Dear Non-simracer: An explanation of the madness

[Ron Sandrin]

Excellent article.

 

[H34d5h07]

Great stuff. I really enjoyed reading it.

Warning! Small wall of text:

Spoiler

Now, why did I become a simracer? Well, tbh, I have no idea really. I don't really have that much of interest in real life motorsports. I may occasionally watch some wtcc/btcc/gt1/gt3/blancpain series on youtube, mostly it's because thats the stuff I like to race with. I absolutely despises F1, and all those prototypes cars, but I don't really follow any series/drivers or whatever. In that sense, I'm very casual.
I watch a race when I have this "wait, is there a new race available?" moment.
Sure I recognize, a few drivers here and there, but that's it.

I don't even own a car, or a driver license.

I started out with those Need for Speed games, but I felt pretty fast, that's not what I wanted.
By some pure luck, one day I bought a PC magazine, and they have those free CD's, packed with free software and demos on it, and this it had a demo version of GTL.

I remember, I were completely blown away. Sure, I crashed all the time and had no really idea what I was doing, but the sounds, the cockpit view, etc etc, I got bitten for sure.
From there I bought the first GTR game, from the local food store, (it was lying around with maybe 50-60 other games in just a random box) and not long after that, I bought Race07.

I slowly started to check out a few forums, and I noticed pretty fast, ppl were more or less saying "get a steering wheel, you will not regret it" so I did, and holy cow, everything just became 10 times better. After maybe a year or so, (in offline mode) I felt confident enough and wanted to start racing against other players, and that lead to Nogrip and they in return pointed me, towards RD.
Sure, i went online much earlier than that, but you know how it is on public servers.....

in 2010, I signed up to RD, and started to race in the Race07 club racing, while waiting for some kind of league that I could participate in. The league never came, (I were simply to late, since most of the league had already been going on for years, and started to die out) so I were ready to put my simracing career on ice, but somehow, I never did. I were pretty much racing every night, since the range of mods were overwhelming at the time (which was so great). I just wished at the time, the week would have more than 7 days.

Then one day, RD decided to pretty much stop using mods (at least at the time, after some kind of incident) and something inside me died, so I simply decided to leave. I had already been using the default content for years, and I was (and still am) incredible tired of it. So I left RD.

However, after a year or something, I came back, mostly due to boredom irl.
Not many games to play, and I had also picked up GTR2, and were slowly getting my interest up for simracing again. Well, few years later, I am still here

 

[André Gee]

For me its less about competition than about pushing myself (and the car) to the limits, "taming the beast" so to say....having truely mastered car & track makes me more happy than standing on the (virtual) podium.

 

[Akis]

This article should somehow make its way to a women's magazine.

 

[Steve William]

I play racing sims just because

 

[Lawndart]

If you warped back 30 years, changed a couple words, you would be taking about real grass roots racers. Back in a time when you had to go out and do stuff... The memories, stories, lunacy...

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

nice one. in another thread about the appeal of titles like dtm or f1 i wrote this earlier this year (february): "... the basic idea is trying to step into someone else's shoes. I bet even the most hard-core sim-racer in his deepest heart of hearts is not that different from the kid pushing his die cast cars across the carpet and going "vroom vroom" we just hide behind a "sim"-wall. the appeal goes much deeper, ..."

http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/so-why-is-there-not-much-buzz.73800/page-3

 

[truelouie]

A sounds from heart. Great read!

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Haha finally a referral article when that odd question pops up again. Thanks @Ryan Ogurek

 

[Herr Löblich]

Dude, thank you for these words! I felt free to translate your text into german and post it on my website. Of course before my translation I quoted a link to this text and your name as owner of this text. Out of copyright worries I just exchanged the screenshots with selfmade ones. I hope this is OK? Please tell me if not! I just thought on this way these very wise words will reach much more simracers

best regards
Herr Löblich

 

[Josh]

Can't wait to show this to the Mrs! I'm so happy to have recently gotten back into my racing sims, thanks for reminding me why.

 

[Hiroshi Awazu]

Great write up! Unfortunately my busy life doesn't allow me to do as much simracing as i used to before but when i do get the chance i sure still love it

 

[AJ McDaddy]

Damn, wish I could show the missus this, but then she'd question the thousands when I've led her to believe it's low hundreds spent LOL