Fellow purists: don't say this isn't tempting!

Speaking fictional vehicles I'm far, far more reluctant.

This due to there's still a wide open buttomless sea of historic, vintage and ancient vehicles of which I've still on my to-do list setting up for historic challenges and even full calendars with events tracks, grids, pilots vehicles as close to historic accurateness as possible - and not to mention the ocean of historic vehicles still to be modelled by the fabolous modder community

And this still by far have my interest in favor of fictional senseless vehicles.

EDIT!!
OOh wait. Missed a point of which I mentioned in other recent larger main discussion threads:
VR driving by revisiting my now AMS1-converted personal creations of fictional rF1 tracks mods, purely created with BTB+extensions, I really had an entire new experience.
Especially one of my tracks hits me - created together with my by then 2½ yo daugter on my knee, pacifier in her mouth eagerly pointing out which track parts, animals, buildings to choose - even a part of the slopes she decided of which became a main attraction in fact.
And then years later rivisiting in VR - now my soon 8yo daugter VR racing our common cozy project from the days, she even clearly remember track parts.

And found out more tracks, especially the dad-daughter one being indeed very competitive no matter if raced in PCC07 Porsches, Skip Barber single seaters, Group C monsters or Vintage 60ies smaller sports cars. And now AMS1 VR racing own rF1 track mods 5-15 years later is heck of an experience.

So yes I follow Mr. Brundle's thoughts and suggestions.
At least speaking the track part.

Fictional tracks, for sure, especially if they are done well. Purely fictional cars that aren't being done to avoid licensing issues don't really hold any interest for me. That being said, I do encourage anyone modding anything. The more the merrier.

Fictional content has it's place. I don't find it interesting as what I'm looking in a simulator is the closest virtual experience to the real motorsport. I can't afford even a second hand kart to drive at weekends, but I can afford a pc and a game that try to recreate as much as the developers can a motorsport as close as posible to reality. Fantasy tracks and cars destroy my inmersion.

But just because fantasy content doesn't work for me doesn't mean that I don't support modders creating those cars and tracks, it's not a bad content at all. It is just a different kind of content. I also miss in fantasy tracks the nuances that a laser scanned track introduce in the driving experience, laser scanned tracks feel just right, it feels organic to me. Fantasy cars and tracks are a kind of content that has it's audience, and it is here to stay.

I run Race 07 with a F1 series with 2021 liveries. Most of the tracks are actual F1 tracks and some places where races have been held or could be. Ialso have a NASCAR season on Ovals from the series. And a GT series. I try to make the the game as realistic as i can with actual cars and tracks. To simulate what my heros do on Sunday's I don't like fantasy tracks or cars as i want a genuine experience.

Fictional rally tracks? Sure. Fictional race-circuits? No.
Thing is with Rally it can be anything, everywhere. With race-circuits you know it lays there's for years and years untouched and people race on it. You can even pay it a visit or race it on yourself.

If the car and track are aligned properly ok. The Red Bull X, car as an example, trying to drive on a actual track was nearly impossible.

If I remember well, there was the exact same topic here on racedepartment onez or two years ago
I used to be hardcore on that, racing cars and tracks with only real life counterparts, wanting to compare my lap times with the real ones. Obviously it became difficult as only a few games became able to provide this experience, as the cars/tracks combos became unconsistent with most modern titles (GTR2 was the most consistent and solid in this aspect).

When I discovered excellent fictional tracks (the first one, and still one of my favorite ones, Springfield from Total Immersion Racing), my mind started to change. Rfactors1 brought amazing fictionnal tracks to the game too. Many fictionnal tracks are bad and are too long or just boring (real ones can be too!) but these should not make us forget the amazing ones.

With time, and as simulators dropped the licences and included generic cars with real specifications, I got used to and it made sense to use them as soon as specifications from real categories were used. Well, I may be ok to use a generic openwheeler (Raceroom, AMS1, AMS2, Pcars), but I would not like to use a fictional GT cars. I'm ok with a real car put to GTE aspects, for example, even if it doesn't exist, but psychologically, a full fictional GTE would still be an issue.

Yes!!
As long as it bring clean and close racing, I am in!!

I'm a big fan of fictional content. I've said it before on here, some of my favorite tracks are fictional GT tracks (Grand Valley, Autumn Ring, SSR11 (the GT1 version is the best), Deep Forest, Trial Mountain). The way I see it, most real tracks and cars might as well be fictional for me anyway. I will never race or drive 99.9% of real sim racing content in real life, so there's effectively no difference between real and fictional cars and tracks. Give me a compelling racing experience, and I'm happy.

That being said, I use AMS or AC from time to time to practice for real races at a few tracks. That is quite valuable for learning the track, but it is secondary to the hundreds of hours of learning racecraft and driving techniques in sim racing, and just having fun.

I've been sim racing for more than 10 years. I can understand not wanting to drive fictional cars. I don't understand the hate for fictional tracks. I get that a large majority of them are just awful. But there are some really good ones that are so much fun to drive, especially with road cars.

Of course, if you try it and don't like, that's one thing. Not trying something just because someone said so, I find a bit strange, though. Especially in a hobby with limited content to begin with.

I don't drive on total fictional tracks. In AC I have more than 200 tracks that are (historical) based on real circuits or real roads.
So I have no need for more and so I prefer a bit of realism.

I don't like fictional cars at all. Also here goes the same. There is more than enough content based on real cars. I don't know how accurate they are in their characteristics but the look and feel gives me at least a feeling of realism.

Why wouldn't you race fictional tracks and cars?

TL;DR fictional cars and tracks can be good if done right, but they are usually not.

I've tried many fictional road courses in simracing that turned out to be very, very good driving places. Thing is, these places need lots of thought and careful planning, it's not just throwing lines and make them come full circle. And some of the fictional tracks I tried were also awful, specially those who want to compile sections of different race tracks, ending up with pathetic tributes that add nothing.

Same goes for fictional cars, but here it's much, much worse. These works are usually either completely over the top physics that end up being a fun exercise with little replayability value, or missed opportunities of having a great concept that ends up being an awful driving experience. IMO the clear example of this is iRacing's Dallara iR-01. A brilliant concept in paper of what a modern, elite level open wheeler could be in the present day, with a sleek looking chassis with the right proportions and no halo, coupled with a screaming V10 outputting 900 bhp. Done in conjunction with Dallara for achieving a car that could actually be built in real life and therefor achieve high but realistic performance levels. But the result? A miserable handling car that seems to never have any sort of consistent level of grip and is treacherous as f***. It died quickly as nobody wanted to drive it by any means.

Fictional tracks are what many of us older peeps would have started out on, back in the day... unless you were playing the likes of TOCA or an F1 title. I believe all of the original Gran Turismo tracks were fictional (correct me if I'm wrong, though, please).
So, in my opinion, fictional TRACKS? - absolutely on-board with that idea... provided they're done well, and are creative and unrestricted by IRL red-tape issues or whatever.

In GT Sport, Kyoto Driving Park is one of the finest examples I've come across of a fictional track done well. Especially the longest version which combines both the Yamigawa and Miyabi variants. An absolute blast to drive: plenty of room for side-by-side racing; loads of elevation changes; fast sweepers; tighter, more technical aspects; decent scenery. I actually thought it was a real track when I first encountered it.

So tracks? Yes.

Cars, though... quite unsure about that. Although there have been a few decent ones I've tried... like the Vento Uno for AC here on RD.

Absolutely, gran turismo does this perfectly and stays relevant, f1 games sadly got boring for me since 2019 due to this

I enjoy fictional tracks from time to time although not generally for races, but for just having fun on a virtual drive.

I'm quite fond of AC's Black Cat County long. It has a nice flow, a bit of a jump in some cars, and very long corners that with the right car you can drive completely sideways through.

At the same time, there is something that just feels better when driving a real track that is laser scanned. I find myself getting in the zone more with real tracks.

I think fictional tracks have only 1 problem. The roads just looks like created via Bézier curves. So the most ones have too smooth and fluid courses. So that feels unnatural.

Fictional tracks especially in rally could be great. But to my knowledge I never race on fictional race circuits, so it's probably difficult to make/design a good one. Fictional race cars don't interest me at all. I see no reason for them except licensing reasons but then I still prefer a real car with no real badge/skin so that they can be skinned afterwards.

I'm all for plausible fictional tracks. I think they work best when the creator has a bit of a backstory in mind (e.g., "in 1950 Chicago promoters decided to hold a street race...") and are true to a particular era or environment. I'd distinguish "fictional" from "fantasy" with fantasy tracks being implausible tracks which I have no interest in.

As to fictional cars, when they are cars that could or might have been built, I'm in favor. The Pessio Porknose is a good example of such a car.

What I would really love to see is a racing sim that included car design, like you can do with "Automation" combined with "BeamNG". A framework like that combined with a defined formula ("1950s 2.0 liter naturally aspirated" , for instance) could make for some very interesting series or league races. (For those who don't know "Automation" it lets you designs car with real-world physics constraints and era-appropriate technologies., you can then export the cars and import them into "BeamNG".)

I like a lot fictional tracks as they can give a great alternative to the real tracks catalogue available in most of simulations. I enjoyed Raceroom's Hill climb, and now in AC, I consider tracks like Horsma Raceway by @Ghoults + Real Billboards skin by @Mascot as a masterpiece.
The same for the tracks I know from @doublezero : Awesome work and so immersive in every details, that the question real/fictional vanishes for me.

I enjoy as well fictional car skins, great famous liveries were anyway fictional concept in the mind of their creator before taking ground in reality. I feel no limit about it.

About fictional cars, I don't have examples in mind which give me the same good feeling as for tracks and liveries. I don't know, perhaps the -even tiny- comparison with the interior/exterior design of an actual car, makes ones stop believing? I stay curious and open to any creation though.